Drop in at the Library to do your solitary writing in solidarity! Tue, Wed & Thu evenings from 7-9pm, and Fri from 10am-1pm. We’re also hosting an editing session on Sat. Nov. 30 from 10am-1 pm. Please visit our online event calendar for a complete list of events.
posted on behalf of Jennifer Mentzer
It’s eleven a.m. on November first, and how many words have I written? None. Nada. Zilch. A big fat zero.
On any other day, this is pretty much the way it’s supposed to be. I don’t make a point of sitting down to write something each and every day of the year. But this year is different. This is the year I’ve decided to participate in NaNoWriMo.
NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write a novel (or close to it) in one month. Fifty thousand words, to be exact. That works out to 1667 words per day – about seven pages in 12-point type. A challenge not for the faint-of-heart, that’s for sure.
It’s an idea that has caught on like wildfire. Started in 1999 with just over two hundred writers, NaNoWriMo has grown to include hundreds of thousands of people and billions of words. This year, some of those words will be mine.
Like many librarians, I have visions of being an author. Not a writer, so much, but an author. Someone whose work is found on the shelf at the library, someone who has published something that someone else actually wants to buy. There’s a picture book, a chapter book for kids and an adult novel all in embryonic form on my laptop at home. The picture book and the others are unrelated. The chapter book and the adult book, though, are two versions of the same story.
I’d wanted to write a children’s chapter book about something that happened to me when I was growing up. It was one of those times that is distinct in my mind, even though I couldn’t tell you much else about the year I was ten. Something very bad had happened in the world, and I was very curious about it. My parents, trying to do their duty, tried very hard to shield me from all the news. They hid the copies of Time and Newsweek, kept tight control on the TV (we didn’t have a remote yet) and deferred my questions. They stymied my every move and kept me in the dark, and I was mad. Protected, perhaps, but mad.
As I began to write the story of a young girl being shielded from the world she craved to know, I found that I needed to write the story of the tragedy. I needed to explore how someone who was there felt about being so close to something so powerful, so difficult, so life-changing. And thus, my adult novel was born.
Since I already have some words committed to the page, I’m not writing for NaNoWriMo in the purest sense. The ultimate object is to begin with a blank piece of paper and start from word one. In NaNoWriMo parlance, I’m a “rebel.” And I’m also a little afraid. This is a big challenge. Am I up to the task? Will anything I produce be worth reading? What happens when I go on vacation next week?
As the month goes on, I’ll find out. And, if you read here regularly, so will you. Hang on. It’s going to be fun!
Grafton Public Library will celebrate Teen Read Week™ (October 13-19, 2013) with special programs aimed at encouraging teens in Grafton to read for the fun of it. Thousands of libraries, schools and bookstores across the country will hold similar events centered on this year’s theme, Seek the Unknown @ your library, which encourages teens to explore and learn about the unknown through mystery, adventure, sci-fi, and fantasy books.
Going with that theme, the library will be celebrating with four programs over the course of Teen Read Week:
• Tuesday, October 15th, 6:30 p.m. Create Your Own Alien using colorful Perler beads
• Wednesday, October 16th, 3:30 p.m. Create Monster Bookmarks that eat your page
• Thursday, October 17th, 6:30 p.m. Paint a Bookend for our teen section
• Friday, October 18th, 5:30-8:30 p.m. Scavenger Hunt (w/digital camera or smart phone)
Teen Read Week is a time to celebrate reading for fun while encouraging teens to take advantage of reading in all its forms —books, manga, magazines, e-books, audiobooks and more! It is also a great opportunity to encourage teens to become regular library users.
Teen Read Week™ is a national adolescent literacy initiative created by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association. It is held annually during the third week of October. For more information, visit www.ala.org/teenread.
For more information or to register for a program, please contact Allison Cusher, Teen Librarian, at 508-839-4649 or email at acusher@cwmars.org.
The Grafton Public Library is pleased to offer a new book discussion group in the library’s Main Reading Room at 35 Grafton Common on Monday, November 4 at 7:30 p.m. The “Not Just for Young Adults” Book Discussion Group is for adults who enjoy reading and talking about young adult literature.
Even though Yong Adult literature is typically about teenage characters dealing with young adult issues, adults now represent a higher percentage of the readership than ever before, accounting for 55 percent, according to Publishers Weekly (2012, Sept. 13. New Study: 55% of YA Books Bought by Adults. PublishersWeekly.com. http://www.publishersweekly.com).
So if you are part of that 55 percent or have a favorite YA novel that you just want to talk about, this group is for you! Stop by the library to sign up and check out a copy of this month’s book: Being Henry David, by Cal Armistead. Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old “Hank”, who can’t remember his identity, finds himself in Penn Station with a copy of Thoreau’s Walden as his only possession and must figure out where he’s from and why he ran away.
