The Bookshop on the Corner: a novel/ Jenny Colgan/ 332 pages

The Bookshop on the Corner written by Jenny Colgan presents in interesting idea.  The Birmingham, England library is closing branches, downsizing it's and collection and going hi-tech.  Media specialist are in and librarians are out.  Nina hopes to retain her job as librarian, all the while collecting the spoils of discarded books.  After losing out to friend Griffin, for the one job opening and having her book collection threaten serious structural damage to her roommates home, Nina embarks on an adventure.  Up in the Scottish highlands is an old van, perfect for Nina's idea of a rolling bookstore.  Her stock?  All those discarded library books.  After a few mis-starts, Nina gets her van up and going.  All that is to find romance.  Will it be midnight train engineer, Marek or sheep farmer Lennox who fulfills her dream?  This is a light read that presents some interesting concepts and presents Scotland in a very nice light.  

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies / Seth Grahame-Smith / 319 pgs.

I picked up the audiobook for my #ReadHarder challenge to read a horror book. Horror is not usually my genre, although I find I really like books about zombies (World War Z, Rot and Ruin, Warm Bodies). Who would ever think? You have no idea how much I enjoyed listening to the audiobook of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! I highly recommend it! The narrator does all the voices so very well with her highly posh 19th century British accent.


The movie is coming out in just a few days and I definitely plan to see it. If you haven't seen a trailer yet, or figured from the title alone, the author took Jane Austen's classic and added about 30% more content, all related to zombies and the training to kill them. All of the Bennet sisters have been trained in the best dojos in China on the art of killing and the preservation of honor. Those much more wealthy than the Bennets (like Mr. Darcy) have received their training in Japan. Together, in Hertfordshire, they battle the undead, as well as try to figure out love and romance, in Edwardian England.

Winter's Bone / Daniel Woodrell / 193 pgs.

At only 193 pages, this book was read in less than two days. I read it as part of the #ReadHarder challenge to read a book and watch the movie. I have the DVD placed on reserve, so I can't compare the two yet, but I loved this book. Unbeknownst to me, there is a new genre called country noir, coined by none other than the author of Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell.  Country noir books are placed in rural settings, often in the Ozarks or Appalachia and tend to have characters with little education, but often with a whole lot of common sense and survival know-how. Politics are of the family variety and there's often a lot of meth involved.


In Winter's Bone, sixteen-year old Ree Daisy must look for her dad when it seems he's skipped out on a court date or else risk losing what little her mom, her two younger brothers, and Ree owns. Her extended family provides little help, if not a whole lot of interference. If I have any complaints, it may be only that the language used is so foreign to a suburbanite, it hardly feels like this story could take place in the same state.