Haunted Bookshop...Parnassus at Home

I finished Christopher Morley's The Haunted Bookshop this morning and I loved it. The pace of the plot picked up quite a bit in the second half and the last couple of chapters were positively breakneck. Turns out this delightful book is a first-rate mystery. No, it's not spooky at all, but a nice, airtight plot which kept me guessing up to the end. What I particularly liked is how so many of the bookish asides from the first half ended up playing into the plot in the second half. Nicely done, Mr. Morley, nicely done. Now I need to read the first of the two Roger Mifflin books, PARNASSUS ON WHEELS.

Aubrey Gilbert, the advertising man turned moving-picture hero, and Titania Chapman, the earnest dubutante turned heroine, are enormously fun to read about, and Roger is the definitive bookseller, dreaming big about his life's work and calling.

I also really enjoyed Roger Gorsline's pen-and-ink illustrations. I looked online for some examples to share with you, but could only find this one...not bad, but not the best.



Now it's off to reread The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde and watch Olivier's Henry V [VHS]
, but first I have to do something with the two collanders of tomatoes and box of anaheims that are sitting on the kitchen counter, not to mention the zucchini and eggplant that demanded that they be harvested before the frost hit. Did I mention that we also have a bumper crop of apples?

The Haunted Bookshop

The Haunted Bookshop and its predecessor, PARNASSUS ON WHEELS, by Christopher Morley have been on my reading list for years, and I finally remembered to check whether my library had it as it sounded like a fun spooky season read.

The library came through and the book is delightful so far, though not particularly spooky. Not sure whether this will qualify for the R.I.P. reading challenge or not.

And, as those of you following me on Twitter can attest, it offers a plethora of quotable book-lover quotes. Here are my favorites from the first half of the book.

"A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error."

"...paradise in the world to come is uncertain, but there is indeed a heaven on this earth...which we inhabit when we read a good book."

"Surely everything that arouses people's minds, that makes them alert and questioning, increases their appetite for books."

"A gathering of booksellers is a sanhedrim to attend."

"A book that fits the mind as well as a silk stocking does the ankle will be sure to sell."

"I don't mind a man stealing books if he steals good ones."

"I can never read Dickens without having something to drink....sale of Dickens will fall off terribly when prohibition comes in."

"...you don't have to be a literary critic: all you have to do to books is to enjoy them."

"I think I'd have gone balmy if it weren't for Walt Whitman."

The premise is that a couple (Roger and Helen Mifflin) owns The Haunted Bookshop, a used bookstore in Brooklyn, shortly after WWI. Roger is the definitive bookseller--loves what he does, loves talking about what he reads, loves talking and working with other booksellers. They have agreed to let the daughter of a wealthy businessman live with them and learn the book business. I'm halfway through and the plot is very slow to emerge, let alone thicken, but it's so much fun to read that, for once, plot doesn't matter.

Another fun aspect of the book is the NYC locale--there's an early version of a Mad Man in the form of an advertising man who wanders into the bookshop and comes under the spell of both Roger Mifflin and Titania Chapman (the Mifflin's understudy), and it's fun to read about where he lives, works, eats (at the Automat), and, of course, the ad copy and jingles that he writes.

I really enjoyed reading Roger's tirade against war, which was particularly poignant because his intuition regarding how Germany would respond to being punished by the rest of Europe was absolutely right on target.

I assume the plot will develop nicely and I'll be able to report back that the second half is as good as the first.

Final notes - reminds me of Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society in that a variety of books are discussed by a variety of characters who comment on what those books mean to them. Just as Guernsey made me, momentarily anyway, want to read Lamb's essays, Haunted Bookshop is making me curious to get Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations by Thomas Carlyle: Volume 2 to see what the fuss is about.

FYI - Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell is one of Mifflin's favorite books that appears to be stolen, then is spotted under the arm of an assistant chef, then reappears on the shelves.