Bookloft's blog

Two New Berkshire-Based Novels Are Here

Authors and publishers have heard your cries for some more mainline fiction set in The Berkshires! Here are two new novels that take place right here in Western Massachusetts:

Time's Betrayal

"By a Berkshire lake on a September morning in 1953, John Davenport Alden III, classical archaeologist, war hero, and blue-blooded New England Yankee, hugged his two-year- old son, took a last drag on his Lucky Strike, and walked away from his life. A year later, his body was returned by the KGB. John Alden was not only exposed as a CIA agent, but branded by some in the Agency as a traitor. His young son, Peter Alden, was condemned to grow up in the shadow of a man he barely knew....David Adams Cleveland unfolds the turbulent saga of four generations of Aldens—from Peter to his great-grandfather, a Civil War general and railroad builder—and the Williams clan, their idealistic cousins and sometime bitter rivals. Anchored in historic moments from the Battle of Antietam to the fall of the Berlin Wall, this sweeping family drama encompasses many of the contradictions of the American experiment, including the plague of racism, American exceptionalism, and the triumph and tragedy of America’s intervention on the world stage in wars and conflicts throughout the 20th century." (From the Publisher)


David Adams Cleveland is the author of two previous novels, With a Gemlike Flame and Love’s Attraction, a Barnes & Noble best-seller. His most recent art history book, A History of American Tonalism, won the Silver Medal in Art History in the Book of the Year Awards, 2010, and Outstanding Academic Title, 2011, from the American Library Association. He also works as an art adviser with his son Carter Cleveland, founder of Artsy.net, a website dedicated to making all the world’s art accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. He and his wife live in New York.

SPECIAL NOTE: 
Meet author David Adams Cleveland! On Wednesday, October 25th, at 3:00pm he will be here at The Bookloft to for an informal book-signing and a meet & greet event! Consider yourself invited.


 

The Locals

"Mark Firth is a contractor and home restorer in Howland, Massachusetts, who feels opportunity passing his family by. After being swindled by a financial advisor, what future can Mark promise his wife, Karen, and their young daughter, Haley? He finds himself envying the wealthy weekenders in his community whose houses sit empty all winter. Philip Hadi used to be one of these people. But in the nervous days after 9/11 he flees New York and hires Mark to turn his Howland home into a year-round "secure location" from which he can manage billions of dollars of other people's money. The collision of these two men's very different worlds - rural vs. urban, middle class vs. wealthy - is the engine of Jonathan Dee's powerful new novel....Here are the dramas of twenty-first-century America - rising inequality, working class decline, a new authoritarianism - played out in the classic setting of some of our greatest novels: the small town. The Locals is that rare work of fiction capable of capturing a fraught American moment in real time." (From the Publisher)

Jonathan Dee is the author of six previous novels, most recently A Thousand Pardons. His novel The Privileges was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize and winner of the 2011 Prix Fitzgerald and the St. Francis College Literary Prize. A former contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, a senior editor of The Paris Review, and a National Magazine Award-nominated literary critic for Harper's, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lives in Syracuse, New York.


 

The Man Booker Prize 2017 Longlist Announced

The Man Booker Prize longlist was announced today. In an exciting battle for only one to rule them all, the road to winning the Man Booker Prize is not easy. From this "longlist," six books will be chosen later this year by a panel of judges for the "shortlist," and then eventually a single winner will emerge. Exciting! 

Which of the books are your favorites?
Who do you think should win?

About the Man Booker Prize:
"First awarded in 1969, the Man Booker Prize is recognised as the leading prize for literary fiction written in English. The list of former winners features many of the literary giants of the last four decades: from Iris Murdoch to Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan to Hilary Mantel. The rules of the prize were changed at the end of 2013 to embrace the English language ‘in all its vigour, its vitality, its versatility and its glory’, opening it up to writers beyond the UK and Commonwealth." (From themanbookerprize.com)

The 2017 Man Booker prize longlist

         
  
         

4321 by Paul Auster 

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack (available Sept. 19th, 2017)

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (available Nov. 14, 2017)

Elmet by Fiona Mozley

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (available Aug. 15, 2017)

Autumn by Ali Smith

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Children's Summer Reading Bingo

This summer we've merged our Children's Summer Reading Challenge with Reading Without Walls' Bingo!

Will you meet the challenge?

Come in to get a Bingo sheet (or print one by downloading it here) to get started. Then, get reading and start winning!

Complete as many rows as you want (diagonals included!) and win a prize for each one. Multiple Bingos are allowed. Complete the whole card to get an extra special prize! Please bring your card in by September 1st to claim prizes.

Plus, get 15% OFF any five books that you buy here at The Bookloft that let you complete a row for Bingo!

Summer Author Series

We are proud to be hosting several author events this summer. Each author will be in our store for either a short talk, a short reading, a book signing, or all of the above! Here's who we've got on the lineup for our Summer Author series...


