Sanibel Island Bookshop

Lorraine A. Vail has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:40:00 -0000

Lorraine A. Vail, Sanibel author of Paradise Found and Near Water, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry. The Pushcart, entering its thirty-fourth year recognizes poets, short fiction writers and literary publishers nationwide for this prestigious award. It is an honor to be nominated.

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To buy this book click here.

National Book Award Winners Announced

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:04:34 -0000

The winners of the 2008 National Book Awards were announced last night, November 19, at the National Book Foundation's 59th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. The night's ceremonies included the presentation of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Maxine Hong Kingston and the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community to publisher Barney Rosset.

This year's National Book Award winners are:

Fiction
Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)

Nonfiction
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (Norton)

Poetry
Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins)

Young People's Literature
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)

The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a Harry Potter offshoot by J.K. Rowling, is being published by Scholastic on Dec. 4

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:00:00 -0000

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The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a slim collection of five stories, including âThe Tale of the Three Brothers,â which appeared in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. $12.95

To pre-order this book click here.

In Memoriam Michael Crichton 1942 â 2008

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:30:00 -0000

Michael Crichton passed away in Los Angeles today after losing his battle with cancer at the age of 66. Best known as an enormously successful novelist, Crichton also created popular TV Shows such as E.R., directed films, wrote non-fiction, and sparked controversy with some of his scientific views, including his disbelief in global warming.- Julie Johnson

Meet the Author: Annie Vanderbilt

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:17:20 -0000

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Where are you from originally?

I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My family started to come to Sanibel for spring vacation before the causeway was built. Twice we crossed by ferry. On our third visit, voila, there was a bridge. In 2002 my husband, Bill, and I drove our truck and camper to Sanibel in search of a place to escape the snows of Ketchum, Idaho, where we've lived for the past 26 years. We found that place on Coconut Drive.

When and why did you begin writing?

I wrote my first novel in my thirties. I had always loved to write. One day when I was thirty-two, I sat down at the typewriter and embarked on my first writing adventure. I was searching for an agent for my completed manuscript when I fell off a cliff while hiking in the canyons of Utah. For the next six years I walked on crutches and a cane, put my first novel in the closet, and ran a cross-country ski touring business with my husband, Bill, so that I could be active in the community, not cooped up at home writing, while I was healing.

What inspired you to write your first book?

The Secret Papers of Madame Olivetti is actually the second novel I have written. (The first was still in the closet when our house in Idaho burned down in 2005.) My protagonist, Lily Crisp, a smart, attractive, sexy woman of a certain age, came into my mind fully formed, as did her story with its twists and turns. I wanted to write a book that would be a really good read, a well-written page turner that would immerse the reader in exotic and sensual settings and explore the many facets of love. It took ten years to complete the manuscript; life intruded in the form of caregiving elderly parents. Those years certainly enriched my writing and gave me the oppotunity to hone my skillls.

Who or what has influenced your writing?

I have never taken a writing class or workshop, so what I write comes from within: my own style, my own structure, my own cadence. What has influenced my writing most is the many adventures I have had in the past forty years: wilderness explorations, overseas work and travel, surviving my fall from the cliff--all these life experiences give one's writing grounding and substance.

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

I suppose it would be take a risk or two, as Lily Crisp does. As I've written in the Conversation Guide at the end of the book, Let the voluptuous side of living and loving take center stage.

What book are you reading now?

I am reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth. Bill and I were in Peace Corps in India in 1968., so I read anything I can that has to do with India. Lumpiris' writing is beautiful and her stories of Bengalis settling in a new land, the States, are simple and poignant.

What are your current projects?

I am writing another novel. It begins and ends on Sanibel, travels to Japan and the Pacific Northwest, and once again involves relationships and the complexities of love. But there are a couple of dead bodies in this next book.

Who is your favoite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?

My favorite authors write complex, sensual stories in beautiful prose. Their settings are provocative and richly textured. Marguerite Duras, Michael Ondaatje, Suzanna Moore, Lawrence Durell, to name a few.

