New from Suffolk: a history of screwpile lighthouses
New from Suffolk history buffs: “Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses” by Larry Saint, Karla Smith, Phyllis Speidell and John Sheally II of Suffolk River Heritage, a nonprofit.
The group tells the story of cottage-style “screwpile” lighthouses — so named for their position atop piles screwed into sandy or muddy terrain — in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.
The book, which runs more than 200 pages, draws on plans and photos in archives; stories from lightkeepers’ logs and journals; interviews with people who still have a connection to the lights; and original art and photography. Speidell and Sheally are former Virginian-Pilot staff members.
Heads up: Book festival starts Nov. 7 at the Simon Family JCC in Virginia Beach. Authors will include Matt Goldman, Avi Jorisch, John Schwartz, Jane Isay, Jenna Blum, Sally Kohn. More details next week. Also: www.jewishva.org/ book-fest.
“America the Grateful: Where Thanksgiving Really Began,” a book for young readers about the first Thanksgiving at Berkeley Plantation. Written in verse by Norfolk’s Lisa Suhay (a VirginianPilot op-ed contributor) with striking illustrations by Savyra Meyer-Lippold of Cape Town, South Africa. Stephen Adkins, chief of the Chickahominy tribe, wrote the introduction. (CreateSpace, 32 pp.) Suhay will have several events, including:
Saturday, Suffolk: 10 a.m. to noon, Edward Jones Financial, 5501 Bennetts Pasture Road.
Sunday, Charles City, Virginia Thanksgiving Festival (fee): noon to 4 p.m., Berkeley Plantation, 12602 Harrison Landing Road.
Nov. 9, Norfolk: 1-3 p.m., with people who are in the illustrations, Slover Library, 235 E. Plume St.
Nov. 10, Norfolk: 3-4 p.m., Prince Books, 109 E. Main St.
Details: www.thanksgivingva.com or 301-3254085.
More oppression of speech: Egyptian police last week arrested the author of a book about Egypt’s economy on charges of publishing false news, security sources and the author’s wife said. Abdul Khalik Farouk’s detention came days after local media reported that draft copies of his book, “Is Egypt Really a Poor Country?,” which includes criticism of the government’s economic policies, were seized by authorities from a publisher. (Reuters)
Kwame Alexander, alum of Chesapeake’s Great Bridge High, has launched a kids’ literacy campaign with Follett, the bookstore chain, called All Books for All Kids.
He’s also got a new book, “Swing,” with Mary Rand Hess, about young kids struggling for hope, courage and love, and finding their own voice. It’s a New York Times best-seller. (Publishers Weekly)
Into film: “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.” Judy Blume’s August note on Twitter — that she thought it might be time for her most famous book to see film — coincided with director Kelly Fremon Craig’s rereading of the book, and her team’s outreach to Blume.
Gracie Films and Fremon Craig (“The Edge of Seventeen”) have the film rights. (Deadline)
New and recent
From Stephen King, “Elevation.” This should be interesting: a tale of a town (Castle Rock, of course) riven by political differences, a town brought together, perhaps, by one very sick man who comes to understand the nature and impact of biases.
For Booklist, Donna Seaman writes, “Written in masterly King’s signature translucent style and set in one of his trademark locales, this uncharacteristically glimmering fairy tale calls unabashedly for us to rise above our differences.” (Scribner, 160 pp.)
“Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary” by Louis Hyman (Viking, 400 pp.). A “disquieting history of worker dispensability” from a Cornell economic history professor who tries to find reason for optimism in the “gig economy”; his study “will still leave salaried employees looking nervously over their shoulders.”
He traces the growth of the temp movement and lays out ideas for how the temp system can “work for us.” (Publishers Weekly)
“All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir” by Nicole Chung ( Catapult, 240 pp.). Chung grew up in a white family in smalltown Oregon, unable to fit in, “the only Korean most of my friends and family knew, the only Korean I knew.”
Here she recounts her experiences, including her first encounters with racism; her love for her adoptive parents even as she idealized and searched for her birth family; and her growing understanding of families’ limits and the nature of identity.
“She has many thoughts about adoption, but this is also an emotional and level-headed book about the rewards of questioning family expectations in order to come to terms with the complicated truth,” says a bookseller in Shelf Awareness. —Erica J. Smith books@dailypress.com