The collected works of AJ Fikry

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Most people’s problems would be solved if they would only give more things a chance. 

It is a book. It will have pages and a cover. It will have a plot, characters, complications. It will reflect tears of studying, refining and practicing my craft. 

I loathe collectable books anyway. People getting moony over particular paper carcasses. It’s the ideas that matter, man. The words. 

He doesn’t believe in random acts. He is a reader, and what he believes in is a narrative construction. If a gun appeared in act one, that gun had better go off by act three. 

People tell boring lies about politics, god and love. You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question: What is your favorite book? 

Jackets are the red headed step children of book publishing. We blame them for everything. 

Sometimes the books don’t find us until the right time. 

Blurbs are the blood diamonds of publishing. 

Every bad thing in life is a result of bad timing and every good thing is a result of a good timing.

No one travels without purpose. Those who are lost wish to be lost. 

A good marriage is, at least, one part conspiracy. 

It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us. 

Novels certainly have their charms, but the most elegant creation in the prose universe is a short story. MAster the short story and you’ll have mastered the world. 

We are not quite novels. We are not quite short stories. In the end, we are collected works. 

After listing all the lovely lines from the book, the review can hardly do any justice. 

This book is a gift from a lover of island, beaches, old world book shops, classic literature and of course diaries and epistolary things. And amongst all these things there is a beautiful love story of bookish nerds who find each other thru their common love for books. 

If you are a bibliophile you will adore this book, with its setting, characters, twists, little references to short stories, real and fictional authors, bookmark shelves, bookish quotes, post cards, publishers, ebooks, interesting puns, bookish ironies, the good and bad books, the good and bad authors, bad book with success, good books that fail, tonnes of genres, book references, children’s books and amongst all this some good reading time. 

I also liked how the protagonist Mr Fikry simply lists the book genres he doesn’t like and it made me wonder that I should probably compile something similar for my blog. May be one day I must go thru all the books listed in this one, but that needs a life time or I should go live in a bookshop. 

I loved reading it. Thank you for the gift my pen friend - one for the collection.