Book of the Week #22

The Good Braider: A Novel by Terry Farish (Marshall Cavendish, 2012)

New Hampshire author Terry Farish has based her latest work of fiction on the stories she heard from friends she has made among the Sudanese people who are just beginning their American lives in Portland, Maine.

"Viola remembers Juba: The fresh smell of dirt on the banks of the Nile. Her mother’s
fingers, twisting her hair into braids. And her grandmother’s stories of elephant songs.
But there are other memories—of war and loss—she would like to forget: The twirl
of a tall boy’s body when he is shot. The mind numbing shudder of exploding shells.
And the brutal soldier who said, “Now you belong to me.
”In spare free verse laced with unforgettable images, Viola’s strikingly original voice
sings out the story of her family’s journey from war-torn Sudan to Portland, Maine.
Here, she navigates the strange world of America, a world where a girl can wear a short
skirt—or even date a boy; a world that puts her into sharp conflict with her traditional
mother, who, like Viola,is struggling to braid together the strands of a displaced life.
This haunting novel is not only a riveting story of escape and survival, but the universal
tale of a young immigrant’s struggle to build a life on the cusp of two cultures."   --Publisher's description

Terry Farish will be talking about The Good Braider at:

• Gibson's on Thursday, May 31, 2012 at 7pm (that's tomorrow)
• Water Street Books on Thursday, June 7, 2012 at 7pm

Book of the Week #21

For Better or for Work: A Survival Guide for Entrepreneurs and Their Families by Meg Cadoux Hirshberg (NY: An Inc Original, 2012)

Inc. columnist Meg Cadoux Hirshberg, who lives in New Hampshire with her husband, Stoneyfield Yogurt C-E-Yo Gary Hirsberg, has written a very engaging and honest guidebook for entrepreneurs (or potential entrepreneurs) and the people who love them. Thanks to RiverRun Bookstore for bringing this title to my attention.

"How does someone who is obsessed live peacefully with others who are not? That question summarizes the quandary faced by company founders and their families. To answer it, I examine the impact—for better and for worse—of entrepreneurial businesses on families and relationships, and vice versa. For Better or For Work is a vital guide to navigating the emotional and logistical terrain of business-building while simultaneously enjoying a fulfilling family life. From the trials of co-habiting with a home-based business to the queasy necessity of borrowing money from family and friends to the complexities of intergenerational succession, no topic is taboo. The entrepreneur will learn how to build a successful business without sacrificing healthy family relationships to the financial and emotional rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship. ...For Better or For Work will remind you that the long hours and late nights spent on the business or with the family are worth the effort, and will give you tools for making both endeavors successful."   --Publisher's blurb

Upcoming Book Events

Tuesday, 5/22/2012

• Poet Tommy McCaffrey will be at River Run at 7pm talking about his book I Have to Tell You and This is Not the Right Time

Wednesday, 5/23/2012

• We the People presents Katherine Towler and A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith in Exeter at 7pm

Thursday, 5/24/2012

• Junie B. Jones will be at the Amato Center in Milford at 4pm
• Author David Macaulay will be speaking at the Bedford Public Library at 7:30pm
• Children's book illustrator Brian Lies will be at Gibson's at 7pm to talk about his latest work, More

Saturday, 5/26/2012

• G. M. Browning will be signing his YA novel Cerulean Isle at 2pm at Toadstool Bookshop, Keene
• Beatriz Williams will be signing and discussing her novel Overseas at 2pm at Toadstool Bookshop, Peterborough

Sunday, 5/27/2012

• At Toadstool Bookshop, Peterborough at 2pm David Brown will be discussing his book The Real Change Makers

Tuesday, 5/29/2012

• Join the celebration at Toadstool Bookshop, Milford at 7pm when local author Kasey Mathews visits on the national sale day of her debut book, Preemie: Lessons in Love, Life, and Motherhood

Wednesday, 5/30/2012

• Novelist Meg Mitchell Moore will be at Water Street Books at 7pm reading from So Far Away
• Author Richard Russo and his daughter, artist Kate Russo, will be at Red River Theatres at 6pm talking about their collaboration Interventions. This free event is hosted by Gibson's.

Book of the Week #20

Up: A Mother and Daughter's Peakbagging Adventure by Patricia Ellis Herr (NY: Broadway Paperbacks, 2012)

I was visiting the Innisfree Bookshop in Meredith this week and one of the (very knowledgeable) booksellers there suggested this title when I asked for a good "local" book. She recommended it saying that it talked about all the stuff that goes on when climbing 4,000 footers with small children, not just the positives. Patricia Ellis Herr lives in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and recently talked about her book on WNYC Radio's Takeaway.