MAY 13, 2017
4:00pm

Joselin Linder, author of The Family Gene

The Family GeneJoselin Linder is a regular contributor to the New York Post, whose work has also been featured on This American Life, Morning Edition and Life of the Law. She spoke at the TEDX GOWANUS event in Brooklyn in 2014, presenting for the first time on the subject of her family gene and the deadly illness to which it leads. Exclusive to just fourteen people, the story of the gene will be told in Linder’s new book, The Family Gene. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two dogs.

About the Book
A riveting medical mystery about a young woman’s quest to uncover the truth about her likely fatal genetic disorder that opens a window onto the exploding field of genomic medicine.


MAY 27, 2017
4:00pm

Jennifer Browdy will be speaking on two of her books: What I Forgot….and Why I Remembered and The Elemental Journey of Purposeful Memoir: A Writer’s Companion

Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D., is a pioneer of purposeful memoir and a leading voice in the field of feminist spiritual ecology, focusing especially on activism through media and the arts. She teaches and lectures widely on social and environmental advocacy, social transformation and the necessity of aligning the personal and political in the journey to planetary stability.

About What I Forgot….and Why I Remembered
An honest, lyrical and hard-hitting memoir that sets one American woman’s journey against the larger backdrop of the personal and planetary landscape into which she was born, and uses the intimate details of one life story to represent the larger story of a whole generation of Americans.

A “nature girl” as a child, Jennifer recalls how she was seduced into forgetting her love of the natural world as a young adult in Manhattan entering the dominant cultural stream. She remembered this primary connection to the Earth much later in life when she woke up to the reality of global climate change and environmental degradation. Through her own experience of denial and avoidance, as she resisted change both personally and professionally, she shows the challenges of getting privileged Americans to wake up and confront the realities of our time.

About The Elemental Journey of Purposeful Memoir: A Writer’s Companion
Warm and informal, this month-by-month guide to writing memoir is like having an experienced writing coach at your elbow. With a year’s worth of thought-provoking, carefully structured writing prompts and essays on craft, Jennifer offers guidance and companionship for the aspiring memoirist, encouraging you to dig deep into the storehouse of your memories to share the wisdom that only life experience can bring.


June 10, 2017
2:00pm

Leslie T. Sharpe, author of The Quarry Fox: And Other Critters of the Wild Catskills

Leslie T. Sharpe is the former Vice President of the New York City Audubon Society, an environmentalist, and a lifelong naturalist living on Lazy Hawk Mountain in the Great Western Catskills. She has taught writing and editing at Columbia University, New York University and the City College of New York. Her book Editing Fact and Fiction: A Concise Guide to Book Editing is a staple text for writing students.

About the Book
A red fox stands poised at the edge of a woodchuck den, his ears perked for danger as two pudgy fox cubs frolic nearby. A mother black bear and her cubs hibernate beneath a felled tree. A barred owl snags a hapless cottontail from a meadow with its precise talons. In The Quarry Fox, Leslie T. Sharpe trains her keen eye and narrative gifts on these and other New York wildlife through her tales of close observations as a naturalist living in the Great Western Catskills. The Quarry Fox is the first in-depth study of Catskill wildlife since John Burroughs invented the genre of nature-writing, in which Sharpe weaves her experiences with the seasons, plants, and creatures with the natural history of each organism, revealing their sensitivity to and resilience against the splendor and cruelty of Nature.
 


July 15, 2017
2:00pm

Raymond P. Sinibaldi, author of John F. Kennedy in New England

Raymond P. Sinibaldi, whose grandfather worked as Kennedy’s East Boston campaign secretary in both 1946 and 1952, poured over thousands of photographs to capture moments of President Kennedy at home in New England. Those moments provide a fresh look at our nation’s 35th president and his enduring legacy, the heart of which is found at the JFK Library on the shores of Boston Harbor.

About The Book
On May 29, 1917, John F. Kennedy was born in the Kennedy home in Brookline, Massachusetts. As a toddler, he wandered the sands of Nantasket Beach in Hull. When he was a little boy, he swam in the Atlantic waters of Sandy Beach in Cohasset, and as a teenager, he learned to sail on Nantucket Sound off the Cape Cod hamlet of Hyannis Port. He was married on the lawn of the Auchincloss Estate in Newport on the shores of Rhode Island Sound, and as president, he sailed the waters off John’s Island in Maine, while the Navy’s Blue Angels flew over in a salute to their commander in chief. John Kennedy was marked and then defined by his time sailing the seas off New England’s shores, and as his brother Ted once said, it was Hyannis Port where he enjoyed his “happiest times.”

 

Children's Book Week

This May marks the 98th anniversary of Children’s Book Week; the theme for this year’s celebration is “One World, Many Stories.”

Children’s Book Week is a cornerstone program of Every Child a Reader, a 501(c)(3) literacy charity dedicated to inspiring a lifelong love of reading in children and teens across America. Other national programs include the Children’s and Teen Choice Book Awards, Reading Without Walls, and the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, in partnership with the Library of Congress. Individual and corporate donations, grants, and the Children’s Book Council support Every Child a Reader.

