Book of the Week #35

Warrior of the Three Moons: Book I of The God Wars of Ithir by J. Michael Robertson (Authorhouse, 2010)

J. Michael Robertson is a student of ancient military civilizations and mythology --particularly the Celts and Romans--and a member of the NH Writers' Project, who writes both fantasy fiction and poetry. This is his first novel and it tells the story of Ciarán, a young highland clansman, who must fulfill a fateful and unwanted destiny: become the mythical Warrior of the Three Moons and lead a desperate search for an ancient weapon hidden in a city lost to the sight of men for three thousand years.

"The Wheel of the year has turned four thousand times since the gods defeated thier brother, the Khem Uru, the Dark God, in the God Wars. A thousand years have passed since the Battle Druid Cuhulain, the last Warrior of the Three Moons, was slain at the Raven Stone. In that desperate time the mythical Sunspear forged in the God Age by the Smith God again reaches out to the world. With his stirring, the Long Night begins to fall over Eirinn, sacred land of the Celtae.

The boy crept stealthily to the edge of the ticket of maple and hemlock lining the riverbank. He cast a quick look up and down the fast moving Eiraen and then scrambled down to the shoal of pebbles below. This trip, with the help of old Angus MacRaibh, a travelling tinker, he had sneaked a sword, bow case, and horn bow out of Sky Stone. By leaving before morn had chimed and hiding in Angus' wagon, he had eluded the young Ainnir who had been shadowing his every waking moment." (p. 1-2)

Hugo Awards 2011

The Hugo Awards, presented annually since 1955, are science fiction’s most prestigious award. The Hugo Awards are voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention (“Worldcon”), which is also responsible for administering them. The list of 2011 winners was recently announced.

Where are the Book Reviews?

Jane Ciabattari, president of the National Book Critics Circle from 2008 to 2011, has put together a great overview of the current state of book reviewing. She includes links to lots of different book review sources and a summary of where each one is coming from editorially.  In reading this article I discovered that Sara Nelson, former PW editor, is now Book Editor at O. This is probably old news, but I hadn't heard where she had landed.

Book Launch Events Tomorrow

Two great authors are launching new books at events at Granite State bookstores on Tuesday 8/30/2011. Unfortunately, timing and geography require that you pick just one to attend. Luckily, you can still read both books.

A launch party for Louise Penny's new Armand Gamache mystery, A Trick of the Light will be held starting at 7pm at Gibson's in Concord.

Toby Ball launches his new novel, Scorch City at River Run in Portsmouth at 7pm

Ladybug Nominee Profile

Author Mo Willems wrote this story about friendship through the seasons which was beautifully illustrated by painter John J. Muth

"Muth sets a limpid rural scene for Willems's two unlikely friends in this tranquil tale of change. ...Willems's concise sentences, paired with joking illustrations in his other works, lose their hilarity-but gain significant emotional weight-when matched with Muth's watercolors. Pink blossoms and red maple leaves allude to Japanese art; Muth pictures Country Frog as a wise tutor who tosses a stick for his apprentice and, in a rain shower, protectively holds a leaf over the dog. The understated episodes acknowledge the transitory nature of the seasons and of life itself." (Publisher's Weekly review)

This is one of the ten titles nominated for the 2011 Ladybug Picture Book Award. Mr. Willem's work has been nominated before: Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale  was nominated in 2005.

Book of the Week #34

Strega Nona written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1975; produced in braille for the Library of Congress, National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, by the American Printing House for the Blind, 2008)

Strega Nona, a character with a magic touch, has been a favorite with children for several generations and is the creation of New Hampshire's own Tomie dePaola. This edition of this classic story about what can happen when you don't do as you're told is one of many Twin Vision Books available from NH's Talking Books Services.

"Judged by their covers, the Twin Vision versions of "Bambi," "Five Little Firemen" and thousands of other children's books are normal. But these books, through an ingenious alteration allow blind people to participate in one of the most hallowed institutions of childhood--the bedtime story.
Facing each page of text inside a Twin Vision book is a page of Braille transcription, allowing a blind parent to read a story to a sighted child and the child, if old enough, to follow along by reading the text. Conversely, a blind child can read to parents, siblings or friends."

Reader's Resources: Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes

Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes: A blog by Mark Athitakis on (mostly) U.S. novelists and short-story writers features, as one might guess from the lenght of its title, long-form writting about American fiction. What you can't tell from the title though is what good long-form writing it is. Posts are often insightful, have lots of links to other stuff you might have missed, and make it clear how thoroughly Athitakis knows his books. I often find his writing to be quite funny, but that is a really subjective thing and might just be me.

Athitakis has been publishing this blog since 2008 and it includes discussions about specific books; comments on what others have said about books; collections of interesting bits of book talk; and interviews with authors. It doesn't generally include actual book reviews, but it does have an explanation of why they aren't included. Specific authors who are mentioned in posts are linked from the side panel, so it is easy to see everything Athitakis has said about a specific writer (Mark Twain and Joyce Carol Oates both seem to come up a lot.) A listing of upcoming D.C. area author events is also maintained on the site.

