Bookworm in the City

The librarian of burned books / Brianna Labuskes
What is it: women fighting ignorance
Did I like it: of course I did

Librarians are awesome and as such make awesome characters in stories. And although I’m not-so-slightly biased, it’s also a fact that every genre has books with librarian protagonists. I’m now kind of curious about books with librarians as the baddies; if you know of any, kindly let me know in the comment section.
Something else: starting in the new year, I will no longer be working as a librarian as I’m moving to a new and exciting position outside of the library. I have a feeling there are a lot less books about civil servants in office jobs available, but if the catergory ever pops up in a reading challenge again, we’ll find out about that.

Onto the book!
This story is set at three different places and times and features three different women. Althea, Berlin, 1933. Hannah, Paris, 1936. And Vivian, New York, 1944.
What the women have in common is that they love books deeply, they don’t understand the banning of books, and they refuse to back down from men or general opinion.
Althea is a published author from rural Maine, and she has been invited by the Nazi party’s propaganda machine to come to Berlin on a scholarship. She loves being in the big city and is swept along on the wave of NSDAP events, taken by a handler appointed to her to make sure she doesn’t miss anything.
Hannah is a German Jewish refugee in Paris and has experienced firsthand how damaging the Nazi ideology can be as her brother was arrested in Berlin for his political beliefs. After that, Hannah and her parents fled to Paris for safety. Hannah works in the Library of Banned Books which stands to promote Jewish culture. She also spreads political brochures and uses her Berlin experiences to warn her Parisian friends.
Over in New York, Vivian has lost her soldier husband and is working in the Armed Service Editions; an organization that sends special small edition books to the troops overseas. Vivian is enrolled in a vendetta against a senator who wants to impose a ban on books, which includes a ban on this particular service.
Each of the women has a personal reason to become an activist, and their stories are equally well developed. The women each get the same amount of time on the main stage, resulting in three equal main characters.

I must admit it felt like this was one of many of kind-of-the-same books I had already read: The banned books of Berlin, The librarian spy, The last bookshop in London, The Paris library. Their covers look alike, and their stories have similar topics and set-ups. It got to the point where I thought I had bought a book I had already read because even the synopsis on the back didn’t clear things up enough. I guess we can safely conclude that I’m a sucker for books on librarians and books, especially in a historical setting. What sets this book apart is an lgbtqia+ angle.
I think these books are popping up in big numbers because a) I’m not the only sucker for them and b) book banning has unfortunately become a hot item again and the best example for how bad that situation can get, is the Nazi-example.
All in all, this book was an easy and fast read and I really enjoyed it.

Saltblood / Francesca de Tores
What is it: an adventure like no other
Did I like it: aye!

To be honest, of all the categories left on this year’s reading challenge, this was not the one I saw being filled before the end of the year. But, life is unpredictable and so is my reading. This book was brought to my attention (and borrowed from) friend M and sheesh, was I happy about that.
This book tells the story of Mary Read. History knows her for two things mainly: she was a pirate, and she dressed like a man. I only knew she was a pirate, so I had a lot to learn. The story reads like a classic adventure and halfway through I had to remind myself that Mary was a real person; I completely got swept along with the story.

