Fletcher Memorial Library, Hampton CT

January 2012

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:16:31 -0500

Lots of new novels, story collections and non-fiction are on the shelves at FML.

We don’t carry too many short story collections, but this month has brought two good ones, the much praised The Angel Esmeralda by Don Delillo, with a terrific title story, and William Trevor’s Selected Stories, a very generous selection of works by the renowned Irish writer.

Elizabeth George’s many fans will rejoice in a fat new novel, Believing the Lie, that a reader in my house is currently enjoying. Lynda La Plante, creator of the redoubtable Jane Tennison of PBS fame, offers Blind Fury, while another popular thriller writer, Robin Cook makes medicine problematic again with Death Benefit.

Martin Limon returns with another military mystery in Mr. Kill, Jeff Abbott is represented by Adrenaline. Expect a more subtle and subdued mystery from Karen Fossum’s Bad Intentions and nonstop mayhem but brilliant writing from Donald Rae Pollock’s The Devil All the Time.

As a chaser from all this derring-do, you might like Maeve Binchy’s latest, Minding Frankie.New to the non-fiction shelves are a couple of biographies, Roger Ebert, the popular film critic recounts his life in Life Itself, while Charles J. Shields presents And So It Goes Kurt Vonnegut: A Life.

Finally for the foodies in town, Extra Virginity: the Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, by Tom Mueller.

Wadsworth Pass

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:09:57 -0500

The library has 2 ART Passes to the Wadsworth Atheneum. They may be borrowed if you are plpanning a visit.

New Books for November

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:45:13 -0500

We have lots of exciting new non-fiction this month, including three notable biographies. Keith Richard’s Life has been well received, as the famous rocker exhibits a surprising recall of his wild life.A different reading experience is promised by Bismark, a life of the German statesman by Jonathan Steinberg.
Hemingway continues to fascinate and award winning writer Paul Hendrickson offers Hemingway’s Boat: Everything he loved in Life and Lost, 1934-1961. Lighter fare is on tap with Elizabeth Bard’s Lunch in Paris, subtitled “A Love Story with Recipes” – where else but in France?
Finally in the non-fiction line we have Arguably from the argumentative and controversial Christopher Hitchens and, very appropriate for our part of the world, Ethan Allen, by Willard Sterne Randall.
Boxes of new fiction keep arriving, too. Mystery favorites Donna Leon ( Drawing Conclusions) and Iris Johansen ( Bonnie, the last of her trilogy) are on the shelves.
Stefan Merill Block has a new novel about family secrets out, Storm at the Door, while long time favorite Alice Hoffman has another book about magic in everyday life, The Dovekeepers. Finally, for action fans, we have Trackers, a new thriller by Deon Meyer set in South Africa, a popular fiction venue lately with Hampton readers.

HALLOWEEN AT THE LIBRARY

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:39:27 -0400

Need a safe, fun place to take your children for Trick or Treating? The Fletcher Memorial Library will be giving treats so stop by on your candy rounds.

NEW WINTER HOURS

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:34:06 -0400

Cold, dark evenings are coming up and library visits are decreasing during the evening hours. The library has therefore decided to increase our daytime hours and cut our evenings back to one night a week during standard time.Starting with the end of daylight savings time on November 6th, our new winter hours will be: Monday 9-12, Tues 6-8, Wed 12-6, Thurs 9-12 and Saturday 10-4.

MORE NOIR

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:33:32 -0400

David Ignatius’s new novel Blood Money features a young CIA officer who has to find out who is killing off CIA agents in Pakistan. The hero of Peter Spiegelman’s Thick as Thieves is a former CIA agent who has gotten himself into a big time robbery caper.

Finally, in the truth is wilder than fiction category, we have David King’s Death in the City of Light, about the monstrous serial killer Dr. Marcel Petiot, who slaughtered would-be refugees from Nazi occupied Paris in 1944. Grimly fascinating.

NOIR BOOKS

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:33:15 -0400

Lots of good noir novels are in the library at the minute, with a variety of favorite tough guys taking on terrorists and killers. Lee Child has created a prequel to his popular Jack Reacher novels with The Affair, which relates the incident that led him to leave the military police and set out as a free lance. One local reader describes this as one of his best.

Popular Irish novelist Ken Bruen has another noir adventure starring Jack Taylor, Headstone. Our librarian recommends.

New Books!

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 10:40:41 -0400

Lots of interesting new books have arrived at the library just in time for those shorter days and longer nights that encourage reading. Mystery fans will want The Troubled Man, what Henning Mankell has hinted may be the last of the Kurt Wallander novels, about the depressing Swedish investigator with the complicated family life. Also in the mystery vein, but quite unconventionally so, is Turn of Mind, featuring an Alzheimer’s patient who is also a ‘person of interest’ in the brutal murder/ mutilation of her neighbor and best friend. In a more literary vein, H.G. Adler’s Panorama, an early novel about his experiences in the Holocaust, has finally been translated into English. Early reviews have praised both its substance and its literary style and made comparisons to Irene Nemirovsky’s admirable Suite Francaise. Non-fiction has not been neglected, either. Erik Larson ( The Devil in the White City) is back with In the Garden of Beasts, a much praised book about US ambassador (and his not always diplomatic family) in Hitler’s Germany. Somewhat lighter reading is promised by Lenya, Don Spoto’s biography of Lotte Lenya, the great German singer, and Born Wild, by Tony Fitzgerald, who has long worked to protect East African wildlife. And for history buffs, Jane Boleyn by Julia Fox, about the ill-fated Anne Bolyen’s less famous sister, another lover of Henry VII.

