The prestigious Man Booker Prize is turning 40 this year! There will be several events to celebrate, including a panel of judges who will award the “Best of the Booker”, the best novel overall of all fourty winners. A similar award was given for the 25th anniversary in 1993, when Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children won. Follow the link below for more articles on the festivities.
For the second consecutive year And Tango Makes Three, a children’s picture book about a family of penguins with two daddy penguins, has received the most challenges in public schools and libraries.
“The ALA defines a ‘challenge’ as a ‘formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.’”
Click below for more on And Tango Makes Three, and to see what other books have made the Top 10 Most Challenged Books.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080506/ap_en_ot/challenged_books;_ylt=Agz5KZ0RwuRlJMUTobdOpKBREhkF
We’re lucky enough to be hosting Andre Dubus III, author of THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, at Newtonville Books on Tuesday, July 22nd at 7 pm for his new novel, THE GARDEN OF LAST DAYS.
The book comes out June 2nd, but in the meantime, to hear him discuss the inspiration for the book (or to watch him cook spaghetti), click on the below video link:
The National Book Critics Circle has posted their recommended “good reads” lists for Spring, including:Fiction
1. Richard Price, LUSH LIFE
2. Jhumpa Lahiri, UNACCUSTOMED EARTH
3. Steven Millhauser, DANGEROUS LAUGHTER
4. Charles Baxter, THE SOUL THIEF
Peter Carey, HIS ILLEGAL SELF
J. M. Coetzee, DIARY OF A BAD YEAR
James Collins, BEGINNNER’S GREEK
Brian Hall, FALL OF FROST
Roxana Robinson, COST
Owen Sheers, RESISTANCE
Nonfiction
1. Nicholson Baker, HUMAN SMOKE: THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR II, THE END OF CIVILIZATION
2. Drew Gilpin Faust, THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: DEATH AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
3. Mark Harris, PICTURES AT THE REVOLUTION: FIVE MOVIES AND THE BIRTH OF THE NEW HOLLYWOOD
4. Honor Moore, THE BISHOP’S DAUGHTER: A MEMOIR
5. Susan Jacoby, THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON
PEN New England
invites you to a celebration of new writers…
ANNUAL DISCOVERY EVENING
Monday, March 3, 2008
7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Sam Cornish introduces Zvi Sesling
Edith Pearlman introduces Debbie Danielpour Chapel
Julian Houston introduces Kim Adrian
Champagne reception to follow
The Amphitheater
Lesley University
University Hall, 1815 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA
You are cordially invited to attend and we encourage you to forward this on to others who may be interested…
Please join us as we launch
The Graduate Writers of Greater Boston Reading Series
Saturday, January 26th, 7:00 p.m.
Brookline Booksmith
279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Author Joyce Peseroff will introduce MFA fiction and poetry students from UMass, Boston’s new MFA writing program.
This Saturday’s featured student readers:
Lily Rabinoff-Goldman
Kris Evans
Jeffrey Taylor
George Kovach
For more information on how to join Greater Boston’s growing community of graduate writing students, or how you can participate in our reading series, please contact:
Barbara Perez, Project Director
(210) 912-7022
You’re invited to a special book signing event at Esposito’s Karate Fitness Center on Saturday, Jan 26th from 2-5pm to celebrate BLACK BELT FOR LIFE: A MEMOIR OF PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE MARTIAL ARTS by Rob Smith, Ph.D., an internationally known sport psychologist. Books will be available for purchase and refreshments will be served.
230 Adams St, Newton, MA 617-965-4977
You are cordially invited…
PEN New England / Hotel Marlowe Reading Series
PEN New England
invites you to a reading with
JEFFREY HARRISON
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
6:15 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
during the Hotel Marlowe’s Wine Hour, beginning at 5:00 p.m.
Jeffrey Harrison is the author of four full-length books of poetry — The Singing Underneath (1988), selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series; Signs of Arrival (1996); Feeding the Fire (Sarabande Books, 2001); and Incomplete Knowledge (Four Way Books, 2006) — as well as The Names of Things: New and Selected Poems, (Waywiser Press, U.K., 2006). His poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies including The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Yale Review, and Poets of the New Century. Harrison has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. He taught at George Washington University, College of the Holy Cross, and Phillips Academy, and currently is a faculty member of the Stonecoast MFA Program, University of Southern Maine.
About PEN New England
PEN New England is an organization of writers and all who love the written word. Our mission is to advance the cause of literature in New England and defend free expression everywhere. PEN New England is one of five regional branches of PEN American Center, and part of International PEN, the oldest human rights organization in the world, and also the oldest international literary organization. PEN NE is honored to collaborate with the Marlowe Hotel and Porter Square Books to produce the PEN-Marlowe Reading Series, now in its fourth year. The monthly reading series is programmed by two PEN NE board members: fiction writer, Edith Pearlman, and essayist/photographer, Emily Hiestand. For more information, visit the PEN New England website www.pen-ne.org.
