Daily Archives: October 20, 2024

Book about New Hamburg’s historic buildings wins provincial award

A book that tells the stories of historic buildings in New Hamburg has won a provincial award.The five-volume book is called The Historic Buildings of New Hamburg And The People Who Lived In Them. On Wednesday night, it was awarded the Stephen A. Otto Award for Research and Documentation by the Architectural Conservancy Ontario.Before knowing they had won the award, two of the three authors — Marie Voisin and Kristen Hahn — sat down for an interview on CBC K-W’s The Morning Edition with host Craig Norris.This third author was Ernie Ritz, the last mayor of New Hamburg and the first mayor of Wilmot Township. He died in March.The following interview with Voisin and Hahn has been edited for length and clarity. Audio of the interview can be found at the bottom of the page.Craig Norris: What got you interested in chronicling all of these historical sites?Marie Voisin: It started in 2012. I used to go for walks and runs and sometimes it would be at night and I would see the lights on in houses and I would think, I wonder what that house looks like.So that led to deciding to find out which were the oldest houses and who built them. I enlisted the help of Ernie Ritz, who was our leading historian, a wonderful man, and he just passed away this year in March. But he was with us through most of this journey to chronologize the people and the buildings. Norris: Kristen, 300 pages to five volumes. That is a bit of a jump. What made it so much larger? Kristen Hahn: Well, it’s as soon as Marie gathered together this information, all of this research about the owners of these properties, and then she pulled in the archive from the New Hamburg Independent, which goes back to what, 1875?And it became clear that each of these people had stories. They had tiny little things, whether that’s a lost dog or a issue with the tavern laws, they were tiny stories to each of these lives. And so now we have this vast collection of names, of dates, of parentage and all of the stories that then come with it. And the thing just ballooned.Norris: So this must have been a, I will say, arduous, perhaps undertaking?Hahn: If you don’t enjoy it. Norris: OK, that’s true. Must have been awesome. Hahn: It was awesome.Norris: How did you collect the personal stories? I mean, where did you get your research?Hahn: Well, Marie spent many years in the archives. And so there’s a lot of the New Hamburg Independent on microfilm there. Thanks to the Township of Wilmot for holding together a fantastic historical record. Then from there, through census records, through voters lists, then you start to assemble the people who are married and oh, and also the way they died. We have a massive section in our index of just the way people died back then, which is markedly different from how we die today. Norris: How so? Hahn: A lot, Well, a lot of things that are cured by vaccines. Norris: Marie, there is your personal passion, obviously for this area, right. But talk a bit about why it’s important that we all know more about New Hamburg’s history and heritage?Voisin: We just are renters of all these buildings over years. I think that people might live for 60, 70 years in the house, but then it passes on to a new generation. And so we don’t know the people that lived 100 years ago, but they’re the ones who established the town and the buildings. So this is our way of just acknowledging them, that we’re just going through but the buildings will be there forever. Hahn: And I think that also by telling people who it was who lived in these places before, it will hopefully encourage them to take good care of the homes that they have so that they’ll last for another 100 years.Norris: Marie, tell us a bit more about Ernie Ritz and his role in this.Voisin: Ernie was my mentor, probably the first person I met in New Hamburg. He never forgot any details, he remembered everything and his mother had the same photographic memory and she lived to almost 107 so she passed on all those details to him, too.Whenever we wanted to know anything, we would just ask Ernie. He was remarkable and such a kind, lovely man.Hahn: Very generous with what he knew.Norris: Kristen, do you have any favourite revelations in any of these? Hahn: We dug up some interesting material on the first mayor of New Hamburg.Frequently when New Hamburg is discussed, we bring up Nithy … Nithy is an alligator that was found allegedly in the Nith River in 1953. Sort of like Nessie. It was the chief of police, George Thomas, who said that he found these tracks along the banks of the Nith River. And it became this story that just spread like wildfire. It even got as far as Queensland in Australia that they picked up the story and there was Medicine Hat, Alta., there was some kind of trash talking back and forth about Ogopogo and Nithy. But at the heart, at the centre of the story, George Thomas invited this guy named Tuffy Truesdale to come to New Hamburg. And Tuffy was a wrestler. He was a professional wrestler until his ignominious defeat at the hands of a luchador named El Santo.And then he decided to get into animal wrestling. So he was an alligator wrestler with an eight-foot alligator named Rodney. And the thinking was that he’d set up camp on the banks of the Nith and the sounds that his alligators would make would lure Nithy out of the water and he’d wrestle Nithi to the ground and that would be that. But it was, by all accounts, a quiet night … According to his wife, he kept Rodney in a tank of water under the bed. And because he was, like, just a little bit afraid of this thing, anytime the alligator would slosh, he’d wake up in a panic. After he received 40 stitches from a sort of a bad tussle with Rodney, he moved on to the questionably safer pursuit of bear wrestling.Norris: You’ve been nominated for the Stephen A. Otto Award. What would that mean to you if you won it?Voisin: We weren’t writing these books for a nomination or an award. We’re just gonna be happy if we sell 379 books. Norris: Why 379? Is that the break even point on the Voisin: That’s how many houses that were in the study.It would be quite an honour. And I wish Ernie were here to be here for this.We had a good time during COVID because we just got up everyday and worked for eight to nine hours at our desk. It was wonderful. Norris: Kristen, to tell us where can we get these books? Hahn: Well, we’re just finalizing the layout of it. So it should be going to print later on this year. At which point it will be available through independent bookstores and we’ll do some online orders as well. LISTEN | Book that focuses on heritage buildings in New Hamburg up for provincial award:The Morning Edition – K-W8:20Book that focuses on heritage buildings in New Hamburg up for provincial awardThree New-Hamburg-based historians joined forces to create a vast, five-volume chronicle of heritage buildings in Wilmot Township. Two of the authors, Marie Voisin and Kristen Hahn, talk about what went into the 13-year long project, which is up for a provincial heritage award.

