The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George (audio)

★★★ 1/2

"Books are more than doctors, of course.  Some novels are loving, lifelong companions; some give you a clip around the ear; others are friends who wrap you in warm towels when you've got those autumn blues.  And some...well, some are pink candy floss that tingles in your brain for three seconds and leaves a blissful voice.  Like a short, torrid love affair."

Monseiur Perdu owe a floating bookstore along the Seine - a bookstore that he has owed for years and years and one where he considers himself to be a "literary apothecary" where he prescribes books to his customers.  It's along the same lines as the "the perfect books for right person at the right time" moto that is seem in countless novels focusing on books or bookstores or libraries or whatever.  Even though Monseiur Perdu seems to be able to heal his patrons with a single volume, he cannot seem to fix himself.  We quickly find out that he is still in love with a women who left over twenty years ago and his life seems to be stuck and he can't get over the one true love of his life.

I enjoyed this book.  It had so many wonderful "bookish" quotes and details and I absolutly loved the idea of perscribing books for customers - a very similar line of giving library patrons that books that they need.  But Monseiur did it with such charm and in such a unique way.  Plus the book was set in Paris, which is always a major plus.  I really enjoyed the beginning, but once Monseiur started traveling, I found myself losing interest in the storyline.  I kept wanting to love the book, but the writing and overall shape of the novel just felt a little lacking to me.  The cover and the title were so charming that I I guess I was expecting something a little different from this book.  But I'm ultimately glad I read it and it was overall charming and entertaining.

Novel Living: Collecting, Decorating, and Crafting with Books by Lisa Occhipinti

★★★★

I've been trying to fit some non-fiction books into my reading list lately and picked this up after a patron had returned it to my public library.  I read it over my lunch break over a few days and found it extremely interesting.  The book was divided into four sections: collecting books, creating a library, preserving and conserving, and crafting with books.  It gave a lot of really great ideas about each topic and I appreciated the author's insight, photographs, personal examples in each area.  My favorite section was the one on different craft projects and decorating ideas using books and I am looking forward to reading the authors first book on this topic, The Repurposed Library.

Goodnight June by Sarah Jio

★★★ 1/2

"We didn't have much, but we always had books, thanks to Aunt Ruby, who brought over boxes of them.  and because of her, we learned of entire worlds that existed beyond the walls of our drab apartment.  We followed Madeline through the streets of Paris and made pumpkin pie with Laura and Ma in Little House in the Big Woods.  And every night, I read Amy her favorite book, Goodnight Moon."

This heartfelt take on the history behind the writing of the famous children's book, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, collides with the contemporary tale of June Andersen - a successful, but mostly unhappy young women who finds unexpected adventures when she aims to sell a bookstore after her aunt passes away.

The author had a perfect story set up, but for some reason I left like there was something missing.  This book had the potential to be amazing - but instead it was just ok.  Maybe it was too much like a Hallmark movie (just add in a Christmas tree and some snow and you're pretty much there) or it could have been the twists that kept being thrown in there towards the end like one bad acting classes where you're suppose to act out ridiculous plot lines that don't have anything to do with one another.   I felt like the author was just pulling for things out of thin air.  But, I think that big problem I had with the book was the lack of feeling I had for the characters.  For whatever reason, I didn't find myself as interested in them as I should have and that left the book feeling a little meaningless for me.

I did, however, like reading the book - I just couldn't give it a very high rating due to it's flaws.  It was fun read (despite the tragedy near the end) and I like how the author used letters to give the readers a glimpse into the past.  Plus I have a huge thing for Goodnight Moon and it was the first book that I read to my daughter when she was born:

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

★★★★★

"Sometimes books don't find us until the right time."

"Every word the right one and exactly where it should be.  That's basically the highest compliment I can give.  I'm only sorry it took me so long to read it."

"Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are.  We have to look inside may. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again."

"It's so simple, he thinks. Maya, he wants to say, I have figured it all out.

But his brain won't let him.

The words you can't find, you borrow.

We read to know we're not alone.  We read because we are alone.  We read and we are not alone.  We are not alone.

My life is in these books, he wants to tell her.  Read these and know my heard.

We are not quite novels.

The analogy he is looking for is almost there.

We are not quite short stories.  At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.

In the end, we are collected works."

"We aren't the things we collect, acquire, read.  We are, for as long as we are here, only love.  The things we loved.  The people we loved.  And these, I think these really do live on."

This was a book about books and and love and loss. And people that fall into your life at the most unexpected times and change you in the most unexpected ways.  This was one of those books that I couldn't put down.  I read the first pages and fell in love with the story from the very beginning.  It was one of those books that seemed to have a little bit of everything in it - mystery, romance, literature.  And I loved the incorporation of short stories at the beginning of each chapter.

