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Store Hours
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Mon - Fri 9:30 - 6:00
Sat 9:30 - 5:00
Sun Noon - 5:00
Open 24/7 online at:
closed Wednesday, July 4
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Greetings!
Our next event is Sunday, July 8 at 3pm -- we'll be joined by Eric Kester, who was raised in Concord and graduated Fenn and Middlesex. His memoir, That Book about Harvard is a humorous account of his years in the Ivy League.
The left sidebar of this note contains our complete events calendar; you can also check details on our website and/or rsvp on our Facebook page.
If you're unable to attend an event, but would like a signed copy of the book, simply call us to pre-order. We'll ask the author to inscribe it to your specifications, then hold it for pick up or arrange to have it shipped.
Do you have a child in the Concord Middle School? Per the school's  website, "All CMS students are required to read Bystander, by James Preller." School Library Journal says the novel addresses a common issue in regard to bullying, the "large majority of young people who stand by mutely and therefore complicitly, this must-read book is a great discussion starter." We have copies of Bystander on our shelves.
Scroll down to learn about this week's book picks, which include new nonfiction that looks at the connection between animals, humans and the science of health; new paperback picks; and a collection from our new US Poet Laureate.
We have an addition to our Signed Books Gallery this week: James Geary's I Is an Other, a fascinating and entertaining book which claims that every aspect of our experience is molded by metaphor.
We look forward to chatting with you in the Bookshop! When you come in to take a closer look at an item mentioned here, please tell us "I saw it in the newsletter" and let us know what you're reading now!
Comments are always welcome via email to
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Our next event: Humorous memoir about his years in the Ivy League
That Book about Harvard by Eric Kester
Please join us on Sunday, July 8 at 3pm, when Eric Kester discusses and signs That Book about Harvard: Surviving the World's Most Famous University, One Embarrassment at a Time, a humorous memoir about his years in the Ivy League. Kester is a former Concord resident, and a graduate of Fenn and Middlesex.
One of the most thrilling and terrifying days of your life is the first day of college, when you step onto campus filled with the excitement of all the possibilities ahead -- and panic about if you'll make it and how you'll fit in.
Now imagine that same feeling, but you're in the middle of the lawn at the world's most prestigious university.
In your underwear.
Thus begins one of the craziest years ever at Harvard, in which Eric Kester finds himself in a cheating scheme, trying to join a prestigious Finals Club, and falling for a stunning type-A brunette...who happened to be standing there in shock that first day when he made his red-faced stroll across the Harvard Yard.
That Book about Harvard is the hilarious and heartwarming story of trying to find your place in a new world, the unending quest to fit in, and how the moments that change your life often happen in the most unexpected ways.
Eric Kester -- who was raised in Concord -- graduated from Harvard in 2008, where he wrote a popular column for the undergraduate newspaper, the Crimson. Eric is now a featured writer for CollegeHumor.com.
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New in our Signed Books Gallery
I Is an Other by James Geary
James Geary was in the Bookshop last weekend, to present a slideshow and talk about metaphors and aphorisms. So entertaining and informative!
I Is an Other offers a fascinating look at metaphors and their influence in every aspect of our lives, from ordinary conversation and commercial messaging to news reports and political speeches.
Signed editions of I Is an Other are on our shelves!
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Health parallels between animals and people
Zoobiquity by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, M.D.
and Kathryn Bowers
"Zoobiquity is full of fascinating stories of intersection between human and nonhuman medicine - fish that faint; dinosaur cancers; human treatments that cure dogs of melanoma; lessons from adolescent elephant behavior that explain human teenagers. I was beguiled."
-Atul Gawande, M.D.,
author of The Checklist Manifesto
In the spring of 2005, cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz was called to consult on an Emperor tamarin at the Los Angeles Zoo. While examining the tiny monkey's sick heart, she learned that wild animals can die of a form of cardiac arrest brought on by extreme emotional stress. It was a syndrome identical to a human condition but one that veterinarians called by a different name - and treated in innovative ways.
This remarkable medical parallel launched Natterson-Horowitz on a journey of discovery that reshaped her entire approach to medicine. She began to search for other connections between the human and animal worlds.