Manorama Hortus: Book fair begins on 26, art exhibition on 28

Kozhikode: Hortus, the art, culture, and literature festival organised by Malayala Manorama, is all set to spark a fresh wave of creativity in Kozhikode, India’s first UNESCO ‘City of Literature’.

The festival, scheduled to take place on Kozhikode Beach from October 31 to November 3, will be inaugurated by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at 4 pm.

The event will host an array of discussions, with debate sessions kicking off on November 1. Over the course of three days, 400 nationally and internationally renowned writers and artists will engage in 130 sessions.

Writer M Mukundan will inaugurate Pusthakashala, a book fair to be organised in conjunction with Hortus, on October 26. Writer Lijeesh Kumar will receive the first book, and Joy Alukkas, Managing Director of the Joy Alukkas Group, will preside over the event. The event promises to be one of the largest book festivals in the country.

AksharaprayanamThe Aksharaprayanam (journey of alphabets), an exhibition that chronicles the evolution of Malayala Manorama from its founding in 1888 to 2024 through pictures and words, will also be held as part of Hortus. A children’s pavilion featuring a cooking studio offering Korean delicacies, along with kite-making, kite-flying, and quiz competitions will also be launched alongside.

The Vilambara Sandhya (proclamation evening) will begin on October 26, during which over 60 new books will be launched. This event will also showcase a variety of cultural performances, adding to the festive spirit.

Art exhibition by Kochi BiennaleThe Kochi Biennale Foundation, in collaboration with Meitra Hospital, will also hold an art exhibition. Bose Krishnamachari will lead the exhibition, which Minister P A Muhammed Riyas will inaugurate at 12 noon on October 28.

Jayant Mammen Mathew, Executive Editor of Malayala Manorama, will preside over the event. Nihaj G Mohammed, CEO of Meitra Hospital, will address the event. Artists P S Jalaja and S N Sujith will curate the exhibition.

