"The Keeper Of Lost Things" by Ruth Hogan - Review

Many people collect something in their free time. Stamps, coins, rocks, books... but it's a lot rarer you hear about people collecting lost things, things they find somewhere. Writer Anthony Peardew is such a person. Ripped off coat buttons, umbrellas and a mysterious cookie tin filled with ashes, Anthony keeps everything, puts a label on it stating when and where he found it and tries to give it back to its original owner. He does all of this to compensate for a lost locket he once got from his deceased love Therese.

When Anthony dies he leaves his house and his whole fortune to his assistent Laura – and with it the task to bring back the lot things to their rightful owners. Laura doesn't feel like she could handle that but she gets help from Freddy, the garderer she's secretely in love with, and Sunshine, a girl with down syndrome who lives in the neighbourhood that hardly ever leaves her side.

Throwback to 1974: Young Eunice starts working as an assistent to the attractive publisher Bomber. They share a big passion for movies and an incredible love for dogs and Eunice instantly falls in love with him. But she knows that they will never be a couple and instead she stays at his side as a trustworthy friend, both at the publishing company and in their private life where she helps him facing his sister who is spoiled by a big inheritance and doesn't understand why Bomber refuses to publish her shamelessly plagiarized manuscripts.

In her first novel „The Keeper Of Lost Things“, Ruth Hogan neatly puts those two plots together without being too intrusive – the full extent of the link is only revealed on the last pages. Both stories are full of British humour, heartwarming moments and a little bit of mystic. Lauras story is also bristles with short stories about the lost things in Anthonys possesion – if they are from the writers imagination or the actual backround stories is up to the reader. All that makes „The Keeper Of Lost Things“ a light summer read without too much kitsch that should delight fans of David Whitehouses „Mobile Library“.

So you want to become a bookseller.

Ever since I started my apprenticeship in 2014 and started working as a bookseller, friends of mine (and friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends, and...) started stating that they would like to become one, too - or at least they heavily considered it.
I am not in the age anymore where you get all defensive about people doing your thing - in fact, I only started working in this field because I met my ex who is a passionate bookseller, told me about his job and gave me the opportunity to try it out at the shop he works at. When I hear people telling me that they want to do what I do, I feel like I am following in his footsteps, and since he is an amazing person with remarkable work ethics and so much love for what he does, I'd be proud if I was.
Thig is, I always feel like my job is not portrayed correctly. Not even by me. Of course I tend to only post/tweet about the nicr stuff. The moments that warm my heart and reassure me that I made the right choice. A lot of people seem to think that as a bookseller, you're mostly a bibliophile who gets paid for reading and gushing about books with customers - which is not inherently wrong, but simply not the whole truth.
To be very, very honest: I have seen a lot of people starting to work in this field and get disappointed, then frustrated, then quit because it is not what they expected.
And even though I love my job, my reality is very different to the reality of other booksellers (mostly due to a great team of coworkers and our amazing, kind customers) - and even I don't always love it.
To be very honest again: If it wasn't for my awesome colleagues and people in my life I can vent to, I wouldn't speak of my work half as fondly in public.
Now all of this may sound like I wanted to unsell becoming a bookseller to people. I really don't! But I think people should get disillusioned so they can choose this job without false expectations.
So here is a few tips and experiences that you should consider while considering a bookshop as your working place:

1. Think bookselling is reading and loving books for a paycheck? Think again!
As I said, my reality is really different to others. Yes, in my shop I get to read at work sometimes, and I get to gush about books I liked with customers. But this is an absolute exception. A lot of the other booksellers I know don't. It really depends where you're working. In a big chain? Forget it! In a small shop there might be the chance, but usually, there is too much to do. Because bookselling is, in the end, a retail job like any other retail job. There are things to be organized, shelves to be stocked, shelves to be cleaned, there is just so much to do most of the time. That I get to read is only due to the fact that I am still an apprentice and thus not qualified to do some of the work behind actually running a bookshop, and even then, it rarely happens that I am finished with everything and it's a quiet afternoon so I can spend time between customers reading. In fact, I am pretty sure that, once I started my next job, I'll have to go back to only reading in my free time.

2. Selling books is hard physical work!
This is also something that differs depending on where you work, but every shop has deliveries from publishers and wholesalers, and that means: hauling, hauling, hauling! If you are not at least a bit fit, either get fit or give up on that idea. Especially if you work for a shop that equips schools with textbooks, you'll be able to spend days just carrying tons of books from A to B and back. It's exhausting, and you will come home in the first few weeks and just fall asleep as soon as you went through the door. Promise!