Joining forces with science journalist Kathryn Bowers, Natterson-Horowitz employs fascinating case studies and meticulous scholarship to present a revelatory understanding of what animals can teach us about the human body and mind. "Zoobiquity" is the term the authors have coined to refer to a new, species-spanning approach to health. Delving into evolution, anthropology, sociology, biology, veterinary science, and zoology, they break down the walls between disciplines, redefining the boundaries of medicine.
Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing explores how animal and human commonality can be used to diagnose, treat, and heal patients of all species. Both authoritative and accessible, offering cutting-edge research through captivating narratives, this provocative book encourages us to see our essential connection to all living beings.
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Memoir of a family and their love for Africa - now in paperback
Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness
by Alexandra Fuller
"Electrifying ... shimmering, musical prose ... her own love for Africa reverberates throughout these pages, making the beauty and hazards of that land searingly real for the reader."
-Michiko Kakutani,
The New York Times
In Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness Alexandra Fuller returns to Africa and to her unforgettable family, which we first met in Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood.
At the heart of this family, and central to the lifeblood of her latest story, is Fuller's iconically courageous mother, Nicola, who holds dear the values most likely to get you hurt or killed in Africa: loyalty to blood, passion for land, and a holy belief in the restorative power of all animals. Fuller has recaptured her mother's inimitable voice with remarkable precision. Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is as funny, exotic, terrifying and unselfconscious as Nicola herself.
We see Nicola as an irrepressible child in western Kenya, then with the man who fell in love with her, Tim Fuller. The young couple begin their life in a lavender colored honeymoon period, when east Africa lies before them with all the promise of its liquid honeyed light, even as the British empire in which they both once believed wanes. But in short order, an accumulation of mishaps and tragedies bump up against history until the Fullers find themselves in a world they hardly recognize. We follow Tim and Nicola as they hopscotch the continent, restlessly trying to establish a home, from Kenya to Rhodesia to Zambia, even returning to England briefly. War, hardship and tragedy seem to follow the family even as Nicola fights to hold onto her children, her land, her sanity.
A story of survival and war, love and madness, loyalty and forgiveness, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is an intimate exploration of the author's family and of the price of being possessed by this uncompromising, fertile, death-dealing land. In local custom, the "Tree of Forgetfulness" is where villagers meet to resolve disputes and it is here that the family at last find an African kind of peace.
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" ... sophisticated and entertaining ... an irresistible young woman with an uncommon sense of purpose" now in paperback
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
This sophisticated and entertaining novel presents the story of a young woman whose life is on the brink of transformation.
On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table.
This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society-where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.
With its sparkling depiction of New York's social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike; now available in paperback.
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Pulitzer Prize winning collection from our new US Poet Laureate
Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
Growing up in the Deep South, Natasha Trethewey was never told that in her hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, black soldiers had played a pivotal role in the Civil War.
The title poem imagines the life of a former slave stationed at a fort off the coast, who is charged with writing letters home for the illiterate or invalid POWs and his fellow soldiers. Just as he becomes the guard of Ship Island's memory, so Trethewey recalls her own childhood as the daughter of a black woman and a white man. Her parents' marriage was still illegal in 1966 Mississippi. The racial legacy of the Civil War echoes through elegiac poems that honor her own mother and the forgotten history of her native South. Native Guard is haunted by the intersection of national and personal experience.
Natasha Trethewey was recently named the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress. She is the author of two previously published collections, Belloq's Ophelia and Domestic Work. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, she was the recipient of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Grolier Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize.
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In our window
July 4 - Picnic in the Park!
The annual Picnic in the Park will be held on Wednesday, July 4 at Emerson Field.
The festivities begin early in the day, with the Minuteman Classic Road Race at 8:30; shortly after 11:00, children are invited to assemble for the bicycle and tricycle parade.
Join us for this traditional event to celebrate Independence Day!
- Tethered Balloon Rides at 10:00am
- Children's decorated bicycle parade at 11:30am
- Music by Jolly Roques 11:45am - 1:15am
- Bluegrass Music by Southern Rail 1:30pm - 3:00pm
- Concert Music by the Concord Band 3:15pm - 4:30pm
- Activities for families include field games 12:30pm - 1:30pm
- Balloon twisting 1:00pm - 3:00pm
- Fire Department 911 House
- Police Department radar toss
- Demonstration of hula hoops by the Boston Hula Hoop Troop
- For teens, a henna artist doing temporary tattoos
The event moves indoors in the event of rain.
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