May I heartily recommend a current fiction novel: "The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry". The Author's name is Gabrielle Zevin. For booklovers like us, it is a beautiful read. A short book, but there is so much there. It has hilariously funny parts, sad parts, lots of literary references, and a bookstore owner who, in the beginning, is about as irascible and opinated as one can be. Upon his first meeting with Sales Rep from Knightley Press, Fikry is saying "this is not for me". She tells him, "I'd like the chance to get to know your tastes". "Like" he repeats with distaste. "How about I tell you what I don't like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be--basically gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful--non fiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups a la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children's books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs movie tie-in editions, novelty items and--I imagine this goes without saying--vampires. I rarely stock debuts, chick lit, poetry, or translations. I would prefer not to stock series, but the demands of my pocketbook require me to". And so on. This, alone, should guarantee that at least one of us has at least specified one of these criteria in our book choices, or the choices of our book groups!