Who designed the covers?

I believe she works for Penguin, in their art department, but I'm not sure. I'm thrilled with the cover.

What was the hardest part of writing your book?

The hardest part was making the transitions from present to past seamless. Because of how I have structured the book, I need to go back and forth in time quite often, but these transitions must not be confusing or jarring. That took a lot of rewriting and tweaking.

Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?

I learned that I'm not a quick writer. I tinker with words and sentences. I write many drafts. If unchecked, I write obsessively. In short, for me writing takes a lot of time, so if I'm going to fit in my walk on the beach and some biking and fly fishing, i.e., lead a balanced life, I have to rein myself in and ration the time I spend at the computer.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

Don't give up. Finding an agent and getting published take perseverance, luck and chemistry. It took me ten years to write Madame Olivett. It took another three years for my manuscript to cross the desk of an editor who read it and said, This is it. I'm making an offer on this book tomorrow.

Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

This is a love story for adults. Women and men have enjoyed it equally. So immerse yourself in Lily's adventures, fantasize a little. Escape is good, especially in these uncertain times.

To buy Annie's Book Click here.

CNN) -- Pulitzer Prize-winning author, radio host and activist Studs Terkel died in his Chicago, Illinois, home Friday at the age of 96.

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:33:34 -0000

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Terkel had grown frail since the publication last year of his memoir, "Touch and Go," said Gordon Mayer, vice president of the Community Media Workshop, which Terkel had supported.

"I'm still in touch, but I'm ready to go," he said last year at his last public appearance with the workshop, a nonprofit that recognizes Chicago reporters who take risks in covering the city.

"My dad led a long, full, eventful -- sometimes tempestuous -- satisfying life," his son Dan said in a statement.

"The last time I saw him, he was up, about, and mad as hell about the Cubs," workshop President Thom Clark said in the statement.

Terkel, known for his portrayal of ordinary people young and old, rich and poor, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for his remembrances of World War II, "The Good War."

Terkel was born in New York but moved to Chicago, where his parents ran a small hotel. Terkel would sit in the hotel lobby watching droves of people arguing, fighting, ranting and telling stories.

"That hotel was far more of an education to me than the University of Chicago was," Studs told CNN in 2000.

It seems that beginning would pave the way for Terkel's love of passing on people's oral histories. He could often be found behind a tape recorder talking to the people who would eventually become the basis for his books. Terkel became famous, if not synonymous with oral histories, for his ability to cast a light on the working class.

"Oral history preceded the written word," Terkel told CNN in 2000. "Oral history is having people tell their own stories and bringing it forth.

"That's what history's about : the oral history of the unknowns that make the wheel go 'round. And that's what I'm interested in."

In an interview with Lou Waters on CNN in 1995, Terkel spoke about his book "Coming of Age," which explored the lives of people who have been "scrappers" all of their lives. Inside the book are the stories of people between the ages of 70 and 95, a group he called "the truth tellers."

"Who are the best historians? Who are the storytellers?" Terkel asked. "Who lived through the Great Depression of the '30s, World War II that changed the whole psyche and map of the world, a Cold War, Joe McCarthy, Vietnam, the '60s, that's so often put down today and I think was an exhilarating and hopeful period, and, of course, the computer and technology. Who are the best ones to tell the story? Those who've borne witness to it. And they're our storytellers."

After Terkel's wife died in 1999, he began working on a book about death, eventually called "Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith."

"It's about life," Terkel said in 2000 when asked about the project. "How can one talk about life without saying sometime it's going to end? It makes the value of life all the more precious."

The mystery novelist Tony Hillerman died Sunday, at 83. Below is a reminiscence by the Book Reviewâs Crime columnist, Marilyn Stasio, who also wrote his obituary for the Times.

