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Summer Store Hours
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Featured Title
Canada
Richard Ford
Published: Ecco (May 22, 2012)
Price: $27.99
The opening lines capture the range and character of Ford's deepest sympathies: "First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later. The robbery is the most important part, since it served to set my and my sister's lives on the courses they eventually followed. Nothing would make complete sense without that being told first." The narrator is the fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons. The sister is his twin. The parents were "simply wrong for each other and should never have married..." The time is the summer of 1960 in Great Falls, Montana. The characters are tautly drawn and introspective. The plot is elegant and symmetrically structured. The writing is finely wrought. Pure Ford!
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Featured Title
Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site
Sherri Duskey Rinker (Illus. Tom Lichtenheld)
Published: Chronicle Books (May 4, 2011)
Price: $16.99
One by one, Crane Truck, Cement Mixer, Dump Truck, Bulldozer, and Excavator finish their work and lie down to rest. As the sun goes down behind the construction site, the hardworking trucks get ready to say goodnight. Tomorrow is another day of rough construction play. The artwork by well-known illustrator Tom Lichtenheld is irresistible and the text has a lyrical, rhyming lilt that will put the toughest young heavy equipment fan into a deep and sweet sleep. Beautiful book!
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Featured Title
Good Food Revolution
Will Allen
Published: Gotham (May 10, 2012)
Price: $26.00
Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in the Chequamegon Bay area know what it is to have fresh and local foods accessible to us year round. But, many of us also come from larger cities where super-sized, warehouse like grocery stores are the closest thing to a garden. This book is an inspiration to anyone interested in urban farming.
Will Allen - the son of a sharecropper, former NBA star and KFC Executive - has made it his mission in life to help people in urban areas start their own farms and eat healthy. Allen started right on the north side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is continuing to educate people all over the country. Former President Clinton feels very strongly about this book, "As the champion of a new and promising movement, Allen is skillfully leading Americans to face one of our greatest domestic issues - our health."
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Greetings!
One of the great influencers of our young imagination passed away last week. Ray Bradbury died at 91 after a lifetime of poetic, cerebral works - over 500 in all - including novels, short stories, screenplays, essays, and poems. He was best known as a science fiction writer, but he was much more than that. As President Obama eulogized, his "gift for storytelling reshaped our culture and expanded our world." His publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950, and its glowing review by Christopher Isherwood, launched his long career. The Illustrated Man, Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, I Sing the Body Electric, From the Dust Returned and so many others followed. Bradbury was a titan to those of us who came of literary age in the 40's and 50's and he remains an inspiration to those who read him today. Perhaps his most famous work (and deservedly so) is Fahrenheit 451 published in 1953. The book deals with a time in a dystopian future in which books are banned and at risk of disappearing altogether. We feel that way from time-to-time now as the future of books seems sometimes to hang in the balance. We are probably not as desperate nor as brave as the hearty souls who each memorized one of the classics to keep them alive in Fahrenheit 451, but we want to keep alive the pleasure of entering a real bookstore, inhaling that unique fragrance, browsing through the titles, turning some pages, and walking out with a new treasure in hand. In honor of Ray Bradbury we feature Fahrenheit 451 in this month's Newsletter.
Happy reading, Theron O'Connor |
Anne Greenwood Brown Booksigning
Friday, July 6th, 1:00-3:00pm
 Calder White lives in the cold, clear waters of Lake Superior, the only brother in a family of merpeople obsessed with killing Jason Hancock, the man they blame for their mother's death. To lure the aquaphobic Hancock onto the lake, the mermaids charge Calder with the task of seducing the man's daughter, seventeen-year-old Lily Hancock. "Get close to the daughter," they tell him, "and you'll get close to the family. Get close to the family, and you'll get close to the man. Get him out on the water. We'll take care of the rest."
Anne will be joining us for a signing for just a couple of hours, so don't miss out on this great new Young Adult novel featuring not only Lake Superior, but Bayfield and the Apostle Islands!
When: Friday, July 6th, 1pm
Where: Apostle Islands Booksellers, 112 Rittenhouse Avenue
Cost: FREE!
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What we're reading
 Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
It was 1953, at the heart of the McCarthy Era disgrace, when Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451 set in a future totalitarian, anti-intellectual society where books were banned and burned by "firemen." The 451, of course, refers to the kindling temperature of paper. One of the firemen - Guy Montag - begins to question the regime and ultimately, runs away to join a group of book-hoarding dissidents. In a last-ditch effort, they commit for each to memorize a classic book in order to ensure the survival of literature. It was thought that Bradbury was reacting against the McCarthy excesses, but he later denied it. Instead he maintained that it was about the threat that the emerging electronic media (TV) would destroy interest in reading literature and lead to a degradation of knowledge to mere factoids devoid of context and meaning. Sound familiar 60 years later? He wrote the book on a coin-operated typewriter at the UCLA library! |
 Theodore Boone: The Accused
Middle Reader Series
John Grisham
Just released in May! Theodore Boone: The Accused, the third and latest book in John Grisham's mystery series for middle readers (8-13 years old), is a fast-paced, exciting ride that continues the plot from the first and second books about a notorious criminal, Pete Duffy, who has been accused of murdering his wife and is now on the run from the law. Young Theo, the series' likable, smart hero who hopes to be a lawyer like his parents, is in trouble. He's been accused in a robbery and must fight to clear his name. A simple story but, nevertheless, thrilling and a great introduction for the young reader to the legal world and issues of guilt, innocence and sifting through clues, innuendo and misdirection to find the truth. |
Other upcoming events
We are thrilled to be welcoming quite the line-up of authors later this year at Apostle Islands Booksellers. Here's a few save-the-dates for you. We will certainly provide more details as we get them. Russ Feingold, author of While America Sleeps When: Thursday, August 23 at 1pm Where: TBA  Michael Perry, Author of Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace When: Sunday, September 9 at 1pm
Where: TBA Peter Geye, author of The Lighthouse Road
When: Saturday, October 27, time TBA
Where: Big Water Cafe & Coffee Roasters, with signing to follow at Apostle Islands Booksellers  William Kent Krueger, author of Trickster's Point
When: Saturday, November 3, time TBA
Where: Big Water Cafe & Coffee Roasters, with signing to follow at Apostle Islands Booksellers |
So much more than just words...
I had a wonderful visit with an old friend for a few hours this month. From one of my bookshelves I pulled out an old tattered hard cover book with a spine that was wrinkled and frayed, with the edge of the pages slightly discolored with age and lots of dog-eared corners as well. This is a book I have had for a long time and have read probably four times before and it called to me to be read again. The ability to use my visual and tactile senses and feel the weight of those well read pages and remember the history of why a page was dog-eared provided a thread of meaning about why this book has been a friend for me over the years.Bright Flows the River was written by one of my favorite authors; Taylor Caldwell. She was an Anglo-American novelist and prolific author of popular fiction. This book was published in 1978 and the title comes from a short quote in the book. "In the dark night of the soul bright flows the river of God". The core of this book is a powerful love story. The principal character, Guy Jerald, falls hopelessly in love in his middle years and the resulting turmoil causes him to question the choices he has made in his life. His resultant trip into madness and despair along with a supporting cast of well developed characters makes for a great read. The title does give a hint as to the outcome and I have put the book back on my bookshelf where it will sit until it calls to me again. ~Jack Beagan |
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