Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Patterson, an advocate of literacy programs, gave the money to Bear Pond because of the store's commitment to young readers. A condition of the grant was that the recipient stores have dedicated children's rooms; Bear Pond meets that stipulation by possessing an upstairs space that's dedicated to children's and young adult books. According to a press release from the store, Bear Pond Books will use the money to redesign that room, thus making it more of "a destination" for young readers.
The bestselling author has dubbed the grant program "Saving bookstores, saving lives," an indication of the importance he places on literacy and reading. So far, in three rounds of grants, nearly 200 independent bookstores have received portions of Patterson's $1 million gift. According to the author's website, he will "continue to support independent bookstores in innovative ways" in 2015, and will launch a new initiative to support school libraries.
Tags: books , bookstores , grant , james patterson , literacy , reading , Image , Web Only
Friday, October 10, 2014
Authors Rose Mitchell and Andrew Janes are map archivists at the National Archives in London, a fact that accounts for the book's overall Anglocentric focus. And while it does contain many a map of Britain and her former colonies, this handsome, profusely illustrated volume also offers such fascinating features as a map of 19th-century Edo (now Tokyo), a map of the Allied forces' invasion of Normandy and, from 1836, the first-known pen-and-ink map by an Aboriginal Australian.
One chapter, "New Worlds: Exploration and the Colonies," showcases maps that testify to the massive wingspan of the British Empire. Amongst the maps of Gambian slave forts and the Indian subcontinent is a 1767 map of French and British claims to the forested parcels of land that surrounded Lake Champlain. Created by Yorkshireman Simon Metcalfe, the surveyor general of New York province, the map shows how the two countries' claims conflicted.
Even more interesting is the watchful lion that joins a wolf, a crane and a turkey in the cartouche in the map's upper left corner. Cool your jets, Catamount Truthers: Just as in the present day, no lions romped through the Champlain Valley in the mid-18th century. Rather, as the authors write, the mapmaker included this fearsome beast in order to "convey ... to those in London both the inherent possibilities and the dangers present in the colonies."
Fanciful details such as that incongruous lion are exactly what make this and the other maps in the book so fascinating. The maps' very inaccuracies speak most eloquently to their origins and attest to their historical significance.
Tags: maps , lake champlain , national archives , history , cartography , beer , Image , Web Only
Sunday, September 14, 2014
So in case you didn't already know, it is now relatively cheap and simple to publish your own book. Here at Seven Days, we receive the fruits of that tech shift: self-published books from fellow Vermonters. Lots and lots and lots. Indeed, each year we receive more.
Do we review them in our pages? Rarely; it takes a very special book to sway us. But we'd like to recognize more writers' efforts, and we think local readers might be curious about what their neighbors are self-publishing. This blog feature may also showcase books from small or academic publishers that we can't cover in the paper.
Before submitting your own book, please see the lengthy disclaimer below!
The Book: Encounter With Japan: An Adventure in Love by Adelaide E. Katz, PhD, and Susan Katz Saitoh. Paperback, 164 pages with full-color illustrations. $20.
What's It About?
How many people have sat at a dying loved one's bedside and wished they could tell the world that person's story? Susan Katz Saitoh does that with this book. Actually, she leaves most of the actual telling to her late mother, Adelaide Katz, a fine writer who left behind journals, poems and more.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Almost 1,100 years after the birth of the poet for whom it is named, Baghdad's historic Al Mutanabbi Street was reduced to rubble by a car bomb that killed more than 30 people. Other casualties of that 2007 bombing included several businesses and their wares, a loss that surely would have immensely grieved the poet, whose full name is Abu at-Tayyib Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Mutanabbi al-Kindi.
For centuries, Al Mutanabbi Street has been the center of Baghdad's intellectual community, renowned for its many bookshops, itinerant book vendors and convivial cafés and tea shops. The car bombing seven years ago not only claimed lives but shredded the very stuff that made Baghdad one of the world's most cosmopolitan cultural capitals.
Starting on July 22, Plainfield's Goddard College will host a traveling art exhibit that uses books and printmaking to commemorate the loss of one of the world's great literary communities. The exhibit, "Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here," has been traveling the world since 2012, and will remain at Goddard's Eliot D. Pratt Library Art Gallery until October 10. Its creator, San Francisco poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil [PDF link], will discuss his work at an opening-night event.
Tags: books , printmaking , goddard , goddard college , al mutanabbi street , baghdad , Image , Web Only
Friday, June 6, 2014
Vermont-based cartoonist Alison Bechdel created the long-running comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For," which was carried by Seven Days and other alt weeklies across the country. Since she left the strip behind, Bechdel has found herself in a larger national spotlight. Her groundbreaking 2007 graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic sat on the New York Times best-seller list for weeks, won or was nominated for numerous awards and met with near-universal raves. The book landed on many a year-end best-of list.
Then it was made into a musical, which closed at the Public Theater in New York last fall after several extensions. That version, too, won popular and critical acclaim — including being named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in drama.
This week, Bechdel has a two-page first-person spread in the New Yorker — call it a graphic mini memoir? Titled "My Old Flame: Gradual Impact," it's a lesbian love story gone wrong, and a comic gone right.
