NH's 2022 Route One Read

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. For this year's summer road trip the Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a work of "literary fiction"

According to Joyce Saricks in Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library:

Literary fiction is “complex, literate, multilayered novels that wrestle with universal dilemmas.” Appeal factors for LF include a character-centered story (as opposed to a plot-driven one) and very strong character development, both in the main character and in secondary characters.

For your summer reading pleasure we selected a title that we felt checked off all the boxes for literary fiction: The Den, by Abi Maxwell. 

With echoes of The Scarlet Letter, this is a luminous, hypnotic story of youth, sex, and power that tells of two young women who find themselves ostracized from the same small New England community for the same reasons–though they are separated by 150 years. 

In addition to The Den, Abi Maxwell is the author of the novel Lake People. Her memoir, One Day I’ll Grow Up, I’ll Be A Beautiful Woman, will be published in the summer of 2023. She lives with her husband and daughter in New Hampshire.

NH's 2021 Route One Read

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. For this year's summer road trip the Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a book of poetry. This was a challenge for the NH Center as the Granite State is home to lots of wonderful poets. 

Since we couldn't bring ourselves to choose just one poet, we selected an anthology: Covid Spring: Granite State Pandemic Poems. This volume was edited by New Hampshire's current Poet Laureate, Alexandria Peary, and was published by our own Hobblebush Books. 

In her introduction Alex explains how this volume came to be:

This anthology is April 202 in the Granite State, but I also believe it is the future. The book pulses with the creative energy of poets from across teh state coming together over a a compressed amount of time to write a manuscript together, responding to the call Kirsty Walker, President of Hobblebush Books, and I sent out in late March for an anthology on the pandemic. Over the course of eight meetings every Wednesday and Saturday during April, fifty-eighte writers from New Hampshire met with me in an online writers' group to help each other start poems about the crisis. 

...At the conclusion of National Poetry Month, writers were invited to submit their poems for blind review, thought participation in the virtual writing group was not required for publication, nor a guarantee. The time frame for creation was compressed and intense: writers would give form and shape to these experiences in real time within a month; a book-length manuscript would result within thirty days. Many New Hampshire writers answered the call to create out of this crisis; we received far more poems than we could fit into the anthology and had to turn away work we admired. 

Fifty-four of the state's poets are represented in this anthology, writing of job loss, loneliness and love, masks, social distancing, surreal visitors, uncertainty, graduations deferred, grief, neighborly and less-than-neighborly acts, observing the beginning of the pandemic and making projections about the future, recalibrating or confirming what it means to be human, to be a resident of  this region.

If this volume whets your appetite for Granite State poets I invite you to revisit our 2021 National Poetry Month celebration which featured the work of many of these same poets. 

 

 

NH's 2020 Route 1 Read

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. For this year's summer road trip the Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a work of historical fiction. Last fall we did a survey to select our featured book and the choice of our readers was Peyton Place by Grace Metalious.

 

Peyton Place has sold over 10 million copies and inspired a film and a television series and generated a storm of controversy around a young woman of French heritage living in a small New Hampshire town.

 

Metalious, a native of Manchester, NH, sets the tone of the novel from the very beginning:

"Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay. In northern New England, Indian summer puts up a scarlet-tipped hand to hold winter back for a little while. She brings with her the time of the last warm spell, an uncharted season which lives until Winter moves in with its backbone of ice and accoutrements of leafless trees and hard frozen ground. Those grown old, who have had the youth bled from them by the jagged-edged winds of winter, know sorrowfully that Indian summer is a sham to be met with hard-eyed cynicism. But the young wait anxiously, scanning the chill autumn skies for a sign of her coming. And sometimes the old, against all the warnings of better judgement, wait with the young and hopeful, their tired, winter eyes turned heavenward to see the first traces of a false softening."

For further reading we suggest the sequel, called Return to Peyton Place (there is a 1999 Gramercy Books edition that includes both novels) and Dirty Whites and Dark Secrets: Sex and Race in Peyton Place by Sally Hirsh-Dickinson.

 

If you are interested in some background information NH Public Radio did a piece on Peyton Place 60 Years Later and one on Driving Backwards: Telling Gilmanton's Story Beyond Peyton Place.To learn more about the life of Grace Metalious, and for a more extensive bibliography, check out the article by  Robert B. Perreault on page 4 of the Fall 2006 issue of Book Notes.

Historical Fiction Survey

We are taking a survey to decide which work of historical fiction set in NH we should feature in next summer's Route One Reads project. To participate in the survey go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Route1NH2020 and let us know which of the 14 books we are considering (pictured above) you like best. You can only vote once, so consider your choice carefully! The survey will close at  11:45pm on Tuesday, October 29, 2019.

NH's 2019 Route One Read

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. For this year's summer road trip the Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a cookbook. last fall we asked for input from librarians throughout the state and got quite a few excellent suggestions. After reviewing everything--and getting quite hungry doing so--we selected Black Trumpet by Evan Mallet as our featured book. 