3. Selling books is hard mental work!
Jup, it's both. This point is actually two points. First, it is mentally exhausting because you have to think a lot. You have to calculate a lot of stuff, even with the most mundane tasks you'll have to be fully concentrated because if you make one mistake you might be sending your company right into insolvency, and you have to be a true Sherlock Holmes, which brings be to the second point. If you work retail, it's inevitable that you will come across customers that will be very demanding. "I don't remember the title [nor the author nor the publisher nor anyting that might be actually something I can put in my catalogue to look it up] but the book was blue!" isn't a well-known phrase amongst booksellers for nothing. Or you get titles that are completely messed up from what they actually are. Or you get "You know, that English textbook for year 7!" Mate, there are literally a few hundred of those. Finding what your customer actually wants is something that will happen. Often. And you need to think, think, think. And, if you're lucky, remember all the books you ever saw in your life (not read, saw). And the ones your whole family, all your friends and your coworkers read. Being a catalogue on legs is helping a lot. I am still working to get to that point at some day right before my retirement.

4. It's not for introverts.
By that, I don't mean introvert as in having to recover all for yourself after spending time with people to charge your social battery again. I am that kind of introvert, and it's fine, really. I mean introvert as inbeing shy, being sensitive, generally prefering to be left alone. Soft skills are key in this field. You'll come across a lot of different kinds of people at work, and it is vital to treat all of them well, from the elderly highly-intellectual person over the soccer mom over the loud overly-excited lover of crime fiction over the sci-fi nerd to the small child who wants to spend their pocket money on Diaries Of A Whimpy Kid. No matter how they treat you. Keep smiling, stay polite, even if the soccer mom yells at you for ordering the exact English textbook for year 7 she pointed at the other day in your catalogue to be the book she needs that turned out to be the absolute wrong book for her childs class. This is hard as well, and you need to be thick-skinned to get through that. Luckily, I can say that, for me, that happens about... once a month, maybe? But those moments are hard, and it's a huge learning process to get to the point where you stop taking it personally and just get over with it. Just smile and wave - and vent to your coworker once there are no customers in the shop anymore.

5. It won't make you rich.
In fact, I am glad we have minimum wage in Germany, because when I finished my apprenticeship, if I work the same hours as I do now, I can comfortably survive on minimum wage as long as I still only have to feed myself. Bookselling is not a well-paying field. I compared wages with my boyfriends field the other day, and his entry wage will be my absolute top - ya know, in case I ever start my own company and it does well.
To be a bookseller, a Spongebob-like work ethic is helping a lot - you know, that episode where he pays Mr Krabbs for letting him work at the Krusty Krab? That. Being a bookseller is being an idealist. If you don't love the job enough that'd you'd do it for free, don't consider it.
 
If at this point you still think that sounds like a lot of fun - congrats, you have what it takes to be an awesome bookseller, and I'd be happy to have you as a colleague some day! Because, and this is important: In the end of the day, no matter how long and exhausting it was, no matter how much my back and my head hurt, I still wouldn't want to do anything else. Being a tad masochist helps, I guess.
I would still recommend, if possible, to do an internship at a bookshop first. Try it. Actually live it for a week or two and see how it feels. I am still not sure if I would be as enthusiastic about it if I didn't know what I got myself into beforehand. Maybe I would've been disappointed as well.
I am so very glad I wasn't.

"The Universe vs Alex Woods" by Gavin Extence - Review

In the middle of the night in Dover, a boy arrives on the ferry and is arrested. He is 17 years old. 130 grams of marijuana and an urn are found in his car. This and the partial epileptic seizure he has during his arrest are apparently not helping him against the police. At the police station he tries to explain that strange situation, but the officers aren’t interested in the whole story – and thus, he tells it to the reader.

Alex Woods‘ story starts with him being hit by a meteor at age 10. He survives with an injury of his brain that makes him an epileptic. As if that isn’t enough already he is bullied by his classmates for his gigantic interest in astronomy and neurology and so, one day fleeing his bullies he ends up in Mr Petersons garden.

Mr Peterson is an American, Vietnam veteran and a passionate fan of Kurt Vonnegut. Actually, he prefers to stay on his own, but he and Alex become friends pretty quickly who learns to love Kurt Vonneguts books as well. Based on their reading they start discussing profound philosophic and especially moral topics. When Mr Peterson is diagnosed with an incurable nervous disease years later, Alex has to show that he actually learned something about those topics. 

