Book of the Week #9

Saferwaters: A Novel by Teresa Tucker (Manchester, NH: Copious Beast Publishing, 2010)

This is the first novel of Manchester-area resident Teresa Tucker and it is a page turner. I found Anita Batchelder to be an appealling character and I found myself irritated by stuff she was doing in the book. I think that's a sign of a good novel, when you are so drawn into the characters that you react to what they do as if they were actually people you know.

"What do you fail to see when you are obsessed with keeping secrets? As the forty-something wife of a successful and conservative Boston architect, Anita's seemingly perfect life remains marred by her mounting fears her husband will learn of events in her colorful California youth. On a fateful Caribbean cruise, when her world becomes intertwined with the lives of several young and ambitious men, Anita is finally forced to remove her blinders. The ripple effects from risks taken at sea, some sensual, some perilous, unravel the secrets in all the characters' lives." (back cover)

Book of the Week #8

Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School by Shamus Rahman Khan (Princeton University Press, 2010)

"As one of the most prestigious high schools in the nation, St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, has long been the exclusive domain of America's wealthiest sons. But times have changed. Today, a new elite of boys and girls is being molded at St. Paul's, one that reflects the hope of openness but also the persistence of inequality. 

In Privilege, Shamus Khan returns to his alma mater to provide an inside look at an institution that has been the private realm of the elite for the past 150 years. He shows that St. Paul's students continue to learn what they always have--how to embody privilege. Yet, while students once leveraged the trappings of upper-class entitlement, family connections, and high culture, current St. Paul's students learn to succeed in a more diverse environment. To be the future leaders of a more democratic world, they must be at ease with everything from highbrow art to everyday life--from Beowulf to Jaws--and view hierarchies as ladders to scale. Through deft portrayals of the relationships among students, faculty, and staff, Khan shows how members of the new elite face the opening of society while still preserving the advantages that allow them to rule." (publisher's website)

Shamus Rahman Khan will be at Gibson's on Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 7pm to discuss this book. A few weeks ago the author applied the Page 99 test to his book.

Book of the Week #7

Peaks & Paths: A Century of the Randolph Mountain Club by Judith Maddock Hudson (NH: Randolph Mountain Club, 2010)

"New Hampshire's Crescent and northern Presidential ranges, the site of spectacular mountain scenery, boast an intricate network of hiking paths centered on the small town of Randolph. This trail system, which began in the 1850s and expanded in the 1880s and 1890s, was largely destroyed by intensive logging in the early 1900s. The Randolph Mountain Club was founded in 1910 to "put the paths in order" and, over the last hundred years, the RMC has become the principal custodian of these trails.
Today the Club maintains over 100 miles of paths, including a section of the Apalachian Trail, as well as four high-altitude camps on the slopes of Mt. Adams. At this, the century mark, Peaks & Paths lays out the history of the Club as it has responded to changing times and conditions, and celebrates the enduring spirit that has led to its emergence today as a major year-round steward for preserving the integrity of paths and camps on the Crescent Range, the slopes of Mts. Madison, Adams, Jefferson, and outliers Starr King and Owl's Head."(RMC website)

Besides the history of the Randolph Mountain Club, the book also contains biographical sketches of early pathmakers, lots of interesting pictures, quotes from journals and other writings contemporary to the stories they recount, and  listings of former RMC board members, camp caretakers, and trail crews.

Book of the Week #6

They Sawed Up a Storm: The Women's Sawmill at Turkey Pond, New Hampshire, 1942 by Sarah Shea Smith (Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2010)

"In 1942, a group of New Hampshire women operated a sawmill on the shores of Turkey Pond, Concord. The sawmill, one of two on the pond, was built by the U.S. Forest Service to saw up what remained of the logs stored in the water from the 1938 hurricane. They Sawed Up A Storm is a book about this group of women, the 1938 hurricane, the timber salvage efforts and the determination of the people of New England." (publisher's website)

Sarah Shea Smith, who lives in Newmarket,  is Extension professor and forest industry specialist, at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension.

LAL letters are on their way to NH

There were 624 letters written by New Hampshire students entered in the 2011 Letters About Literature competition. All of these have now gone through 2 levels of judging at the national LAL office and the best of these letters -- the ones where a student clearly expressed a connection to a work of literature -- are on their way to the Center for the Book at the New Hampshire State Library. The New Hampshire semi-finalist letters will come from this group of 115 letters that have advanced to level 3 judging. The semi-finalist letters will then be read and discussed by New Hampshire judges--including writers, teachers, poets, and librarians-- and winners will be selected at each competition level.

Stay tuned for more info!

Book of the Week #5

American Dreamland by Robert C. Huckins (iUniverse, 2010)

American Dreamland is the first novel of New Hampshire teacher-turned-author Robert C. Huckins. He will be reading from the novel at Toadstool Bookshop, Keene on Saturday, February 12, 2011 beginning at 2pm.

"The story is set in a time very much like our own: In the face of dwindling approval ratings and growing criticism, President George W. Bush is impeached and thrown out of office near the end of his second term. He returns home to Texas, bewildered and humiliated, his political career in ruins. Meanwhile, a deeply respected but poorly reviewed Bob Dylan finds his Never Ending Tour odyssey growing tired and stale as fans and critics alike view him more as a traveling museum than as a dynamic performance artist. Disillusioned, Bob retires from music. As the sun fades on these two men, each of them struggles to find his place in the increasingly fickle American cultural landscape. Bush's and Dylan's worlds come together in strange and unpredictable ways, demonstrating how seemingly opposite ends of life's spectrum may not be so far apart from each other after all." (publisher's blurb)