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 The
Odyssey Gallery
Pictures of recent events
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
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Joan's Picks
Click on any title to order
Return to staff
list
 THE
INVISIBLE BRIDGE by Julie Orringer is a remarkable achievement in literature, both heartbreaking and inspiring. Andras Levi wants to be an architect, but in Hungary, there’s no place for a Jew in their architecture programs. So he sets off for Paris, where he falls in love against his better judgment and watches in dismay as Hitler marches across Europe. A lapsed visa forces his return to Hungary where everything is changing. Andras and his male friends and family members are conscripted by the Hungarian army for labor, an ordeal where food, shelter, and heat are in short supply and hours of brutal work are endless. This epic saga of love and war is well researched and beautifully written and tells the horrific, less well-known story of the Holocaust in Hungary. ~Joan
 THE
IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS by Rebecca Skloot. If your book group likes discussing the thorny issues of bioethics, this is a book that will provide lots of material for debate. Henrietta Lacks was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors. Her cells—taken from her without her knowledge, much less consent, when she was a cancer patient in the “colored” ward of John Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s—became one of the most important tools in modern medicine. They became the first “immortal” cells grown in culture and are still alive today and know as HeLa cells. They have been vital in developing polio vaccine and many important medical advances, including in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping. Their sales have generated billions of dollars in the industry, yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave, and in a sadly ironic twist, her own descendents cannot afford health insurance. ~Joan
 WIKILEAKS
AND THE AGE OF TRANSPARENCY by
Micah L. Sifry. How is the internet changing how governments and
corporations share information with the public? This book is a
primer on how politics and policy are becoming more accessible to
millions of people through the actions of a growing movement of
programmers who are transparency activists. Sifry discusses
Wikileaks, but also many other groups working on issues as diverse as
Kenyan politics, the Haitian earthquake, uprisings in the Middle
East, and which lobbyists are influencing which U.S.
Congressional members. For me, a low-tech reader, this book was
incredibly eye-opening. ~Joan
 WEST
OF HERE
by Jonathan Evison. I love
this book and so do independent booksellers across the country! I have
never visited the Olympia Peninsula of Washington State, until now, in
this magnificent and brilliant saga. The description alone of the
mountains, rivers, flora, and fauna would be enough to captivate me.
Beyond the natural world Evison’s tale spans more than 100 years—from
Port Bonita’s earliest days until the present—and gives us the
history of its various inhabitants, both the indigenous peoples (the
Klallam) and the white settlers and explorers. Evison deftly weaves
together the lives of more than forty characters (who span several
generations) and the many challenges they face. ~Joan
 TOWNIE
by Andre Dubus III. In Townie,
Andre Dubus III’s haunting and powerful memoir, we learn that his path
to success as a writer was from far from simple or painless. The oldest
of four children, Andre was twelve when his father left his mother for a
young student. His mother worked long hours in an attempt to keep the
family afloat, but the kids spent much of their time struggling to
survive the mean streets of the dying mill towns of the Merrimack River.
His father, a well-regarded writer, taught at a nearby college and saw
the kids on Sundays for a few hours. Neither parent was aware of the
drugs and street violence which were a constant feature of their
children’s lives. To protect himself and his siblings from
bullies and worse, Andre learned to box. The brutal violence that Andre
lived through is frightening and disturbing, but eventually at 22 he
begins punching out stories and not people. His courageous struggle to
become a writer is his salvation. ~Joan
 WINGSHOOTERS
by Nina Revoyr. Wingshooters, the fourth novel by Los
Angeles writer Nina Revoyr, is a riveting and heartbreaking tale.
Nine-year-old narrator Michelle is the daughter of a Japanese mother and
white American father. Both parents abandon Michelle to live with her
grandparents in the rural, all-white town of Deerhorn, Wisconsin, in the
early 1970s. Bullied and rejected by her classmates, Michelle spends her
free time by herself or with her grandfather Charlie, a bigot who
embraces his only granddaughter, teaching her to garden, fish, hunt, and
play baseball. Michelle’s world is torn apart when the Garretts, an
African-American family, move to Deerhorn and her grandfather’s
loyalty is made clear. You won’t forget this story and Revoyr’s
thoughtful insight into the complexity of human relationships. ~Joan
 AMERICAN
RUST by Philipp
Meyer ($15.00) This debut novel is an absorbing portrait of ordinary
people and communities that face the extraordinary and heartbreaking
de-industrialization of America. His novel is set in the former steel
towns of Pennsylvania, but the experience resonates with many
once-prosperous New England mill towns. I can’t stop thinking about
Meyer’s characters, the issues they confronted, the complexities of
their limited options, and the life-changing decisions they made, such
is the power of his writing. ~Joan
 MATTERHORN
by
Karl Marlantes ($24.95) is a behemoth of a book that was 30 years in the
making. Marlantes, who abandoned his Rhodes scholarship to serve in the
Marines, writes with precision and authenticity on being a grunt in the
Vietnam War. Epic in size but narrow in scope, the novel follows Waino
Mellas, an extremely young and green platoon commander, who desperately
tries to keep his men and their morale alive in the face of the
monsoons, mudslides, disease, alienation, racism, and bitterness that
plague them, not to mention the actual war that they’re waging. It’s
a meditation on a desperate time in US History, a powerhouse of a story
that will stand tall among the giants of the literature of war. ~Joan
(signed copies available in June)
 TEN
HILLS FARM by C.