My daughter was about a month old at the time and, after putting her to bed completely exhausted, I somehow stayed up reading the entire thing - it was so good!  a bit like a Hallmark movie at times, but totally worth it.  Highly recommended for anyone that loves books as much as I do! And so many great quotes!

This book was #7 on my top ten list of 2015.

The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett

★★★★★ 

"What he wanted was to find that world-within-the-world where he could be himself by himself."

" 'That must be something to discover a book that nobody's ever heard of or everybody thought was lost.'

'It's every bibliophile's dream,' said Francis, and Peter knew in a second that it was his own."

Let me start off by saying that I kind of have a thing for the whole "book-about-books" concept.  I love books, and reading, and libraries - so ultimately reading about any of those things usually catches my attention.  This one was no exception.  It was the last of the seven books I got for Christmas last year.  I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to put up the official list, but it should be up in the next few days or so.  I've been reading/listening to a lot of average books lately and it was a wonderful surprise to find a book that I couldn't put down.  Luckily, I was working at the volleyball gym this weekend and my husband was up north hunting, so I was literally able to spend most of the last few days reading :)

This book had so many wonderful aspects - books, libraries, booksellers, romance, and Shakespeare.  I loved the writing style and the different story lines that were woven together.  This novel was ultimately three stories in one:

1.) In the year 1995 is a young man named Peter Byerly.  Nine months after the death of his wife, he is struggling to pick up the pieces of his life.  When I first started the novel, I assumed his was much older than he was.  He is essentially an "old soul," reflecting on his quiet life with his wife and working in the English countryside as an antique bookseller - I was surprised to learn how young he was!  When Peter receives a call about a estate sale of old manuscripts, he is thrown into following a mysterious and dangerous book trail beginning with the time of Shakespeare.  He also meets a women named Liz whom he tries not to like, but just might end up falling for.

2.) Woven into Peter's journey is the story of him and his wife, Amanda.  Both quiet and lovers of books, the two meet in college at the library where Peter works.  I loved there love story.  It was simple and beautiful and cute and romantic and tragic.  It made me cry - a lot.  I kept hoping the ending would turn out differently, but of course it didn't.  And I kept wanting to read more about them.

3.) The third story is one of an old book - a very old book that was Shakespeare used as the material for his play A Midsummer Night's Dream.  This was the same book that Peter was investigating.  This story traced the book throughout history and readers discovered how it ended up at an old home near Peter.  I found it particularly interesting to read about Shakespeare's time and how stories were passed down through different sources.

Another aspects of this novel that I found to be really intriguing was that off book repair and book preservation.  As a college student, Peter first finds himself working for the library's circulation department.  After he approaches one of the workers in special collections about repairing and old book that he knows Amanda will use, he spends the rest of his college years - and career - learning about and repairing old books.  I do basic book repair as part of my job at the Andersen Library at UW-Whitewater and it was really interesting to read about book preservation - especially the process of rebinding books.  And, of course, I loved all of the library jargon! 

All-in-all this was a great book!  I was debating on if I should give it 4 1/2 or 5 starts.  The story line of Peter and Liz trying to solve the mystery of the old book was a little farfetched.  It seemed a little too much like the Da Vinci Code - which I liked, but I didn't always feel that it fit in with the rest of the story.  I have, however, decided to give it 5 stars - simply because of all the "book-ness" of the novel and for the fact that I couldn't put it down.  And because of how much I loved Peter and Amanda's story.  Highly recommended for anyone who loves books and libraries!

This book was #6 on my top ten list of 2014.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham (audio)

★★★★★

"We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live along in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes.  We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep.  It's as simple and ordinary as that.  A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself.  There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult."

"What I wanted to do seemed simple.  I wanted something alive and shocking enough that it could be a morning in some body's life.  The most ordinary morning.  Imagine, trying to do that."

I tried reading this book a few years ago, and failed miserably.  I'm not sure why.  Now am I'm going through my bookshelves and listening to the books I haven't read yet, I came across it again.  I wasn't expecting to love it.  It was just another book to check of the list.  But I found myself drawn in from the first line.  The language was beautiful and the style of the novel reminded me of The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. It was a relatively short and simple story, but extremely profound and brilliant.  

I loved the idea of three women connected by a single book, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.  Their stories fit so effortlessly together in so many ways:

• Virginia Woolf in 1923 begins to write the new novel, Mrs. Dalloway.  She suffers from severe depression and desperately wants to move back to London with her husband.

• Clarissa Vaughan is the modern-day Mrs. Dalloway.  She is planning a party for her good friend (and former lover) Richard who is receiving a poetry away and dying of AIDS.  She goes through her day planning for the party: running errands, talking to old friends, and reflecting on Richard.  Charissa is happy with her partner Sally, but constantly thinks about how her life would have been different if her and Richard would have stayed together.

