Notes From the Shire

It began as a game between my co-worker and I: who could be the first to snag a copy of Rupi Kaur’s milk & honey? Every day two books would come in, and immediately two books would be snapped up by customers. We asked ourselves, who was this new poet no one had heard of , with her books flying off the shelves? When was the last time a book of poetry had been a bestseller, even in the hayday of our greatest writers?  As of 9/8/17, milk & honey had more than 89K ratings on GoodReads and over 10,000 reviews, averaging to a 4.26 out of 5-start rating. The book surpassed one million sold copies only one year past its publication date.In January 2017, it reached #1 on the New York Times list, and remained on the trade paperback bestseller list for 41 consecutive weeks. Bustle called it "Essential Reading" echoing The Huffington Post's article titled "The Poet Every Woman Needs to Read".

When I was a lad I went through a phase, as many children do, of enjoying ghost stories. I read many a volume of supernatural lore, some scary and some disappointingly tame. When pressed to name the scariest book of my childhood I don’t need to give it a thought. That honor goes to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz.

Launch Party for local author Eric Rickstad

The Names of Dead Girls Friday,

September 15th 6:00 pm

We don’t throw parties for every new book release but when a local author hand delivers an ARC (advanced readers copy) and our booksellers fight over it, we know it’s likely worth toasting to! Stop in and help us celebrate! We'll kick off the night at 6:00 pm with wine, soft drinks and small bites. At 7:00 enjoy an author presentation followed by Q&A and a book signing. Eric is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. The Names of Dead Girls is the much-anticipated sequel to The Silent Girls and it does NOT disappoint! The story once again features detectives Frank Rath and Sonja Test as they track a depraved killer through rural Vermont

The early 2000s were an exciting time for beer drinkers. The microbrew movement was turning into a revolution. The variety and quantity of beer was on the rise, showing no sign of abetting. For several years this was pretty cool. Lots of good, if not great, beer at reasonable prices was the order of the day. Sadly, something changed. Beginning four or five years ago I started to notice a number of low-quality yet pricey offerings from small, recently established microbreweries. At the same time and at the other end of the spectrum several very expensive and hard-to-find  beers started to crop up. The quality was (and still is) good, but not good enough to warrant prices several times that of average micros. Given this new terrain on which we beer lovers find ourselves deployed, perhaps it’s time to consider homebrewing. Today there are many really great homebrew supply stores and online retailers, making it accessible to all. If you enjoy DIY and a variety of well-made beer, homebrewing is a viable alternative to buying the latest, greatest craft brew. With prices creeping up and the increasing number of low-quality offerings being made by small breweries, I’m ever so glad I became a home brewer.

Good day, dear reader, I am your genie for the day. I will grant you three book-wishes. What book-related wish would you like me to grant? I do not mean endless supplies of books. Or books that never end. No, I mean wishes such as:

Would you like to time travel like some of the Outlander characters do? Or find a magical world where animals talk and White Queens keep the world in ice and snow as in Narnia? Perhaps you would like to know which road Robert Frost took that made all the difference? How about drive a flying car with English schoolchildren as Harry and his best friend, Ron, did? Or perhaps you would prefer to fight Apaches with men like L’Amour’s Hondo?

A few years ago my wife and I were planning a trip to coastal Massachusetts. I had gotten her to agree to a detour to the Springfield Armory Museum in Springfield. She wasn’t unhappy about going, but she would not have elected to go of her own accord. While looking for other diversions along the travel route she recalled that the Emily Dickinson Museum was also in Massachusetts. Having majored in English and being a long-time Dickinson fan, she was pleased to find that the Museum is in Amherst, along the I-91 corridor, along the route to Springfield. It was settled. We were going.

I am not a poetry enthusiast and never really have been. There was a brief time in high school when I thought I was, but it didn’t last long. I was exposed to Dickinson in my high school American Literature class but was lucky enough to dodge the poetry bullet in college. Surprisingly, I was not at all down on visiting the Dickinson homestead. (Read More...)