Well this wasn't a bad short story involving Tess. I liked the overall message about the importance of books, but think at times that Lippman via Tess was throwing way too much out there about how readers that use e-book readers, and or bookstores to help them find books as being less than other readers was a bit much. I definitely get the pangs one gets when small bookstores and the like close. There was a used bookstore up the street from me that closed that I felt guilty about, but the owner was a bit....he was just a bit, but also the books I donated he seemed to get annoyed by since he didn't have a lot of room for them. I just started taking books to the local library to donate instead and went to other bookstores in Old Town that didn't make me feel like an interloper. Anyway, I digress, back to the book, it's a clever little mystery, though it hurt my heart a bit when you find out what has been happening to the missing books.

"The Book Thing" is a perfect short story to whet your appetite a bit. It's now been two years or so since the events in the last book and Tess is still a private investigator. Now though she spends her days taking care of her daughter Carla Scout. Going to their local children's bookstore is something that they try to do to pass the time as well as pass on the love of books to her daughter. While there though, Tess gets caught up in a case of book theft when an employee explains to Tess that a lot of books are being stolen which is hurting the store's bottom line.

Tess is more settled in this one. She references the last book a bit when she mentions being on bed rest prior to her daughter's birth. And she mentions the books she read and how many books she has to go. Though Tess doesn't like the owner of the book store much, she feels obligated to help her out since she doesn't want businesses like this disappearing from Baltimore.

Tess also goes into The Book Thing which is an actual business in Baltimore where people can take as many books as they want. Check out the site, https://bookthing.org/. I am so going to visit this, maybe this upcoming weekend since I have free time. I love that the limit is 15,000 books at one time. I can't imagine hauling that much away. They are not taking donations right now, but I still want to see what books they have available. I definitely want to use this place as a resource.

As I said above, Lippman seems at time to be hinting at how e-readers ruined many bookstores. However, I have to push back on that. Having an e-reader actually allowed me to read more. I buy books via my local bookstores whenever possible. But since I travel a lot, I like to actually purchase books that I can read via that so I don't have to cart 10 plus books around with me. And you all laugh, but yes I packed books back in the day. The worst was probably when I went to Sri Lanka and brought 12 books with me. My thing though was to leave whatever books I found to just be okay at the front desk of the hotel I was at. Heck, I went to Jordan and they called me the girl with the books when I was there on R & R. I was in freaking heaven and just read books from sun-up to sun-down. Back to the case for e-readers, you can make the fonts larger so you can view the text and you don't have to worry about your book pages getting damaged or ripped. When I traveled that happened to me too many times to count.

The writing was fine and the flow was too. Lippman shows you can write a short story and actually develop the characters in it. I liked how she figured out what was going on and her resolution for things.

I do get what Lippman/Tess is saying in this one and how she fears as her daughter grows up she will have less use for books and less interest in classics, but I guess I don't see things that way. My nephews and nieces devour books and this past summer my nephew even asked me to send him classics. I posted about that here on Booklikes. I think kids do love books, but you have to sell it to them as an adventure and not a chore they must do. My parents were both big readers and my favorite memories is sneaking under my parents bed to find books they were reading that I secretly read and put back so they didn't know I was reading them too. How I found out about romance books and "throbbing members."

If I go to The Book Thing, will take pictures and post here. ( )