Battenkill Books

Curiosity Forum with Author Kevin O’Hara (3/19)

connie — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:07:45 +0000

Friday, March 19th, 7 pm

Battenkill Books

(After the event, all are welcome to sojourn to the Cambridge Hotel for a pint and live music provided by the Ernie Williams Trio!)

Kevin O’Hara recreates his boyhood with these wonderful stories of growing up in Massachusetts in the 1950s and 60s as one of eight children. His parents, born in Ireland, came to this country for their children’s sake. His family struggled against grinding poverty but they never gave up and never lost their faith that God had a plan for them.

Kevin learned the lessons of making do and making things last, and what the true riches of the world are: good health and the love of a united family. All these lessons grounded him as he reached adulthood…and was sent off to fight in wilds of Vietnam as a reluctant solider.

This book will tug at your heart and make you cry tears of both sorrow and joy. It is a story about the Irish-American experience but it is much more–it’s the story of a generation growing up in the shadow of the Second World War and the start of a new age of hope and promise, a time when people believed that anything was possible as long as you dared to dream and had faith in yourself.

And a little Irish luck couldn’t hurt either.

Kevin O’Hara is the author of Last of the Donkey Pilgrims, an autobiographic telling of his travels around the coastland of Ireland with his beloved donkey Missy. A psychiatric nurse for more than 25 years, O’Hara still resides in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the place to which his parents emigrated.

Praise for A Lucky Irish Lad

“Told in a loquacious style and hitting all the iconic moments of childhood, from his first baseball mitt to his first kiss, this engaging memoir is sure to warm hearts and elicit knowing nods from like-minded baby boomers nostalgic for their own childhoods.”–Booklist

“With great affection and narrative skill Kevin O’Hara brings back an era that needs to be remembered–a moment common to many Irish Americans.”–Mary Pat Kelly, author of Galway Bay

“Kevin O’Hara’s memoir of being Irish and growing up in small-town America of the Fifties and Sixties captures the time, the place, and the ethnic family values with such an unerring eye that you’ll hear the bands on the Fourth of July, taste Mallow cup candies, share in the cadences of the rosary—and smell a young draftee’s fear in the horror that was the Vietnam War. This is memoir as tour de force.”—Patrick Taylor, New York Times best selling author of An Irish Country Doctor “A story of growing up Irish and American that will stir deep emotions in every reader. Read it now and enjoy the movie later!”—Thomas Fleming, winner of the Lincoln Prize for Lifetime Achievement in History; and the New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Trial of Robert E. Lee

“Kevin O’Hara crystallizes the Irish-American experience of the mid-Twentieth Century as vividly, as accurately, and as humorously as anyone has yet. So read the book. You’ll feel lucky, too.”–William Martin, New York Times bestselling author of Back Bay and The Lost Constitution

“This funny, sweet and fast-moving memoir tells the story of growing up in a large Irish family in a small Yankee town — a way of life that has almost disappeared. Kevin O’Hara deserves a prominent place in the long tradition of the Berkshire’s finest storytellers.”—Debby Applegate, Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher

Battenkill Book Club (3/5)

connie — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:05:02 +0000

Please join us on Friday, March 5, 6:30 – 8:00 pm, to discuss The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. All are welcome. Event is free.

Curiosity Forum with Bernice Mennis (3/7)

connie — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:42:03 +0000

Curiosity Forum: Author Talk with Bernice Mennis

Sunday, March 7th, 4 pm

Beacon Feed Studio, Hubbard Hall

Bernice Mennis, author of “Breaking Out of Prison: A Guide to Compassion, Consciousness, and Freedom” with speak and sign books.

For twelve years, Bernice Mennis, a resident of the Adirondacks, taught Composition and Literature in the Great Meadows and Washington Correctional Facilities as part of Skidmore College’s University Without Walls program. At the center of “Breaking Out of Prison” are papers written by students in a composition class in prison and the author’s journey toward understanding and freedom. The book is not only about those imprisoned by concrete and steel, but also about those who have placed them there and how habitual thinking and entrapped mindsets cast some people “beyond the pale” with the illusion that another’s imprisonment makes us safe. “Breaking Out of Prison” won the Adirondack Center for Writing’s Award for Memoir in 2009.

Poetry Night (2/26)

connie — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:45:25 +0000

The next Poetry Night will be held Friday, February 26th, from 7:30 – 9 pm. Bring a poem to share, or just come to listen.

My Book Picks for WAMC

connie — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:47:17 +0000

My debut on The Roundtable’s Book Picks was this morning (on WAMC). I had a blast and Joe Donahue is such a gracious host.

To listen to the clip, click here.

Here are the books I mentioned, in the order I talked about them:

Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals photographs by Christopher Payne with an essay by Oliver Sacks

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

Searching for Ichabod: His Eighteenth-Century Diary Leads Me Home by Julie Foster Van Camp

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

The Doom Machine by Mark Teague

The Home Creamery by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley

Mind’s Eye to play Valentine’s Weekend (2/13)

connie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:36:53 +0000

Songs of Love with Mind’s Eye (2/13)

connie — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:21:12 +0000

Join us Saturday, February 13, from 2 – 4 pm, for songs of love performed by Mind’s Eye. Based in Cambridge, NY and fronted by artist and singer/songwriter Stephen Alcorn, vocalists Gwendolyn Hall and Shantia Mayer, and Riccardo Barbierri on accordion, MIND’S EYE is an acoustic, folk ensemble dedicated to the performance (in italian and english) of lyrical odes to Love, Beauty and the History of Art.