Book Sales!

Over the next few weeks there are a LOT of library book sales going on in our state! Check out the Center for the Books' library book sale listing (which extends into the summer and beyond) to see where you can get your next book (or bag of books) while supporting our public libraries.

It's Time for Summer Reading!

NewHampshire’s public libraries are set to soar to new heights and explore new worlds this summer with the help of the 2019 Summer Reading Program theme, “A Universe of Stories.”

Library patrons of all ages will be invited to explore the galaxies – and our home planet – not only through books, magazines, music and movies, but also through activities and programs offered by their libraries, including a variety of celebrations for NASA’s 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic moon landing.

For many families with children, their public library is the only community space available during the summer months where free educational and cultural activities are available.

The State Library’s “Kids, Books and the Arts” grant program will fund special events by juried performers at libraries across the state, incorporating music, magic, puppetry and storytelling into the “Universe of Stories” theme as a way of making reading even more fun.

Summer reading programming can help children stay motivated to read, maintain their skills during summer vacation and help them develop positive attitudes about reading, books and the library. Program participants are encouraged to read whatever materials they like, including those not directly tied to the “A Universe of Stories” theme.

The New Hampshire State Library promotes excellence in libraries and library services to all New Hampshire residents, by assisting libraries and the people of New Hampshire with rapid access to library and informational resources through the development and coordination of a statewide library/information system; by meeting the informational needs of New Hampshire’s state, county and municipal governments and its libraries; and by serving as a resource for New Hampshire. For more information, visit nh.gov/nhsl.

Nathaniel Philbrick to Accept the 2018 Sarah Hale Award

Nathaniel Philbrick

Richards Free Library and the Judges of the Sarah Josepha Hale award are pleased to announce that Nathaniel Philbrick is the 2018 Sarah Josepha Hale Award Medalist.  He will accept the award on October 6, 2018 at 8:00 p.m. at the Newport Opera House.

Born in Boston, Nathaniel Philbrick grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Brown University and received his Master’s degree from Duke University. In 1978 he was Brown University’s first Intercollegiate All-American sailor and won the Sunfish North Americans race.  After working as an editor at Sailing World magazine, he wrote and edited several books about sailing.

A resident of Nantucket he is the founding director of the Egan Maritime Institute and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association. In 1994, he published his first book about the island’s history, Away Off Shore, followed by a study of Nantucket’s native legacy titled Abram’s Eyes.
 
Philbrick published In the Heart of the Sea in 2000, which won the National Book Award for nonfiction. In 2003 Sea of Glory won the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize and the Albion-Monroe Award from the National Maritime Historical Society. Mayflower was a finalist for both the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Los Angeles Times Book Award and won the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction.  His newest book, which is due out in October is In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown.

His writing has also appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe.

For over fifty years, the Sarah Josepha Hale Award has been given by the Trustees of the Richards Free Library in recognition of a distinguished body of written work in the field of literature and letters.  The award honors author, poet, and essayist Sarah Josepha Hale, who as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Magazine shaped the opinion of nineteenth century American women.  The list of Hale Award winners includes the finest writers of our times from Robert Frost in 1956 to Julia Alvarez in 2017.

For more information about the Hale award please contact Andrea Thorpe, Director of the Richards Free Library, Newport, NH at 603-863-3430 or rfl@newport.lib.nh.us.

September is Library Card Sign-up Month

September is Library Card Sign-up Month, and this year students will be able to call on the Incredibles team to help them access the information they’ll need heading into another adventurous school year. You can sign up for a library card any time of year, not just in September, and when you sign up for your very own library card, you gain access to powerful education tools like homework help, technology, apps, programs, activities, music and movies, along with reading materials of all kinds covering a world of topics. In New Hampshire, public libraries provide library cards free of charge to residents in their towns. 

“Together, New Hampshire’s public libraries and school libraries provide the breadth of information that students need, no matter what they are studying,” said N.H. State Librarian Michael York. “Remember that library cards aren’t just for kids. We hope that when students come in to sign up for a card that they’ll bring their parents and caregivers with them.”

