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ODYSSEY GALLERY

The Odyssey Gallery

Pictures of recent events

 

ON THE AIR

The Odyssey Bookshop is one of five independent bookstores participating in WAMC's Roundtable on Tuesday mornings, just after the 10:00 news. People from the Odyssey will be on about once a month, talking about our favorite books. 

Click here to see the list of the books we have talked about.


The Odyssey Bookshop
9 College St.
S. Hadley, MA 01075

413-534-7307
800-540-7307
fax 413-532-3654

email odysseybks@aol.com

 

Late June/July Calendar of 
Author Appearances and Events

All events are free and open to the public and, unless otherwise noted, are held at The Odyssey.

Call (413) 534-7307 to reserve a space. If you can’t attend, we can reserve a signed book for you.


Print the Month-at-a-Glance

 Printer friendly Calendar with details  


New: Reserve a seat online.

Please take a moment to reserve your seat for any of these events online. Reserving helps us better plan for the event, and helps you by assuring that if there are any changes or cancellations, you will be contacted immediately.  Please note that we cannot take reservations for those events taking place outside of the Odyssey Bookshop (i.e. Mount Holyoke College).

Click Here
to reserve your seat. 

You may also reserve a seat by calling 534-7307


Please call the Odyssey at 534-7307 or email us to reserve a place for an event. (If emailing, please give us your phone number.) If we have your name and telephone number, we'll be able to call you with last-minute cancellations or changes. Click on an event in the calendar for details. 

Late June/July 2009

Sun

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

June 21

22

23   7:00 p.m.
Jennifer McMahon, Dismantled

24  7:00 p.m.
Robert Forrant, Metal Fatigue: American Bosch and the Demise of Metalworking in the Connecticut River Valley

25   7:00 p.m.
Samantha Wilde, This Little Mommy Stayed Home

26

27   10:30 a.m.
Children's Story-time

28

29

30   7:00 p.m.
Brad Kessler, Goat Song:  A Seasonal Life, a Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese

July 1 7:00 p.m.
Lisa Hamilton,
Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agriculture

2

3

4

5

6

7

8   7:00 p.m.
Tracy Winn
Mrs. Somebody Somebody

9

10

11

12

13   7:00 p.m.
Jim Lynch,
Border Songs

7:00 p.m.
The Odyssey Crime Club discusses Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler

14

15

16

17

18

19

20   7:00 p.m.
The Open Fiction Book Group discusses Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

21

22   7:00 p.m.
R. Keith McCormick,
The Whole Body Approach to Osteoporsis

23   7:00 p.m.
Michael Lang,
The Road to Woodstock

24

25

26

27

CLOSED FOR INVENTORY

28

29   7:00 p.m.
Katherine Howe,
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

30

31


June 23  •  Tuesday  •  7:00 pm

Jennifer McMahon

Dismantled

Henry, Tess, Winnie and Suz banded together in college to form the “Compassionate Dismantlers.” Following the first rule of their manifesto – “To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart” – these daring misfits spend the summer after graduation in a remote cabin in the Vermont woods committing acts of meaningful vandalism, and plotting elaborate, sometimes dangerous, pranks. But everything changes when one particularly twisted experiment ends in Suz’s death and the others decide to cover it up. Nearly a decade later, each is desperate to move on from the summer of the Dismantlers, but the past isn’t ready to let them go. When a victim of their past pranks commits suicide, it sets off a chain of eerie events that threatens to engulf Henry, Tess, and their precocious nine-year-old daughter Emma. Is there someone who wants to reveal their secrets? Is it possible that Suz did not really die – or has she somehow found a way back?

“One of the brightest new stars of literary suspense.”Los Angeles Times (online)


June 24  •  Wednesday  •  7:00 pm

Robert Forrant

Metal Fatigue: American Bosch and the Demise of Metalworking in the Connecticut River Valley

On February 4, 1986, the lives of thousands of workers changed in ways they could only begin to imagine. On that day, United Technologies Corporation ordered the closure of the 76-year-old American Bosch manufacturing plant in Springfield, Massachusetts, capping a nearly 32-year history of job loss and work relocation from the sprawling factory. The author, a former Bosch worker and the business agent for the union representing nearly 1,200 Bosch employees when the plant closed, interjects his personal recollections into the story.

