Where Is Your Bookmark? (09/08/2015)

I am nearly finished reading Fredrik Backman's My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, which I featured last week. This week I received The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, a selection from my Postal Book Group.  I had actually been considering starting the audio version of this one, and so it was good timing. I have not yet begun either the paper copy (or e-copy because I have one of those too) or the audio version, but I have heard wonderful things about this little story. If you click on the cover, you will be led to a summary of the novel on Goodreads.

First Paragraph of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (which is a long one!):

On the ferry from Hyannis to Alice Island, Amelia Loman paints her nails yellow, and, while waiting for them to dry, skims her predecessor's notes. "Island Books, approximately $350,000.00 per annum in sales, the better portion of that in summer months to folks on holiday," Harvey Rhodes reports. "Six hundred square feet of selling space. No full-time employees other than the owner. Very small children's section. Fledgling online presence. Poor community outreach. Inventory emphasizes the literary, which is good for us, but Filky's tastes are very specific, and without Nic, he can't be counted on to hand-sell. Luckily for him, Island's only game in town." Amelia yawns--she's nursing a slight hangover and wonders if one persnickety little bookstore will be worth such a long trip. By the time her nails have hardened, her relentlessly bright-sided nature has kicked in: of course it's worth it! Her speciality is persnickety little bookstores and the particular breed that runs them. Her talents also include multi-tasking, selecting the right wine at dinner (and the corrdinating skill, tending friends who've had to much to drink), houseplants, strays, and other lost causes.

Teaser from 17% on my Kindle: 

A.J. has never changed a diaper in his life, though he is a modestly skilled gift wrapper. Back when Nic was alive, Island used to offer free gift wrap at Christmas, and he figures that diaper changing and gift-wrapping must be related proficiencies.

What do you think? Would you keep reading?  

I admit, at first I wasn't too sure about the opening. The run down of how the bookstore is doing as a business could easily have become boring, and yet by the end of the first paragraph, I was ready for more.

And the teaser, well, it gave me a good chuckle.

What are you reading at the moment?  Is it anything you would recommend?

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely ladies at Broke and Bookish.

This week's  Top Ten Tuesday theme is my Top Five Finished Series I Have YET to Finish Reading. This topic took a little research on my part because most of the series I read are still ongoing, and many of which I am not caught up with yet. The five below are all series I enjoy very much and am looking forward to completing--yet with a tinge of sadness that they have come to an end. I only came up with five, but there are probably more I am overlooking. (I purposefully left out authors who have died that I could easily have listed: Agatha Christie, P.D. James, and Arthur Conan Doyle, for starters, all who wrote series I would like to complete at some point.)

1. Kim Harrison's Hollows Series ~ Urban Fantasy series set in Cincinati, Ohio about a bounty hunter witch, Rachel Morgan.

2. Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld Series ~ Urban Fantasy series that has a whole cast of characters, many of the books focusing on different women from the same world.

3. Colleen Gleason's Gardella Vampire Chronicles featuring Victoria Gardella Grantworth (which has a new spin off I'm not counting as part of the series) ~ Urban Fantasy series featuring a very fiesty Victorian lady who slays vampires on the side.

4. Jeff Lindsay's Dexter Morgan Series - Perhaps you have heard of the HBO series? This is the book series the character of Dexter is based on. I actually began reading the series before the television show came out--but somehow I have not gotten around to completing the series yet. I have seen the entire television series though.

5. Lisa Lutz's The Spellman Files Series - This really is more of a fiction series than a mystery one. It's about a family of private investigators. It's both comic and serious. And I'm cheating with this one because it's really just the end of Isabel's narration of the books per the author. Another character is slated to become the focus down the road.

What finished series do you plan to read to completion? I imagine at least a few of you will list ones I completely forgot that should be on my list . . .

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