FNV: Joe Hill

In this interview from RT Book Reviews NH author Joe Hill talks about NOS4A2, a novel about "a very bad man with a very bad car."

The plan for this series is to point our readers one Friday each month to an online video featuring New Hampshire authors and their work. If you have a suggestion for a video we should include please let us know in the comments. 

Book of the Week #9

By This Wing: Letters by Celia Thaxter to Bradford Torrey About Birds at the Isles of Shoals 1888 to 1894, edited by Donna Marion Titus (Manchester, NH: J. Palmer Publisher, 1999)

Celia Thaxter was an author and poet and was well known for her gardens. She was also an enthusiastic birder and contributed an article for the first issue of Audubon Magazine (Feb. 1887). Bradford Torrey was a writer and naturalist with whom Thaxter maintained a correspondence. Her first letter, written December 7, 1888 and enclosing a bird's wing) was to ask him to identify the birds that had descended upon the Shoals in great numbers and was unknown to the place. (It turns out to be a kildeer plover.) This collection of letters describes the ornithological landscape of the Shoals in the late 1800s in the words of a poet who loved the place. 
 

During February 2013 author Mary Robinette Kowal has issued a challenge to anyone willing to take it up: The Month of Letters Challenge. In honor of this challenge, all the books-of-the-week during February will be collections of correspondence. If you enjoy these types of books you may also want to check out the Postal Reading Challenge being hosted by The Indextrious Reader.

Book of the Week #8

Letters from a Sharpshooter: The Civil War Letters of Private William B. Greene, Co. G, 2nd United States Sharpshooters (Berdan's) Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865, transcribed by William H. Hastings (Belleville, Wisc.: Historic Publications, 1993).

The events of an historical period are brought to life by hearing from the people who were there, who saw what happened and heard what was said. Interpreting what this meant is an entirely separate question, but the letters of someone who was there tells us something unique about how it felt to be in a particular place and time. This collection of letters, interspersed with photos, illustrations and maps describes the U.S. Civil War from the perspective of a New Hampshire boy.

William B. Greene was a seventeen year old student when he caught the contagion of war fever that swept the country in 1861, Against his mother's wishes he joined his boyhood friends to examine the options available in this national 'rush to arms.' It was never a question of if, just how. ... Private Greene's war letters are rare not only because he was a member of the elite Berdan's Sharpshooters but because he experienced the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Most enlistments were for three years and, with the appalling rate of sickness, combat death and mutilation, desertions and just plain being 'used-up', to last even those three years was unusual. ... This incredible collection of letters gives us a very personal and honest view of the American Civil War. As with many Civil War soldiers, William B. Greene, Co. G, 2nd United States Sharpshooters, Army of the Potomac, neither feared death in combat nor agonized over the killing involved. ... This is the story of a young man, and a young nation, coming of age." (excerpted from the Introduction)

 

During February 2013 author Mary Robinette Kowal has issued a challenge to anyone willing to take it up: The Month of Letters Challenge. In honor of this challenge, all the books-of-the-week during February will be collections of correspondence. If you enjoy these types of books you may also want to check out the Postal Reading Challenge being hosted by The Indextrious Reader.

Books of the Week #7

Love Letters to Spike: A Telegrapher's Lament with a Brief, Eclectic History of Communications in the Seacoast by Bill Holly (Portsmouth, NH: Placenames Press, 2004)

 "Herbert D. Waldron plied his craft as a telegrapher at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for three months in the spring of 1914. Over thirty of Herb's letters come down to us today, written to his sweetheart Grace, his beloved 'Spike,' back home in Hartford, Connecticut. Faithfully reproduced with all their inaccuracies intact, Waldron's letters--and author Bill Holly's research and commentary--provide a unique snapshot of 1914 Portsmouth and environs, from the perspective of a young, lower middle class working man. Swinging from exuberance to pathos, they detail the minutiae of Herb's days. Practically nightly, we find our young friend at the movies, dances, minstrel shows and sporting events--all the while complaining how broke he is. At the same time, Herb's travels about the area serve as a convenient framework for the exploration of the Seacoast's rich communications history. The story is well-illustrated with many rare period photographs and engravings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." (publisher's blurb)

Bill Holly, K1BH, has been an amateur radio operator since 1964 and is also the author of The Vibroplex Co., Inc., 1890 to 1990.

During February 2013 author Mary Robinette Kowal has issued a challenge to anyone willing to take it up: The Month of Letters Challenge. In honor of this challenge, all the books-of-the-week during February will be collections of correspondence. If you enjoy these types of books you may also want to check out the Postal Reading Challenge being hosted by The Indextrious Reader.
 

Book of the Week #6

The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963)

"What must you think of a silence as long as this to a letter as good as that?" 

Thus begins the first letter of a this collection of correspondence from Robert Frost, one of New Hampshire's most beloved poets, to fellow poet (and critic) Louis Untermeyer. Reading the letters of a poet (or any other writer) often provides an insight into their creative process. This particular collection is full of Frost's thoughts on his life as a writer ("Your Post review encourages me to think I ought to keep writing. You believe in me and I do too. I wonder if we are both wrong." 3/13/1917); his reading ("...I think you overvalue [Archibald McLeish's] article. It is the prose of a college-educated and practiced publicist trying hard to think." 2/17/1935); and gardening advice ("And by the way I should hardly want to prescribe for your radishes without seeing them. I have always found it dangerous to prescribe for or treat radishes in absentia" 7/13/1918). I think it is too easy to put the great writers of the past on pedestalsand forget that they were real people. These letters introduce the reader to the man who was Robert Frost.

During February 2013 author Mary Robinette Kowal has issued a challenge to anyone willing to take it up: The Month of Letters Challenge. In honor of this challenge, all the books-of-the-week during February will be collections of correspondence. If you enjoy these types of books you may also want to check out the Postal Reading Challenge being hosted by The Indextrious Reader.