The Storied Life of A.J. Fikrey
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikrey by Gabrielle Zevin is a cute but somewhat sappy little book, with a little melodrama thrown in. A.J. Fikrey is a touchy and argumentative bookstore owner on a small, touristy island town and recent widower. He walks in his store one day to find that a baby has been …
The Tragedy of Arthur
Phillip’s tale is a faux-memoir, presented as an “introduction” to a newly uncovered work of Shakespeare’s, titled “The Tragedy of Arthur,” followed by a hundred pages or so which comprise the actual text of the play in question. The provenance of the fictional work, though, was that it had been given to Arthur Phillips (the …
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a nerdy dude’s ode to everything nerdy dudes love: technology, coding, tabletop RPGs, startup culture, smart people, boobs (not a typo), books, typefaces, and everything else in that vein, including the dorky guys that get the beautiful girls. It’s set in San Francisco, in an old-school bookstore with …
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
The Possessed is author Elif Batuman’s recounting of her summer spent studying in Uzbekistan, mixed in with tales of her experiences as a Russian Literature grad student. I picked it up out of the respect I have for classic Russian Literature, which I have a soft spot for since it’s just so desperate and dramatic. …