Ladybug Picture Book Award 2011

Beginning this week -- ten weeks before November -- I will be profiling each of the ten picture books nominated for the 2011 Ladybug Picture Book Award. The profiles will be done in alphabetical order by title.


Voting for the Ladybug Picture Book Award takes place at schools, libraries, day care centers, and homes throughout New Hampshire during November. If you want to be a Ladybug polling place here's what you need to do:

• Get copies of the ten nominated books (from your bookseller, from your library, borrow them from a friend, whatever works for you). If you want to give the list to your patrons there is a promotional flyer you can use for this.
• Find some kids who are in the third grade or younger and read the books to them, or with them.
• In November 2011 have the kids you read the books to/with vote for their favorite. If you want to use the Ladybug Picture Ballot that's great, but you can do the voting however it works best for your group of kids. (Attention parents - one kid is a valid group for voting.) You can also order stickers to give to the kids who have voted, but that is not required. (They are really cute stickers!)
• Total all the votes cast at your site using the Ladybug Tally Sheet -- this is not optional, this form is strongly preferred because otherwise counting the votes becomes impossible -- and send your tally sheet to us so we RECEIVE it before 5pm on December 5, 2011.
• Visit this blog to find out which book is the winner. Results will be posted as quickly as possible, and definitely before Christmas. 

Book of the Week #33

Season We Can't Resist: Poems by Martha Carlson-Bradley (WordTech Editions, 2007)

In this volume New Hampshire poet Martha Carlson-Bradley shows us how she sees the natural world using words to create lasting images for her readers.

"Carlson-Bradley … writes as directly and meticulously about nature and its wonders as any writer you'll find. … What can close examination of the natural world tell us about ourselves? A lot. Carlson-Bradley affirms this in poem after poem." ~ Rebecca Rule, Sunday (Concord, NH) Monitor

Carlson-Bradley has just published, in a 250-copy printing, a new chapbook, If I Take You Here, which she will be signing at Gibson's on Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 7pm.

Do You Love Your Librarian?

Nominate your librarian for the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award!  Nominations for 2011 stay open through September 12, 2011.


There are more than 122,000 libraries nationwide, and librarians touch the lives of the people they serve every day. The award encourages library users (like you!) to recognize the accomplishments of exceptional public, school, college, community college, or university librarians. This is your chance to explain how you think your librarian is improving the lives of the people in your school, campus or community.

Up to ten winners will be selected this year and receive a $5,000 cash award, a plaque and $500 travel stipend to attend an awards reception in New York hosted by The New York Times. The award is administered by the American Library Association with support from Carnegie Corporation of New York and The New York Times.

2011 PEN Literary Award Recipients Announced

This week the winners and runners up of the 2011 PEN Awards, the most comprehensive literary awards program in the country, were announced. Next year will mark PEN’s 90th anniversary. For more than 50 of those years, PEN’s Literary Awards program has honored many of the most outstanding voices in literature.

This year, PEN will present 17 awards, fellowships, grants, and prizes—including one that has been revived after a five-year hiatus, the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and three awards offered for the first time ever: the PEN Emerging Writers Awards, the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing. With the help of its partners and supporters, PEN will confer nearly $150,000 in 2011 to some of the most gifted writers, editors, and translators working today.

Award winners and runners up will be honored at the 2011 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, October 12, 2011, at CUNY Graduate Center’s Proshansky Auditorium in New York City.

Librarian of Congress Appoints Philip Levine Poet Laureate

Apparently today is a day for news of poets laureate. This just in from the Library of Congress:

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has announced the appointment of Philip Levine as the Library’s 18th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2011-2012.

"Philip Levine is one of America’s great narrative poets," Billington said. "His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’—about working in a Detroit auto factory, as he has, and about the hard work we do to make sense of our lives."

Philip Levine succeeds W.S. Merwin as Poet Laureate and joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including Kay Ryan, Charles Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, Rita Dove and Richard Wilbur.

Levine is the author of 20 collections of poems, including most recently "News of the World" (2009), which The New York Times Sunday Book Review describes as "characteristically wise." Levine won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for "The Simple Truth," the National Book Award in 1991 for "What Work Is" and in 1980 for "Ashes: Poems New and Old," the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1979 for both "Ashes: Poems New and Old" and "7 Years From Somewhere," and the 1975 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for "Names of the Lost."

Born in Detroit, Mich., on Jan. 10, 1928, Levine received degrees from Wayne State University and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and in 1957 was awarded the Jones Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford. As a student, he worked a number of industrial jobs at Detroit’s auto-manufacturing plants, including Detroit Transmission—a branch of Cadillac—and the Chevrolet Gear and Axle factory. Levine has said about writing poems in his mid-20s during his factory days: "I believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry, I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own. I thought, too, that if I could write about it I could come to understand it; I believed that if I could understand my life—or at least the part my work played in it—I could embrace it with some degree of joy, an element conspicuously missing from my life."

Levine taught for many years at California State University, Fresno, where he is professor emeritus in the English Department. He has also taught at New York University as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, as well as at Columbia, Princeton, Brown and Tufts universities, the University of California at Berkeley and elsewhere.

