From Goodreads: A Gen-X librarian's snarky, laugh-out-loud funny, deeply moving collection of love letters and break-up notes to the books in her life.

From me: a librarian and bibliophile gives a personal, humorous, cozy take on some of her favourite – and not so favourite – books, providing recommendations on the way and imparting a new respect for librarians everywhere.

Bibliophiles, anyone looking to reminisce about books from the past, anyone looking to branch out in their reading, fans of humour of the slightly snarky type – who are also not offended by a peppering salty language.

I much preferred her breakup letters to her love letters for the most part. She uses pun and innuendo fairly well, and much of her writing was endearing.

It was a quick read with a delightful summary of ways to get out of events and the books that fit with that, as well as some further book recommendations.

Every single thing she says about Nicholas Sparks, and also 50 Shades.

And if you can’t laugh at “dear fancy bookshelf at a party I wasn’t technically invited to” then I’m pretty sure we can't be friends.

There’s not a lot of depth or insight provided into the majority of these books, so in that way it is sort of a “fluffy” book. Occasionally the humour seemed forced, as did the attempt to shed the stereo typical “librarian” image. I also don’t like that this book taught me that I can’t spell “Fahrenheit” to save my life. I didn't count that against the book. It still upsets me.

Also, the entire section on 'how to make your lover a reader' or whatever it was called was just cringe-worthy and I would have docked a whole star just for that anyway.

Return it to the library and not feel particularly bad that it wasn’t a book I didn’t plan to own. I will admit that a few of her book suggestions piqued my interest and might appear on my reading list this year.

Like people were going to take my three-star rating the wrong way. There is nothing wrong with this book and it was an ok read. I don’t however, find this book to be earth-shattering or consistently amusing enough that I would likely read it again. It is probably a bit over-hyped, but certainly not terrible.

I wouldn’t discourage any one from reading it, and if anyone asked I’d say it was worth a read, but I don’t see it as a book I would pull from the back of my head for a more general “got any non-fiction or autobiographical book recommendations?”.

I don't recommend it to anyone wanting literary analysis or critique; anyone wanting solid book recommendations or anyone offended by seemingly misplaced salty language (which didn't bother me one bit); or anyone expecting some stereotypical 'librarian' overtone. Whatever that is.

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Created Jan 14, 2018 at 5:46pm • Submit your own review...