Book Review: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

There is a genre of fiction/non-fiction you may not be entirely aware of.  These are the stories both true and imagined, of bookstores and booksellers.  The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is one such tale.  It is of the fictional variety, but written so well, you can easily imagine A.J., Amelia and Maya, and all of their friends and family being real people.


A.J.'s bookstore is failing, someone has stolen his priceless copy of Tamerlane, he wife has died, and he is slowly drinking himself to death.  Just when all seems lost,  someone abandons a toddler in his bookstore, and the little girl changes his life.  She slowly reconnects him to his customers, and other people as a whole, allowing him to live a life of love, instead of a life of solitude and despair.


I really enjoyed The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.  It is sentimental without being overly schlocky or corny.  And a bookstore plays a central role.  The main character is endearingly curmudgeony, and a bit of a book snob, but still charming in his own way.  The ancillary characters are well developed and a bit quirky, but quite believable.


The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is an enchanting tale about books and the people who love them.  It is a story about the redemption we can find in children, and how life may not work out the way we expect, but it can still be magical.

The Storied Life of A.J Fikry is available in hardcover, on sale for $21.95 + tax.

Book Review: The Circle

The Circle, by Dave Eggers, is a cautionary tale about Mae Holland, a recent college graduate who lands her dream job at The Circle, a Googlesque technology company.  She begins her job at the bottom, in Customer Experience, and quickly rises through the ranks.  She reaches the pinnacle of her importance at the company when she volunteers to broadcast her life for all of her followers to witness, rate, and comment upon.

The Circle, is a tale about what happens when everything in a person's life becomes watchable, searchable, commentable, and we essentially volunteer to give up all privacy so that we can share everything with others.  Is is a worse case scenario of social networking run-amok, and taken to the worst extreme.

It is about a runaway company, that to the outsider seems like the greatest place to work, and live.  As long as you are not critical of the company.  Something fairly incriminating will be found on your hard drive if you even utter the world "monopoly."  And once you're part of The Circle, it is a constant struggle to be the one who shares the most, rates the most, and interacts the most.  You are encouraged to participate in company events, and any slight, intentional or unintentional, can turn into an incredible emotional overreaction by the slighted party.

I loved this book, and read the over 500 pages in just a few days.  It was easy rooting for Mae to figure out what was going on, and use her incredible influence among her followers to put a stop to it.  It also makes you think about how much time we spend in front of one screen or another in our lives, and that we should probably endeavor to spend less time interacting on line, and more in person.

The Circle, comes out in paperback on April 22nd.  We will have a few copies here if you want to check it out.  I loved it.

Book Review: Hounded by Kevin Hearne

I picked up Hounded, by Kevin Hearne, because I kept hearing good things about it from other Fantasy writers.  Not personally mind you, but in blog posts and YouTube videos, and all sorts of different places.  It was a pretty good read.  It took me a little while to get into it, but there is a lot of very good mythology here.  Of course you start with the Irish Druid, so there is Irish mythology, there is also Norse and Polish mythology thrown in just for fun.

We have our main character Atticus O'Sullivan (please don't ask me to spell or pronounce his Irish name-I would undoubtedly mangle it beyond recognition) a 2000 year old Irish Druid.  For our purposes here, Druids are able to gain power from the earth, and shapeshift into several different animal creatures.  Atticus has attempted to change with the times (thus the name Atticus), and blend in with his surroundings so as to not be killed by the many, many dangerous creatures in his world.  He is particularly afraid of  Aengus Óg, a very angry Celtic God from whom he stole a very important sword many years ago.  He has achieved relative immortality by a deal he made with the Morrigan, an Irish crow goddess, who choose the warriors who die in battle.  He is also able to mix up a Druidic tea that prevents him from aging.  Thus immortal Druid human.

And now the fun part.  He owns a new age bookstore/tea house!  Knowing I have a weakness for both books, and tea, I became quite enamored.  Discovering he was a ginger only sealed the deal.  And he has a giant Irish Wolfhound named Oberon, with whom he communicates telepathically.  Given the shortage of literary gingers with giant telepathic dogs, I had no choice but to read this book.

If you are concerned about the myriad of unpronounceable words, don't be.  Thankfully Mr. Hearne has thoughtfully provided a pronunciation key at the beginning of the book, although I wish he had provided the same pronunciations in subsequent volumes, instead of assuming I had them down (I didn't).