Levine’s nonfiction books include "The Bread of Time: Toward an Autobiography" (1994); "Don't Ask" (1981); and "So Ask: Essays, Conversations, and Interviews" (2002). He also has edited "The Essential Keats" (1987) and translated collections of Spanish poet Gloria Fuertes and Mexican poet Jaime Sabines.

 Additional awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, the Frank O’Hara Prize, two Guggenheim Foundation fellowships and three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (for which he served as chair of the Literature Panel). In 1997 Levine was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2000-2006.

You can find Levine's work at your library or local bookstore.

Readings by our Poet Laureate

To celebrate the publication of his latest book, Radio Time, New Hampshire Poet Laureate Walter Butts wiill be doing readings and book signings at the following venues:

• Wednesday, August 17th, 7:00 p.m. at Water Street Bookstore
• Thursday, August 18th, 7:00 p.m. at The Poetry Institute (Connecticut)
• Wednesday, September 21st, 7:00 p.m. at Gibson's Bookstore
• Saturday, September 24th, 7:00 p.m. at The Piano Factory (Boston)

Reader's Resources: NewPages

The NewPages Blog has been publishing since 2006 and it covers "Literary Magazines & Publishing, Alternative Media, Links to Good Reading."  If you are trying to keep up with the comings and goings of literary magazines this is a blog for you. It also includes, among other things, contest announcements and "what I'm reading" posts.

This is a well-written, informative blog. What makes it a standout though, is the website behind it.

NewPages.com bills itself as "the Portal of Independents" and it includes reviews of books and magazines; a magazine stand with recent issues; directories of independent publishers (they are missing the NH ones though), independent booksellers (a good NH list for stores selling new books, a visit to the NHABA site would flesh out their used books listings), book review sources,  literary magazines;  and a tremendous list of internet resources for readers and writers (which didn't include this blog, but seemed otherwise very comprehensive).

If you are interested in books or writing, NewPages has a lot to offer.

Reader's Resources



Photo by W00kie via Flikr



There are a LOT of blogs, websites, podcasts, etc. about books. Some of them are very comprehensive and speak with authority about the book world. Some of them are one reader's thoughts about books (not that that can't make for a great blog). Some of them are a little bit of both.


In writing book-of-the-week posts I often come across these sites--the good, the bad, and the bizarre--and I have decided to start posting information about some of them as part of Book Notes. Reader's Resources (RR) will not be a regular feature (I learned my lesson with book-of-the-week). It will be occasional reviews of book-related internet sites that I find useful, or interesting, or just too quirky not to share.  I have added a blog-roll to this site to which I will add the blogs as I write about them.

If you have a book site you love, send me an email about it and it might turn up in a future Reader's Resources post.



Book of the Week #32

The Summer Visitors by Karel Hayes (Down East Books, 2010)

Watercolor artist and New Hampshire resident Karel Hayes tells the story of two families sharing a cabin at the lake. One family is human, and the other is bears and the sharing may be a surprise to the human family.

"The Summer Visitors seems like one of those childhood treasures you discover on a musty bookshelf in a furnished summer timeshare: unexpected yet perfectly seasonal, a small pleasure that ends up somehow intrinsic to the vacation experience. Once again, as in 2007’s clever “Winter Visitors,” Karel upends the idea that it’s bears who intrude on human space. Here, finely drawn pen-and-ink and watercolor illustrations, often appearing in panels, tell the story; the economical text is almost unnecessary." (NY Times, 7/20/11)

White Birch Books will be hosting a signing with Karel Hayes on Saturday, 8/13/2011 from 3-5pm.

Library of Congress Coming to Concord

On August 30 and 31, 2011 The Library of Congress Gateway to Knowledge Travelling Exhibition will be at the New Hampshire State House (107 North Main Street, Concord, NH) and will be open for visitors from 10am-6pm each day.

The exhibition outlines the history of the Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson's role in re-establishing the Library after the burning of the U.S. Capitol in 1814, and his classification system of Memory, Reason, and Imagination. These three categories define the organization of the content inside the exhibition.

The visit is being co-hosted by the New Hampshire State Library and Concord Public Library.

Book of the Week #31

Stieglitz: A Beginning Light by Katherine Hoffman (Yale University Press, 2004)

"Stieglitz was American, born in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1864. His early work in both the United States and Europe formed a significant foundation for his later, more well-known work. During much of his career, Stieglitz fought tirelessly for the recognition of photography as a significant fine art, in his own work as a photographer, as a collector, as a gallery director, and as a writer and speaker about photography. In the May 1999 issue of ARTnews, Stieglitz was listed as one of the twentieth century's most influential artists.
This book is about the early work of Stieglitz, his first fifty-three years, from 1864-1917. ... This book is not a straight biography, nor a technical guide to photographic experiments of the last century. Rather it is an attempt to understand the early Stieglitz in the context of his times and to explore more fully his life and work as they were intertwined during those early years, both in the United States and in Europe." (Prologue, p. xi-xii)

Katherine Hoffman continues the story of Stieglitz's life and work in Stieglitz: A Legacy of Light. She will be at the Toadstool Bookshop, Peterborough on Saturday, August 6, 2011 at 11am to sign and discuss this latest work.