For the next week I expect to be sprawled out in my raspberry-colored velvet club chair with my feet on the ottoman reading some books from my towering “to-be-read” pile. Therefore, I won’t be posting on the blog.

Here, instead, is a compilation of book-related ways for readers of Book by Book to spend the week.

•Monday, Feb. 2 : Since this is Groundhog Day, I’d suggest checking out About.com which lists 10 books for children about Groundhog day. The first one is “Gretchen Groundhog, It’s Your Day!” by Abby Levine. And the others look very nice as well.

•Tuesday, Feb. 3: How about a NYC museum visit? Go to your community library and check out a Museum Pass. This is a very economical way to see what is happening at the New York Botanical Garden, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Historical Society, the Museum of Natural History, the Guggenheim Museum, or the Museum of Television and Radio — just to name some available from the Valley Cottage Library. Passes available vary from library to library, but most libraries have some assortment of museum passes that community members can borrow. Check with your home library where you live. And if you don’t have a library card go get one!

• Wednesday, Feb. 4: At 7 p.m. Why not attend the Westchester Poetry SLAM and Open Mic! at White Plains Public Library featuring poet “Eco-Billy” Christian Drake on tour from Oakland, Calif. Besides hearing him you can hear your own words. Bring two of your own original poems of up to 3 minutes each (sign-up at 6:30 p.m.). The library is at 100 Martine Avenue.

•Thursday, Feb. 5: From 7 to 8:45 p.m. Attend the Mahopac Writers Workshop at the Mahopac Public Library, 668 Route 6. This is described as a self-managed/peer support writing workshop which includes discussions of general writing issues. No age limit. No genre limits. For registration information, contact Andy Campbell at the library, 845-628-2009.

•Friday, Feb. 6: It’s Fridays with Franklin at The Voracious Reader in Larchmont. Head to this children’s specialty bookstore and spend some time reading to the store’s Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Franklin. The pooch, it seems, enjoys being read to (and any other attention as well). The store is at 1997 Larchmont Avenue and is open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

•Saturday, Feb. 7:

1- 3 p.m. Meet State Assemblywoman Sandra Galef, D-Ossining, in the Kent Public Library to talk about issues and express local concerns. The library is at 17 Sybil’s Crossing in Kent Lakes.

2 p.m. Be My Valentine Kids Party at Borders Books and Music in Mt. Kisco, 162 E. Main Street. Bring the whole family to celebrate a love for books and reading with a storytime, followed by games and activities for kids of all ages.

•Sunday, February 8: Read some good books and share your favorites with friends. I have been reading “The Middle Place” by Kelly Corrigan and am finding it to be a wonderful memoir of a woman who lives in suburban community and tells the story of motherhood, marriage and dealing with cancer in a poignant and very real way. It is not sappy, but I have cried a bit. And laughed too. When I went to buy the book at Borders in Mt. Kisco the man at the check-out commented: “This must be some book. People keep depleting our stock.” Well, that must be the power of Oprah Winfrey who pushed it in her magazine. And  there’s  Corrigan talking in a You Tube video as well. But honestly, I heard about from my editor. The power of word-of-mouth suggestions.

Author and conservationist Frances F. Dunwell will speak on Sunday, Feb. 8, at 2:00 p.m. at the Desmond-Fish Library in Garrison.

Drawing on the material in her recently published book, “The Hudson: America’s River,” (Columbia University Press, 2008) Dunwell will present a one-hour slide show and discussion.

Her presentation, explains the library, will bring to life the stories of the visionary people who, inspired by their deep relationship with the river, impact American history even today. Using images of Hudson River School paintings, maps, and period engravings, she captures the spirit of the river through the eyes of its many admirers. Her talk recounts how the Hudson River powered the growth of the country’s greatest industrial and financial empire and also produced leading American artists, writers, engineers and environmentalists. She makes the case for conserving the Hudson as a source of creative inspiration and as a crucial link in the web of life that supports the human and natural community.

Copies of “The Hudson: America’s River” will be available for purchase. All royalties from the sale of this book are donated to the Natural Heritage Trust for conservation of the river.

The library is at the intersection of Route 403 and Route 9D in the hamlet of Garrison.

Readings at Riverspace in Nyack is returning on Sunday, Feb. 1 at 4 pm in the cafe and highlighting its poetry friends from across the Hudson River in Sleepy Hollow.

Poets Lyrae Van-Clief Stefanon and David Tucker, both award winners, will read from their chapbooks. The afternoon is billed as “Poetry Chapbooks: An Afternoon with Poets from the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center.”