For more information, please contact Heidi Fowler, Reference Librarian at 508-839-4649 ext. 1102 or graftonlibrary.ma@gmail.com.
Alice Munro, 82, is a renowned Canadian short-story writer, widely beloved for her spare and psychologically astute fiction that is deeply revealing of human nature. She has published 14 short story collections, and is considered by many to have revolutionized the architecture of short stories, often beginning a story in an unexpected place then moving backward or forward in time.
Her collection Dear Life, published last year, appears to be her last. Upon learning of the award, Ms Munro said, “I would really hope this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.”
The Grafton Public Library has many of Alice Munro’s collections, and we’ll be happy to order anything for you that we don’t!
The Grafton Public Library welcomes reviews of books, music, movies, and games for our website. Some things you might include (but you don’t necessarily have to):
What is the story about?
What do you like about it?
Who might like this item?
To send a review, use the Contact Us form. Please include the title and author (if applicable), and an explanation of what you liked or didn’t like about the book and why. We will list only first names unless you provide an alias or tell us you would like to remain anonymous. If you’re a student or under the age of 18, please check with your parents before sending a review.
Reviews can be of varying lengths, but two or three paragraphs, or around 250-300 words, is ideal. Using proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar makes your review easy for others to read.
You don’t have to like a book in order to review it, but please don’t express your disdain with vulgar, slanderous, or defamatory language. Keep your audience in mind–anyone, including children and grandmothers, may read your review. We can’t accept reviews that may be offensive. Focus on the merit of the work, not the author.
Once we receive your review, we will check the online catalog and create a link in your review to your book so others can place requests. You should see your review posted on the website in a day or two after you submit it.
Every once in a while, a new book leads to an old book. Or vice versa (which, in this case, means an old book leads to a new one.)
The Children’s Room has quite a few books that have links to others. If any of these are a book you enjoy, why not take a look at the one it inspired, mentioned or was visited by another book’s character?
We also have a new book about an old character, Ruby Redfort. Ruby is the spy that Clarice Bean is always reading about in her books. It seems the author, Lauren Child, had so many requests for the stories that Clarice was reading that she had to go ahead and write them down. Now you can ask yourself, “What would Ruby Redfort do?”
A terrific book on the list of nominees for the Massachusetts Children’s Book Award is Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea. The sequel, Mr. Terupt Falls Again, has his now sixth-graders reading lots of classic books including The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman and Wringer by Jerry Spinelli. It’s also pretty cool how the students talk about The Westing Game without giving away the mystery!
If you’re still reading from the Picture Book and Easy Reader sections, do not despair! There are plenty of authors waiting to help you find old friends in new books.
When it comes to learning about famous literary or historic figures, it pays to listen to the spouses’ point of view. Such was the case in The Aviator’s Wife about Ann Morrow Lindbergh and so it is about Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife in The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain.
Hadley and Hemingway (H & H) met in Chicago in 1920 when she was 28 and he was 21. An aspiring writer, Hemingway worked at low-paying newspaper jobs before it occurred to him that given time and space, he could write about his own experiences, of which he would have plenty.
He was encouraged by Sherwood Anderson to go to Paris where all the action was. It was the Jazz Age in Paris, and Hemingway lived a bohemian lifestyle with the likes of Gertrude Stein, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce to name a few. It was a fast-living, hard-drinking crowd with no apparent family values. When H & H had a son, Hadley could no longer keep up, and her husband’s interest and eyes wandered.
As much as she disliked bull-fighting, Hadley would accompany her husband to Pamplona, where he actually participated in amateur bullfighting. In addition, beside the fact that Hadley could no longer hold her husband’s interest, she seemed unaware that other women were flirting openly with him and in active pursuit mode.
As Hemingway’s work goes, I was never a big fan of The Old Man and the Seawith its simple declarative sentences, but I am curious to read The Sun Also Rises, which was written when he was married to Hadley.
Although this may not be the most stylistically perfect book, it provides insight into an American icon and what drove him. It also is a further reminder that often the most famous, intelligent, talented and handsome of men do not make the best husbands or fathers–Charles Lindbergh and Ernest Hemingway being prime examples.
In any case, Papa Hemingway, Hadley and Paris make for a good literary experience.
We now have, for your drinking pleasure, hot coffee (regular and decaf), hot tea and hot cocoa! Just purchase a cup at the front desk for $1 and, with the Keurig technology, brew yourself a fresh cuppa! Many thanks to the Friends of the Grafton Public Library for making this possible!