The Hotel Marlowe is located at 25 Edwin H. Land Boulevard, Cambridge. Inexpensive parking is available in the Cambridgeside Galleria garage with direct entry into the hotel from Levels A and C. Enter the garage from the Land Boulevard entrance, directly next to the Hotel Marlowe entrance. The hotel is closest to the Lechmere T-stop, and is within walking distance of Charles and Kendall Square.
First Edition Book Clubs Gain Fans
by Judith Rosen — Publishers Weekly, 12/3/2007
To help launch new fiction titles, more publishers are aggressively working to get booksellers to feature their works in book clubs for signed first editions. These clubs, which typically offer one hardcover novel a month, many by first-time authors, can generate sales of as many as 1,000 copies for a single title per store.While established writers at mainstream houses, like Richard Russo, whose Bridge of Sighs appeared on several first edition book club lists this fall, may not need the extra attention, for debut novelists it can have a significant impact. This fall, for example, Unbridled Books got what its sales director Steven Wallace called a “grand slam,” when four clubs adopted Margaret Cezair-Thomson’s first novel, The Pirate’s Daughter. “The book has been on a lot of booksellers’ minds, but this helps move it to the next level,” said Wallace. The book was the #1 October Book Sense pick.
The clubs benefit not only publishers but bookstores as well, since modern signed first editions typically sell at full list price and often appreciate in value. With the recent movie release of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, members of Denver’s Tattered Cover club have seen the value of their first-edition copies increase ninefold, to more than $250. In addition, noted Charles Stillwagon, events manager at Tattered Cover, the clubs are a way to keep in touch with customers who have moved away from the area.
At Tattered Cover, Stillwagon is one of several voracious readers who help choose books for the club. Most stores rely on an informal selection committee, which generally includes the owner, the events coordinator and a buyer. Newtonville Books in Newtonville, Mass., is one of the few stores to offer two or three books every month and to give club members discounts, not on their selections but on other store purchases.
Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Mass., which has one of the largest such clubs—260 members—in the country, will select only books by authors in its reading series or who are within a two-hour drive of the store. “Last December, we didn’t choose a book,” said Darcy Lambert, who directs the club. “We notified customers that we couldn’t find anything we could stand behind, and sent out a catalogue of the first edition collectible books we have in the store.”
Some would rather bend the rules than pass on a selection. That’s the case at Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif., which uses its club to spotlight emerging writers. “The members are mostly collectors, and we’ve gotten a lot of feedback saying we introduce them to writers they wouldn’t have known,” said club coordinator and buyer Mary Benham. Even so, the store made exceptions this year for two novels by well-known short story writers, Away by Amy Bloom and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz.
At Square Books in Oxford., Miss., Slade Lewis puts aside signed first editions in the fall when a lot of authors are touring and uses them months later, during slower tour months. If he can’t get a good signed first edition, Lewis will wait and send out two the following month. Unlike other stores, Square Books offers two levels of membership—one with 12 books a year, the other with 18. Those who have been in the club for six months receive a free bonus book at Christmastime and can refuse two selections during the year. It’s a tribute to the strength of its selections and the loyalty of its customers that membership has held steady at 200 members for many years.
Both Square Books and Lemuria Books in Jackson, Miss., heavily promote signed collectible books in their stores and on their Web sites. And the clubs are an integral part of who they are as booksellers. Bookseller Joe Hickman at Lemuria takes pride in creating a collectible first edition bookstore within a regular retail store. But even more significant, he said, “is knowing that one little guy in Mississippi can help out. You’re either helping out a first novel or a first book—and you’re helping an author. Authors definitely love it.”
Judging a Retirement Town by Its Bookstore |
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Authors Recommend Their Favorite Stores and Towns – Baby boomers have begun the search for their ideal retirement communities. For many of them, the quality of the town’s bookstore is a key selection criterion. Goldengrain, a member at Topretirements.com, put it this way: “I need bookstores, colleges, lectures, discussion (and) a good active library.” We feel the same way – communities without good book stores are ghost towns. This article will review some of the top retirement towns in America – based on the quality of their bookstores. The most fun part of this article is that we were able to enlist a helpful group of top authors to write about their favorite bookstore towns. Here is the list (and feel free to post blog entries to cover the ones we’ve missed): Newton, Massachusetts Cannon Beach, Oregon Asheville, North Carolina Phoenix, Arizona Vicksburg, Mississippi Kansas City area Raleigh NC Richmond, Virginia New York, New York Madison, Connecticut Carmel, Indiana Massachusetts More Great Towns and Bookstores: |
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