The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

Sometimes I go into reading a book with such big hopes and yet the book can miss when it comes to plot, miss when it comes to characters, and miss when it comes to believability.

That is true of Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend.

The plot is farfetched: a Swedish woman comes to America to finally meet her pen pal only to learn her friend has died. Instead of returning home, the woman decides to open up a bookstore in her friend's dying Midwestern town.

The characters are farfetched; romance between an incredibly shy foreigner and an incredibly shy American man seems impossibly unlikely.

I usually give up on a book that isn't working for me. I kept turning pages with this book and read all the way to the end. I don't recommend it, but I must admit that something in me loves the idea of a story in which a dying town is revitalized by a bookstore.

I really loved [b:The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend 25573977 The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend Katarina Bivald https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1452107441l/25573977.SX50.jpg 25758335]. If you love books and you're a romantic, this is the book for you. I'll admit that it took me a bit to get into it, but I never considered putting it down. It was always intriguing. It just wasn't a fast read for me. (This could be me more than the author.)It's supposed to be Sara's story about how she comes from Sweden to Broken Wheel, Iowa to visit a pen pal, another book lover, who sadly dies before Sara arrives. But the town steps in to play host and it becomes the story of how Sara affects every other living person in Broken Wheel as much as what happens to her. Anyone can tell you the plot, but I'll mention a few things I found fascinating.There's a section of the novel that describes when Penguin first began mass-producing paperbacks in 1935 and the publisher started the Armed Forces Book Club.“Best of all was the fact that the smaller paperback format fit easily into their uniform pockets. “It was especially prized in prison camps,” Penguin's official history claimed. Which Sara had always thought was a particularly sad sentence.But, still, it said something about the power of books. Not that they would somehow lessen the pain of war when someone beloved had died or create world peace or anything like that. But Sara couldn't help thinking that in war, as in life, boredom was one of the greatest problems, a slow, relentless wearing down. Nothing dramatic, just a gradual erosion of a person's energy and lust for life.So what could be better than a book? And a book that you could fit in your jacket pocket at that.” Of course, this is the book all librarians should read. And if you really love books, you'll love some of the ways Sara thinks about them.”. . .Tom thought she preferred [books] because they were happier than life, but even within their pages, people were dumped and broke up and lost those they cared about. And in life, just as in books, people eventually moved on to new loves. There was no difference between books and life there. Both involved happy and unhappy love stories.Of course, with books, you could have greater confidence that it would all end well. You worked through the disappointments and the complications, always conscious, deep down, that Elizabeth would get her Mr. Darcy in the end. With life, you couldn't have the same faith. But sooner or later, she reminded herself, surely someone you could imagine was your Mr. Darcy would turn up.” If you get the chance to read this book, don' t pass it up.