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The Poetry Life: Ten Stories, Baron Wormser, (CavanKerry Press, 2008, 190 pages)
By Dan Szczesny dszczesny@hippopress.com
Baron Wormser’s new book could easily become the stuff of novelty: ten monologues from ten different common folk all in different stations of life, contemplating a particular poet and his or her relevance to their situation. It’s the waitress who uses Sylvia Plath’s stubbornness to get her through her shift. It’s the old man who overcomes the death of his wife by using the precision of William Carlos Williams. There’s the teenager who encounters beauty for the first time through the vision of Elinor Wylie.
Rilke and Andreas-Solome: A Love Story in Letters, translated by Edward Snow and Michael Winkler, Norton, 2008 (paperback edition, 407 pages)
By Dan Szczesny dszczesny@hippopress.com
The paperback release of this 2006 book is significant for a couple reasons. The academic nature of the volume made the original hardcover a difficult book to find. Also, because it is Norton, the hardcover was financially inaccessible. The paperback is good news to English-speaking fans of one of this century’s most popular poets, Rainer Maria Rilke.
The Backyard Birdsong Guide: A Guide to Listening, by Donald Kroodsma (2008, Chronicle Books, 192 pages)
By Lisa Parsons lparsons@hippopress.com
If you have ever peered, crazed with vengeance and insomnia, out your bedroom window at 3:50 a.m. thinking “SHUT THE **** UP!” toward the bird you can hear (every single morning around this hour) but not see (it’s still dark out), wondering what it looks like and what would be the best object to throw in its general vicinity so as to scare it away, preferably for good, then this is the book for you.
Snuff, by Chuck Palahniuk (Doubleday, 197 pages)
By Nate Graziano news@hippopress.com
Philosophically, I don’t believe in panning books. As a writer, I understand the amount of time, thought and emotional expenditure that go into a piece of writing.
That Little Something, by Charles Simic (Harcourt, 2008, 73 pages)
By Dan Szczesny dszczesny@hippopress.com
There’s something a little different about Charles Simic.
The Immigrant’s Contract, by Leland Kinsey (2008, David R. Godine Publisher, 86 pages)
By Dan Szczesny dszczesny@hippopress.com
Leland Kinsey is an ambitious poet. He’s set out to do two things in his latest work, The Immigrant’s Contract.
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach (2008, W. W. Norton, 319 pages)
By Lisa Parsons lparsons@hippopress.com
What could Mary Roach possibly write about next?
Happier, by Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D. (abridged, read by Jeff Woodman, HighBridge Audio, 2008, 4½ hours on 4 CDs)
By Lisa Parsons lparsons@hippopress.com
“Following are some sentence stems…”
Let that warn you. Any man who writes a book on happiness and includes sentence stems is just not coming from the right place.
Strawbery Banke: A Seaport Museum 400 Years in the Making, by J. Dennis Robinson (2007, Peter E. Randall Publisher, 393 pages)
By Lisa Parsons lparsons@hippopress.com
Is a big, solid coffee-table book with lots of pretty pictures of Portsmouth old and new. It is more generally about Portsmouth and New Hampshire history than its title might lead you to expect.
The McSweeney’s Joke Book of Book Jokes, by the Editors of McSweeney’s (Vintage Books, 2008, 217 pages)
By Nate Graziano news@hippopress.com
Maybe it’s egocentric to believe a book could be written with me specifically in mind, but in the case of The McSweeney’s Joke Book of Book Jokes, the joke is definitely on me.
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