Gavin Extences first novel „The Universe vs Alex Woods“ convinces with bittersweet humor, curiosity for the world and, of course, the unspoken and yet so urgent call to think about the moral questions asked in the book yourself. The characters are likeable and the book read quickly – how else, when you can’t put it down?

"I'll give you the sun" by Jandy Nelson - Review

The twins Noah and Jude are inseperable – both are interested in art and have an artistic disposition but apart from this they are rather different. Noah, who draws, is closer to their mother, and the sewing and sculpting Jude has a better relationship with their father. Noah is an introvert original while Jude is popular and spends a lot of time with her surfer friends at the beach. Still, they are hand in glove with each other – until puberty hits and everything changes. Both want to attend the Californian School of Arts, and thus a rivalry for the mothers attention and support forms who seems to be somewhere completely else mentally. Noah discovers his homosexuality and doesn't really know how to deal with it, Jude herself makes first experiences with love, and slowly, the siblings grow apart more and more, become stranger to each other, and when their mother dies in a car accident, their connection is lost for good.

All of this is told from 13 years old Noahs point of view. Three years later, Jude tells us about the current situation where the twins' roles seem to have switched: Jude is attending art school, is seclusive, hardly cares for friendships and keeps boys away from herself, whereas Noah is cool and popular but gave up drawing. They hardly talk to each other. Jude has a hard time sculpting in school, all her clay works break mystically. She believes that her dead mothers ghost is so angry with her that she is breaking her works. Jude wants to make up for something, and for that she needs stone, a statue, and a mentor to teach her statuary. She finds that in the bizarre artist Guillermo – and with him, she finds Oscar, a mysterious English boy who makes it hard for her to hold her boycott on boys up.

Incredibly sensitive and gentle Jandy Nelson guides us through the exceptional twins' emotions. The subject of the siblings who love each other but still are in concurrence to each other is rarely found in young adult fiction in a way this unique. Jandy Nelson combines family drama, LGBT+ literature, coming of age story and, yes, a love story and manages to find an own style that is hardly comparable with other authors.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Review

I have to admit I am pretty new (read: late) to the Star Wars fandom. To be clear: I did watch the original trilogy as a teen, I also saw the prequels, but I wasn't caught yet until last year when The Force Awakens came out and my beloved boyfriend (oh such a Star Wars super-nerd) got me all hyped up - and Tumblr as well, admittedly. We went to see TFA, I loved it, I didn't stop talking about it for weeks, we went to see it again in English because we saw this video the night before and really liked Adam Drivers actual voice, I made Rey and Kylo Ren cosplays for my boyfriend and me (and spent the week before the convention in complete desperation), long story short: It got me. Which, really, wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for the hype beforehand.

In comparison, Rogue One almost sneaked up upon me. To be fair, I was pretty lazy when it came to watching teasers, trailers and so on in 2016. Honestly, I haven't even seen the most recent trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 yet. I remember watching the first teaser in April but only because my friend who I was staying with at that time watched it and I was a bit hyped back then, but that's it. It all just went down a bit more quiet.
Still, because I am my boyfriends girlfriend, we went to see it the weekend right after it came out. And again a week after that in English (because this is how we roll).

In case you don't already know: Rogue One is set between the prequels and the original trilogy and tells how the plans of the Death Star are stolen and brought to Princess Leia. The team doing so is Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the daughter of Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) who worked on it's developement, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a Rebel Alliance Captain, the droid K2-SO (Alan Tudyk), the ex-Guardians of the Whills Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen) and Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen), Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), a former Imperial cargo pilot, and a small squad of other rebels who choose to come with them even though the idea to steal the plan is rejected by the Rebel council.

I'm starting with the (very few) negative remarks I have because why not?
I missed the intro text. I really, really missed being greeted by a wall of yellow text descending into space. Yes, we know what happened before, we even know already what happens afterwards, but the intro text just belongs to Star Wars movies, ok?
The second point I have is the timing. I was kind of looking forward to see more of Rey, Finn and Poe Dameron and was now confronted with an entirely new team inbetween. That is not inherently bad, but I think I would've enjoyed it more if Rogue One came out first or after the sequels, not inbetween. But well, this is complaining about first world problems, really.

...and that's everything negative that I can say about Rogue One. Isn't that telling? Except for those two points, I loved Rogue One. The characters had great dynamics with each other, their motives are completely legit, the story made complete sense and actually, it was pretty nice to see only "normal" people act for once instead of once again crying inside because I'm not force-sensitive. That's something, right?