Look for more work from Bechdel in Seven Days' upcoming Cartoon Issue on July 2.
Tags: the new yorker , alison bechdel , fun home , dykes to watch out for , Image , Web Only
Monday, May 19, 2014
Shaftsbury resident Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of the critically acclaimed novel Almost Famous Women and short story collection Birds of a Lesser Paradise, will visit Burlington's Hotel Vermont on Wednesday, May 28, for a reading and signing event.
Bergman, as detailed by Seven Days' Amy Lilly in 2012, grew up in North Carolina and moved to rural Shaftsbury in 2008, where she lives with her family. Mayhew Bergman, who writes short-form fiction and nonfiction alike, is, among other things, a regular columnist for the online magazine Salon. Readers interested in sampling her work online are directed here, to the author's own list of her publications.
The event is sponsored by the Burlington Writers Workshop and is free and open to the public.
Megan Mayhew Bergman reads from her work on Wednesday, May 28, at 7:30 p.m., at Burlington's Hotel Vermont. Free; reservations recommended.
Tags: megan mayhew bergman , writing , author , novel , story , burlington writers workshop , Image , Web Only
Friday, May 9, 2014
In punitively slashing the budgets of their own state colleges, legislators in the South Carolina House of Representatives have unwittingly given late-night comedians a great wealth of new material about narrow-mindedness, blind ideological loyalty and homophobia.
As reported in various media outlets including National Public Radio the College of Charleston had the audacity to assign to first-year students a book that acknowledges the existence and humanity of people who are not heterosexual. That book, the acclaimed Fun Home by Vermont cartoonist Alison Bechdel has also been adapted into an award-winning, Pulitzer-nominated off-Broadway musical.
The University of South Carolina Upstate, another school that state legislators deemed worthy of a good, hard spanking, did not assign Fun Home to first-year students, but did assign other works that dare to challenge the state’s centuries-long tradition of upholding heteronormativity.
Tags: fun home , alison bechdel , south carolina , homophobia , Image , Web Only
Monday, May 5, 2014
I heard that refrain often when my wife and I announced our intention to move to Vermont from Brooklyn. We've found it to be pretty much true, but I'm not certain, even nearly a year later, that we're able to articulate the qualities that make Vermont different. A new book, copublished by the Vermont Historical Society and the Woodstock Foundation, aims to shed light on that particular subject.
The Vermont Difference: Perspectives From the Green Mountain State collects the writings of 19 essayists who have all manner of connections to Vermont. Contributors include current Gov. Peter Shumlin; former governors James H. Douglas and Madeleine May Kunin; and Tom Slayton, former editor of Vermont Life magazine.
The Woodstock Foundation, a nonprofit organization associated with the Billings Farm and Museum in Woodstock, is devoted to the promotion of conservation, sustainable land use and the preservation of local heritage traditions.
Right there in its title, the book states its intentions: to figure out just what does make this place different from other places. Contributors to the book take varied approaches in their essays, addressing such topics as farming, politics, education and recreation.
The Vermont Difference was co-edited by J. Kevin Graffagnino, H. Nicholas Muller III, David A. Donath and Kristin Peterson-Ishaq, all of whom will be in attendance at the upcoming event celebrating the book's publication. Montpelier's Vermont History Museum will host the free event at noon on Thursday, May 8.
Tags: vermont , books , book , essay , vermont historical society , billings museum , woodstock foundation , montpelier , Image , Web Only
Monday, April 28, 2014
VCFA did not lay out any money to acquire the program but rather, said VCFA president Thomas Greene, “reached an agreement to relocate the program here, to Montpelier.” According to Greene, USC had decided to move its graduate programs “in a different direction”; as soon as he learned about that, Greene contacted the university about moving the program to VCFA.
Asked why his school chose this particular program for its first venture into residential graduate programs, Greene offered two reasons. The first, he said, is that VCFA “is nationally known for writing more than for anything else.” The second was the opportunity to bring a well-regarded program to Montpelier. “That was something that, when it came to my attention, I moved pretty quickly on,” he said.
Tags: VCFA , MFA , USC , writing , graduate school , low-residency , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Kibuishi was born in Tokyo but raised in California from childhood. While studying film at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he began drawing comics for the student newspaper. In 2004, he launched a critically acclaimed comics anthology called Flight.
The following year, Kibuishi's debut graphic novel, Daisy Kutter: The Last Train, won a Best Books for Young Adults award from the Young Adult Library Services Association. Amulet was released by Scholastic in 2007.
In an interview with Multiversity Comics, a website run by cartoon enthusiasts, Kibuishi explained that when Scholastic approached him with the Harry Potter project, he'd initially felt surprised:
"I love the originals and thought they shouldn’t really touch those, but then I began to realize that many of the kids reading my books weren’t old enough to be Harry Potter readers (something I confirmed on recent visits to elementary schools and libraries). They are just beginning to read longer and more complex works of fiction, and what better set of books to introduce than Harry Potter?Kibuishi will speak at CCS' commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 17, 11 a.m. at the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction.
Tags: comics , center for cartoon studies , kazu kibuishi , Image , Web Only