Meta-magical: books about books... with books in them!

Ah, Paradise!

In a blog about books, this was bound to happen. Welcome to the post about books about books -- with books in them!

This is one of those books I shelved many, many times when I worked at the bookstore and, I admit it, it's true, I'm sometimes a bit of a cover snob. "Potato Peel?" I thought. "Not for me." Happily, a search for epistolary novels for my sister kept putting this one right under my nose and I finally borrowed it from the library. This is such a delightful book. It celebrates the love of readers for their books, the fortitude of humans in the face of terror and war, and our essential need to communicate with one another. The characters are real and moving, the voices are distinctive, and the way that everyone misreads everyone else is hilarious. There is a character who tries to model herself on Miss Marple and she had me laughing myself out of my chair. If you need a literary ray of sunshine and enjoy a novel in letters, this is the one for you!

I think the "on the corner" in the title got me thinking about The Shop Around the Corner in You've Got Mail, and so I was won over! The plot is every book lover's fantasy - a young, bright woman moves to the countryside, gets brought into the community, and matches residents with books that will change their lives. The descriptions of the Scottish countryside were wonderful and the secondary characters grabbed my interest. Unfortunately, there's a whole romance plot that's sort of shoe-horned in at the end and it doesn't make sense or add much to the overall story. I would have been much happier with a girl-goes-off-on-a-bookish-adventure-and-succeeds story without the book falling into the whole "a woman must have a man" to be happy cliche. I was also sometimes put off by the main character. The author tried to make you sympathize with her, but even her "bad" fortune seemed pretty sunny (and sometimes too good to be true). A fun little read, but not to be taken too terribly seriously!