William Morrow Paperbacks
September 20, 2016
ISBN: 9780062467256; $14.99
E-ISBN 9780062467263; $9.99
About
the Book
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.
Review:
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.
Review:
I
believe this was a story written straight to my booklover heart. The
author showed us what and why reading is so important to those of us who
live and breathe words. It's not just reading about made up stuff, it's
about feeling. Laughing, crying, and empathizing with another human
being - even if that human being is one through a book. It reminds us
that life can be beautiful in many different ways; but we're showed just
how beautiful through a story.
Nina
is a librarian who has a knack for finding the perfect book for a
reader. Then she receives terrible knees that her job at the library is
closing down. Which means Nina is jobless and terrified of what the
future may bring. One day while looking in the paper she sees an ad for a
van and then she gets the greatest idea. Maybe she could turn that van
into a mobile bookshop!
But
of course, she's never been one to take risks so she it's just an idea.
It didn't take long for her to change her mind when she lost out on
another job opportunity. Nina then moves to Scotland! It's there that
she becomes part of a quirky little town in desperate need of books! And
Nina is just the person to give it to them.
There
is some romance in the book that surprised me. I totally wasn't
expecting love! I thought this was going to be a book strictly about
books. And it is, but the story is much more than that. I loved the
message of the story. To me, it meant that I could do anything if I just
set my mind to it. Books are an amazing tool that can be educational,
fun, comforting, and a great way for escaping.
*Thank you to the publisher for providing a copy for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
*Thank you to the publisher for providing a copy for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Purchase
Here:
THE
BOOKSHOP ON THE CORNER – https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062467263/the-bookshop-on-the-corner
About
the Author
Jenny Colgan is the New York Times bestselling
author of numerous novels, includingLittle Beach Street Bakery, Christmas at
Rosie Hopkins’ Sweetshop, and Christmas at the Cupcake Café,
all international bestsellers. Jenny is married with three children and lives
in London and Scotland.
Connect with Jenny Colgan
Website - http://www.jennycolgan.com/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/jennycolgan
Praise for Jenny Colgan and THE BOOKSHOP ON THE CORNER:
“Losing myself in Jenny Colgan’s beautiful
pages is the most delicious, comforting, satisfying treat I have had in ages.”
—
Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author of Summer Secrets
“With a keen eye for the cinematic, Colgan
(Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery, 2016, etc.) is a deft mistress of
romantic comedy; Nina's story is laced with clever dialogue and scenes set like
jewels, just begging to be filmed. A charming, bracingly fresh
happily-ever-after tale…”
— Kirkus
“This
is a lovely novel with amazing characters who are hooked on books… at least
some of them. The plot is believable and is a joy to read. The main female
character, Nina, is the librarian who always figures out the best choice for a
patron without fail. Jenny Colgan thinks outside the box and creates a
memorable book.”
— RT
Book Reviews
“This charming tale celebrates the many ways
books bring people together”
— Booklist
“This light, fresh romantic comedy is the
perfect escape for bibliophiles. Enjoy it with a cup of tea on a crisp day.”
— Real
Simple
“[A] love story about reading and the joys
books can bring to people’s lives.”
— All
About Romance
Excerpt from THE BOOKSHOP ON THE CORNER:
The problem with good things that
happen is that very often they disguise themselves as awful things. It would be
lovely, wouldn’t it, whenever you’re going through something difficult, if
someone could just tap you on the shoulder and say, “Don’t worry, it’s
completely worth it. It seems like absolutely horrible crap now, but I promise
it will all come good in the end,” and you could say, “Thank you, Fairy
Godmother.” You might also say, “Will I also lose that seven pounds?” and they
would say, “But of course, my child!”
That
would be useful, but it isn’t how it is, which is why we sometimes plow on too
long with things that aren’t making us happy, or give up too quickly on
something that might yet work itself out, and it is often difficult to tell
precisely which is which.
A
life lived forward can be a really irritating thing. So Nina thought, at any
rate. Nina Redmond, twenty-nine, was telling herself not to cry in public. If
you have ever tried giving yourself a good talking-to, you’ll know it doesn’t
work terribly well. She was at work, for goodness’ sake. You weren’t meant to
cry at work.
She
wondered if anyone else ever did. Then she wondered if maybe everyone did, even
Cathy Neeson, with her stiff too-blond hair, and her thin mouth and her
spreadsheets, who was right at this moment standing in a corner, watching the room
with folded arms and a grim expression, after delivering to the small team Nina
was a member of a speech filled with jargon about how there were cutbacks all
over, and Birmingham couldn’t afford to maintain all its libraries, and how
austerity was something they just had to get used to.
Nina
reckoned probably not. Some people just didn’t have a tear in them.
