"Some magic buried in a slow-paced book with too many unnecessary characters

Bob, a retired librarian, finds a missing senior citizen at a convenience store. When he returns the missing woman, Bob begins to volunteer at the senior center. Then, we flashback to two major time periods in Bob’s life and flash back to the conclusion.

Sadly, this book is a bit painful for me. The book is really slow paced, and, if I was editor, I would have trimmed it significantly.

When Bob is first introduced to the senior center, that section is too long, and there are too many characters.

The section about Bob’s wife and best friend I loved it. I would not have changed anything. I loved the complex backstory of each of the characters. Even though one of the characters hurt Bob, I understood why it happened that way, and I thought that it was such a moving, cool moment.

However, some of that was buried in the next section. Bob runs away and meets a bunch of random characters that I didn’t connect with. This section seemed to drag on and on.

Then, we arrive at the ending, and I loved the way that the author concluded the story. It felt really realistic. However, the ending (as much of the book) was too long. The last few pages weren’t memorable.

Also, this is my own personal preference, but there just weren’t enough literary references. The book is entitled The Librarianist. My assumption is that the target audience is bibliophiles, but it didn’t have enough to make me happy.

Overall, I am actually a bit sad about this book because I felt that it has a bit of magic in it. It really did make me stop and think. However, it was just too slow paced and had too many unnecessary characters.

*Thanks, NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and unbiased review.

Connect With Me!
"

"I served in the American military, a single enlistment, and I’ve opposed every single military campaign since I was a child watching the horrors of Viet Nam on black and white TV. This should be required reading for everyone, everywhere. Period. War is an insane response to any sort of problem or conflict and it’s never the answer.

I remember marching in Seattle just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in early 2003. More than anything, I was hugely disappointed in how few people showed up. There were fewer than 50,000 demonstrators in a city considered liberal by American standards, yet in cities across Europe, millions had come out against killing. I almost found myself in a fistfight in a Seattle cocktail bar with some folks who were cheerleading in favor of the coming invasion. I asked them if they knew the difference between Sunnis and Shias in Islam. They didn’t, of course. I told them they soon would.

After reading this, I can only think that I should have done more, worked harder to show my opposition to the wars. I felt powerless, just as I had when Bush senior invaded Iraq the first time.

I feel the two biggest issues facing the USA are the ever-widening income gap between the billionaires and the rest of us, and our insane defense budget that keeps growing and is the sacred cow of our government. We can’t even talk about slowing the rise in defense spending, let alone doing something to drastically reduce it."