Thank You, Volunteers!

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:28:06 -0400

The Fletcher Memorial Library depends on its kind and energetic volunteers.

Recently Matthew LaFontaine scaled the heights to clean the buildings gutters.

Penny Newberry donated a Kindle– come in soon for a test read.

And Dylan Ouellet and some of his friends from Parish Hill High School attacked the overgrown vines and poison ivy on the side lawn.

Thanks to their work, one can now see the professionally designed garden in memory of the late Eunice Fuller, long time librarian at FML and afine gardener herself.

Thank You!

Mon, 23 May 2011 16:16:06 -0400

Thanks to our friends in Hampton and the Quiet Corner, our spring Book & Bake Sale was a big success. We made a grand total of $1,055, including $250 from baked goods and $54 from a combination of card sales and donations.

We are grateful to all the volunteers who worked the sale and to the many people who contributed baked goods and, of course, books. Thank you to all.

Remember if you have unwanted books in good condition, the library is always happy to receive them. We will have our fall Book & Bake Sale in October and we will be accumulating stock for that event.

May Staff Picks

Sat, 07 May 2011 07:06:16 -0400

Non-fiction is featured this week. Carolyn Burke’s well received “No Regrets” is a biography of Edith Piaf, who went from singing in the street as a child to international fame. “Apollo’s Angels” is Jennifer Homans’ history of the ballet. An excellent writer who was herself a dancer, Homans brings her personal experience of the dance to the book as well as exhaustive research in her subject.

Two books set art in a social context. “Olympia, Paris in the Age of Manet” uses the painter’s famous image of a nude courtesan as a focal point for Paris when it was the center of the art world, while Henry Sachs uses Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as a way into the revolutionary world of the early 19th century in “The Ninth, Beethoven and the World in 1824”.

Book & Bake Sale

Fri, 06 May 2011 17:28:19 -0400

Come to our Book & Bake Sale, Saturday May 21, 2011. 8AM - 2PM.

257 Main St., Hampton, CT 860-455-1086

Bestsellers, hardcovers, paperbacks, mysteries, romances, crafts, children’s books and much more!

Delicious baked goods!

Photography Exhibit!

Support you library!

New Novels

Fri, 06 May 2011 17:25:27 -0400

The library has some terrific new novels in at the moment.

“The Tiger’s Wife” by Tea Obreht is one of the few recent books that lives up to its publisher’s blurbs and reviews.

Set in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia, but looking a back to the turbulent Balkan history since before the First World War, the novel trances a young physician’s relationship to her beloved grandfather. Interwoven with their present day lives are two stories which he tells her: that of the Tiger’s Wife from his childhood and the Deathless Man from his maturity. Terrific.

“Left Early, Took the Dog”, by Kate Atkinson is another wonderful Jackson Brodie mystery, which means it is a novel with mystery elements, watchmaker plotting, and great characters. All the principals are well drawn right down to The Ambassador, a very intelligent border collie, and though the plot is circuitous, the story never lags.

“The Anthologist” by Nicholson Baker is for anyone interested in poetry or writing as a business. A monologue by a blocked anthologist, it is witty and amusing. One forgives the self-absorbed hero because he is so entertaining. Short and good.

New Biography

Fri, 06 May 2011 17:24:05 -0400

Michael Korda’s “Hero” about Lawrence of Arabia has found enthusiastic local readers, and has “The Last Boy” Jane Leavy’s well received biography of Mickey Mantel.

Finally, you get a twofer with “Furious Love” by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger about those larger than life starts, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. A page turner.

New Non Fiction

Fri, 06 May 2011 17:23:31 -0400

The library has a fine selection of new non-fiction at the moment, including a number of books about World War II. Laura Hillenbrand, whose “Seabiscuit” was an immense best seller is back with “Unbroken,” the story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic runner and bombardier, whose plane crashes in the South Pacific, beginning an odyssey aboard a fragile raft, and running through Japanese captivity.

Alan Riding’s “And the Show Went On” focuses on cultural life in Paris during the occupation, as the French artistic elite struggled to continue their work without losing their political footing. It makes an interesting companion to “IBM and the Holocaust” about Big Blue’s role in the data collection and processing that enabled the seizure, exploitation and destruction of millions of Europeans.

Some of the consequences are told in “The Long Way Home,” Ben Shepherd’s book gripping account of how the multitudes of POW’s, refugees, camp survivors, and displaced persons found ways to return to their homelands.

Gives Us FEEDBACK

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:01:21 -0400

If you’ve enjoyed a book recently from the library, please tell us about it!

Book & Bake Sale

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:17:49 -0400

Come to our Book & Bake Sale, Saturday May 21, 2011. 8AM - 2PM.

257 Main St., Hampton, CT 860-455-1086

Bestsellers, hardcovers, paperbacks, mysteries, romances, crafts, children’s books and much more!

Delicious baked goods!

Photography Exhibit!

Support you library!

Photo

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:13:08 -0400

Welcome to the Fletcher Memorial Library in Hampton, CT

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:09:07 -0400