 

The American Library Association began “September is Library Card Sign-up Month” as a way to ensure that every student has access to the information needed to make the upcoming school year successful.

NH Libraries will ‘Rock Out’ This Summer

New Hampshire libraries will pump up the volume in the coming months for this year’s Summer Reading Program theme, “Libraries Rock!”

Library patrons statewide will be invited to make musical instruments, write songs, learn about music from different countries and be inspired by musicians of all kinds. Books, magazines, movies and more are available for patrons looking for new ways to experience music.

The State Library’s “Kids, Books and the Arts” grant program will fund special events by juried performers at libraries across the state, making the “Libraries Rock” theme even more fun.

Designed to help strengthen literacy skills in young people of all ages, the Summer Reading Program lays the groundwork for preschoolers to become lifelong readers and learners, helps elementary school children develop positive attitudes about reading, and strengthens the high level of literacy that teens need for higher education and future employment.

Students who read at least four books over the summer fare better on reading comprehension tests in the fall than their peers who read one or no books. Nine out of ten kids say they are more likely to finish a book they’ve picked out themselves; summer Reading Program participants may choose to read whichever books they want, including those not related to the “Libraries Rock” theme.

Visit your local library this summer and join in the fun!

Poet Sharon Olds is 2016 Hale Award Medalist

The Richards Free Library and the Judges of the Sarah Josepha Hale Award have  announced that poet Sharon Olds is the 2016 Sarah Josepha Hale Award Medalist.  She will accept the award and give a reading on October 1, 2016 at 8:00 p.m. at the Newport Opera House. For more information contact the Richards Free Library.

Book of the Week #24

Destiny: How Humanity's Arrogance will Lead to Nature's Ultimate Response by Carl Howe Hansen (Maine Authors Publishing, 2015)

"Don't start this book if you have anything urgent to do! You won't be able to put it down. Dr. Peter Petersen's discovery of bacteria designed to clean up oil spills promises a solution to environmental disaster, but when it is released prematurely, it threatens to end the world as we know it. Wild adventures at sea, geopolitical crisis, a frantic race to avert calamity-all are made human by the story of two brilliant but estranged brothers, grappling with their past. To top it all, there's the story of first love in the face of an impending catastrophe. This is a rip-roaring thriller with a heart. -REBECCA PEPPER SINKLER, former editor-in-chief of the New York Times Book Review"

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book benefit The Island Institute.

There are several opportunities coming up for you to meet Hansen at local events:

• River Run's evening of first fiction at 6:30 on June 16, 2015
• As part of the Author's on the Porch series at Bayswater Book Co. on June 26, 2015 at 10:30am
• Moultonborough Public Library is hosting a book talk with Hansen on July 9, 2015 at 7pm
• A reading at Gibson's on July 2, 2015 at 7pm

The Value of NaNoWriMo

Courtesy Portsmouth Public Library

Today's NaNoWriMo guest post is by Jeff Deck, an independent sci-fi/horror/fantasy writer who grew up in New Hampshire and currently lives just over the border, in Maine. This is his twelfth NaNoWriMo.

Thank you, Center for the Book, for this chance to speak about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). And hello, New Hampshire writers and readers. 

I’d like to give a quick rundown of the incredible value of NaNoWriMo. It’s not just a writing exercise—it’s a wizardly device that enriches the to-read shelves of our future selves.

If you fall into the “writer” category, please proceed to part I below. If you fall into the “reader” category, well, you can skip to part II. But since reading is your bag, I suspect you’ll be perusing part I as well.

I.

Right now hundreds of thousands of writers (including me) are attempting to write 50,000 words of fiction, before the 11:59:59 p.m. November 30 deadline. Quickly, without looking back. That’s NaNoWriMo in a nutshell: quantity over quality.

“Quantity over quality?” you might say. “Hmm. Isn’t that the opposite of what I should be doing?”

It’s counterintuitive. Until you consider that most people who decide to start writing a book never finish it.

Even the pulpiest, trashiest novel is better than a half-finished manuscript full of sparkling insights and godlike prose…  because nobody will ever read the latter.

NaNoWriMo trains writers to meet goals and to finish projects. NaNoWriMo trains you to ignore that loathsome little critical voice in your head that says: You can't. This is stupid. You can't.

