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onlywords

Words of a Bibliophile

"It's only words, and words are all I have, to take your heart away." —Bee Gees

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin

"You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question: What is your favorite book?"

In this delightful, offbeat novel centered around an independent bookstore at a small island town, the characters are all book people: a prickly bookstore owner, a sales rep at a publishing house, a writer, an aspiring writer, an English teacher who organizes school plays, a book club leader, and lots and lots of readers of various types of books—from crime novels to short story collections, from young adult to literary fiction. These characters are connected through the bookstore and the books they read, as they grapple with losses and forge new beginnings in the grand business called life.

The sparse writing style may give off a detached and impersonal feel at times but somehow the story and the characters touched me anyway, with some unexpected revelations along the way. The comedic moments made me smile a lot, but the ending tugged at my heart. A quirky and charming read for book lovers.

"Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again."