Here’s my book for October! What do you mean it’s a week and a half into November?
When my grandmother moved out of her house and into an active adult community two years ago, she got rid of almost everything she’d owned. Which was a lot, as you can imagine, after you’d lived in the same house for forty years.
My grandmother is an avid mystery reader, and she had a lot of books to give away. I ended up going through and taking about 15 books home with me, mostly the first few of series and some standalones that looked interesting to me.
(I actually got a lot of pushback from other family members, who apparently thought that it was rude of me to take books without everyone–and they did mean everyone, even if said people did not care about books or mysteries–getting a chance to lay claims. I explained that I read very quickly, and that if I’d taken a book someone else was also interested in, I would be happy to read it and pass it on. I never heard anything from anyone, so I stand by my decision to just take the books instead of turning it into a committee affair.)
Anyway, based on the title, this sounded like a good choice for October.
(This is taking the place of the library book sale review for the month.)
Title: The Haunted Bookshop
Author: Christopher Morley
Genre: Mystery
Publication Year: 1919
Pros: Excellent characters, actually made me tear up a bit, good look at life right after WWI
Cons: No ghosts
I mean, with a title like The Haunted Bookshop, it sounds like there’ll be ghosts, right? Or at least the appearance of ghosts, like a Scooby Doo episode.
But no, the name of the bookstore refers to the ghosts of the authors of the books contained within, their words still echoing after they themselves are gone.
Which is great. Very poetic. I just wanted ghosts.
The story takes place shortly after the end of WWI in a second-hand bookstore in Brooklyn. I don’t think I’ve read many novels contemporary to this time period, so it was interesting to get a look at what existed and what everyday was like to someone who actually lived through it (as opposed to reading about the time period in a historical novel).
The book is sort of a sequel to Morley’s first novel, Parnassus on Wheels (1917), in that it involves the same characters (and some new ones). I did check to see if a third book with these characters was ever written, because I was interested to see how things went afterwards, but it doesn’t look like it. Too bad. I liked the characters and was willing to go further with them.
The actual mystery aspect takes a few chapters to get going; I suspect that Morley did not set out to write a mystery and just ended up with one accidentally.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. I like the slice of life aspects at the beginning, and once the mystery was going, it was quite gripping. I can see why people are still reading this book a century later.
(It’s apparently in the public domain now, so it should be fairly easy to find a copy to read!)
Anyway, I’d recommend this one.
Now to get on to my November book.
(For those of you checking up on Nano, I’m at 14K as of yesterday. The smaller, mobile one’s school went unexpectedly completely virtual as of today, though, which may prove problematic.)
