5. The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan

Listened to eAudio/Chirp
narrated  by Lucy Price-Lewis
Unabridged audio (9:13)
2016, William Morrow/Harper Collins
384 pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 1/10/2020
Goodreads rating:  3.85 - 41,335 ratings
My rating:  4
Setting:   Birmingham, England, and rural Scotland

First line/s:  "The problem with good things that happen is that very often they disguise themselves as awful things."

My comments:  Set first in Birmingham, England, then moving shortly to the Scottish Highlands (and read beautifully with both British and Scottish accents) Nina purchases a HUGE van that she turns into a bookshop on wheels.  She's never driven anything like this, never mind a stick shift, but she has otherworldly luck in purchasing books everyone want for next to nothing, creating s huge  clientele, and actually making her new business a success.  Throw in a weird relationship with a midnight train, a Latvian immigrant, a gruff sheep farmer, and a cast of well-meaning characters and you have one entertaining - though somewhat unbelievable - story.  A simple, clean love story for book lovers.

Goodreads synopsis:  Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.
          Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.
          From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.

65. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan

listened to on Audible
2017, Scribner
336 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished 11/13/17
Goodreads rating: 3.81 - 7705 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: Contemporary Denver

First line/s:  "Lydia heard the first flap of paper wings as the first book fell from its shelf."

My comments: A couple of friends of GoodReads liked this book, so I thought I'd give it a try.  The story slowly pulled e in.  Took me awhile to get into it, but once I did I didn't want to put it down.  I really like the way it was written, it reminded me of gently folding a dry ingredient into a wet one when baking.  It had many, many layers to it, especially a well-flushed-out cast of characters.  The setting, Denver, Colorado, is almost like one of the characters.  As the tragic story unfolds, one gets a strong feeling about which way it's headed, but there are still many surprises, twists, and turns.  This is not a police procedural or any sort of murder mystery.  It's a solid psychological mystery and I very much recommend it.

Goodreads synopsis: “Sullivan’s debut is a page-turner featuring a heroine bookseller who solves a cold case with clues from books—what is not to love?” —Nina George, author of The Little French Bistro, and the New York Times bestselling The Little Paris Bookshop
          When a bookshop patron commits suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this fiendishly clever debut novel from an award-winning short story writer.
          Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves.
          But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?
          As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left. Bedazzling, addictive, and wildly clever, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a heart-pounding mystery that perfectly captures the intellect and eccentricity of the bookstore milieu and will keep you guessing until the very last page.​

MOVIE - Cafe Society

PG-13 (1:25)

Limited Release 7/15/16

Viewed Sunday 10/2/16 at Century Gateway (by myself)

RT Critic:  71  Audience:  63
Critic's Consensus:   Café Society's lovely visuals and charming performances round out a lightweight late-period Allen comedy whose genuine pleasures offset its amiable predictability.

Cag:  4/Liked it a lot

Directed & written by Woody Allen

Perdido Productions

Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carrell, Blake Lively, Parker Posey

My comments:  I don't think I realize how much I love Woody Allen's work.  For the most part I love this film, and I adore the way he ended it.  The settings - 1930s Hollywood and New York City - as well as the costuming - were terrific.  I love the way that real personalities (like in many of his other films) were examined.  Casting was terrific.  The juxtaposition of the three siblings was my second favorite part, but I think a little bit more story about Bobby's brother and sister was needed to round out the story a bit and would have definitely enhanced the movie.  My favorite part?  The Jewish influences and humor.

RT Summary:  Set in the 1930s, Woody Allen's bittersweet romance CAFÉ SOCIETY follows Bronx-born Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) to Hollywood, where he falls in love (with his uncle's mistress), and back to New York, where he is swept up in the vibrant world of high society nightclub life. Centering on events in the lives of Bobby's colorful Bronx family, the film is a glittering valentine to the movie stars, socialites, playboys, debutantes, politicians, and gangsters who epitomized the excitement and glamour of the age.

66. The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin

2014, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
HC $24.95

260 pgs.

Adult CRF

Finished 10/20/2014

Goodreads rating: 4.01

My rating:    (5) Awesome 

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary Alice Island (a fictional island off Hyannis, Cape Cod, Massachusetts)

1st sentence/s:  "On the ferry from Hyannis to Alice Island, Amelia Loman paints her nails yellow and, while waiting for them to dry, skims her predecessor's notes.  'Island Books, approximately $350,000.00 per annum in sales, the better portion of that in the summer months to folks on holiday,' Harvey Rhodes reports.  'Six hundred square feet of selling space.  No full-time employees other than owner.  Very small children's section.  Fledgling onn-line presence.  Poor community outreach.  Inventory emphasizes the literary, which is good for us, but Fikry's tastes are very specific, and without Nic, he can't be counted on to hand-sell.  Luckily for him, Island's the only game in town.'

My comments:  I loved this book.  I loved the way it was written. I loved all its references to books and short stories. I liked the format.   And I adored the characters. I appreciated all the "hints" in A.J.'s notes of what was to come, how you slowly realized what was going to ultimately happen.  The plot unfolded perfectly. It's been a long, long time since I've stayed up so late into the night to finish a book.  My favorite character?  The chief of police, Lambiase.  Biggest problem?  How to pronounce "Lambiase" and "Fikry." Super story.  I've listed the short stories that begin each chapter below.