Tbh, I can't write much more without spoilers, so I'll leave it as it is right now and have nothing more to say than: I can't wait for Episode VIII.

"Half of a yellow sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Review

The newly acquired independence of Nigeria from the Commonwealth involves new problems. The population is split over how the country should be governed. Many intellectuals still see a strong bond to the former colonial ruler Great Britain, and between the different tribes is discord as well, because when you speak of Nigerians you don’t speak of a homogenous people but a loose affiliation of different peoples whose only common ground is that between the borders of their nation.

Now that the Nigerians are supposed to govern themselves, each of those tribes is afraid of being overlooked, and Nigeria turns into a powder keg. History is made quickly, a military putsch is pulled through mainly by Igbo, one of the three biggest tribes in Nigeria. That results in the persecution of the Igbo who get murdered in masses by people of the other tribes. 1967 at last, in the South-East of the country, the republic Biafra is declared, a nation supposed to protect the Igbo and make them independent from Nigeria. What follows is a bloody war between both countries and a blockade that coins the image of the biafran malnourished child with a bloated belly forever before Biafra is reincorporated after the capitulation in 1970.

In “Half of a yellow sun”, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie bluntly and impressively tells the story of three people during the rise and fall of Biafra. The link between those people is the university docent Odenigbo who fights for Biafra passionately. We witness the story from the point of view of his wife Olanna who falls from the life of a privileged daughter of a rich family into a life in poverty in a refugee camp during the war, the point of view of the houseboy Ugwu who is intellectually fostered but also influenced by his master and yet always keeps a little jungle in his heart, and from the point of view of the British journalist Richard who, after living as a stranger in Nigeria, finally feels home in Biafra – and still isn’t, due to his skin colour and origin and the privileges coming with that.

With “Half of a yellow sun”, Adichie, who is an Igbo herself, makes a part of history visible that ususally is overlooked by the Eurocentric world view and the habit to let the winners write history and yet manages to not force a onesided view upon the reader by being fully aware of both the flaws of Biafra as well as the injustices that were committed by Nigeria and the rest of the world. Additionally, with the social entanglements between Olanna, Odenigbo and Richard and their families, she makes up a thrilling and captivating family story.

 “Half of a yellow sun” makes this part of history understandable especially to those who never heard the word Biafra. Helping with that is a glossary at the end of the book.

"My heart and other black holes" by Jasmine Warga - Review

Aysel is 16, depressive and plans to kill herself. Some may think that this is the typical melodramatic behaviour of a teenager. But Aysels problems are pretty atypical: She is the daughter of a convicted murderer, and no one in Langston, a small town in Kentucky, fails to remind her of that, not even her family who she feels left out of, and she herself. She fears that she might have inherited the „gene for evil“, for the rage and aggression of her father, and one thing is clear – waiting and seeing what happens? Not an option.

But Aysel is also scared that she might not follow through, that she might back down in the last second. A partner is needed, and she finds that partner online at „Smooth Passages“.

This partners name is Roman, respectively FrozenRobot, is 17 and lives in the nearby town Willis, even though „living“, in his case, means „existing“. Roman has to live with a whole different problem: He didn't watch his younger sister carefully enough and she drowned. He feels responsible for that. He, too, fears he might not actually do it, and thus he advertises at Smooth Passages and is found by Aysel.

Except for the shared wish for death, Aysel and Roman are quite different. While Aysel is more of a weirdo with her interest in classical music and science plus her Turkish heritage which is pretty uncommon in conserative Kentucky, Roman is popular, athletic, normal and somewhat fitting in. What they share is April 7^th, the day they chose to jump off a cliff into Ohio River together. But can you plan a suicide with someone you don't even know? Even if you just want to die instead of live together?

„My heart and other black holes“ is Jasmine Wargas well-made first novel. You don't wish upon her that she got inspired by her own life, yet, she started writing after a good friend of her died in 2013. Thematically, this young adult book is incredibly important. In a world where the rates of teenagers in therapy rise steadily it is a great approach to offer a reflection in the character of Aysel that touches the reader, may it be the reader that is affected themself or the happiest person in the world. And we follow this reflection, we understand Aysels emotions, her grief, her fear, her suspicion, and we witness her developement, see a possible progress of an illness that is hidden and ignored so easily. Still, „My heart and other black holes“ isn't meant to scare people. It's meant to help feeling understood, and this intention is met with bravour.

I'd recommend „My heart and other black holes“ to fans of John Greens „The fault in our stars“, to readers who like to sympathise, and of course to everyone who wants to feel understood in their sorrows just once.