Firmin week at the LBC

This quarter’s Read This! pick from the LitBlog Co-op is Firmin by Sam Savage. I really can recommend that you read it: if you’re reading this, if you like reading enough that you read lit-blogs, you’ll likely be charmed, as I was, by this fable about a rat whose born into a Boston bookstore and learns to read.

Really.

The book is beautiful and full of charming little pen-and-ink illustrations. Hungry, Firmin gnaws on paper and then surprises himself by learning to read. As he works himself through the books by the great ones, the gap between his life and the glamour of the lives he reads about grows ever more painful and poignant.

There is some discussion at the site about whether or not Firmin is really a rat—eavesdrop or chime in as you wish. (I think he’s a rat…).

I was inspired to contribute my own reminiscence of Boston area bookstores.