This book celebrates both the cuisine and the community of the renowned Black Trumpet Restaurant, located in the historic seacoast city of Portsmouth, NH. Seasonal recipes, stories of the history and people that have made this restaurant what it is, and and a model for community food activists who want to support local farmers and producers, preserve heritage foods, and advocate for a sustainable, fair, and delicious food ethic. Local foods are featured for all seasons, even the dark cold of late winter when braising meat, stewed roots, and slippery critters from the sea pervade the menu.

NH's 2018 Route 1 Read

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. For this year's summer road trip the Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a romance for adult readers. There are LOTS of great romance writers in New Hampshire and choosing just one of their books was too tough a job for us, so last October we asked Granite state readers to weigh in. We included a dozen romances in the survey, each by a different NH author, and asked readers to vote for their favorite.  

We heard from 226 people and 28.76% of them voted for Love Free or Die: 23 Tales of Love from the Granite State which is our Route One Read this summer. 

 "If you like romance, you’ll find all kinds of it here — sweet, funky, vampire and so on — all based in New Hampshire.  One story — about the Old Man of the Mountain — is even a little shocking, enough to  make your soft, red lips part in amazement. The book’s editor, Elaine Isaak, warns that “you’ll never think about the Old Man the same way again.” Indeed." --Barbara Coles in NH Magazine

This volume is part of the New Hampshire Pulp Fiction Series and it includes stories by 23 different Granite State writers: Michael Samuels,  Kari Lemor,  S. J. Cahill,  Robin Small,  Shana Chartier,  Judi Calhoun,  Annie Boghigian,  Jessie Salisbury,  Susan E. Kennedy, Abby Goldsmith,  Sylvia Beaupré, James Isaak,  David O'Keefe, Leah Brent,  Justine Graykin, Timothy Boudreau,  Norman Klein, B. K. Rakhra,  K. J. Montgomery,  Melva Michaelian,  Robert E. Owen, Amy Ray, and Troy Ehlers.

What Romance Did You Love?

We are taking a survey to decide which romance novel by a NH author we should feature in next summer's Route One Reads project. To participate in the survey go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Rt1RomanceNH
and let us know which of the dozen books we are considering (pictured above) you like best. You can only vote once, so consider your choice carefully! The survey will close at  11:30pm on Sunday, October 29, 2017.

NH's Route 1 Read 2017

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. The Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a biography for adult readers.
We wanted a biography that told the story of a native life in the Granite State. We had lots of books to  choose from, check out past book-of-the-week biographies for a sample, and ultimately decided to feature Kookooland, Gloria Norris's story of her gritty urban upbringing in Northern New England's largest city. If this story rings a bell for you it may be because you read the Calvin Trillin article about Norris's extended family and their problems in the New Yorker in 1978.

It's the 1960s in Manchester, New Hampshire and Gloria Norris is growing up in the projects with her family. A photo might show a happy, young family, but things aren't as they appear. Jimmy's a wiseguy who relies on charm, wit and an unyielding belief that he's above the law; and his youngest daughter, Gloria, is just like him. Or at least, she knows that she needs to stay on his good side. When an unspeakable act of violence shakes her to her core, Gloria's fiery determination takes shape and she sets herself on a path away from the cycle of violence whirling around her. That path will eventually take her to NYC where she will work as an assistant to film directors Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, and Woody Allen and then to Los Angeles where she is now a screenwriter and independent producer.

NH's Route 1 Read 2016

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. The Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a mystery novel for adult readers.

We conducted a poll of our blog readers, asking them to select from 6 great NH mysteries and the resounding choice was Blood on Hampton Beach by Jed Power.

Following Route 1 into downtown Portsmouth NH you will come to a a junction NH Route 1A which will lead you into the heart of Hampton Beach. Despite the high body count found in Jed Power's fictional version, Hampton Beach is a beautiful beach and well worth a visit.

A summer resident of Hampton Beach, NH author Jed Power’s latest installment in the Dan Marlowe series has Dan facing death from a cast of crooked beach dwellers as he investigates the murder of Hampton Beach’s premier property owner. A murder the police want to hang on him.

Choosing A Route 1 Reads Mystery

The east coast Centers for the Book are collaborating again this year on a Route 1 Reads project. The theme for 2016 is Mysteries. Please vote within the next 48 hours for your favorite from among the titles under consideration for the New Hampshire selection!

 

If you want to forward the link for voting to other NH readers it is https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/R1Rnh2016

NH's Route 1 Read

A Project of the East Coast
Centers for the Book

Route One Reads is a virtual reading trip along Route One. The Center for the Book in each state along Route One was asked to select a travel-related title.
While Route One will only take you to a few New Hampshire towns (it runs along the seacoast) we decided to feature a book that will take you on a trip throughout the entire Granite State.

Sue Anne Bottomley is a New Hampshire artist who decided to visit every one of the 234 towns (this includes 13 that are incorporated as cities) in New Hampshire and draw a picture there. This project took her two years and the resulting drawings were published in the book Colorful Journey: An Artist's Adventure: Drawing Every Town in New Hampshire (Portsmouth, NH: Piscataqua Press, 2014).

As you read your way along Route 1 don't miss the beautiful trip along New Hampshire's seacoast.