2008 Edgar Award Nominees Announced

The Edgar Awards, presented by The Mystery Writers Of America, honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film and theatre published or produced in the past year. The Awards will be announced on May 1, 2008. Nominees for Best Novel are:

• Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
• Priest by Ken Bruen
• The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
• Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman
• Down River by John Hart

Nominees for Best First Novel are:

• Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell
• In the Woods by Tana French
• Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard
• Head Games by Craig McDonald
• Pyres by Derek Nikitas

The Opera Club will be held at the Essex Library on the first Wednesday of the month beginning April 2 from 4 to 5 PM. We are offering five presentations to prepare listeners for the Salt Marsh Opera’s presentation of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Ivoryton Playhouse in October. The presenters include the following:

April 2: George Willauer, retired Professor of English at Connecticut College, will speak about the literary, cultural and historical background of Lucia, including Sir Walter Scott and Romanticism.

May 7: Diana McVey, SMO’s Lucia, will offer insights about preparing to sing the demanding title role in the opera.

June 4: Stephan Tieszan, Concertmaster of the SMO Orchestra, will discuss how Donizetti orchestrated Lucia and why he made certain choices in instrumentation.

NO EVENTS IN JULY OR AUGUST

September 3: Carol Werner-Feiertag, Stage Director for the production, will discuss staging Lucia for the Ivoryton Playhouse.

October 1: James Kuslan, who presented a fascinating illustrated lecture on the Opera Events series, will talk about madness in opera as well as bel canto, and will play sound clips of great Lucias, including Maria Callas.

If you plan to attend any or all of the lectures please call the Ivoryton or Essex Libraries for up-to-date information before each presentation in the event that the venue is changed. There is a $5 suggested donation to defray the cost of the speakers.

The Book Sense Book Of The Year Awards Are Announced

The winners of the 2008 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards, formerly known as the ABBY Award, honoring the titles American Booksellers Association members most enjoyed handselling last year, are:

for Fiction: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
for Nonfiction: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
for Children’s Literature: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
for Children’s Illustrated: Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity by Mo Willems
The awards will be presented at the ABA’s annual Celebration of Bookselling, May 29, during BookExpo America.

Sonnets In April

Victoria Murphy, PhD. will be presenting four sessions of sonnet reading and discussion at the Essex Library on Tuesday mornings at 10a.m. in April–April 8, 15, 22, and 29. Dr. Murphy has taught at Hunter College, Santa Fe Community College, The Brearley School and the Acadia Senior College in Maine. Join her in reading many sonnets, ancient and modern, and perhaps discover new connections between structure and sense. Writing a sonnet of one’s own may become irresistible.

A $5 contribution to cover the cost of materials is requested, to be paid at the first session. For more information, contact Dr. Murphy at 526-4426 or victoriamurphy@msn.com

To register for the program. please call the Library at 767-1560.

This series is sponsored by the Friends of the Essex Library.

April Is For The Arts At The Library

April is a time of renewal and reinvention–not in the garden, at the Essex Library! We have a month full of terrific arts programming going on in April: Jenny Tripp’s The Write Stuff program for kids, Victoria Murphy’s Sonnet Programs for adults, the one-woman play The Secret Life Of Louisa May Alcott, and the launch of the Essex Opera Club. That might be enough for some but not for us. In addition to all of the above, Jenny Tripp is continuing her documentary series with 4 fabulous, upbeat films on Sundays at 7p.m. in April:

Ballets Russes : Part history, part love letter, Ballets Russes may be the most purely delightful documentary in years. The movie follows the birth of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the early 1930s, an event that eventually led–after years of exhilarating experiments, bitter artistic battles, and exhausting tours–to the establishment of modern ballet around the world. Ballet Russes combines astonishing film footage of fantastical ballets (featuring extravagant sets designed by Salvador Dali and costumes by Henri Matisse) and interviews with surviving dancers in their 70s, 80s, and 90s (ranging from Dame Alicia Markova, who was a prima ballerina with the original Ballet Russe under impresario Sergei Diaghilev, to Yvonne Craig, who went on to become Batgirl in the ’60s tv show Batman); the result is a breathtaking range of scholarship and depth of feeling. The heart of the film is the dancers themselves, who are sly, thoughtful, gossipy, and amazingly youthful in spirit–even the most difficult times are discussed with humor and honesty. Ballet fans will find this an essential document, while anyone who’s never even thought of going to ballet will be completely caught up in these dancers’ passion and wonder.” Amazon.com

Sing Faster: The Stagehands’ Ring Cycle : “Winner of the prestigious Filmmaker’s Trophy at Sundance, SING FASTER is a spirited and comical behind-the-scenes look at Richard Wagner’s beloved “Ring Cycle,” one of the most ambitious and spectacular operas in history. In the tradition of “Noises Off,” this acclaimed film from Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Jon Else tells the story of Wagner’s epic masterpiece entirely from the point of view of the opera’s unsung heroes – the union stagehands.

