Viking in the Wheat Field Event

For anyone who was interested in our event on March 3, with Susan Dworkin discussing her book The Viking in the Wheat Field, but couldn't make it, or anyone interested in the science and politics of seed banks, one of the attendees of the event put up a great summary of the discussion. You can read it here: From Garden Project to Seed Banks.

The Surrendered

Chang-Rae Lee stopped by the store yesterday after his interview on WBUR's "On Point". Meeting him was a real pleasure. His new novel The Surrendered (his fourth) is garnering all kinds of serious review attention. It was the lead review in last Sunday's Boston Globe, was reviewed by Michiko Kakutani in Monday's New York Times, will be reviewed this Sunday in the NY Times Book Review, and was reviewed by James Wood in the current New Yorker.

We have a limited number of signed copies available in store. As always, if you're ordering online and wish a signed copy, please leave us a note in the comment field.

Gary Snyder Reads in Acton

On Tuesday, March 16 at 7:30pm at the Acton-Boxborough Regional Hight School, poet Gary Snyder will read from his work and be presented the 10th Annual Robert Creeley Award. Admission is free and open to the public. Though the event is not in our store we think it merits bringing to your attention. We've set up a display with some of Snyder's work in case you'd like to peruse or purchase one before you attend.

If you're asking yourself what is the Robert Creeley Award and why Acton - Creeley grew up in Acton and as further explained on the Robert Creeley Foundation website:

"Acton rediscovered Creeley’s connection to the town through his chance meeting with Acton resident and poet Robert Clawson in late 2000. On April 11, 2001, Creeley returned to Acton to read to and interact with students in the Acton Boxborough Regional High School. Acton officially proclaimed this day to be “Robert Creeley Day,” and thus began the annual awarding of the “Robert Creeley Award.” Each year, the award winning poet reads to a community audience and a student audience."

More information about the event, past winners, and directions can be found at the Creeley Foundation.

March’s Featured SciFi Author

Frank Herbert was born on October 8, 1920 in Tacoma, Washington. He was a journalist, an editor, a war-time photographer, and a renowned writer. He died – too soon – on February 11, 1986.

Herbert was the author of many short stories, essays, poems and science fiction novels but he is rightly remembered for the landmark Dune series. Written in 1965, Dune was the first hardcover science fiction bestseller. Dune, along with its sequels -- Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and the forever penultimate Chapterhouse: Dune -- was one of the first literary scifi novels. The Dune books are set in the impossibly far future and span light years and eons. With their marvelous world-building, complex religious and ecological themes, and emphasis on humanity over technology, they are often considered the greatest science fiction novels ever written.

Vasily Grossman

Vasily Grossman might be the most important unread writer in the 20th century; important because his two novels Life and Fate and Everything Flows, are intelligent, beautiful, compelling stories of fascism, freedom, love, fear, and humanity, that present fearless portraits of life in Soviet Russia under Stalin; unread because his works were censored for decades. They were first published in 1980 in Switzerland from smuggled photographed draft pages and still only reached the US in 2006.

Grossman worked as a war correspondent during WWII and translated much of his experience into Life and Fate. This massive novel follows a number of characters living in different circumstances with different relationships to the fascism of the Soviet Union and the war against Germany. These include Victor Shtrum, a theoretical physicist with a conscience; Captain Grekov, a commander of a small hold out in Stalingrad; Pavlovich Novikov, a dynamic tank commander; and Nikolay Krymov a member of the political branch of the military whose job is to ensure that the proper communist philosophy is being practiced by soldiers and officials. There are also historical characters like the German General Friedrich Paulus and the Soviet Lieutenant-General Yeremenko. The story moves from the streets of Stalingrad, to Moscow, to eastern Russian beyond the reach of the German invasion, all the way to concentration camps and gas chambers. Somehow, despite the deprivation that surrounded him and the story he told, Grossman still maintained a faith in the fundamental good of the human character and told everything with a profound empathy and compassion.

Everything Flows, is set after the death of Stalin. The main story follows Ivan Grigoryevich, a political prisoner released after thirty years in gulags. As Ivan tries to make sense of everything, not just the unfamiliar world he has been thrust into, but also the world that imprisoned him for thirty years, the nature of fear and fascism, the politics of slavery and freedom, and the emotions of informing and loyalty, are brilliantly and beautifully elucidated. Everything Flows is shorter and more philosophical than Life and Fate but it has no lack of the beautiful and heartbreaking images that make Grossman one of the century's best writers.

Grossman is also the author of Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 and The Road, a collection of short stories, essays and other writings coming out this September.

New Signed Books

Recently John Banville and Howard Frank Mosher separately stopped by the local office of the New England Independent Booksellers Association and signed copies of their new books. So you'll currently find a limited supply of signed copies of The Infinities and Walking To Gatlinburg on our shelves. If you're ordering via the web, make sure you note that you'd like the signed copy in the comments box.

If you'd like to meet Howard Frank Mosher in person he will once again be at our store for an author event on May 11.

Abraham Verghese doing informal signing on Saturday

The author of Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese, will be stopping by the store on Saturday, March 6 at 2 pm. He will be happy to sign your copy(ies)and have a chat. Come and bring your book group! He will also be signing copies for the store so if you can't make it in then we will have some extras.