I have to say it was pretty good, which is enough to get me to continue with the series as first books are really hard to make fantastic, due to all the necessary exposition contained therein.  As long as they manage to establish some characters that you actually care about, and put them in a place with the possibility for dangers and fun, I'll go on to the second book (which improves on the first by the way).  If you enjoy the Dresden Files, or the Libriomancer Series, you should give the Iron Druid Chronicles a shot.  You won't be disappointed.

I Don't Care How Many Bats I Have Tattooed on My Person, I Still Do Not Have to Read Dracula

It's kind of a mantra.  I struggle with this deep doubt of my worth as a bookseller, because I read almost exclusively for pleasure, and almost always out of the often shunned genres of: fantasy, young adult, and graphic novels.  I seldom find other things that call to me, but there is this tiny voice that whispers that I'm a bad person for refusing to read non-fiction, or even classic literature.  So I repeat to myself that I don't have to read Dracula.  My goth card will not be revoked if I don't.

Here's the thing.  In the second year after Borders closed, I pledged to read one classic a month for the entire year.  I kicked it off with the most bookseller friendly classic of all time; Fahrenheit 451.  We booksellers love the First Amendment.  Since Fahrenheit 451 is pretty much all about the power of books and not losing them to censorship, I really couldn't think of starting any place else right?

And then I hated it.  I finished it and was pleased with the ending, and was glad that I made it all the way through the book, but it took me almost three weeks to read.  I could read six Jim Butcher novels in that time, and not feel bogged down by a sense of moral obligation to pick up a book.

I kind of imagine this is how non-readers feel all the time.  "I'm not enjoying this, but if people see me holding this, they'll think I'm some sort of savvy intellectual type."  Make no mistake, I definitely felt intellectually superior to everyone walking around with Fifty Shades of Grey (that's when this experiment took place), but I wasn't a very happy reader.

So like 90% of the population, I guiltily abandoned my New Year's Resolution.  I then spent the next 49 weeks reading 83 additional books, including nearly everything Jim Butcher has written (hence the earlier math-those were not random numbers).

So, I learned a lesson.  Classics are not really my thing.  Most of the time I feel okay about it.  I have my handful of go to non-fiction books (I love you Simon Winchester), and I have my token regular fiction book (The Bean Trees).  I also have a trove of recommendations based on the 50 hours a week I spend selling books to other people ("What are the last three books you loved," isn't just to help you find your next favorite book.  It's also to help the person who has read it already.).  But there's this voice that whispers (usually after someone gives me a scornful "oh," sometimes with accompanying eyeroll, when I answer their inquiry as to what I read), that tells me to put on my big girl pants and read some literature.  It's typically not a very positive voice, so I have decided to continue to repeat my reader mantra: "I don't care how many bats I have tattooed on my person, I do not have to read Dracula", and I am a happy reader.

Book Review: the Fault In Our Stars

The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green is not what I expected.  I won't tell you exactly what I expected, because that may ruin it for you when you read it.  What's that you say, you weren't planning on reading it?  Well you really should.  It is an excellent book about young love, loss, and how you need to live and love now, regardless of your situation, because it is the love that is important, not how long it lasts.

Hazel has thyroid cancer, which has metastasized to her lungs, she knows she will not live to a ripe old age, but for right now a drug is preventing the tumors in her lungs from growing any larger.  So it has arrested, but not cured her condition.  She still needs to use an oxygen tank.  Certainly not a life anyone would want as a sixteen year old, until she meets Augustus Waters at her cancer support group.  Augustus is in remission from a cancer that resulted in an amputated leg.  Hazel tries to keep Augustus (fantastic name Augustus) at arms length, because she doesn't want to hurt him when she dies.  "I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to try to minimize that casualties, okay?"  Fantastic line, although all for naught, as they fall in love anyway.  These characters are well written, and it is a great young love story.

The book makes some fascinating observations about what it means to be a terminally ill child, and what it means to be the parent of a terminally ill child.  It is an important book for both parents and their teens to read.  It is interesting to see what happens to teenagers who have lost their sense of immortality.  They know they will not live forever, but are determined to live while they can.

In the end, The fault In Our Stars, is an epic love story that stretches on to infinity.  It just happens that, "some infinities are longer than others."