Night after night at the San Francisco Opera, a majestic universe of trolls, giants, and magic mountains comes alive before audiences. But when the stage dims, another spectacle unfolds as the highly-skilled stagehands maneuver 1000-pound set pieces in near darkness, with a meticulous choreography no less intricate than that of the opera’s. While the mythical Valkyries on stage seem an improbable counterpart to the stagehands, at the heart of the film is a surprising connection between Wagner’s Norse mythology and the sensibilities of these working people. And as the stage crew offers their own animated interpretation of the “Ring Cycle,” this hilarious and ultimately moving film becomes a meditation on the most basic of human themes: love, greed, power, and redemption.” Amazon.com

Who The #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?: “When Teri Horton, a 73-year-old former long-haul truck driver with an eighth grade education bought a painting in a thrift shop for five dollars, she didn’t know that it would pit her against the most powerful people in the art community and perhaps forever change the way art is authenticated around the world. Who The #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? is a rollicking adventure that documents a 15-year war with the art world’s inner circle, lifts the veil on how art is bought and sold in America and introduces audiences to the funny, profane and utterly unforgettable Teri Horton.” Amazon.com

Life After Tomorrow: ” The award winning Life After Tomorrow, a film by Julie Stevens and Gil Cates, Jr., reunites more than 40 women who played orphans in the original Broadway production of Annie and reveals the highs and lows of their experiences as child actresses in a cultural phenomenon. Once the curtain came down, many found it could be a hard-knock-life, fraught with out-of-control stage mothers, separation anxiety, and worst of all, pubescent growth spurts that could find the moppets being replaced by smaller, younger editions just waiting in the wings. As one cast member in the film remarks, The younger ones are coming to take your place and you’re 12. It’s not like you are getting downsized at 50…you’re 12!. While their lives moved on, the impact of the experience remains. Features behind-the-curtain footage from the original Broadway production and performances with the re-united orphans.” Amazon.com

New Books At The Library

We have lots of great books arriving almost every day with, we hope, something for everyone. For a look ahead to forthcoming bestsellers check out the New Release Alerts on our website. Here are just a few of our new arrivals:

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson “Miss Pettigrew, an approaching-middle-age governess, was accustomed to a household of unruly English children. When her employment agency sends her to the wrong address, her life takes an unexpected turn. The alluring nightclub singer, Delysia LaFosse, becomes her new employer, and Miss Pettigrew encounters a kind of glamour that she had only met before at the movies. Over the course of a single day, both women are changed forever.”

Tell Me Where It Hurts by Dr. Nick Trout “From the frontlines of modern medicine, Tell Me Where It Hurts is a fascinating insider portrait of a veterinarian, his furry patients, and the blend of old-fashioned instincts and cutting-edge technology that defines pet care in the twenty-first century. Dr. Trout takes the reader on a vicarious journey through twenty-four intimate, heartrending hours in his life; his wry, companionable voice offers enlightening and engaging anecdotes about cuddly (or not-so-cuddly) pets and their variously zany, desperate, and demanding owners.”

Curse Of The Spellmans by Lisa Lutz “Their first caper, The Spellman Files, was a New York Times bestseller and earned comparisons to the books of Carl Hiaasen and Janet Evanovich. Now the Spellmans, a highly functioning yet supremely dysfunctional family of private investigators, return in a sidesplittingly funny story of suspicion, surveillance, and surprise.”

The Bill McKibben Reader by Bill McKibben “Now, for the first time, the best of McKibben’s essays—fiery, magical, and infused with his uniquely soulful investigations of modern life—are collected in a single volume. Whether meditating on today’s golden age in radio, the natural place of biting black flies in our lives, or the patriotism of a grandmother fighting to get corporate money out of politics, McKibben inspires us to become better caretakers of the Earth—and of one another.”

The Serpent’s Tale by Ariana Franklin “Adelia is back in action! Ariana Franklin combines the best of modern forensic thrillers with the detail and drama of medieval fiction in this enthralling historical novel, the second in the Mistress of the Art of Death series.”

Five Future Strategies You Need Right Now by George Stalk “In this Memo to the CEO, Stalk discusses five strategies that have not yet become widely practiced but are nonetheless worthy of your attention now. He offers advice on how to identify and manage them while they still present opportunities to jump ahead of the competition.”

John Adams On HBO This Sunday

David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of John Adams has been adapted as a seven-part series and will premier on HBO this Sunday at 9p.m. Paul Giamatti stars as Adams and Laura Linney as his wife Abigail.

Bunny Stories At The Library Saturday, March 15th

The Essex Library will host a reading of bunny stories by Children’s Librarian, Judie McCann at 11 a.m. on Sat. March 15th. Peter Cottontail will make an appearance to visit and have his picture taken with the with the children. Snacks will be served. Please call to reserve your spot: 767-1560.

Some Excellent, Though Short, Non-Fiction

Asked for a reading recommendation the other day, (a service referred to by librarians as ‘reader’s advisory’) we remembered the terrific Penguin Lives series of biographies. Then, as it happens, we read an article from the International Herald Tribune the very next day which also had good things to say about Penguin Lives. With Roy Blount writing about Robert E. Lee, Francine du Plessix Gray describing Simone Weil and Jane Smiley presenting Charles Dickens, each in about 200 pages, how could one go wrong? If these appeal to you, don’t forget to check out the handful of other short non-fiction series also described in the Herald Tribune article.

National Book Critics Circle Awards Announced

The winners of the National Book Critics Circle awards were announced yesterday. The NBCC is a group of nearly 700 active book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing. Here are their choices of best books from last year:

For Fiction: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Nonfiction: Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington
Autobiography: Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat
Biography: Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal
Poetry: Elegy by Mary Jo Bang
Criticism: The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross

In addition, Sam Anderson of New York Magazine won the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and Emilie Buchwald, founder of Milkweed Editions, won the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.