Review: The Bookshop on the Corner, Jenny Colgan

Review: The Bookshop on the Corner, Jenny ColganThe Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
Published by HarperCollins Publishers on September 20, 2016
Genres: Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 368
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
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Goodreads
four-half-stars

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.

If you’ve read my previous post, you know my cat doesn’t have long to live, and it’s been difficult to read anything. I haven’t listened to audiobooks like I usually do on my walks because I find it hard to concentrate. I thought if I found a sort of cozy read, something of a love letter to books, I might do all right, and I was right. This book was just what the doctor ordered. It’s not great literature. It’s not going to change the world. It’s even pretty corny and twee. It’s like a Hallmark Channel movie made into a book. But it was kind of nice to disappear into Nina’s world in Kirrinfief, a place I desperately wanted to be real as much as I wanted the lovely children’s book Up on the Rooftops to be real.

I really enjoyed Jenny Colgan’s characters, especially the ancillary ones. Fair warning: this is the kind of book where the minor characters sort of steal the show whenever they’re on the page and the main characters are more of a vehicle for the story than anyone you fall in love with.

The one thing I didn’t like about this book was the title. I read somewhere that the book’s title only appears in the American edition, but I’m not sure that’s true. The title is misleading because Nina buys an old van and converts it into a mobile bookshop, so it’s not on any corner. The cover art makes no sense, given the novel’s story. I read that the original title was The Little Shop of Happy Ever After, which makes more sense as it’s the name of Nina’s mobile bookshop.

I’ll probably read more of Jenny Colgan’s books. This book isn’t for everyone, and I suspect some people would hate it for being so twee, but if twee is what you need, it’s perfect. It was perfect for me, at this moment.

four-half-stars

2022 Reading Goals

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Happy New Year! I hope 2022 is off to a good start for you and yours. I’m holding out hope that this year, COVID will be endemic like the flu or other coronaviruses, and that we can emerge from this pandemic and learn to live with this novel coronavirus. It has been such a hard couple of years. I never could have imagined I would see what we have seen these last two years.

Last year, I managed to surpass my goal of reading 50 books by two books, but I’m still planning to try to read 50 books in 2022. I have joined a few reading challenges, as I usually do. I find they help me diversify my reading and try books I might not otherwise try.

I think I participated in the European Reading Challenge some years back, but I’m joining again this year. My goal is to read five books.

I almost always participate in the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge since it’s my favorite genre. Last year, I lowballed and wound up surpassing my goal, so this year I’m going for it and planning to read 10 books at the Renaissance Reader level.

I’ve participated in the Monthly Motif Challenge for the last couple of years, but I’ve never managed to complete it. Maybe this year? The goal is to complete each month’s reading challenge for a total of 12 books.

The Poetry Reading Challenge is new to me, but I’m excited to try it, especially as I have been reading more poetry over the last few years. I plan to complete all three challenges:

  1. Read a poem a day for a month.
  2. Read a poetry collection.
  3. Read five additional poetry collections.

Finally, the This or That Reading Challenge offers two challenges each month, and the goal is to complete one or the other each month for a total of 12 books.

I always love setting these goals at the beginning of the year. The whole year is before me, and the possibilities seem endless.