Books Books & Books

Summer and books. It’s a classic combination. And in Sharon and Norfolk the libraries are providing perfect bookends for the end of the season.

In Sharon, the month opens with the 25th annual Summer Book Signing on Friday, August 4th from 5:30 to 7:30PM followed by the traditional author dinners. The event offers patrons an opportunity to meet their favorite authors, discover new ones, chat with friends and neighbors and buy signed copies of books.

The 25th Book Signing has a special celebratory air to it this year as the library has just this week moved back into its handsome home at the end of the village green after extensive renovations to the building. The library, an 1893 gift to the town from Maria Bissell Hotchkiss, was built in memory of her late husband, Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss, and was designed by Bruce Price. Price designed the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec, several other Canadian Pacific Hotels and numerous buildings at Yale.

The event is festive, held on the lawn under a sparkling white tent, with hors d’oeuvres and drinks served beneath it. All the proceeds from this largest annual fundraiser supports the library’s daily operational expenses for staffing, book purchases, children’s programming and Zoom events for adults.

Authors familiar and new will be present, including Patrick Bringley, a former New Yorker staffer who worked for a decade as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In All the Beauty in the World he dives into the secret nooks and crannies of the museum discovered while working there.

Ralph White will also be there with his book, Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-year-old Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians, a true story of White’s effort to save the entire staff of the Saigon branch of Chase Manhattan.

Simon Winchester, a perennial favorite at the Book Signing, returns with his latest book. According to Booklist Winchester's book, Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge from Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic, is an essential read. This book dives into technology and how it continues to change our lives and minds from the ancient world to the modern kindergarten room.

Author Antonia Shoumatoff presents seldom-told tales in Historic Tales of the Harlem Valley: Life at the End of the Line, including a Victorian utopian community claiming to see fairies that settled in Wassaic, attracting Japanese samurai and an early version of the "Borscht Belt" on the shores of Lake Amenia.

Regional territory forms the backdrop for yet another work, this one in Jen Beagin’s book Big Swiss. Set in her own town of Hudson NY this book is about a sex therapist's transcriptionist and her affair with one of the patients.

Visitors can also chat with Marnie Mueller, whose The Showgirl and the Writer, A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration, is a hybrid memoir/biography that tells the story of Mueller's long friendship with Mary Mon Toy, a Nisei performer.

Theatre critic Robert Hofler will be there with The Way They Were: How Epic Battles and Bruised Egos Brought a Classic Hollywood Love Story to the Screen. His behind-the-scenes look at a classic love story starring Robert Redford and Barbara Steisand reveals the full story behind its genesis and continued controversies, its deleted scenes, much-anticipated but never-filmed sequel and the real-life romance that inspired the story.

Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy continues the focus on the movie industry, telling the shocking inside story of the struggle for power and control at Paramount Global. The author, James B. Stewart, will join the festive scene, signing copies at the annual event.

Leonard S. Marcus’s book, Pictured Worlds: Masterpieces of Children's Book Art by 101 Essential Illustrators from Around the World, would make wonderful gift for a children's book enthusiast or art lover.

Local authors well-known to area residents will return for the event. Sharon’s own Peter Steiner is back with The Inconvenient German, in which former Munich police detective Willi Geismeier is now the head of the Flower Gang, a flourishing network of secret operatives helping Jews and others escape Germany.

And Dani Shapiro returns with Signal Fires, a national bestseller that tells the tale of two families whose lives collapse and collide over a span of 50 years.

Revenge and redemption is at the heart of The Wife App by Carolyn Mackler, termed a “hilarious romp” in which three best friends decide they’re done with their ex-husbands taking their work as wives and moms for granted. They’re ready stick it to their exes and have a wild ride in the process.

Women are also at the center of The Golden Doves, a page-turner penned by Martha Hall Kelly that traces the exploits of two former female spies who risk everything to hunt down an infamous Nazi doctor in the aftermath of World War II .

Pineapple Street rounds out the selections for this year. Written by Jenny Jackson, it is filled with the crises and chaos of the Stockton family and rife with the indulgent pleasures of life among New York’s one-percenters.

General admission is $50, with early admission at 4:45PM costing $75. Seven author dinners at $250 will be offered following the event.

The book signing kicks off the month of August and the annual used book sale in Norfolk, planned this year for August 26th and 27th, ends it. The two-day sale features thousands of books collected over the course of the year in the Norfolk Library’s large, dry cellar and then miraculously transported up the stairs to a tent in the library parking lot.

The sale “rehomes” all its donated books every year, acting as a sort of adoption agency for books and keeping them out of the waste stream. “We get a lot of books when people move and clean out their libraries,” library director Anne Havemeyer said. “We just had a call from someone who wanted to donate 1,000 books. The cellar is almost full, so I told them to wait until September for next year’s sale.”

The books cover every imaginable subject and Bridgit Taylor, who oversees the sale annually, trains a cadre of volunteers in sorting them into categories. Her co-chair, Liz Hilman, organizes the volunteers into different areas of responsibility.

Books are checked for their relative value and better books—first editions, signed books and the like—are segregated and presented for sale inside the library. “It varies year by year as what values we have,” said Havemeyer. “We check with places like ABEbooks to see what they are going for—which is probably more than we get because people are more likely to go to the Internet to look for better books. We take all considerations into account in pricing ours.”

The sale is conducted under the auspices of the Library Associates, a 501 (c) 3 and is a major fundraiser for the library, underwriting its cultural programs throughout the year. “The proceeds go to them and they give us a budget for concerts, speakers and the like,” said Havemeyer.

It literally takes a village to put on the sale. Some 90 volunteers helped last year, carrying books to the tent, sorting them into categories, manning the check-out stations and assisting visitors. “It’s a pretty big operation,” Havemeyer said. “We’re always looking for younger volunteers with strong backs. It’s easy to get the books down to the cellar because we have a chute,but it’s much harder to get them back up the stairs. I think it is a lot of fun and that everyone has a good time.”

There are other than physical challenges, among them book dealers who grab dozens of books and then sort slowly through them. “We try to be nice about it, but it’s not fair to take dozens of books from the tables and then take your time to go through them,” said Havemeyer. “So we have a policy that if you take it, you pay for it.”

She said that in recent years there has been an uptick in families coming from as far as new York City to pick books they later resell on Amazon. “It’s okay,” she said. “At least the books go to someone and aren’t thrown out.”

The sale runs for two days, Saturday 10AM to 5PM and Sunday 10AM to 2PM. From 2PM Sunday until sundown all remaining books are free. On Monday free books are also selected for Books Through Bars, an organization that provides books to prisoners; Books for Africa; Our Culture is Beautiful to support awareness of cultural diversity; and for a veterans’ home in Newington. Discover Books, whose mission is to redistribute books to support literacy efforts, takes all that are left. “We find homes for them all,” said Havemeyer.

This year Friday night Summer Soiree returns where, for a $35 donation, the public is invited to come under the tent for drinks and hors d’oeuvres. “We haven’t done it since before the pandemic but it helps to pay for the tent,” said Havemeyer.