Book review: Mistborn

I just finished reading Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson.  It had been lurking in my to read pile for an obscenely long time, and I figured four years was about as long as I could reasonably put it off.  The verdict?  I'm a fool!  I could have spent years living a life enriched by this book and I missed out on them for no good reason whatsoever.  Actually it was a very good reason.  I was afraid I'd love them and decide that I needed to read all Sanderson's books.  If I had to read all his books, I would then have to read the Wheel of Time and I have a wildly irrational fear of Robert Jordan's life's work.

The thing that finally got me over my ridiculous procrastination was an offhanded remark in a review I was reading (TOR has signed him to write two more books in the series which reminded me I needed to read them) "What happens when the hero of prophecy fails?".  For whatever reason in all of my conversations about this book (there were many) no one seemed to find that plot point relevant.  I'll confess that I'm still a bit perplexed at how dozens of people managed to skip that tiny fact (I roll my eyes here), because fantasy is at its core, a very simple formula.

A hero and his companions (there are almost always companions, a good hero knows that he needs help) go on a quest (usually involving a magical jewel or talisman) to fight a tyrannical evil (who might have minions, but never companions, he doesn't think anyone can do something better than him. This is typically his undoing).  Said hero, with the aid of his aforementioned noble companions, will defeat his evil foe, often saving a beautiful girl in the process, and will then live happily ever after.  This isn't a set in stone formula, but it's pretty much the core of the fantasy genre.

Over the years authors have certainly strayed from the formula.  Tamora Pierce and Robin McKinley both gave their magic talismans to girls.  Terry Brooks sucked a man out of our world and gave him a magic kingdom, before he started following the designated path of a fantasy series.  But over all most authors stick to the Tolkien approach.  Even the most devoted Magic Card loving, D&D playing, David Eddings loving, fantasy geek can only read so many books with the same overall plot.  When I first picked up The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, I couldn't wrap my head around the protagonist's tales of growing up with loving parents.  Didn't Pat know that all heroes must be orphans?  It made us root for them.

All that is what finally made me read Mistborn.  A world that had been failed by its hero and suffered under an evil overlord for a millennium was just the thing to cleanse my literary palate.  It also got me thinking.  Right now is a really great time to be a fantasy reader.  Game of Thrones kicked the door wide open for non-traditional fantasy novels to make it onto bookstore shelves.  Whether its a change in location brought to you in The Lies of Locke Lamora (no knights and castles in this one, think renaissance Venice instead), Rothfuss and The Name of the Wind's assault on every fantasy trope out there, or Sanderson mocking everything fantasy readers hold dear by giving us a world where the bad guy won, things have certainly changed in mainstream fantasy.

It's refreshing to step away from tradition, even more so when the book doing the stepping is well written, and fun to read.  Any suggestions as to what I should read next?

New copies of Mistborn and Name of the Wind are available at Broken In Books in mass market paperback for $7.99 each plus tax. Anything else mentioned in this blog post can always be ordered or may be available used.

Book Review: Eleanor & Park

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

I decided to read this book around the time it started showing up on banned book lists.  All I can really say about it is it is phenomenal.  This is the sort of book that can really have a positive impact on kids lives, particularly if they're the sort who don't really fit in or have had difficult lives.  It's also a really good love story that has cross generational appeal.

Rowell does an excellent job of capturing the spirit of young, awkward love, and the book would still be amazing if that was all it had to say.  However it is more complicated than that, as the female lead Eleanor and her family are the victims of abuse at the hands of her drunken step-father.  It also shows the ways her family deals with being poor, which can be quite enlightening for kids who are more well off.


I endorse this book for both teenagers and adults.  There are some PG rated teenage love scenes and some language and abuse themes, but overall it's a fantastic book that most teens should be able to handle.  It also has appeal for adults, particularly those that enjoy the culture and music of the 80's as that is the time period in which the book is set.  It also takes perspective turns between Eleanor and Park so you can see the story from both perspectives, for example when she sees herself as looking fat and unattractive in her gym clothes, and he sees her as beautiful.


Eleanor & Park is a sweet love story between two teenage misfits.  It teaches a lesson of acceptance and hope and was one of the better books I have read this year.  I wholeheartedly endorse it, and can put a copy on hold for you right now if you give me a call, shoot me an email or write me a Facebook message.