Tohan Wants to Keep People in Contact with Paper Books; Distributor Catering to Japan’s Small Local Stores

The Yomiuri ShimbunNohohon Books & Coffee in Hokuto, Yamanashi Prefecture
By Chihiro Kosugi and Takafumi Masaki / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers
20:00 JST, October 20, 2024
The efforts of major book wholesaler and distributor Tohan Corp. to support the opening of small bookstores came from a sense of urgency to address the decline in the number of bookstores in cities, which led to the loss of opportunities for people to come into contact with paper books.
In March, the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry set up a project team to promote bookstores under the direct supervision of the head of the ministry, which helped to raise people’s interest in bookstores.
Nohohon Books & Coffee, which opened in 2022 in Hokuto, Yamanashi Prefecture, at the foot of the Yatsugatake mountain range, is a cozy bookstore with a wood-toned interior.
In the about 100-square-meter store, 3,000 books are arranged by themes such as “create” and “think.”
Those books were selected by the store’s owner, Junpei Watanabe, 47, who is also a copywriter.
The bookstore is located in a vacation home area and is popular with young families who have moved there. Visitors also can have coffee at the store. “I want to provide a space where people can drop in casually,” Watanabe said.
Inspired by Watanabe’s bookstore, Tohan started the project called “Honyal.”
A book wholesaler and distributor connects bookstores and publishers by delivering publications, including paperback books and magazines, to bookstores.
The Honyal initiative reduces transportation costs by removing magazines from shipments, making it possible for small bookstores with monthly transactions of ¥300,000 to ¥1 million to do business with Tohan.
By doing business with Tohan, which handles a wide range of publications, such small bookstores can stock a variety of books.
“We want to lower the hurdles for opening bookstores, not just [focus on] how to keep current bookstores from going out of business,” Tohan Chief Executive Officer Toshitaka Kondo, 63, said.
After The Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Tohan’s initiative in July, the company received around 30 inquiries, including one from a person who wanted to open a bookstore in a depopulated area.
In addition to the downturn in the publishing industry, the soaring costs of labor and fuel are making transportation by truck more expensive, making it difficult for a book wholesaler and distributor to stay in business.
Tohan recorded a current profit of ¥1.8 billion in the consolidated financial results for the entire group in fiscal 2023. Although the company secured a profit through its real estate business and other operations, its book wholesale and distribution business posted a loss of ¥1.3 billion.
Nevertheless, Tohan decided to start the new project because the company believed that if it did not increase the number of places where customers could come into contact with paper books, people would become less interested in them. This would shake the foundation of the company’s business, it said.
According to a document titled “Publication sales volumes in 2023,” released by Nippon Shuppan Hanbai Inc., 20.5% of domestic sales of publications are through online bookstores. Even now, more than half of readers still buy books in bookstores, as the percentage of sales through bookstores is 58.2%.
The decline in the number of bookstores in towns deprives people of the opportunity to come into contact with books, leading to a vicious cycle of sluggish book sales.
According to the Japan Publishing Organization for Information Infrastructure Development, there were 10,918 bookstores nationwide in fiscal 2023, having declined by 30% over the preceding decade.
In the same period, the estimated sales value of paperbacks, which used to be the main product of bookstores in towns, fell by more than 40% from ¥129.3 billion to ¥74.1 billion, according to a survey by the Research Institute for Publications.
In a 2023 survey by the Cultural Affairs Agency, more than 60% of respondents said they had not read a book in a month.
After the ministry set up the project team to promote bookstores in March, there has been a growing recognition that bookstores are cultural hubs in local communities.
After interviewing people involved in the book industry, the ministry on Oct. 4 compiled a list of issues to be addressed to revitalize bookstores, including the book distribution system and how libraries purchase books.
The ministry has also published a guide for booksellers on how to use the support measures.
The guide presents measures that bookstores can use from the support projects and subsidy systems that are being implemented for small and medium-sized enterprises and retailers. The ministry also encourages new bookstores to enter the market.
“With the emergence of online bookstores that sell a wide range of books, readers’ attitudes [about bookstores] have changed, and small bookstores with a distinctive ‘select shop’ feel are now attracting attention. I think it will be important to create bookstores in a variety of forms,” said Sophia University Prof. Kyoko Shibano, who specializes in media studies.
The government and the private sectors are both being asked how they can nurture small bookstores that conduct a face-to-face business.
Stores take action
Bookstores are taking the initiative to promote their paperbacks.
This autumn, a group of 12 bookstores, including Tottori Prefecture-based Imaibooks and Books Ogaki Co., which has stores in Kyoto Prefecture and elsewhere, launched the BUN-1 Grand Prix, an event to select the bestselling paperback novel among general readers.
The event featured a section of nominated books and offered free booklets with staff recommendations, so that participants could experience the appeal of paperback novels in a more casual way.
“By creating a hit paperback from a bookstore, I hope it will provide an opportunity for people to discover new books and authors,” said Ogaki Bookstore Azabudai Hills manager Yoshitaka Akai, who was involved in the project.
Leading bookstore chain Maruzen Junkudo Bookstores Co. held its second “Nonfiction award chosen by booksellers,” in which booksellers nationwide vote for the best work. Last year’s winner Kanako Nishi’s “Kumo o Sagasu” (Looking for spiders) is a memoir of the author’s experience of cancer treatment abroad that has sold 290,000 copies.