Here's how The Bookloft is celebrating:

  • Bookmark Design Contest
  • 10th Annual Children’s & Teen Choice Book Awards Voting station
  • Prizes for Book Reviews

BOOKMARK DESIGN CONTEST

Here's how you can design our next official Bookloft bookmark!

Come to The Bookloft Sunday, May 7, between 2-4pm and create your bookmark design.

Or, here's how to make it at home:

  • Get a Bookmark Template:  Download it here to print, or stop by the store to pick one up.
  • Draw your original artwork inside the box on the template.
  • Turn it back in to The Bookloft by Sunday, May 7.

We will select our favorite and make that our next official Bookloft bookmark!

VOTE FOR THE CHILDREN'S & TEEN BOOK AWARDS

  

 

 

Voting for the 10th Annual Children’s & Teen Choice Book Awards, the only book award voted on solely by kids & teens, has been in progress since March 3, and you can be a part of it if you stop by The Bookloft and cast your vote before May 7.

REVIEW A BOOK AND EARN A PRIZE

Write a review for a book you've read recently, bring it to The Bookloft, and we'll give you a free prize! Make sure to include your first name, your age, and the title of the book you read, along with your review.

Independent Bookstore Day 2017

Ok, listen up.
Really, you'll want to see this.

Something big is happening Saturday, April 29th...

Independent bookstores all across America are having a party. Come on out to The Bookloft for a fun day of special freebies, exclusive books and literary items that you can only get on this day at a store. Not before. Not online. Not after they run out.

Here's what to come out for:

  • $6 Story: The Sandmeyer Reaction - A special SIGNED edition of IBD’s ongoing “$6 Story” series featuring a deleted scene from Michael Chabon’s latest novel, Moonglow 
  • Welcome to Night Vale vinyl record -  A vinyl edition of the bestselling Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
  • “Lost & Found” Coloring Print - This original, SIGNED black and white drawing by Jenny Lawson (aka The Bloggess) is inspired by her activity book, You Are Here

  • A Literary Map of the U.S. - A SIGNED giclee print created by 3Fish Studios, creators of Bookstore Day’s A Literary Map of California and A Literary Map of the Seas
  • "An Author’s Best Friend" Canvas Pouch - This handy 100% cotton canvas zippered pouch features portraits of real author dogs like Sparky Patchett and Jennie Sendak.
  • Literary Tea Towels - This year’s flour sack tea towels feature two food-related literary quotes from Virginia Woolf and Oscar Wilde.

  • “Child of Books” fine art print - The acclaimed New York Times bestselling authors of A Child of Books, Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston, offer an exclusive SIGNED fine art print for book lovers of all ages.


Free Items, Prizes, or Giveaways - 

...and more!

Who Will Win?

These are the books on the just-announced Man Booker Prize International shortlist. Who do you think will win?

The Man Booker International Prize is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. Each year the award recognizes a single book in English translation, which then takes home £50,000, to be shared equally between the author and the translator.


  

  

Compass
by Mathias Énard, Charlotte Mandell (Translation)
A Horse Walks Into a Bar
by David Grossman, Jessica Cohen (Translation
The Unseen (not yet available)
by Roy Jacobsen, Don Bartlett (Translator), Don Shaw (Translator)
Mirror, Shoulder, Signal (not yet available)
by Dorthe Nors, Misha Hoekstra (Translator)
Judas
by Amos Oz, Raquel García Lozano (Translator)
Fever Dream
by Samanta Schweblin, Megan McDowell (Translator)

Dragon Egg Hunt

Calling all Dragon Hunters!

Join us for a Dragon Egg Hunt
Thursday, April 20th
4:00pm

In celebration of the release of The Dragon Brothers series, come on out for a special dragon egg hunt inside the Bookloft! All participants will go home with prizes. The Dragon Hunters book will be on sale for participants at 30% off. RSVP to childrensdept@thebookloft.com

Bookstore Owner Runs For Public Office


April 1, 2017
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Great Barrington, MA - Pam Pescosolido, owner of The Bookloft in the Southern Berkshires region, announced her candidacy to run for public office in 2018 under the newly founded Bookist Party. "I enjoy reading," Pescosolido stated in her announcement speech, "and telling people what to read comes naturally. Really, how different can running the store be from running for office and inventing a reading political party?" During her rally on Saturday, April 1, 2017, she outlined that her platform will be defined by the same principles that her bookshop runs on: well organized categories of what readers should read. Saturday's rally saw the support and public endorsement from Kathleen Kelly, former owner of independent bookstore The Shop Around The Corner in Manhattan. "We need someone like Pam to stand up to the big book lobby." Dozens of individuals were in attendance at Pescosolido's announcement rally, but, controversially, only those who were fictional participated. When reached for comment about whether that might translate to a lack of non-fictitious voter support, Pescosolido stated, "Look, I made cookies. Want one?" Pescosolido's rally was held at The Bookloft, in the Poetry section.

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