Goodreads book summary:  On the faded Island Books sign hanging over the porch of the Victorian cottage is the motto "No Man Is an Island; Every Book Is a World." A. J. Fikry, the irascible owner, is about to discover just what that truly means.
          A. J. Fikry's life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. Slowly but surely, he is isolating himself from all the people of Alice Island-from Lambiase, the well-intentioned police officer who's always felt kindly toward Fikry; from Ismay, his sister-in-law who is hell-bent on saving him from his dreary self; from Amelia, the lovely and idealistic (if eccentric) Knightley Press sales rep who keeps on taking the ferry over to Alice Island, refusing to be deterred by A.J.'s bad attitude. Even the books in his store have stopped holding pleasure for him. These days, A.J. can only see them as a sign of a world that is changing too rapidly.
          And then a mysterious package appears at the bookstore. It's a small package, but large in weight. It's that unexpected arrival that gives A. J. Fikry the opportunity to make his life over, the ability to see everything anew. It doesn't take long for the locals to notice the change overcoming A.J.; or for that determined sales rep, Amelia, to see her curmudgeonly client in a new light; or for the wisdom of all those books to become again the lifeblood of A.J.'s world; or for everything to twist again into a version of his life that he didn't see coming. As surprising as it is moving, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is an unforgettable tale of transformation and second chances, an irresistible affirmation of why we read, and why we love.

 Short stories mentioned:
Dahl -  "Lamb to the Slaughter" (1953)
Fitzgerald - "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (1922)
Harte -  "The Luck of Roaring Camp" (1868)
Bausch - "What Feels Like the World" (1985)
O'Connor - "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (1953)
Twain - "The Celebrated Frog of Calaveras County" (1865)
Shaw - "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" (1939)
Paley - "A Conversation with My Father" (1972)
Salinger - "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (1948)
Poe - "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843)
Bender - "Ironhead" (2005)
Carver - "What We Talk about When We Talk about Love" (1980)
Dahl - "The Bookseller" (1986)

15. Leaving Gee's Bend - Irene Latham

For: Middle grades
G. P. Putnams, 2010
HC, $16.95
230 pages
Rating: 4

This is the story of three days in the life of 10-year old sharecropper Ludelphia Bennett in 1932. Ludelphia lives in Gee's Bend, Alabama, a tiny, extremely poor black community on the banks of the Alabama River, 40 miles by road from the closest town. Gee's Bend is now famous for the quilts that have been produced by the hands of the women who lived there through the depression and afterwards. I was lucky enough to see the exhibition of these quilts a year or two ago in a huge exhibition in San Francisco. The quilts and their stories have traveled - and are still traveling - all around the country. What incredible stories! I've thought many times of these people, of these quilts, of the lives in that community, even researching quilt shops and museums in Alabama for a future summer trip. So when this book came out, I reserved it at the library immediately.

Ludelphia has had nothing but rotten luck for much of her life, and it certainly continues in this story. One bad thing after another happens to her - but I can attest, this is the reality of our lives sometimes. For the first time in many years, Ludelphia's mother has delivered a healthy baby. However, she herself is dying from pneumonia and influenza. There's nothing that can be done. So Ludelphia sets off across the river to try and find a doctor. Along the way she bumps into one adventure after another. And along the way, she has the tangible comfort of stitching together used, torn-up pieces of cloth into a story quilt for her mother.

When the author, Irene Latham, first saw the quilts of Gee's Bend, she was as entranced by them and their stories as I was. But she had the gumption to research and travel and visit and talk to people and create this story. A story based on incidents that she researched. She has given the world - and the children of the world who have no idea about this section of our country in more segregated times than now - a glimpse into a sharecropper's life. I get it. The kid's will get it. There's good story telling going on here. I thank Irene Latham for writing this book.

View the book trailer on YouTube.

Here's a review of a reader that didn't like the book. If you read the reviews, make sure you read the comments after. There was much more bias on the reviewer's side than on the author's side (in my humble opinion). When a reviewer really bashes a book - a lengthy bashing - it's always interesting to see that reviewer's background - gives a little insight into where the left-field comments (or what appear to be left-field comments) are coming from. Talk about picking apart a book! She sure reads for a different reason than I do!

This was a good historical fiction which I will recommend to my students. However, I'm not sure the title is apt. I would ask my students to create a new title and tell me why they chose what they did. Takers, anyone?

MOVIE - Public Enemies

Johnny Depp was great

Released July 1, 2009

R (2 hrs. 23 min.)

Reel Pizza Thurs 8/6 with Fran

RT: 67% cag: 88%

Director: Michael Mann

This machine-gunning love story had humor and great acting. John Dillinger - Public Enemy # 1 in the 30's, recreated by Johnny Depp and Michael Mann - was interesting and entertaining. The violence and mahem were expected, the smirk on Depp/Dillinger's face was beautiful, of course you were rooting for the bad guys....and the ending was perfect. Yes, it was indeed a love story. And how much of this was true? Was he really so smart? Was he really so cheeky? (Walking into the Chicago Police station and strolling into the Dillinger unit!) Or was he really just lucky? Between the book I'm currently reading and this movie, I am more-than-ever convinced that the FBI is, for the most part, ummmmm....... ineffective???

I'm really glad I saw this. Hadn't been planning to. Good movie.