(What
Nina didn’t know was that Cathy Neeson cried on the way to work, on the way
home from work—after eight o’clock most nights—every time she laid someone off,
every time she was asked to shave another few percent off an already skeleton budget,
every time she was ordered to produce some new quality relevant paperwork, and
every time her boss dumped a load of administrative work on her at four o’clock
on a Friday afternoon on his way to a skiing vacation, of which he took many. Eventually
she ditched the entire thing and went and worked in a National Trust gift shop
for a fifth of the salary and half the hours and none of the tears. But this
story is not about Cathy Neeson.)
It
was just, Nina thought, trying to squash down the lump in her throat . . . it
was just that they had been such a little library.
Children’s
story time Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Early closing Wednesday afternoon. A
shabby old-fashioned building with tatty linoleum floors. A little musty
sometimes, it was true. The big dripping radiators could take a while to get
going of a morning and then would become instantly too warm, with a bit of a
fug, particularly off old Charlie Evans, who came in to keep warm and read the
Morning Star cover to cover, very slowly. She wondered where the Charlie
Evanses of the world would go now.
Cathy
Neeson had explained that they were going to compress the library services into
the center of town, where they would become a “hub,” with a “multimedia
experience zone” and a coffee shop and an “intersensory experience,” whatever that
was, even though town was at least two bus trips too far for most of their
elderly or strollered-up clientele.
Their
lovely, tatty, old pitched-roof premises were being sold off to become
executive apartments that would be well beyond the reach of a librarian’s
salary. And Nina Redmond, twenty-nine, bookworm, with her long tangle of auburn
hair, her pale skin with freckles dotted here and there, and a shyness that
made her blush—or want to burst into tears—at the most inopportune moments,
was, she got the feeling, going to be thrown out into the cold winds of a world
that was getting a lot of unemployed librarians on the market at the same time.
“So,”
Cathy Neeson had concluded, “you can pretty much get started on packing up the
‘books’ right away.”
She
said “books” like it was a word she found distasteful in her shiny new vision
of Mediatech Services. All those grubby, awkward books.
—
Nina dragged herself into the
back room with a heavy heart and a slight redness around her eyes. Fortunately,
everyone else looked more or less the same way. Old Rita O’Leary, who should probably
have retired about a decade ago but was so kind to their clientele that
everyone overlooked the fact that she couldn’t see the numbers on the Dewey
Decimal System anymore and filed more or less at random, had burst into floods,
and Nina had been able to cover up her own sadness comforting her.
“You
know who else did this?” hissed her colleague Griffin through his straggly
beard as she made her way through. Griffin was casting a wary look at Cathy
Neeson, still out in the main area as he spoke. “The Nazis. They packed up all
the books and threw them onto bonfires.”
“They’re
not throwing them onto bonfires!” said Nina. “They’re not actually Nazis.”
“That’s
what everyone thinks. Then before you know it, you’ve got Nazis.”
—
With breathtaking speed, there’d
been a sale, of sorts, with most of their clientele leafing through old
familiar favorites in the ten pence box and leaving the shinier, newer stock
behind.
Now,
as the days went on, they were meant to be packing up the rest of the books to
ship them to the central library, but Griffin’s normally sullen face was
looking even darker than usual. He had a long, unpleasantly scrawny beard, and
a scornful attitude toward people who didn’t read the books he liked. As the
only books he liked were obscure 1950s out-of-print stories about frustrated
young men who drank too much in Fitzrovia, that gave him a lot of time to hone
his attitude. He was still talking about book burners.
“They
won’t get burned! They’ll go to the big place in town.”
Nina
couldn’t bring herself to even say Mediatech.
Griffin
snorted. “Have you seen the plans? Coffee, computers, DVDs, plants, admin
offices, and people doing cost–benefit analysis and harassing the
unemployed—sorry, running ‘mindfulness workshops.’ There isn’t room for a book
in the whole damn place.” He gestured at the dozens of boxes. “This will be landfill.
They’ll use it to make roads.”
“They
won’t!”
“They
will! That’s what they do with dead books, didn’t you know? Turn them into
underlay for roads. So great big cars can roll over the top of centuries of
thought and ideas and scholarship, metaphorically stamping a love of learning
into the dust with their stupid big tires and blustering Top Gear idiots
killing
the planet.”
“You’re
not in the best of moods this morning, are you, Griffin?”
“Could
you two hurry it along a bit over there?” said Cathy Neeson, bustling in,
sounding anxious. They only had the budget for the collection trucks for one
afternoon; if they didn’t manage to load everything up in time, she’d be in
serious trouble.
“Yes,
Commandant Über-Führer,” said Griffin under his breath as she bustled out
again, her blond bob still rigid. “God, that woman is so evil it’s
unbelievable.”
But
Nina wasn’t listening. She was looking instead in despair at the thousands of
volumes around her, so hopeful with their beautiful covers and optimistic
blurbs. To condemn any of them to waste disposal seemed heartbreaking: these
were books! To Nina it was like closing down an animal shelter. And there was no
way they were going to get it all done today, no matter what Cathy Neeson
thought.
Which
was how, six hours later, when Nina’s Mini Metro pulled up in front of the
front door of her tiny shared house, it was completely and utterly stuffed with
volumes.
