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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

August 25 • Wednesday • 7 pm

In the thirty-four years since his retirement, Henry Aaron’s reputation has only grown in magnitude: he broke existing records (RBIs, total bases, extra-base hits) and set new ones (hitting at least thirty home runs per season fifteen times, becoming the first player in history to hammer five hundred home runs and three thousand hits). But his influence extends beyond statistics, and at long last here is the first definitive biography of one of baseball’s immortal figures.  Based on meticulous research and interviews with former teammates, family, two former presidents, and Aaron himself, The Last Hero chronicles Aaron’s childhood in segregated Alabama, his brief stardom in the Negro Leagues, his complicated relationship with celebrity, and his historic rivalry with Willie Mays—all culminating in the defining event of his life: his shattering of Babe Ruth’s all-time home-run record.

“Brawny…The Last Hero had the forceful sweep of a well-struck essay as much as that of a first-rate biography.”  — The New York Times

It’s been five years since the Mason family vacationed at the lakeside cottage in northeastern Vermont, close to where prize-winning novelist Samuel Mason grew up. The summers that Sam, his wife, Mena, and their twins Franny and Finn spent at Lake Gormlaith were noisy, chaotic, and nearly perfect. But since Franny’s death, the Masons have been flailing, one step away from falling apart. Lake Gormlaith is Sam’s last, best hope of rescuing his son from a destructive path and salvaging what’s left of his family. From the acclaimed author of Two Rivers comes a compelling and beautifully told story of hope, family, and above all, hunger—for food, sex, love and success—and for a way back to wholeness when a part of oneself has been lost forever.

“This compelling study of a family in need of rescue is very effective, owing to Greenwood’s (Two Rivers) eloquent, exquisite word artistry and her knack for developing subtle, suspenseful scenes... Greenwood’s sensitive and gripping examination of a family in crisis is real, complex, and anything but formulaic.”  --Library Journal (starred review)

“Uh-oh. I'm lost,” a little duck says. “I can help,” says a monkey, who swings down from a tree and points out Mama duck.  Then the monkey loses his balance! Who can help him?! Giraffe can!  And so the fun begins in this story, beautifully illustrated in watercolor and line, about how easy it is to help someone in need. 

“Each animal has offered a solution suited to its skills, and the words are easily memorized with their variations: perfect intellectual engagement on the preschool level.” —Newsday

The Odyssey Crime Club will discuss The Dirty Secrets Club by Meg Gardiner.  Called the next suspense superstar by Stephen King, Gardiner presents the first novel in a new series featuring San Francisco psychologist Jo Beckett. Investigating a series of suicides, Jo finds they are all part of the Dirty Secrets Club, a group of A-listers with nothing but money and plenty to hide. This month’s selection is discounted 20%.

Floodlines is a firsthand account of community, culture, and resistance in New Orleans. The book weaves together the stories of gay rappers, Mardi Gras Indians, Arab and Latino immigrants, public housing residents, and grassroots activists in the years before and after Katrina. From post-Katrina evacuee camps to torture testimony at Angola Prison to organizing with the family members of the Jena Six, Floodlines tells the stories behind the headlines from an unforgettable time and place in history.

“This is the most important book I’ve read about Katrina and what came after. In the tradition of Howard Zinn this could be called ‘The People’s History of the Storm.’ Jordan Flaherty was there on the front lines.” — Eve Ensler, playwright of The Vagina Monologues and activist and founder of V-Day

From the renowned authority on domestic violence, a startlingly original inquiry into the aftermath of wars and their impact on the least visible victims: women.  In 2007, the International Rescue Committee, which brings relief to countries in the wake of war, wanted to understand what really happened to women in war zones. Answers came through the point and click of a digital camera. On behalf of the IRC, Ann Jones spent two years traveling through Africa, East Asia, and the Middle East, giving cameras to women who had no other means of telling the world what war had done to their lives.  The photography project—which moved from Liberia to Syria and points in between—quickly broadened to encompass the full consequences of modern warfare for the most vulnerable. Even after the definitive moments of military victory, women and children remain blighted by injury and displacement and are the most affected by the destruction of communities and social institutions. And along with peace often comes worsening violence against women, both domestic and sexual.  Dramatic and compelling, animated by the voices of brave and resourceful women, War Is Not Over When It’s Over shines a powerful light on a phenomenon that has long been cast in shadow.

“Underfunded and doubted in First and Third World countries, the project reveals the link between misplaced rage by depressed former soldiers and the women who suffer culturally sanctioned violence, while the U.N.’s antirape resolutions are ignored. In spite of the graphically grim material, Jones provides glimpses of hard-won triumphs, including separate bathing areas in Burmese refugee camps and the promise of peace for women by a thoughtful local chief.” – Publisher’s Weekly

In this astonishing debut, Tracy Winn poignantly chronicles the souls who inhabit the troubled mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, playing out their struggles and hopes over the course of the twentieth century. Through a stunning variety of voices, Winn paints a deep and permeating portrait of the town and its people: a young millworker who dreams of marrying rich and becoming “Mrs. Somebody Somebody”; an undercover union organizer whose privileged past shapes her cause; a Korean War veteran who returns to the wife he never really got to know—and the couple’s overindulged children, who grow up to act out against their parents; a town resident who reflects on a long-lost love and the treasure he keeps close to his heart. Winn’s keen insight into class and human nature, combined with her perfect, nuanced prose, make Mrs. Somebody Somebody truly shine.

“A rare achievement . . . Winn’s characters struggle with unexpected losses and damaging habits . . . always questioning the hard truths that hold them in place.” — Atlantic Monthly

Lunch Lady and the Breakfast Bunch kids are looking forward to a relaxing summer vacation with no funny business. What evils could possibly befall them at summer camp? Of course, there is the legendary swamp monster. Stories say he haunts the camp at night. But that’s just a legend. Or is it? Once again Dee, Hector, and Terrence must help Lunch Lady prevail against a secret enemy!

Sundays with Shakespeare, led by UMASS English professor, Arthur F. Kinney, will discuss All’s Well That Ends Well.  The month’s selection is discounted 20%.

The Odyssey Bookshop's Open Fiction Group will discuss The Quickening by Michelle Hoover.  In this luminous and unforgettable debut, Hoover explores the polarization of the human soul in times of hardship and the instinctual drive for self-preservation by whatever means necessary.  This month’s selection is discounted 20%.

Nothing But Our Best: A Holyoke Industrialist & His Company is a story about the life of a man who, for fifty years, managed a Holyoke manufacturing company from a position of financial collapse to become one of its industry’s leaders.  From family home to factory floor, the reader meets working class residents who came to Holyoke seeking employment in the mills that thrived there as America entered the 20th Century. How these men and women used wit, humor and perseverance to survive under difficult working conditions is told from the perspective of the author’s first hand experience. One moves through the years to the company’s Board Room as the Directors wrestle with the decision about choosing who is the best partner for a merger.

Supreme Court Justice Breyer shares his original and accessible theory of the United States Supreme Court's responsibility and integrity. He illuminates key decisions with fascinating stories told from his unique perspective.