• Laura Brown is a young wife and mother living in a Los Angeles suburb in 1949.  Her husband and son are perfect in every way, but she is not content with her simple life.  She begins the morning reading Mrs. Dalloway in bed and dreading the day where she will have to make a cake and celebrate her husband's birthday.  She goes through the day - exhausted and just wanting to read her book.  I didn't particularly like her, but I did find something appealing and familiar about just wanting to lose yourself in a good book instead of constantly going through the motions of everyday life.

I wish I would have read Mrs. Dalloway before reading this, but then again, maybe it will be interesting to read the book after as well.  

  

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

★★★★★

"I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right."

"I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality.  But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know?  I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimated the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.  I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant."

Updated: 5/7/2014

The movie is coming out, so I listed to his as an audio book this past week.  I loved it just as much as I did a few years ago and it remains one of my favorite books.  The story is subtle, yet extremely powerful.  I have always loved the character of Liesel and the connection between books and words throughout the novel.  I enjoyed listening the the audio version, but I missed a lot of the formatting and drawings that were in the print version - especially Max's stories that he wrote for Liesel. 

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

★★★★★

"After that the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind.  But I hope you will remember this: A man walking fast down a dark lonely street.  Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need.  A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes.  A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time."

"What do you seek in these shelves?" 

 This book was brilliant.  I read a lot of books, and it's rare that I find a novel so wonderful and unique as this one.  An idea that just...simply hasn't been done before.  To my knowledge anyways.  At least not done as well as this.  Its cute and quirkey - the main character is a total 21st century geek - yet surprisingly insight full.  

When Clay Jannon loses his job as a web designer, he stumbles into Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and takes up the late-night shift.  With very strange and random customers, Jannon begins to realize that there might be more to the bookstore than he thought.  Enter a world of card cataloging meets the internet, the book has everything: bookstores, libraries, Google, audio books, data visualization, secret societies, history of print, typography, children's fantasy novels, databases, remote storage facilities, digital vs. print, coding, cataloging, ebooks, the internet, information overload, Wikipedia - and of course, books.  When Penumbra mysteriously dissapears, Jannon and his friends soon find themselves on the quest for immortality amongst the shelves.  

This is the ultimate book for book lovers and I couldn't put it down!  It's about finding "the right book, at exactly the right time" and creating a world where print and technology can exist side by side.  Not only was it fascinating, but super fun to read.  I just loved it.  Robin Sloan got this one right.  

Oh, and did I mention that the cover glows in the dark?  Yep, it does...way cool :)

This book was #5 on my top ten list of 2014.

Major Pettigew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

★★★★

"The world is full of small ignorances.  We must all do out best to ignore them and thereby keep them small, don't you think?"

"Life does often get in the way of one's reading."

This novel was really cute!  Essentially a love story between 68-year-old retired Major Pettigrew and a 58-year-old shopkeeper from Pakistan named Mrs. Ali. Brought together by their love of literature and drinking tea, the unlikely individuals become friends in a small villiage in England.  Fighting pressure from their family and neighbors, the friendship begins to blossom into something more as the two struggle to find love at an older age.  It got a bit slow in the middle, but this charming novel is a wonderful tale of life lessons and finding just what you need at a later age in life.

The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

★★★★ 

"I will never be able to read one of my mother's favorite books without thinking of her - and when I pass them on or recommend them, I'll know that some of what made her goes with them; that some of my mother will live on in those readers, readers who may be inspired to love the way she loved and do their own version of what she did in the world."

"That's one of the amazing things great books can do - they don't just get you to see the world differently, they get you to look at people all around you, differently."

" 'Everyone doesn't have to do everything,' she told me.  'People forget you can also express yourself by what you choose to admire and support.  I've had so much pleasure from beautiful and challenging things created by other people, things I could never make or do.  I wouldn't trade that for anything.' "

"Of course you could do more - you can always do more, and you should do more - but still, the important thing is to do what you can, whenever you can.  You just do your best, and that's all you can do."

"We're all in the end-of-your-life book club, whether we acknowledge it or not; each book we read may well be the last, each conversation the final one."

This book was wonderful!  There were so many good quotes - it was very hard to pick my favorite.  Or as you can see above, even a couple of favorites.  I'm not sure if it was because of the writing, the story, or that this was written about books, but I've never been able to get through a non-fiction this fast.  I got this book last Christmas and I've been meaning to read it since then.  I kept putting it off - too busy and too many other books to read - but I'm so glad I finally got the chance to finish it!

