Wednesday, July 27, 2016

The Bookshop on the Corner: A Novel by Jenny Colgan


A librarian in Birmingham (the UK one not the US one) gets laid off, and decides to open a mobile bookshop -- in Scotland. Sounds like a fun premise for a light read, right? And after all, I like books about books, because usually I get at least one good title to put on my wishlist. And a light read is sometimes just the ticket.

Aside from being completely misnamed, "The Bookshop on the Corner" was indeed a

Even with my ARC frustrations, I still enjoyed the book. I'd like to thank the publishers and Library Thing early reviewers program for my copy of the book, and the author for one of the more entertaining Message to Readers.

2016-read, advanced-reader-copy, books-about-books, early-review-librarything, made-me-look-something-up, read 
quick, light read. ("On the corner" makes the shop sound land based, when in fact, it is in a van, and rides the country side. Also, the actual name of the shop is "The Little Shop of Happy Ever After", which I expect was the original title of the manuscript, but that some editor found too twee, and changed it. I have no problems with changing the book title, but make it fit the book!) The main frustrations I had with it might be because I was reading an ARC. I am in the habit of looking up words I don't know as well as books mentioned which are unfamiliar. In this case, I looked up probably 17 words, two of which I was able to find meanings for. The others, thinking they possibly could be British slang I sent to various British and Scottish friends, who also were stumped. I can only assume I have somewhat unaware friends, or else these are typos that will be corrected before the final publication. As to books, aside from well-knowns, like Harry Potter or Swallows and Amazons, I was also singularly unsuccessful, even using amazon.uk. I sincerely hope there is a glossary of books mentioned for readers who wish to follow-up on interesting sounding books. But as I said, these may be ARC frustrations, and really didn't interfere too much with the telling of the story.

3 comments:

  1. How weird, I read that book a little while ago and it was definitely called the Little Shop of Happily Ever After. So maybe your version was just the American Edition and they kept the name in the English version?

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    1. I'm not sure, but that's one possibility. This was an ARC for a trade paperback from Wm Morrow. The title is just wrong, though. So glad to know that somewhere it has the correct title!

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