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I Am Maru

1 rating: 1.0
A book by mugumogu

Meet Maru! This round, adorable Scottish Fold cat may be an internet sensation, but he knows how to keep his celebrity status from going to his fluffy head . . . mostly. Maru and his owner, mugumogu, give readers a peek into the low-key life of the … see full wiki

Tags: Books
Author: mugumogu
Genre: Home & Garden
Publisher: William Morrow
1 review about I Am Maru
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Maru is cute, but the YouTube viral-ness didn't translate well to book form...

  • Oct 13, 2011
Rating:
+1
As a cat lover (and a heavy Internet user), I think I've watched every Maru YouTube video out there. I love his "catitude", and rarely do I fail to laugh or smile when watching his fascination with boxes. I got a copy of I Am Maru by mugumogu from the library when I was last over there, wondering if the online life of Maru would translate well to print. Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed...

For Maru fans, the book is interesting. It adds some background in terms of birth date, the kitten years, habits, the meaning of his name, and so forth. And yes, many of the pictures are cute. Gotta love that round mound of fluff...

But beyond that, there's not a lot of substance. A number of the pictures are minor variations on each other, as well as being on the smallish side. Including screen images of the different videos is somewhat strange, as you can't click on anything and the URLs to find the videos on YouTube are not included. The back-and-forth "banter" between Maru and his owner is sort of cute, but again it's rather light in substance. Add in a fair amount of white space as well as the text being in both English and Japanese, and this book ends up being something you'll breeze through in about 15 minutes.

Maru fans will like this book and appreciate the additional background info. Others who don't know the Maru story will wonder what the commotion is about (until they go online and see the videos). I would have been very disappointed had I paid full price for this book, but given that I got it at the library, I'm willing to say it was "OK."

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Library
Payment: Borrowed

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October 15, 2011
Maru is very photogenic in appearance.
 
October 14, 2011
That Maru's appeal is commercialized doesn't concern me, but a feature-length video would better befit exhibition of this phenomenon in miniature.
October 14, 2011
Agreed...
 
October 13, 2011
I LOVE MARU! But why a book?! Apparently, the honey badger guy is coming out with a book, too, and I'm afraid of what that's going to be like because a big part of his appeal is his voice, the action, and the music. Eh.
October 13, 2011
That's too bad... some things are best left in an online form, and not everything translates well to book format. I understand the desire to make money off of it, but it rarely works in a different medium.
 
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