This is a beautiful story about Will Schwalbe and his mother.  A wonderful tribute to both his mom and the books that they read together.  Will and his mother have always shared a love of books and reading.  When his mom is diagnosed with cancer, they spend a lot of time together during frequent trips chemo treatment.  They share books they've read or always wanted to read and begin to talk about them.  After awhile, they begin to realize that they have formed a sort-of two person book club.  

I wish that they book had focused a little more on the books that they read and less on all of Will's mother accomplishments and political aspect.  She was a great person did a countless number of things to help others - both the people around her and people in other countries - but, she was one of those people I both admire and get a little annoyed with at the same time.  I'm glad that there are people like her who can do all those wonderful things for others and still have time for themselves, work, and their family because I sure can't! 

I love that the book focused on not only books, but the connections that people have with each other through the books they read.  This book brought up a lot of connections to the relationship that I have with my mom.  She doesn't run all over the world helping people in her spare time and, thankfully, she's very healthy and will hopefully be in my life for many, many years to come, but I while I was reading the book, I found myself thinking a lot about her.  My mom and I have always been avid readers, but in the last few years, we have started to share the books we're reading and talking about them.  She joined a book club about a year ago and we are constantly swapping books and recommending them to each other.  Whenever I finish a really good book, she's always the first person I call to rave about it!  This book got me to think a lot about the bonds that books create and made me appreciate the connect that I have with my mom and the other people in my life through the books we read.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

★★★

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said.  A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made.  Or a garden planted.  Something your hand touched someway so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.  The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said.  The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."

"There must be something in books, something we can't imagine, to make a women stay in a burning house; there must be something there.  You don't stay for nothing."

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

★★★★★

"From that time one, the world was hers for the reading.  She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends.  Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.  There was poetry for quiet companionship.  There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours.  There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to fee a closeness to someone should could read a biography.  On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived."

" 'People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,' thought Francie, 'something complicated and hard to get.  Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone - just to be with someone you love.  Those things make happiness.' "

"She was made up of more, too.  She was the books she read in the library.  She was the flower in the brown bowl.  Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard.  She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly.  She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping.  She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk.  She was all of those things and of something more...It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike."

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

★★★★

"There are times in our lives when we have to realize our post is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it.  But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future."

"She never managed to find herself in these books no matter how hard she tried, exhuming traits from between the pages and donning them for an hour, a day, a week.  We think in some ways, we have all done this our whole lives, searching for the book that will give us the keys to ourselves, let us into a wholly formed personality as though it were a furnished room to let.  As though we could walk in an look around and say to the grey-haired landlady behind us, 'We'll take it.' "

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

★★★

"As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it.  And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself inexarably forward for us with its shadowy claws."

The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides

★★★★★

"Every letter was a love letter.  Of course, as love letters went, this one could have been better.  It was not very promising, for instance, that Madeleine claimed not to want to see him for the next half century."

"She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons because she loved to read."

"The way of true love never works out except at the end of the English novel."

It's the late 1980s and college student Madeleine is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot and the "marriage plot" that is the basis for all great English novels.  Suddenly she finds herself caught in a modern-day marriage plot of her own and is forced to make decisions that will decide how her life will play out.

I read Eugenides "Middlesex" many years ago and was couldn't wait to read his new novel!  I really enjoyed how the author intertwines ideas of old English literature into a completely new and easy to relate to story.

This book was #8 on my top ten list of 2012.

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

★★★★★

"When I looked at my hands and wrists, marred by the marks of small burns from cook pots and flying embers, every red weal or white pucker brings to my mind's eye that eternal fire and the writhing masses of the damned, among whom I must expect to spend eternity."

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

★★★★★

"At the same time I ask myself, as I had already begun to ask myself back then: What should our second generation have done...We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not inquire because to inquire is to make the horrors an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt."

"I looked at Hanna's handwriting and saw how much energy and struggle the writing had cost her.  I was proud of her.  At the same time, I was sorry for her, sorry for her delayed and failed life, sorry for the delays and failures of life in general."

"In the first few years after Hanna's death.  I was tormented by the old questions of whether I had denied and betrayed her, whether I was guilty for having loved her.  Sometimes I asked myself if I was responsible for her death.  And sometimes I was in a rage at her and at what she had done to me.  Until finally the rage faded and the questions ceased to matter.  Whatever I had done or not done, whatever she had done or not to me-it was the path my life had taken."

"What would you have done?"

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

★★★★

"I'm not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship."

"I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen."

"Love Jo all your days, if you choose, but don't let it spoil you , for it's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the one you want.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

★★★★★

"I wanted this one to be different.  I wanted to give a sense of the people of the book, the different hands that made it, used it, protected it."

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

★★★★

"The truth is, we all thought of giving up at some point that winter, more often than you could imagine.  And maybe we would have, if we hadn't had each other, but it was something, having the five of us, knowing we weren't alone."