The Bookshop on the Corner

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nina has always lived a quiet, bookish life in bustling Birmingham, England, so she's at a loss when the library where she works is closed in favor of a new "media center." Only a handful of employees are hired to work at the new, apparently book-less, center, and she isn't one of them. However, this turns out to be the best possible outcome for her, as it gives her the courage to do something crazy and live her dream of owning a small mobile bookshop. She finds the perfect van in a village in Scotland, where folks are hungry for books and haven't had a library in years. She finds a gorgeous renovated barn to live in, complete with a grumpy, taciturn, very attractive landlord going through a contentious divorce. Nina makes friends and influences people, changing the lives of some. The caterpillar blossoms into a butterfly over the course of a spring and summer in the highlands.

The tone and mood of this book are so lovely! And I highly recommend listening to it on audiobook because the narrator does such an absolutely fantastic job with the voices and accents. Especially the accents.

I do wonder what on earth is going on with the libraries in the UK, though. Are so many really shutting down and jettisoning their books? Do their "librarians," as Nina and her coworkers call themselves, not go to the same type of library school we do here in the US? I ask because Nina is excellent with readers' advisory skills but seems to utterly lack all the other training of a reference librarian--namely the drive to help people find information, particularly using computers. Modern libraries are about SO much more than "just" books! And our books are so well-used that it's rare we would discard anything that was in pristine condition like so many of the cast-offs Nina picks up from libraries during the course of the story.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, setting secondary. A few swear words and some off-screen sex, but no violence (aside from a vindictive ex throwing a valuable book into a mud puddle because she's been told she can't have it). The author clearly loves Scotland and isn't fond of big cities (Birmingham in particular).

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