Weekend Spotlight: One New, One a Little Less So

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I’m shining the metaphorical bookshop spotlight today on one new book and one from 2008. Both this week are nonfiction.

The cover tells the story,
as you discover when reading the book.

The new book comes from a Northport author, Jennifer Sager, and tells the story of her older sister, Stephanie, born with Down syndrome and not expected to live more than two years. Steph’s parents, however, could not bring themselves to heed the doctor’s advice to institutionalize their first-born daughter (and “try again”) and instead kept her at home and had two more girls. Naturally, accommodations had to be made for the eldest. Yet this is basically the story of a happy family, with parents and sisters responding to and interacting with their slowest member with love and humor.

Of course, not all is smooth sailing. The parents’ eventual divorce is probably the rudest shock (and I guess that’s a partial spoiler, isn’t it?), but it isn’t the end of the story or even crisis precipitating tragedy. Life goes on for all of them.

One of Steph’s recurrent frustrations is her feeling that, because she is oldest, she should do everything first: go to school, have a boyfriend, get a job. Her mother feels sadness through the years over the many things Steph will never be able to do. But she does so much! I’ll leave you to discover all that by reading the book, which I predict will hold your interest, as it did mine, to the last page. Although Jennifer Sager includes in her sister’s story many details about the law and various organizations and groups involved with Americans with disabilities, these facts do not stand awkwardly apart from the narrative but are smoothly woven into it. 

I usually have from three to five books going at once, depending on whether I’m at work or at home, what room I’m in at home, or what time of day it is, but when I started Steph’s Story all the others had to wait. And I'm glad to announce that Jenny will give a book talk for me in August, so read the book now and come meet her then!

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Traditional Boats of Ireland: History, Folklore and Construction is a dream book, whether or not you're Irish. 

Published in Cork 18 years ago, the volume was years in the making, and it shows. How often have you seen a book with four introductions, each written by a different person? We are introduced, in turn, to “Irish Vernacular Boats”; “Irish Fisheries”; “The Great Spring Mackerel Fishery”; and finally “Boats, Boatmen and the Oral Tradition,” these introductions followed by sections on different regions of the island nation, the entirety illustrated with photographs, plans, drawings of details, and maps. Place names are given in both Irish and English, as is only proper. To turn the pages is enough to fall in love.

See what I mean? 

Steph's Story, paper, 464pp, retails for $29.95.

Traditional Boats of Ireland, hardcover with dust jacket, 658pp with dust jacket and index, is priced at $75.