Book: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
This book has been waiting for my attention for years. I finally picked it up the other day and pretty much devoured it. Why did I wait so long?
This is a lovely lovely story that is perfect for book lovers... such an awesome nod to all things bookish I don't even know where to start!
We have our sad and sort of ornery-ish small town book shop owner who is very set in his ways and knows what he loves. He's sad because he's still recovering from losing his wife. When a rep from the publishing company comes to sell him their books for the season, he's pretty mean to her and then feels bad.
Later that night, his precious Edgar Allen Poe book is stolen after he gets drunk, and then the next day someone leaves a two year old in his bookstore with a note to take care of her.
And bam, life changes for him. He decides to adopt this kid and then slowly slowly slowly he starts to come out of his stupor and begins to enjoy life again. Especially when he realizes he sorta kinda likes the publishing rep that he was mean to back in the day.
It's a simple heart warming story all surrounded by a lot of book talk. If one were to list the books mentioned in this book you'd have a nice long reading list! (I think there's a link to this list somewhere...maybe I can find it. Actually I thought it would be a lot longer than this!)
I really loved this one. For no particular reason other than the writing was awesome, the characters were real and the all the bookish love.
