LATE-BREAKING NEWS! The Boston Book Festival is Saturday, October 26, 10-6, in Copley Square.
By Arts & Culture Editor Joan Kirschner
The 46th Annual International Antiquarian Book Fair, is November 8-10, at the Hynes Convention Center in Back Bay, Boston. The Friday night preview is $25 but Saturday and Sunday are free. The fair culminates Boston Rare Books Week, a celebration of Boston’s book culture.
If you are interested in the diary and life of Anne Frank, a full-scale recreation of The Annex, the Amsterdam hiding place of the Frank family and their friends during World War II, opens in New York on January 25, 2025 at The Center for Jewish History.
C-SPAN’s Book TV is a great general source for regularly updated information on book fairs and festivals.
Back in Greater Boston, and New England, check out author events at Porter Square Books in Boston and Cambridge, Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, An Unlikely Story in Plainville, the Association of Rhode Island Authors, the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, and The Connecticut Book Festival in W. Hartford, CT on November 23.
Spend a day in Amherst, where you can visit both the Yiddish Book Center (note: closed Saturdays) and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in one day (or weekend).
Add some books about books, libraries, and reading to your “To Be Read” list:
NON-FICTION
84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff, is the story of her 20-year correspondence with Frank Doel, a British bookseller, following World War II. It was adapted into a play, and then a film starring Anne Bancroft as Hanff, Anthony Hopkins as Doel, and Judi Dench as his wife, Nora. Mel Brooks, Bancroft’s husband, was instrumental in the film’s production. The Helene Hanff Omnibus offers Hanff’s autobiographical works all in one volume.
Even though I normally feature women authors exclusively, an exception is Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry. In addition to be a bestselling author of novels based mainly in the American West, McMurtry was a well-known antiquarian bookseller.
The Library Book by Susan Orlean recounts the terrible fire at the Los Angeles Public Library in 1986, its consequences for that city, and the importance of libraries to our lives.
FICTION
Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles is historical fiction based on the life of Jessie Carson, an American librarian, who went to France as World War I wound down and was responsible for making provincial French libraries more democratic and modern. The titular Miss Morgan was the daughter of financier J.P. Morgan.
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray is also historical fiction with a Morgan connection, between Morgan himself, and Belle da Costa Greene, the woman who managed his personal library (now the Morgan Library and Museum in New York). Greene, an African American, “passed” as White in the rigid society of the early twentieth century and throughout her life.
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson is a novel about the Pack Horse Library Project, which brought books to remote areas of Eastern Kentucky in the 1930s, where schools were few and illiteracy was high. The best-selling author Jojo Moyes wrote The Giver of Stars based on the same material, causing some legal action by Richardson (I haven’t read Moyes’s book yet).
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks is historical fiction centered on the Sarajevo Haggadah, a manuscript originating in Spain during the 1400s that eventually surfaced in the Sarajevo Museum. After the Bosnian War, an Australian rare book expert is called in to examine and restore it.
Joan Kirschner is a Boston area writer/blogger who reviews books, museum exhibitions, theater, film, music, and travel experiences. Her commentary previously appeared on SonsiWoman.com, UllaPopken.com, WomenofGloucesterCounty.com, Trazzler.com, and IndieReader.com. She attributes a lifelong love of reading and cultural events to parents who encouraged her interests early on. Joan began as a retail and mail order catalog copywriter when typewriters, carbon paper, X-Acto knives, and hot glue were found in advertising offices everywhere. She advanced through the ranks and changes in technology, eventually taking on corporate communications, social media, and digital advertising and promotion. She managed and mentored younger writers, acquired skills in art direction, and had responsibility for print and digital communications reaching millions of customers. Surrounded by the babble of languages in Manhattan and Brooklyn and sympathizing with the challenges of non-English speakers, she earned a certificate in the Teaching of English as Second Language (TESOL) and began teaching and tutoring adults and college students. Joan now works part-time in grants administration, freelances occasionally, and covers books and the arts on her blog.