It has been wonderful to be back at the library and have the doors open to you all! We are thrilled to have patrons back in picking up holds, perusing the stacks and using the library’s technology. It will be awhile before we are back in full swing, though. We will not be running any programs or renting rooms for group meetings for the foreseeable future. Usually, this month’s edition of the HCN would have our program guide for the fall in its centre pages. If all goes well, you will see this next month. With a lot of finger- crossing and crystal ball gazing we will try and figure out what September will be like. Stay tuned. In the meantime, if you can’t get down to the library, and you are avoiding retail settings, you may want to indulge in some reading material that will surround you with books.
There is something appealing about books set in bookshops. If you do a google search on the topic, many 10- best, 20-best lists will pop up where a bookshop is the predominant setting. At the beginning of the COVID-19 shut down I had taken one such novel from our collection. It reminded me of many others I had read over the years and also of the many hours I have spent perusing the shelves of new and used bookstores all over the world: the one that was located in my childhood neighbourhood (remember those?), on University campuses, near summer campgrounds, on the banks of the Seine; from small family owned independent shops to Chapters. With the arrival of online shopping and the big retailers, many of these smaller gems are disappearing. Perhaps that’s why novels set within the walls of these treasure-filled places have come to mean so much. Here are a few to get you started:
Goodnight June – Sarah Jio
Goodnight Moon is an adored childhood classic, but its real origins are lost to history. In Goodnight June, Sarah Jio offers a suspenseful and heartfelt take on how the “great green room” might have come to be. June Andersen is professionally successful, but her personal life is marred by unhappiness. Unexpectedly, she is called to settle her great-aunt Ruby’s estate and determine the fate of Bluebird Books, the children’s bookstore Ruby founded in the 1940s. Amidst the store’s papers, June stumbles upon letters between her great-aunt and the late Margaret Wise Brown—and steps into the pages of American literature.
The Bookshop of Yesterday – Amy Meyerson
A woman inherits a beloved bookstore and sets forth on a journey of self- discovery in this poignant debut about family, forgiveness and a love of reading. Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric Uncle Billy’s bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on Miranda’s twelfthbirthday,Billyhasamysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda’s life. She doesn’t hear from him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy—and one final scavenger hunt.
The Little Paris Bookshop – Nina George
Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can’t seem to heal through literature is himself; he’s still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.
84 Charing Cross Road Helene Hanff
(An oldie, but goodie)
This charming non-fiction classic, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books.
Hopefully, we will see you soon at the library where we can all share our common love for books.