When Trish Herr became pregnant with her first daughter, Alex, she and her husband, Hugh, vowed to instill a bond with nature in their children. By the time Alex was five, her over-the-top energy levels led Trish to believe that her very young daughter might be capable of hiking adult-sized mountains. In Up, Trish recounts their always exhilarating--and sometimes harrowing--adventures climbing all forty-eight of New Hampshire's highest mountains.  Readers will delight in the expansive views and fresh air that only peakbaggers are afforded, and will laugh out loud as Trish urges herself to "mother up" when she and Alex meet an ornery--and alarmingly bold--spruce grouse on the trail. This is, at heart, a resonant, emotionally honest account of a mother's determination to foster independence and fearlessness in her daughter, to teach her "that small doesn't necessarily mean weak; that girls can be strong; and that big, bold things are possible." --Publisher's blurb.

Book of the Week #19

The Lost History of 1914: Reconsidering the Year the Great War Began by Jack Beatty (NY: Walker & Company, 2012)

Everyone who took history in high school knows that WWI was inevitable. A series of events took place that led the nations of Europe into a war that they could not avoid. But what if that isn't actually true? Jack Beatty, a resident of Hanover, NH and news analyst for NPR's On Point  presents a new perspective on the events of 1914 and whether they had to lead where they did.

"In The Lost History of 1914, Jack Beatty offers a highly original view of World War I, testing against fresh evidence the long-dominant assumption that it was inevitable. "Most books set in 1914 map the path leading to war," Beatty writes. "This one maps the multiple paths that led away from it."
Chronicling largely forgotten events faced by each of the belligerent countries in the months before the war started in August, Beatty shows how any one of them—a possible military coup in Germany; an imminent civil war in Britain; the murder trial of the wife of the likely next premier of France, who sought detente with Germany—might have derailed the war or brought it to a different end. In Beatty's hands, these stories open into epiphanies of national character, and offer dramatic portraits of the year's major actors—Kaiser Wilhelm, Tsar Nicholas II , Woodrow Wilson, along with forgotten or overlooked characters such as Pancho Villa, Rasputin, and Herbert Hoover. Europe's ruling classes, Beatty shows, were so haunted by fear of those below that they mistook democratization for revolution, and were tempted to "escape forward" into war to head it off. Beatty's powerful rendering of the combat between August 1914 and January 1915 which killed more than one million men, restores lost history, revealing how trench warfare, long depicted as death's victory, was actually a life-saving strategy.
Beatty's deeply insightful book—as elegantly written as it is thought-provoking and probing—lights a lost world about to blow itself up in what George Kennan called "the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century." It also arms readers against narratives of historical inevitability in today's world." --Publisher's blurb

I find books to feature here through a variety of channels; this one was brought to my attention by a display at Gibson's early in the year.

2012 LAL Winners

New Hampshire's 2012 Letters About Literature winners have been selected from the 45 excellent  letters that were chosen as state semi-finalists from the among 736 New Hampshire entries received this year.

Jaden Carrier, a fifth grader at Infant Jesus School, wrote the 2012 Level I NH winning letter to David Lubar about his book My Rotten Life (Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie).

Isabelle Todd, a student in the eighth grade at Oyster River Middle School, wrote to Natasha Friend about Perfect. Her letter was selected as the 2011 Level II NH winning letter.

Christopher Maloney, a senior at Goffstown High School wrote the letter that was selected as the 2011 Level III NH winner to Christopher Paolini about his Inheritance Cycle.

Lots of wonderful letters were entered in Letters About Literature 2012 and the judges at each competition level had tough choices to make as they read all the semi-finalist letters. The New Hampshire winning letters have been sent on as entries in the National Letters About Literature Competition.

 

Thank you to the 2012 New Hampshire Letters About Literature judges!

• Ann Hoey, Youth Services Coordinator, NH State Library
• Author Joseph Monninger
• Poet Kyle Potvin
• Selma Nacchach-Hoff, English Department Chair, Manchester High School Central
• Jennifer Desloges, a teacher at Plymouth Elementary School
• Author Lara Bricker 

Book of the Week #18

The Savings Solution: A Conversation About Living for Today While Saving for Tomorrow by Michael B. Rubin (Portsmouth, NH: Wachtel & Martin, 2012)

Author Michael B. Rubin will be appearing at RiverRun Bookstore this week. Here's what they had to say about it:

"Are you earning an income but struggling to get by?  Have too little money in the bank? Feel like you’ll never gain any traction on that emergency fund you know you’re supposed to have-- let alone start saving for retirement? Finally, are you ready to eliminate those nasty credit card bills? Financial expert Michael Rubin will speak at RiverRun Bookstore in Downtown Portsmouth on Monday, May 7th at 7:00pm.  RiverRun is located at 142 Fleet St."

This book is, as the title indicates, a conversation about personal finance. The author is talking with "you" through most of the book. This is a bit of a gimmick, but it works well to keep the reader moving through the explanations of stuff like compound interest. As you read along the questions that pop into your head as you read ("where am I gonna get 8% on my money?", "what if Ididn't save $10 every day since I was 21?", "isn't that a quote from My Cousin Vinnie?") are written into the text and answered directly (in the stock market, you need to get on it today, yes). The end of each chapter has a series of entries based on postings from the author's blog.