“Easily one of the most lucid and accessible books ever written on the local cost of globalization. Robert Forrant, a former machinist-turned-academic, recounts in living but tragic detail the impact of the loss of skilled industrial jobs on individuals, families, and an entire region. ” — Bruce Laurie, Prof. Emeritus University of Massachusetts Amherst


June 25  •  Thursday  •  7:00 pm

Samantha Wilde

This Little Mommy Stayed Home

In this riotously funny, ruefully honest, and irresistibly warmhearted debut, Samantha Wilde writes about one new mother who discovers the wonders and terrors of motherhood—one hilarious crisis at a time. Frank, bawdy, and full of keenly self-aware observations, this novel tells the story of one new mother, three men, one marriage, and the baby love that keeps us up at night. For new moms, potential moms-to-be, and anyone who just wants to (wisely) live the experience vicariously.

“Here's a talent test: when a narrator's doldrums make a reader laugh out loud. Samantha Wilde's inkwell must be filled with truth serum because this brave and funny book gets the postpartum peaks and valleys so very, winningly, right.” —Elinor Lipman, author of The Pursuit of Alice Thrift


June 30  •  Tuesday  •  7:00 pm

Brad Kessler

Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, a Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese

Goat Song tells about what it’s like to live intimately with animals who directly feed you. As Kessler begins to live the life of a herder -- learning how to care for and breed and birth goats -- he encounters the pastoral roots of so many aspects of Western culture. Kessler reflects on the history and literature of herding, and how our diet, our alphabet, our religions, poetry, and economy all grew out of a pastoralist milieu among hoofed animals. In the tradition of Thoreau’s Walden and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Goat Song is both a spiritual quest and a compelling and beautiful chronicle of living by nature’s rules.

“A hushed, meditative tribute to the nearly forgotten value of living off the land.”Kirkus Reviews


July 1  •  Wednesday  •  7:00 pm

Lisa Hamilton

Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agriculture

A century of industrialization has left our food system riddled with problems, yet for solutions we look to nutritionists and government agencies, scientists and chefs. Lisa M. Hamilton asks: Why not look to the people who grow our food? Hamilton makes this vital inquiry through the stories of three unconventional farmers: an African-American dairyman in Texas who plays David to the Goliath of agribusiness corporations; a tenth-generation rancher in New Mexico struggling to restore agriculture as a pillar of his crumbling community; and a modern pioneer family in North Dakota who is breeding new varieties of plants to face the future’s double threat: Monsanto and global warming. Threads of history and discussion weave through the tales, exploring how farmers have been pushed to the margins of agriculture and transformed from leaders to laborers.

“The extraordinary farmers . . . in Deeply Rooted embody the future of American agriculture.” — Alice Waters


July 8  •  Wednesday  •  7:00 pm

Tracy Winn

Mrs. Somebody Somebody

By turns funny and sad, the linked stories in Tracy Winn’s debut collection, Mrs. Somebody Somebody intersect in surprising ways. Winn draws us into the last sixty years of an old mill town where her unforgettable characters are down on their luck, but making the most of it. The man-crazy young mill worker of the title story forms an unexpected friendship with a lesbian labor organizer; a plucky immigrant child finds faith that her sister will return safely from Iraq; and a secretive old bookie has reason to hide a fragment of bone in his pocket. Connecting them all is the decidedly upper-class Burroughs family whose stately home holds years of unspoken compromise and regret. In clean, sensuous prose, Winn delivers the truths of our experience, unfolding these all-too-human lives, showing how little race, class and age matter when it comes to the grace that connects us all.