La Rue: Fall book highlights include ‘Author’s Guide to Murder,’ ‘Connie’

Diane LaRue, special to The Citizen
Fall is a big season for publishers, a time when so many great books can be found in bookstores. This year is no exception, and I have three terrific books, something for all types of readers.The first book is a mystery written by Team W, as they are known — good friends Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White — titled “An Author’s Guide To Murder.” The authors met at a book conference, became friends, and decided to write a book together.In this fifth collaboration, three American authors are at a Scottish castle owned by a very famous and successful writer. They are supposed to be there for a writing conference with the famous writer, but they each have other reasons to be there.When the writer ends up murdered, the women become suspects in the killing. The book alternates between the police interrogation of the women and the lead-up to the murder. The police interviews are hilarious as we get to know each of the authors.

People are also reading…

Kat writes erotica and plays her part with innuendo and outrageous flirtatious behavior. Cassie is a mom of six who writes cozy mysteries and has a Mary Poppins bag filled with every item anyone would ever need. Emma writes historical fiction and is what would be called a history buff, always ready with a quick historical fact whether anyone wants to hear it or not.Readers of Team W’s novels will get immense enjoyment as the authors have played around with their own personalities and created characters that mix-and-match their own writing style and lives. I found myself laughing out loud several times.Although it is humorous, there is a serious undertone as we learn why the women have come together to confront the famous writer. It is billed as “Murder, She Wrote” meets Agatha Christie, an accurate assessment. I highly recommend.Lynda Cohen Loigman’s new novel “The Love Elixir of August Stern” tells the story of Augusta Stern, an 80-year-old pharmacist who has just (unwillingly) retired to a Florida community her niece found for her.On her first day there, she discovers that Irving Rivkin, who worked as delivery boy in her father’s pharmacy back in the 1920s, also lives in the same retirement community. Irvin hurt her deeply many years ago and Augusta never got over it.This is also a story told in two different timelines — the 1920s and 1997. Frequently in two-different-timeline novels, one story is more interesting, but Cohen had me equally engaged in both stories.Augusta is a fabulous character; she can be difficult and a tough nut to crack. Although she initially keeps to herself, she eventually makes friends. What she doesn’t understand is why Irvin is pursuing her romantically after he broke her heart years ago with no explanation.It’s refreshing to see more older female characters in recent novels, and Augusta is one of the more intriguing and well-drawn ones. We get the opportunity to see how she became the person she was, and her close attachment to her great aunt Esther, another intriguing older female character. The setting of 1920s Brooklyn is so vividly created, I could picture Augusta’s father’s pharmacy clearly. I also highly recommend “The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern.”

There are many memoirs out this fall, and Connie Chung’s “Connie” is one of the more interesting ones. Chung, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, became one of the most prominent broadcast journalists in the 1970s.She was one of the few female television reporters covering the Nixon White House during the tumultuous Watergate years. Chung has to battle not only sexism but also anti-Asian attitudes during her tenure. She believed the best way to do that was to become one of “boys” — she could curse like a sailor, and she gave as good as she got.Chung worked incredibly hard, and would take any opportunity to show that she was a team player. At one point she anchored a pre-“Today Show” news hour, reported on stories for the “Nightly News,” then did live news cutaways at 9 and 10 p.m. She worked nearly around the clock.