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:39:19 -0000

Tony Hillerman was known for his generosity to other authors and the kindness he showed to young people who could be opinionated and just plain irritating. I ought to know, having been the recipient of his kindness when I was young, opinionated and irritating. We were both attending a conference in Key West on mystery writing when I stepped out of my hotel on Duval Street and found him standing against the wall with his hands in his pockets and his face turned up to the sun. That looked good to me, so I joined him. Faces warmed, we drifted into a conversation about Ernest Hemingway, whose novels, I pertly noted, were anathema to me because of their sexism.

Instead of delivering the lecture I deserved, he gently directed me to the nearby Hemingway House and advised me to pick up a copy of âTo Have and Have Notâ in the bookshop. If I had any more thoughts about Hemingwayâs attitude toward women after reading the novel, heâd be happy to continue our conversation. So, I sauntered over to the Hemingway House, read the novel in the garden (surrounded by six-toed cats), and had my epiphany. The next time I saw Tony, I tried to tell him what a jerk I had been and to thank him. He had his reward, he said, in bringing another reader to one of his favorite authors.

Thatâs how I think of Tony Hillerman â kind, generous, and sorely missed.

Meet The Author

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:30:00 -0000

Charles Sobczak lives and writes on Sanibel Island, Florida. He and his wife, Molly Heuer, have two sons, Logan and Blake. Both children share their fatherâs love of writing and their motherâs musical talent.
Charles began his writing career over thirty years ago as a regular columnist for The UMD Statesman, a weekly newspaper for the University of Minnesota, Duluth, where he was pursuing an English major. After college, he was a member of a coffeehouse group called Easy Steam, for which he wrote lyrics, sang and played flute. The group toured professionally across the United States for four years and recorded one album, To Be Alive.
For the next fifteen years, Charles did little in the way of writing aside from keeping a journal and writing an occasional poem or short story. In 1994, at the request of Ted Kircher, then editor of The Island Reporter, Charles began a fishing column called To Catch a Catfish. Over the next five years the columns were well received, with two columns winning Florida Press Awards.
In 1997 he began work on a novel set at the Sanibel fishing pier. That work, eventually titled Six Mornings on Sanibel, was first published in 1999, and went on to become one of the best-selling novels on Sanibel Island for two years. It is currently in its sixth printing and has received critical acclaim worldwide. To date the book has sold more than 24,000 copies.
His second novel, Way Under Contract, a Florida Story, published in November of 2000, went on to win The 2001 Patrick Smith Award for Florida literature. It is currently selling through its second printing. Charles followed with a third book, Rhythm of the Tides. It is a collection of his fishing columns, short stories, essays and poetry.
In April of 2003, A Choice of Angels, the story of the forbidden marriage between a Muslin girl and the son of a Southern Baptist minister, was published. It immediately received a starred review in Booklist, the official review publication of The American Library Association. The novel went on to win the Bronze Award for Religious Fiction from Foreword Magazine, a trade publication focusing on independent titles.
On March 6th, 2005, Charles received the Writer of the Year Award from the Alliance for the Arts organization of Lee County. That same year he began work on his first nonfiction title, Alligators, Sharks & Panthers: Deadly Encounters with Floridaâs Top PredatorâMan. Published in 2007 it recently won a Bronze IPPY Award (Independent Publishers Award) for best regional nonfiction for the Southeastern United States.
Charles is currently working on a fictionalized memoir titled Chain of Fools. The book tells the story of the life and premature death of his grandmother, One-eyed Maggie. Born in the late 1800s, Maggie went on to become a infamous one-eyed gambling prostitute who lived below the tracks in Duluth, Minnesota. A black comedy, the book is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2008.

The Secret Life of Bees Now in Theaters

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:24:54 -0000

The Secret Life Of Bees
The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness

--Man and Insects

New Release

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:16:32 -0000

Tim McGraw's Book, My Little Girl, Now available.
October 21, 2008
A children's book co-written by Tim McGraw and songwriter Tom Douglas was published Tuesday (Oct. 21) by Thomas Nelson, a Nashville-based publishing company. Faith Hill wrote the foreword to the book. McGraw and Douglas also collaborated on the song, "My Little Girl," which was featured in the film, Flicka.