Something Rotten

By Jasper Fforde

The fourth novel in the Thursday Next series. In this book, Thursday is now back in the real world with her toddler son, Friday. She is still part of Jurisfiction but, needing money, she goes back to work for Special Operations, a branch of law enforcement.
Thursday wants to get her eradicated husband, Landen, back. She also needs to track down Yorrick Kaine, an escapee from an unknown book. Kaine has risen to high position in the government and has even higher ambition. If Kaine succeeds, he will start a war that will bring about Armageddon.

Wikipedia has a really informative entry that does an excellent job of explaining the universe of the Thursday Next stories. It is helpful even to those who have read the first three books in the series. The novels can be a bit overwhelming there is so much to keep in mind. Thursday's Britain is not our Britain and then there is the world of books and all its characters and creatures that sneak in and out of Thursday's world.

I did enjoy this story and parts of it were quite funny. The story line seemed a bit more straight forward than some of the earlier stories. For the most part, I didn't feel as lost as I sometimes did in the other books.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

By Gabrielle Zevin

A.J. is the owner of a small bookstore. He lives in the apartment above the store.
Ever since his wife died, A.J. has been very depressed. So depressed that he occasionally gets very drunk. One evening he is passed out drunk and someone comes into the apartment and steals a very valuable, very rare first edition book of poetry.
At about the same time, a woman abandons her young child in A.J.'s bookstore. The toddler has a note from the mom explaining that she wants her little daughter to grow up in a home that values reading and books. And that she can no longer take care of the girl, whose name is Maya.
And so Maya enters in the lonely, sad middle-aged man's life. He accepts the responsibility of raising Maya and it enriches and expands his life in ways he never imagined.

I truly loved this sweet, gentle story. Although A.J. seems live under a dark cloud in the beginning, the arrival of Maya lets in fresh air and sunshine.

Book review by the Washington Post from 2014.

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

By Bill Bryson

Bryson returns to the United States after living in the UK. Feeling a bit nostalgic, he takes off on a road trip to visit some of same places he visited with his parents as a kid and to visit places that he had always wanted to visit but never had.
Bryson is usually quite amusing and this book lives up that in being a humorous read. But he must have been in a bad mood when he wrote it because he really beats up on America, only rarely finding a good thing to say beyond praising the scenery occasionally.

I did enjoy the book, but I wish he could have been a little less snarky about his homeland.

See the New York Times book review from 1989.

Time Salvager

By Wesley Chu

James is a time salvager. His job is to travel back in time and save artifacts and technology from the brink of destruction.
Time salvagers are required to adhere to a strict set of protocols. The main one of which is to never bring a living person from the past into the future. Dire consequences if anyone does such a thing.
James lives in a time of decay and depression. His forays into the past to rescue lost tech is helping to keep mankind safe if not exactly thriving.
Time travel takes a toll on the salvagers, both physically and mentally. James is one of the most experienced and valuable salvagers but he is suffering from exhaustion. He really needs to take some time off to rest and recuperate. But on his latest foray, he is smitten by an attractive and intelligent young woman and saves her from her doom and brings her back to his timeline.
This woman is a scientist and she was supposed to die in a terrible explosion. Her knowledge could be the key to saving Earth from a deadly environmental catastrophe.
But James has broken the first rule of time travel and has put himself and the scientist in the crosshairs not only of his own employer but of that of a ruthless and cruel corporation that will stop at nothing to get to him and to her.

Kind of a boring story. James rescues the woman and hides her in a tribe of outcasts living in the ruins of Boston. And he makes many trips into the past to gather the equipment she needs to conduct her experiments to solve the environmental crisis that has enveloped the world. None of that was really very interesting.
The last part of the story features a lot of battles and strife, most of which I skipped. I am not interested in the details of battles. I find that sort of thing to be the so boring.
So even though this book is the first in a new series, I probably will not bother to read the next in the series.