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon collaborated with fellow poet Elizabeth Alexander on Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, their chapbook about “Reclining Nude “a collage by renowed African American artist Romare Bearden. Black Swan, Stefanon’s first fulllength collection, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Alexander, you recall, read an original poem at President Barak Obama’s inauguration.

David Tucker, author of Days When Nothing Happens, is also a career journalist. He won the Bakeless Prize for Poetry for Late for Work, described by Philip Levine a as “a series of verbal triumphs.”

This event is made possible, in part, with funds from the Community Arts Grants program of the Arts Council of Rockland, the Decentralization Program of the New York State Council on the Arts and a generous grant secured by Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee.

Tickets are free, but donations accepted.  Riverspace is at 119 Main Street, Nyack. Information: call  845-348-1800. For more information on the Hudson Valley Writers Center go to its Web site.

Sad news came this afternoon. Noted writer and American literary icon, John Updike has died at age 76 from lung cancer.

Though he did not live in our New York suburbs, Updike seemed like he really knew us and our lives stuck here somewhere between city and country.

A couple of calls to active readers generated comments on Updike and his lasting impact on our literary scene.

Scarsdale Public Library’s Nancy Zachary recalled first reading about his character Henry Bech when she was in college and today she felt instantly sad. Within an hour of his passing being posted on the Web, she said one patron had mentioned it to her and someone else called on the telephone.

We both said we were surprised that his was 76 and not older.

Updike has written more than 50 books, including novels, short stories, literary criticism and essays. His last book is a short story collection “My Father’s Tears” and is due out this June from Alfred A. Knopf.

A reference librarian who is well-known in Scarsdale for running the library’s popular book club, Zachary said she was just planning how to put together a display of his many books from the Rabbit series to “Witches of Eastwick.

“But once I do that, they every book will be taken out,” she said. Zachary said the book group has read Updike and that they are always popular choices. Recently the group read “The Terrorist” about his own view of what had taken place during the 9/11 attacks.

“He is a favorite of our book groups here,” said Zachary who has run the very popular group for years. “When it is a name like his, even if you read the book before you are willing to read him again,” she said.

“As a literary figure, he just definitely is a part of American contemporary fiction,” she adds.

Read an obituary of him at LoHud.com

Christine Perigen, founder of the Women’s Book Club of Westchester County said she was”really sad to see such a literary talent go.”

Her group participants aren’t such fans of Updike, she said, but she appreciates his writing.

“He was controversial and had an insane and uncanny ability to understand how a woman feels and what she experiences (within Witches of Eastwick). He also dared to break the norm in women’s roles in our traditional society – something our book club stands for.”

The Womens Book Club, she continued “established ourselves as strong-willed, opinionated and open-minded women who have bonded together over our love of books and our determination to create close and true friendships with one another.”

James Bradley, whose father helped raised the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima, will be a guest speaker this Monday at the Ossining Public Library.

Bradley wrote, “Flyboys” and “Flag of our Fathers”, which Steven Spielberg made into a movie. He says his “career as an author began with the search for my father’s silent past.”

Bradley, says the Ossining Public Library, specializes in historical nonfiction chronicling the Pacific theater of World War II and visited Hiroshima with his family in 1998 stopping where the flag was placed. James is the fourth child of flag raiser John “Doc” Bradley. Raised in Wisconsin, Bradley studied at the University of Notre Dame, Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan and graduated with a degree in East Asian History from the University of Wisconsin. He has traveled extensively, living and working in more than 40 countries.

He recently established a foundation supporting American and Japanese student exchange programs which offer young people the chance to experience each other’s culture.

Books will be available for sale at the Ossining library and he will sign copies for those who want this personalization.

For more information on the program, contact the Ossining Public Library, 53 Croton Ave at 914-941-2416 ext. 327 or 326.

Poet Elizabeth Alexander, a lower Hudson Valley favorite, topped off the sparkling and emotional address of President Barak Obama this afternoon with glorious words of her own. She was asked to write a poem for the inauguration of our 44th president and graced the podium minutes after Obama.

Alexander spoke of generations of Americans some who had picked cotton and lettuce and others who had laid the nation’s train tracks and government buildings. She talked of the tradition of loving thy neighbor and treating people as you would want to be treated.

But the words that hung in my mind on first listen came at the end of her poem:

“What if the mightiest word is love?”

Yes, what if — and what if the following word is respect.
Alexander has published her work with Slapering Hol Press, an imprint of the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center in Sleepy Hollow. They are quite proud that she is being highlighting today. (Photo above of Alexander from the HVWC.)

She is only the fourth poet in history to speak at an inaugural event. Robert Frost read for President John F. Kennedy, and Maya Angelou and Miller Williams read at President Bill Clinton’s inaugurations. In addition to being a poet, she is an essayist, playwright, and teacher. She is the author of four books of poems, The Venus Hottentot, Body of Life, Antebellum Dream Book, and American Sublime, one of three finalists for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.