In the late 17th century, Mary is born as her half-brother dies. This leaves her mother with a problem because along with Mark dies the inheritance money he received. So, Mary is turned into Mark, making it possible to keep collecting money from his grandmother a couple of times a year. Mary learns to walk and talk like a boy and because she can pass, she is sent into service as a footman once she looks old enough. Her mother tells her to keep up appearances, because it is safer to be a boy than it is a girl, and boys earn more than girls. (Depressing how little has changed in 300-odd years.) After a few years, Mary makes her escape from the stifling stillness of the house by way of enlisting in the navy, and while the other boys who are enlisting add years to their age to earn more, she shaves a couple off to explain her smaller figure and higher voice. She finds her calling in the navy, enjoys her time aboard the ships more than anything, even though it is a dangerous place to be found out as a woman. After a couple of years at sea, she moves to the army and is sent to the battlefield. The longer she spends on dry land, the more she misses the sea, and she’s desperate to survive her enlistment so she can return to the water.
When she does have an opportunity to return aboard a ship, she no longer hides herself and presents as a woman. The merchant ship she works on, finally ends up in Nassau, the Bahamas, the pirate capital of the world at the time. Here, she meets Anne Bonny, and is mesmerized by her. Anne at the same time, is intrigued by Mary, who learns she herself is something of a legend, known as the “sailing woman”.
When she has the chance to join a pirate crew, she takes the opportunity with both hands and realizes she never felt so free before. She’s an equal member of the crew and as such gets to earn as much as the men, gets to vote, and is appreciated for her knowledge of sailing and dealing. It takes being a pirate to be considered equal. But piracy isn’t a career that offers longevity and there is a dark cloud hanging over the story.
And wow, what a story. The story is about gender, about survival, about making choices, about discoveries, and about an incredible woman. And the wonderful writing only added to it and left me turning page after page after page. I was so into this book, that I missed my stop on the metro, and I didn’t mind one bit as it gave me extra time to read as I made my way back.
If you want to read an amazing adventure story that features strong main characters, this book needs to be added to your read-list.

The bookshop ladies / Faith Hogan
What is it: a cozy read
Did I like it: I sure did

The story kicks off in Paris, which hasn’t been a small town for many centuries, but then quickly moves to Ballycove, Ireland. Having lived in Ireland, books set there always make me happy, even the dark and heavy ones. This book is warm and cozy and made me extra happy.

The first chapters introduce the three different characters: Joy, an American woman living in Paris, Robyn a young woman living in Ballycove, and Fern, a young artist breaking through in the art scene with a show at a fancy gallery.
When Joy’s husband dies, he uses his dying breath to reveal a big secret. Deeply upset, Joy has her world turned upside down and is unsure of how to move on. When she learns that her husband left a painting to someone living in Ballycove, Ireland, it gives her something to focus on and she wraps up the painting and travels to western Ireland.
In Ballycove, she finds Robyn who owns the only bookshop in town. Running a bookshop has been Robyn’s dream but she’s a shy bookworm, more likely to sit reading in her store than actually running it. Realizing she needs help, Robyn puts up a sign asking for volunteers. When Joy enters the shop, she is mistaken for an applicant and accidentally talked into accepting the non-paying job. By the kind of coincidence that only happens in books or movies, Joy has had a career in bookshop marketing, and she knows what she’s doing. She’s happy to be back at work, and she brings the kind of energy that isn’t overpowering but allows Robyn to grow into her own as a businesswoman.
Then Fern arrives as well, and soon the three of them become a team. But there are some secrets lurking in the background and when they are brought to light, it changes the team dynamics. With the big official launch of the shop only days away, it is bad timing and the three of them need to find a way to make things work or walk away.

The town of Ballycove sounds just lovely and there are some interesting background characters moving around, which I’m assuming might be popping up in the other books by this author. From what I could tell the books aren’t an official series, just mostly set in the same place, at least that’s what it reads like. The main characters are nice but have their flaws and show growth, and the setting made me want to drink coffee and enjoy the sound of seagulls in the distance.
If you’re looking for a cozy read set in a small-town and or bookshop, you will like this one.

The Apple Pie Ice Cream Parlor: a Dream Harbor Novella / Laurie Gilmore
What is it: special edition novella
Did I like it: nope

