Among the outraged voices protesting Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine: bookish types, including PEN International and the American Booksellers Association. The ABA promised “to amplify Ukrainian authors and books; offer support directly to Ukrainian booksellers; and promote organizations working to resist, inform, and offer aid.” The Frankfurt Book Fair and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair have cut ties to Russian state-sponsored publishers.
Particularly interesting is the opposition in Russia, where dissenting publicly can be fatal, and in former Soviet republics. From one letter, signed by several hundred people (translated):
“We, Russian book publishers, booksellers, editors, translators, critics, illustrators, designers, typesetters, proofreaders, printers, librarians, and booksellers, protest against the war unleashed by the Russian authorities in Ukraine. The war must cease immediately, and the initiators and participants of the military aggression must be stripped of their ranks and titles and brought to justice.
“Books are one of the main forms of preserving and transmitting human experience. And all this experience accumulated over the centuries teaches us: war is a crime, and the value of human life is unconditional.”
In Georgia — the former Soviet republic attacked by Russia in 2008 — the Publishers and Booksellers Association expressed its “unconditional support for the fight of the Ukrainian people against Putin’s Russia.” (At the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair, the furious Georgians — their booth across from Russia’s — took books off the Russian stand, ripped out pages, and “bombed” the Russians with paper airplanes made from their own books.) (Shelf Awareness, Publishers Weekly)
Recommended: “The Gates of Europe,” Serhii Plokhy (2015). A history of Ukraine across centuries, empires, independence struggles. (NYT)
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Visiting: Oge Mora, children’s author and collage artist, March 12, Virginia Beach Central Library. Her picture book “Thank You, Omu!” was a 2019 Caldecott winner. Collage workshop (10:30 a.m.; few slots left). At 2 p.m., talk, Q&A and signing. Free, but register: workshop, tinyurl.com/VBcollage; talk, tinyurl.com/VBtalk. 4100 Virginia Beach Blvd., 757-385-0150.
Doris Kearns Goodwin: The Norfolk Forum has individual tickets for the presidential historian and the cookbook author Ina Garten. Goodwin: 7:30 p.m. March 15, Chrysler Hall; $50 plus fees. Garten, May 24, $75 plus fees. thenorfolkforum.org.
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New and recent
Margaret Atwood, “Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004-2021? (Doubleday, 496 pp.). Some smart pieces, but the speeches, printed verbatim, “quickly capsize the boat, threatening to drown even the good material.” (NYT)
Bill Barr, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General” (William Morrow, 595 pp.). The Washington Post: Barr “blasts Trump and Giuliani — and ignores his own partisan excesses.”
Garrett M. Graff, “Watergate: A New History” (Avid Reader, 832 pp.). Lively, wide-ranging, detailed. Averse to speculation — so “it’s notable that he suggests the C.I.A. might have set up the voice-activated system that sank Nixon’s ship,” writes Douglas Brinkley. (NYT)
Regional titles: Bobby Raye Huntley, “The Shaping of Our Future Generation: Putting a Plug in the School to Prison Pipeline!” Reflections on 19 years working in Virginia Beach public schools, including 14 as director of the Gentlemen’s Club, a mentoring and character development group. (B. Raye Huntley Enterprises, 245 pp.) … Charles Oldham, “Ship of Blood: Mutiny and Slaughter Aboard the Harry A. Berwind, and the Quest for Justice.” Based on the 1905 murder of the white captain and crewmen for which three Black crewmen were blamed. The trial was in Wilmington; the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. (Beach Glass Books, 272 pp.)
— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com