Last year, Slapering Hol Press published Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, by Elizabeth Alexander and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (edited by Margo Stever and Suzanne Cleary) as the first in its new Sleepy Hollow Chapbook Series. Alexander and Van Clief-Stefanon read from their work and answered audience questions at the Writers’ Center just a few weeks ago on December 12.

For a statement by Elizabeth Alexander about her selection as inaugural
poet, go to her Web site. For more information about Poems in Conversation and a Conversation,
go to the writers center.

And, here’s an update on the poem since I posted the top half of this post:

Graywolf Press will release a copy of Praise Song for the Day on Feb. 6 in a 32-page book.  Associated Press writer Hillel Itale described the poem as a “14, unrhymed three-line stanzas, and a one-line coda.”

With his newest novel “The Women” set to come out Feb. 10, famed novelist T.Coraghessan Boyle is taking on a topic with some clear local interest — the famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

In his new book (front jacket show to the left), he focuses on Wright’s romances with three women that he loved and who might have inspired his work. Possibly, even the homes in Pleasantville on Usonia Road or the magnificent new cantilevered windowed home on an island in Lake Mahopac which was built based on plans Wright created for this exact Putnam County location.

To read more about the book from Viking Penguin, check out the publisher’s site for  The Women. And, thanks to BookPageXTRA for passing along the information in its newsletter

Here is a photo of the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home in Mahopac shot July 31, 2007 by The Journal News’ photographer Joe Larese.

And it should go without mention, as well that Boyle was born in Peekskill in 1984. In previous interviews he has talked about growing up in this northern Westchester city and how his first job was working in a local clothing store, a job he was clearly not well suited to keep.

A Palisades-based History Publishing Company announces a new publication, “Homeland Insecurity: How Washington Politicians Have Made America Less Safe.” They say they will have lots of copies available to sell during this political transition and it is quite an appropriate book to read this week.

Don Bracken of Palisades, who runs History Publishing, notes in his email to us that the book offers hope for change in America.

“With hopes as high as a cloudless sky, millions of Americans will pour through the gates of Washington D.C. to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States and to embrace the change that the president-elect will bring to America,” reads the publicity material. The publisher  urges the public and newly-elected and appointed officials to read up on some current history to not make similar mistakes.

“Homeland Insecurity” is written by Terry Turchie and Dr. Kathleen Puckett, two former FBI officials. Turchie, a former Deputy Assistant Director of the Counter-terrorism Division of the FBI, was also Senior Counter-Intelligence Officer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He was with the FBI Unit Director who led the final pursuit of Ted Kaczynski, the unabomber, and was an Assistant Deputy Director. Puckett worked for the FBI for 23 years and was a founder of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Program. She is now at University of California at San Francico. They also co-authored “Hunting the American Terrorist,” an account of the pursuit of Ted Kaczynski, which is also from History Publishing.

Read more about History Publishing and the authors at their own Web site.

The $24.95 book is available at Barnes and Noble  and other book retailers, including online at History Publishing’s Web site.

That’s the word today from the National Endowment for the Arts, which released a study of American readers today. The tip came from one of my favorite book-ish blogs, GalleyCat which posted the news release online and teased a few of the more impressive details.

The NEA begins its discussion on an ecouraging note: “For the first time in more than 25 years, American adults are reading more literature,” the first line reads.

The report is based on results from the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) and shows that those who are readers are also volunteers in their communities, attend arts and sports events and even exercise more than those who are non-readers.

Here are some key findings from the report:

Literary reading increases

• For the first time in the history of the survey – conducted five times since 1982 – the overall rate at which adults read literature (novels and short stories, plays, or poems) rose by seven percent.


• The absolute number of literary readers has grown significantly. There were 16.6 million more adult readers of literature in 2008. The growth in new readers reflects higher adult reading rates combined with overall population growth.


• The 2008 increases followed significant declines in reading rates for the two most recent ten-year survey periods (1982-1992 and 1992-2002).

So from my point of view, visit community libraries and local bookstores often and partake in their literary treasures.   And share with us new discoveries from each.

Melvin Burruss, president of the African American Men of Westchester , will be the host this year of the 11th Annual African American Literary Tea, sponsored by the Westchester Library System. He says is very honored to promote reading and libraries on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, just a day before the inauguration of President Barak Obama.

The Literary Tea to be held at Abigail Kirsch’s Tappan Hill in Tarrytown, kicks off a month-long celebration of African American history, literature and culture throughout the county’s 38 public libraries. It is co-sponsored by the Westchester County Chapter of The Links, Inc.