Happy first day of Fall! I can’t wait for cooler temperatures, scarves, and boots. Today I thought I’d start a new series here on the blog featuring some books that I love but haven’t read recently. Mostly my book reviews tend to focus on what I’m reading while I work through my fifty book goal, but that means I often don’t write about all of the other books I’ve truly enjoyed over the years!

I’d love to think that I will write a Throwback Thursday post each week, but that might not be attainable. Either way, it will give you a chance to read about some fabulous books. Who knows? It might inspire you to read some of these as well!

Today’s Throwback Thursday book is Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. This book was assigned reading for many of my classmates in high school, but my class read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time instead. I didn’t read this until my freshman year of college, when I took an “epistolary fiction” class. Epistolary basically means that the book is written in letter/journal/diary format, and this book fits the bill!

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

Set on the fictional island of Nollop, which is off the coast of South Carolina, Ella Minnow Pea is about a town that bases its entire philosophy on a pangram (a sentence containing every letter of the alphabet). In this case, that sentence is “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” It just so happens that Nollop is named after the man who penned this sentence, and the pangram is displayed proudly on a statue in the center of town.

When letters begin falling off of the statue, the town leaders decide that letter should be banned from use. As a result, letters start disappearing from the pages of Dunn’s book. By the end of the novel, only four letters remain: LMNOP.

If you like books, words, or any combination thereof, I think you’d really like this delightful book. It’s a quick read, and it’s fun to see letters disappearing from the pages of the book! I would put this book in the same category as The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, and Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. If you like reading books about books or books that celebrate books, look no further than LMNOP.

In hindsight, I should have followed Dunn’s example and removed letters from this blog post, but that would take way too much brain power!  Have you read Ella Minnow Pea? What did you think? Do you know of any other fun books about books? Share in the comments below!

Keep Reading!

Sarah