This book was published to promote the Week of the English Book. Lucky me I got out of the reading funk and into a book-buying spree just in time to receive this little book along with the stack of books I purchased.
As happy as I was with my other finds, I ended up reading this one first because of course. The Dream Harbor series is very popular, and I’ve seen the books everywhere. I hadn’t read one yet but that was no problem for this book; there is a handy map at the front of the book, (which I’m guessing is in all the books of the series), which greatly helped set the scene. A lot of characters pop up in this story that I figure have their own stories in the series. On the plus side, this helps build the world of an everybody-knows-everybody small town, which the limited space of a novella really needs. On the minus side, there’s barely enough space in a novella to create a believable storyline, especially when it’s about two people falling in love. To constantly have additional characters pop up, felt a bit cluttered at times. Even the main characters got annoyed at one point because they kept getting interrupted during conversations.
Those main characters are Leo and Charlotte, both teachers, and best friends of three years. The story kicks off with them mid-kiss, something they are both shocked about.
As they are both scheduled to volunteer at an event to raise money for the local fire station, it makes things uncomfortable to say the least, especially when they both end up scooping ice at the titular ice cream parlor. The kiss makes Charlie see Leo in a completely different light, and she can now only notice how handsome he is, how defined his muscles, and how delightful his voice, and is no longer able to have a normal friendly conversation with him. So far, I was able to keep up with the story and thought: at least it’s not as bat-shit crazy as last year’s book!
But then the story turned on me. Charlie doesn’t know how to deal with her turned-upside-down emotions and instead of taking a step back and thinking things over, she proposes that they sleep together in a non-romantic way so they can get the feelings out of their system. There’s a backstory of her pink hair and piercings leading guys into thinking she’s kinky in the bedroom. It felt crammed into the story just to give it a bit more weight and backstory to the Charlie character but because the story is so short, it came out of nowhere and was solved way too easy. Leo’s backstory involves two affairs with two former colleagues so clearly teachers are his type.
Their one night of non-passionate passion is followed by four days of pining and agony at work, and then they inevitably bump into each other outside of work because it’s a small town, have a chat and declare their love.
The second half of the story definitely ruined it for me and I’m just glad this meant I got to cross out another item of my reading challenge real fast. Onto the next one!

Shady characters : Ampersands, interrobangs and other typographical curiosities / Keith Houston
What is it: all things punctuation and then some
Did I like it: yes exclamation mark

Me: Everything I had ever wondered about weird symbols and punctuation is answered in this book.
Friend C2: You wonder about punctuation?
Me: You don’t‽

The foreword was an indication that the author and I wonder about the same things. The difference between us is that he couldn’t let it go and ended up with so much research that it could be bundled into a book, whereas I only had to buy his book to have my questions answered.
I didn’t read this book because I’m a purist where it comes to punctuation, as anyone who is can probably easily tell from my writing: I throw in commas and (semi)colons where it feels right, rather than bother to investigate and make sure they are in the right spot. At best I use the Word grammar check to help me out, but the squiggly lines annoy me and often I’m not sure whether the suggestion is actually right, so I click “ignore this” way too often. My interest in punctuation is more the history of it, who came up with something and why, and what’s with the names of the symbols. This books covers it all and then some.

I learned about this book because articles about “stories hidden in your keyboard” are total clickbait for me. Fresh out of my reading slump, I skipped to the bookshop to get my hands on this read. And boy, does it deliver: the author did a deep dive into the pilcrow, octothorpe, and ampersand. If these names don’t mean anything to you, I’m sure you recognize their symbols: ¶ # &. These and other symbols each get their own chapters. I liked how the author put the symbols to use in the text, creating easy and clear examples. I’ve already memorized the code for entering an interrobang (‽ : a combination of an exclamation mark and a question mark) on a windows computer (alt+8253) and have probably been using it too often.
The one thing I found annoying, but that’s a general pet peeve and not something particular to this book, is when the text of a footnote continues onto the bottom of the next page. It disrupts the reading experience, and I would prefer a footnote that is limited to one page, even if it were to take up more space than normal.
Moving on.
This book taught me so much about typography and editorial work, and I’m sure the book is a standard in those worlds, but it is a dream to read for grammar nerds and curious minds as well; there are plenty of images to illustrate topics, there is an index and a vast list of notes. It’s not boring at all, in fact, it’s rather entertaining; the chapters travel through time, from graffiti in Pompeii to Johannes Guthenberg’s printer to touchtone telephones and the first email. It is worth pointing out that the book focuses on Western writing and publishing.
Bonus points for the wonderful title.