S. Manegold ($29.95) Most of us grew up believing slavery was an
exclusively southern issue—there was terrible discrimination in the
north, to be sure, but not slavery. That’s what our history books
said, at least. In Ten Hills Farm Catherine Manegold puts the lie
to this belief, exploring slavery on a 600-acre farm north of Boston,
first settled in 1630, and passing through five generations of rich and
powerful slave owners. This is a fascinating, forgotten history that
relies on mostly primary sources to reveal a colonial New England that
most of are unaware of. In her writing, Manegold pays great attention to
story, naming slave owners and slaves alike, making this book
exceptionally readable and engaging. This is an important book for
anyone interested in the complete version of American history. ~Joan (signed
copies available)
 EAARTH
by Bill McKibben ($24.00) McKibben has been warning us about human-made
damage to the environment for over 20 years and has become the best
green writer around. In Eaarth, he tells us that the problem no
longer belongs only to our grandchildren, or even our children, but
rather to us. At once terribly troubling and yet inspiring, McKibben
gives it to us straight. Our planet, while recognizable, is a new planet—we
can call it Eaarth—significantly different from decades past, facing
environmental challenges never before imagined, and which threaten its
very survival. But McKibben prods us with gentle optimism and
practicality urging us live more “lightly and carefully.” This is a
vitally important and extremely readable book by the reigning authority
on global warming. We all need to pay more attention. ~Joan
 CURVEBALL
by Martha Ackmann ($24.95) I love books about famous people we have
never heard of. Toni Stone, the first woman to play professional
baseball in the Negro League started her baseball career in 1949 with
the San Francisco Sea Lions, where she knocked in two runs her first
time up. Over the next five years, she played with several other teams
including the Kansas City Monarchs, where Hank Aaron had played just two
years before Toni got there. Ackmann’s book is not only a wonderfully
told story of an immensely talented and courageous woman in the latter
years of Negro League baseball, but also an important story of rampant
race segregation and gender bias in the 1940s and 1950s. ~Joan
(signed copies available in June)
 STRENGTH
IN WHAT REMAINS by
Tracy Kidder ($16.00) Kidder, with his incredible ability to observe and
describe the worlds that others live in, has given us another
extraordinary story. Deo is a 24 year-old medical student in Burundi
when ethnic warfare breaks out between the Hutus and the Tutsis in 1994.
Deo spends months on the run, struggling to survive the horrors of
genocide and civil war that sweep through Rwanda and Burundi. Remarkably
he survives, and with help from a family friend, Deo is given a plane
ticket to the US and $200. He knows nobody in America and speaks no
English. His life as a low-paid immigrant workers is a step up from
facing possible slaughter by armed militias, but delivering groceries
for $15/day and sleeping in Central Park hardly qualify as the American
dream. ~Joan
 THE
WOMAN BEHIND THE NEW DEAL: The
Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins—Social Securuty, Unemployment
Insurance and the Minimum Wage
by
Kirstin Downey ($16.95) This is a fascinating biography about an
extraordinary Mount Holyoke College alumna from the class of 1902. In
her honor, the Frances Perkins Program at MHC was established in 1980
for non-traditional aged women who wish to attend college. MHC helped to
shaped Frances Perkins. She visited local factories in her American
economic history class and heard Florence Kelley, the head of the
National Consumers League speak on campus. In 1911 she witnessed the
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in NYC where 146 workers lost their lives, many
jumping to their deaths rather than being burnt alive. From that moment
on, Frances Perkins was always deeply involved in improving the lives of
workers. Downey’s superb examination of life should help bring long
overdue attention to her many accomplishments. ~
Joan
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