Guess what? You won’t miss that voice when it’s gone.

Gaining confidence on the page—learning to keep moving forward, no matter what—is the first step every writer must take to become successful. You can sum up this idea in four words: Finish first, edit after.

It’s such a simple idea. It’s easy to see the value in it. As a fledgling writer you might even already agree with this idea—in principle. But putting it into practice is hard.

We are literally creatures of habit: the things that come the easiest to us are the things that we have done over and over again. That’s the way our brains work. If we want to change, we need to change our habits.

That’s where NaNoWriMo comes in. After a full month of sitting your derriere down in your chair and writing every day, you’ve gotten used to it. You’ve come out of the exercise with a complete first draft—but more important, you’ve started to build the habits that you’ll need to sit down and revise that draft. And write your next book.

You’re pounding the habits of successful writers into your brain. It feels good! And those habits will be absolutely necessary if you set out on the path of writerhood someday.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at a NaNoWriMo kick-off event at the Portsmouth Public Library (which has supported novice writers for years through these events). Of the 30 or so people in attendance, about half were first-time NaNo participants.

So that’s about fifteen writers just in the Seacoast area who are attempting to learn the habits of professional authors—often for the first time—thanks to NaNoWriMo. Plus the ones who didn’t get a chance to attend the kick-off.

And there are enough pockets of interested writers to warrant NaNoWriMo events not just in Portsmouth, but around the state: Concord, Pelham, Hudson, Manchester, Newport, Merrimack, and so forth. Think of all the New Hampshire writers plunging into a gung-ho pursuit of their passion this month.

The writers I met in Portsmouth were a diverse crowd. Male and female, teenagers and senior citizens, traditionalists and rebels—they probably had nothing in common but an interest in writing.

Even on that note, their plans for novels diverged wildly: Aliens descending on a small town to attack Thanksgiving. A young Russian woman’s coming-of-age tale. A man stealing the bodies of his descendants to gain immortality. A steampunk adventure in a town by the sea much like Portsmouth.

I’d love to read all those books someday. Wouldn’t you? Which brings us to part II…

II.

When you support NaNoWriMo, you’re supporting the butt-kicking books of the future.

See, nobody gets it right the first time. None of our favorite authors wrote something clean and admirable on the first go-round.

What makes them special is that they didn't give up. They pushed through the draft. Then they edited it. Then they edited it some more. Then someone else took a look, pointed out something crucial. And they edited the story again.

That is the secret origin story of every one of your favorite books. And maybe, this month, the origin story begins for a future addition to your bookshelf. Somewhere out there in NaNo Land, among those hundreds of thousands of people giving this thing a shot—or maybe right here in New Hampshire.

One of the writers I met at the Portsmouth NaNoWriMo kick-off—or one of the many other New Hampshire writers pushing through their 50,000 words—could be working right now on your favorite read of 2018.

As for me? I've been participating in National Novel Writing Month since 2003. I’ve managed to reach 50,000 words every year except one (curse you, 2005!).

NaNoWriMo helped me build the habits I needed to achieve my own goals as an independent fiction author. I’ll be releasing my first indie e-books in January: The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley, a horror novel, and Player Choice, a sci-fi novel. (Like my Facebook page for updates about these projects.) I’m excited and proud to be where I am right now, and I can thank NaNoWriMo for that.

The bottom line is: as a reader, there are two major ways you can support New Hampshire authors.

The first, obviously, is to Read Local: to purchase existing books by New Hampshire authors right now. I’m working with the New Hampshire Writers’ Project to create better ways for readers to discover New Hampshire authors—especially indie authors, who don’t have big-name marketing budgets behind them. Stay tuned on that front.

And the second way to support New Hampshire authors is to support the books that don’t exist yet, by supporting NaNoWriMo. Donate or buy a t-shirt. Spread the word about the site to local writer friends who need a bit of encouragement. If you know local authors who are participating in NaNoWriMo, please buy them coffee or a chocolate bar—they can use all the caffeine they can get.

Thanks for reading! Good luck if you’re working on a NaNo book right now—and get back to work!