Mrs. Somebody Somebody is rich in surprises and moments of unlikely beauty. A splendid debut.” - Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street


July 13  •  Monday  •  7:00 pm

The Odyssey Crime Club will discuss Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler. This first novel in a riveting new mystery series introduces two cranky but brilliant old detectives whose lifelong friendship was forged solving crimes for the London Police Department's Peculiar Crimes Unit. This month’s selection is discounted 20%


July 13  •  Monday  •  7:00 pm

Jim Lynch

Border Songs

An Odyssey Bookshop Signed First Edition Club Selection

By the acclaimed author of The Highest Tide comes a story of contrary destinies further complicated by the border that separates them. Six foot eight and severely dyslexic, Brandon Vanderkool has always had an unusual perspective—which comes in handy once his father pushes him off their dairy farm and into the Border Patrol. Uncomfortable in this uniformed role, he indulges his passion for bird-watching and often finds not only an astonishing variety of species but also a great many smugglers hauling pot into Washington State from Canada. Rich in characters contending with a swiftly changing world and their own elusive hopes and dreams, Border Songs is at once comic and tender—a riveting portrait of a distinctive community, an extraordinary love story and fiction of the highest order.

“Jim Lynch’s new novel reads as an antidote to the 21st century: a kind of metaphorical insistence on hope and simplicity and art in the face of a surrounding storm.  Border Songs is a quietly ambitious book and it just gets better as it rises to the final satisfying image.” – Kent Haruf


July 20  •  Monday  •  7:00 pm

The Odyssey Bookshop’s Open Fiction Book Group will discuss Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie. Sweeping in scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of disasters eluded and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed. The month’s selection is discounted 20%.


July 22  •  Wednesday  •  7:00 pm

R. Keith McCormick

The Whole Body Approach to Osteoporosis

In The Whole-Body Approach to Osteoporosis, nutrition and bone health expert Keith McCormick offers a holistic, ten-step approach to help readers increase bone density and bone flexibility, reduce the risk of fracture, and engage in more active and healthy lifestyles.

“…the most updated, advanced, and comprehensive approach to bone health regeneration available today.” -- Susan E. Brown, Ph.D., author of Better Bones, Better Body

 

 


July 23  •  Thursday  •  7:00 pm

Michael Lang

The Road to Woodstock: From the Man Behind the Legendary Festival

The story of the Woodstock festival begins with Michael Lang, a kid out of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, who liked to smoke a joint and listen to jazz and who eventually found his way to Florida, where he opened a head shop and produced his first festival—Miami Pop, featuring Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and others. In the late sixties, after settling in Woodstock, he began to envision a music and arts festival where folks could come and stay for a few days amid the rural beauty of upstate New York. The idea crystallized when Lang talked it over with Artie Kornfeld, a songwriter and A & R man, and with two other young men they formed Woodstock Ventures. They booked talent, from Janis Joplin and The Who to the virtually unknown Santana and Crosby, Stills and Nash; won over agents and promoters; brought in the Hog Farm commune to set up campgrounds; hired a peacekeeping force; took on fleets of volunteers; appeased the Yippies; and were, at one point, run out of town only to find another site weeks before the festival. On the ground with the talent, the townspeople, and his handpicked crew, Lang had a unique and panoramic perspective of the festival. Enhanced by interviews with others who were central to the making of the festival, The Road to Woodstock tells the story from inspiration to celebration, capturing all the magic, mayhem, and mud in between.

“Totally rocking...what elevates this book above the level of most rock memoirs is the inclusion of voices other than Lang's — including scenesters and key Woodstock players like Jimi Hendrix, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Jerry Garcia. Well-written, informative and tons of fun.” -- Kirkus Reviews


July 29  •  Wednesday  •  7:00 pm

Katherine Howe

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

An Odyssey Bookshop Breakout Fiction Selection.  Wine and cheese to be served at the reading.

A spellbinding, beautifully written novel that moves between contemporary times and one of the most fascinating and disturbing periods in American history–the Salem witch trials. Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie’s grandmother’s abandoned home near Salem, she can’t refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest--to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge. Written with astonishing conviction and grace, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane travels seamlessly between the witch trials of the 1690s and a modern woman’s story of mystery, intrigue, and revelation.

“This debut novel flows with poetic charm and eloquence that achieves high literary merit while concocting a gripping supernatural puzzler. Katherine Howe’s talent is spellbinding.” --Matthew Pearl, author of The Poe Shadow and The Dante Club


August Events at the Odyssey!

August 4:  Lydia Peele, Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing

August 17:  Jacqueline Sheehan, Now & Then

August 27:  T. Greenwood, Two Rivers