Diane LaRue

She is one of the few people to work on-air for all three broadcast networks — she co-anchored the “CBS Evening News” with Dan Rather (who undermined her), co-anchored “20/20″ on ABC and was an anchor on the local Los Angeles CBS station for years.If you know of Chung’s career, you’ll want to read “Connie,” and if you don’t know her, you’ll want to read what it was like to be a woman in the news business at this time. It’s a fascinating read.If you readBOOK: “The Author’s Guide To Murder” By Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig & Karen White GRADE: A PUBLISHER: William Morrow COST: Hardcover, $30 LENGTH: 416 pages BOOK: “The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern” by Lynda Cohen Loigman GRADE: A PUBLISHER: St. Martin’s Press COST: Hardcover, $29 LENGTH: 312 pages BOOK: “Connie” by Connie Chung GRADE: A PUBLISHER: Grand Central COST: Hardcover, $32.50 LENGTH: 323 pages
Diane LaRue is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and blogs about books at http://bookchickdi.blogspot.com. She is president of the Friends of Webster Library and manages the Book Cellar, a nonprofit used bookstore that benefits branch libraries of the New York Public Library in New York City.

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Book review: Death Rites by Sarah Ward

Death Rites by Sarah Ward is published by Canelo Crime
Jon Gower
If the measure of success of a crime novel is the speed with which you turn its pages then the latest work by Lampeter-based writer Sarah Ward requires one of those rubber thumb-thimbles that bank tellers use for counting notes. It’s a compelling tale and one which takes you a long way from her home in Ceredigion.
Death Rites is set in a normally quiet college town in New England, where a newly hired archaeologist, Carla James is settling into her first term of teaching, But hardly has she managed to sit down in her chair before she is whisked away to a crime scene, where some oddities about the killing mean the police reluctantly need to call in some expert help.

Serial killer
The cops in question include a surly one straight out of central casting, who doesn’t seem all that keen to help, as seems to be true of so many of the townsfolk especially when it becomes evident that a serial killer is on the prowl.
The college authorities don’t want the adverse publicity while the police don’t want the work, not if it keeps them out of the bar. Then there’s the powerful family whose name is found all over the place, from college benefactors to shopping mall developers, who seem to somehow own the place. It’s a situation with a lot of suspects too, which all helps keeping the reader guessing or being led down dead ends, if you pardon the pun.
Tight-lipped silence
In the face of so much tight-lipped silence, Carla is forced to go solo, ferreting around for clues which seem to connect the ritualistic symbols and paraphernalia found near each victim with very old superstitions about effective ways to ward off witches.
In so doing she puts her own life in danger, even as she begins to discern a pattern emerging, which suggests that the killer is building to his own violent crescendo of crime, thus giving her much less time to get to the bloody heart of the matter. It certainly doesn’t help that Carla’s been given a room in college vacated by her predecessor who seemed to have walked into the river with her pockets weighted down with pieces of quartz, and the suggestion that she, too is a victim of the shadowy assassin. The book gives us regular glimpses into the killer’s mind as he recollects his dark actions and we can feel his compelliing need to kill again.

Fogs of the past
It’s a neat twist to have a crime mystery with an archaeologist hero, as it takes us away from the modern plot to the suspicious fogs of the past, a feature of the writing of the likes of James Lee Burke, who’ll often connect modern New Orleans or Montana with the dark days of the American Civil War. Like Burke, Ward is very good at deftly conjuring up place, in this case the new country in which Carla James now finds herself:
She loved the thought of New England brought alive in the books by Edith Wharton and John Updikea and wanted to embrace the small towns that retained their settler feel, the changeable seasons each with their own dynamic and the academic excellence offered by Jericho College.
As the book’s strapline has it ‘It takes an expert in death to catch a killer’ and there’s certainly a lot of learned expertise on display in this confident, solidly constructed page-turner. It’s evident that Carla has what it takes to act as the bedrock of her own series, digging into the past to understand the present, and, one suspects, should that series come into being, looking for love.
Lone wolf
Because Carla is a lone operator not out of choice but because she had lost her partner. In that sense she is an expert in death two times over, which helps explain her ready empathy with the victims’ families and her ability to read the runes and signals that take her ever closer to the heart of the dark web in which her dastardly, calculating killer sits, plotting his next murderous move, counting down his victims.
Death Rites by Sarah Ward is published by Canelo Crime. It is available from all good bookshops.

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