Book #44 |
Book: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry | Author: Gabrielle Zevin | |
| Source: Library loan Format: Audiobook |
Pages: 290 | Duration: 06/14/25 – 06/14/25 (1 day) | |
| Rating: ★★★★★ | Genres: fiction, romance, books about books, relationships | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Man gets a chance to turn around his deteriorating life. 🖌6-word review: Great characters, literary allusions, and story. |
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| 💭Favorite quote: “Do you miss your [writer] husband?” Lambaise asks. “Not really,” she says after a bit. “His sense of humor sometimes, but the best parts of him were in his books.” |
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| 🎓A new-to-me word: jejune | |||
| Description:* A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. Slowly but surely, he is isolating himself from all the people of Alice Island—from Lambiase, the well-intentioned police officer who’s always felt kindly toward Fikry; from Ismay, his sister-in-law who is hell-bent on saving him from his dreary self; from Amelia, the lovely and idealistic (if eccentric) Knightley Press sales rep who keeps on taking the ferry over to Alice Island, refusing to be deterred by A.J.’s bad attitude. Even the books in his store have stopped holding pleasure for him. These days, A.J. can only see them as a sign of a world that is changing too rapidly. And then a mysterious package appears at the bookstore. It’s a small package, but large in weight. It’s that unexpected arrival that gives A. J. Fikry the opportunity to make his life over, the ability to see everything anew. *From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: This was a quick, easy read for me. Books, a bookstore, and book clubs are an integral part of the story, which appealed to me greatly. This book alludes to a lot of stories, books, plays, and authors (see all 64 of them), and when I searched goodreads.com for one of the books mentioned early on in this story, The Late Bloomer by Leon Friedman, to see what it was about, I was surprised to find an entry there that said it wasn’t a real book. I love that someone took the time to create that entry, and it made me wonder how many times people search for books that don’t really exist when seeing them mentioned in another book, and what percentage of those have entries like this one for them. I originally read this book in 2020, and this was a re-read as it’s been chosen as a Mostly Social Book Club book by Suzanne. | |||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.