Newtonville Books Community Blog

Father of the Rain  by Lily King has won the New England Book Award in fiction, awarded by the New England Independent Booksellers Association.

Come see her read with us on Thursday, October 14 at 7 pm!

Allegra Goodman will be reading with us this Thursday at 7 pm. Her new book was featured on Fresh Air today:

There’s a luscious party scene about two-thirds of the way through The Cookbook Collector in which a group of young-ish, very clever people gather in an exquisite mansion in Northern California. Champagne and strawberries are served, and the afternoon light turns golden as the day wanes. That scene, for me, captures the overall mood and appeal of Allegra Goodman’s new novel: It’s shimmering and astute and a little melancholy. In short, it’s a midsummer’s dream of a novel — there’s even a nearby enchanted forest thrown in (in this case, filled with giant California redwoods rather than Arden’s ferns and faeries.)

The Cookbook Collector is about all kinds of appetites — for love, and sex, and God and money, and, of course, food. The story revolves around two sisters: Jess, a beautiful 23-year-old graduate student in philosophy, hops impulsively from passion to passion. In contrast, we’re told that Jess’s older sister, Emily, is “possessed of a serene rationality.” At only 28, Emily is the multimillionaire CEO of a dot-com startup. If that flighty sister vs. level-headed sister premise sounds familiar, it should. Goodman herself has called her latest novel “A Sense and Sensibility for the Digital Age.” I confess, if anyone other than Allegra Goodman had made that claim, I very likely would have tossed my review copy away. I am very weary of the literary fad of contemporary authors shoplifting plots and characters from the 19th-century fiction warehouse. Poor Jane Austen, in particular, has been plucked clean. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out your local bookstore where you’ll find the latest violations, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Is there no shame?

Click here to see more and also to read an excerpt from the novel.

Michelle Hoover will read with us on Sunday, July 18 at 2 pm. The Boston Globe reviewed her novel:

A finely-crafted debut novel by Michelle Hoover, “The Quickening’’ follows two women who live on neighboring Midwestern farms in the first half of the 20th century. Hoover skillfully shifts her narrative point-of-view between Mary Morrow and Enidina Current, who tell their stories in alternating voices. Part of the reason this novel succeeds so well is the strength and depth of these two, and how differently they view the world.

Hoover, who teaches writing at Boston University, builds the novel gradually, showing us the harsh realities of farm life in the years between the two world wars. In these pages, there are rainstorms and droughts, fires and the constant exhaustion of physical labor. Enidina is big and strong, seemingly well-suited to farm life, but she’s devastated by her inability to give birth. After a miscarriage, Enidina’s feelings of emptiness are palpable: “This life I loved, it’d given me nothing to keep. I was sick of myself, sick of my good husband who I knew should expect more of me.’’

Click here to read more.

George M. Foy will be reading with us on Sunday,  June 13 2010 at 2:00 pm. He was recently featured on NPR:

George Michelson Foy stood on the platform of a New York City subway station, battered by the noise of trains, crowds and traffic. Suddenly, he couldn’t take another minute of the din.

Zero Decibels is the story of Foy’s search for absolute silence. In his quest, he visited the Parisian catacombs, Joseph Pulitzer’s “silent vault” and the Berkshires. He tried noise-canceling headphones, flotation tanks and silent meditation.

Foy used a “serviceable” sound meter that cost a couple hundred dollars to measure the levels of sound in his life. The place he found the greatest silence was in an anechoic chamber, a sound-proof room at Orfield Labs in Minnesota.

“It’s rated to minus 9.4 decibels,” Foy tells NPR’s Neal Conan. But how is that possible — negative decibels? “Zero decibels is not perfect silence,” Foy says. “It’s actually the level at which 100 people who don’t have hearing damage stop hearing anything. But in fact, that doesn’t mean that there are no sound waves around.”

Click here to read the rest and also to hear the interview with Neal Conan.

I didn’t get a chance to read the Boston Globe Magazine  until  recently, and one article in particular had me  bursting out in laughter. Charles P. Pierce’s weekly column, “Pierced,” was hilarious.

“Party On Dover. Kudos for not solving a nonexistent problem.

Dear Joseph G. Griffin: Good for you, sir. As police chief for the crime-ridden — to say nothing of horse-ridden, Volvo-ridden, and trust-fund-ridden — metropolis of Dover (town motto: “6,000 Residents, 8,000 Polo Mallets”), you had the courage to admit you proposed a law to ban something that isn’t a problem: rowdy adult parties. It seems that before scrapping the idea, you had wanted to prohibit parties easily visible to schools, playgrounds, and parks. This immediately sparked concern in me, due to my longstanding empathy for whales-on-green-pants people. What was going on in Dover? My imagination ran riot: Gatherings on the deck, with Mater and Pater and Uncle Sockless playing knuckle-down games of Sherry Pong. Perhaps someone got into the stables, and impromptu steeplechases had erupted around the dining room table with Great Aunt Hedgefund used in place of the water jump. I had visions of Dover as having turned into a new reality show — WASPs Gone Wild! — which likely would run on Lifetime or wherever it is in the cable universe where Matlock is still trying cases. I was very concerned, especially for the delicate psyches of young Ralph Waldo or Louisa May, looking up at recess in preschool and seeing Grandmama passed out on the patio and wearing The Book of Common Prayer for a hat. Now, because of you, I know my fears are largely groundless.”

Don’t miss Charles P. Pierce read with us from his new book, Idiot America,  on Sunday, June 14 at 2 pm.

We are hosting a book release party for the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga here at Newtonville Books. There’s still time to call or come in and reserve your copy of Breaking Dawn, which officially comes out Saturday, August 2nd.

We will open at 11:30 pm on Friday, August 1 for the Breaking Dawn party. Join us for trivia, prizes, and refreshments while mingling with other fans. Dressing up is encouraged!