The Bookshop on the Corner

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Cogan          Audio Book:  9 hours, 13 mins      Hardback Book: 368 pages               

Good book.   Set in England at the beginning then in the Highlands of Scotland thereafter, there is such a delightful sharing of the people and landscape told here that the reader really feels and visualizes being there.    I learned that in Summer in Scotland it stays light outside until after 10:30p.m. at night.   How cool.   I had never heard that before, nor did I ever consider the longitude and latitude of the country having close ties with the north pole so much so that the aurora borealis can be seen there at times.   Man!  How cool is that!   I had no idea.    You learn so many things from books.   I love it and the descriptions of the voracious appetites for books and reading that the folks in the small Highland town and countryside that the main character meets and deals with throughout is refreshing.    It starts out with our heroine losing her job at the small Library she has worked in for years.    She decides to go against her normal introverted character and finally pursue her dream of owning a bookshop.   Unfortunately her dreams and her pocketbook are at odds so she thinks outside the box and decides to purchase a cargo van she sees an ad for sale in Scotland to house a mobile bookshop.    Kind of like selling out of the boot (trunk) only bigger.    Her original plan was to buy the van and go around her English hometown to sell books, but, the people in the small Scot town are so intrigued with her idea of the van serving as a bookmobile they try to talk her into doing it as a Library there since their Library closed and there are none anywhere close by.    The inhabitants miss the Library and cajole until finally it works.    While still a bookstore not a library since she has to make a living to support herself as this will be her only source of income, she does end up moving there and bringing in books to sell she gets on the cheap from bookstores and libraries, etc. discounting their materials.    Her landlord and his ex-wife have refurbished one of their barns into a stylish living area which she jumps on because since the landlord is in the midst of divorce he doesn’t know what to charge and gives her a ridiculously low rental fee.    So much goes on, she meets a Latvian man and falls for the romance she reads about in her books more so than really what is in front of her.    It becomes a dangerous deal for her love interest as he drives a train and she gets him to transport the books from London and other areas to her at midnight (for free) by stopping the train for lame excuses long enough for them to unload the books into her van.   She is a bit of a user and really rude at times to her partner in crime and also to her landlord  though she gets annoying toward the end for being such a little jerk seems to me.   She plays it off like the chances people take are their choice – REALLY?   Loads happens.    She wants her way a lot without looking at the other person’s view, so when squirrely things happen to her, I feel she has it coming for being inconsiderate, but, after twists, turns and surprises and what could be really horrendous consequences, I ended up feeling she redeemed herself.    Good book.   If you like Scotland, brogue and books, aye this is a canny story.