Saturday, December 13, 2014




Our holiday books are on display, ready for our patrons to stop by and browse the collection! There are Christmas themed mysteries by Anne Perry and Mary Higgins Clark, novels, crafts books, recipe books, and more!

Are you looking for some gift giving ideas? A Haverhill Library tote filled with our hometown cookbook, and "like new" books we have for sale, would be just the thing! Mini totes are $6.00, regular totes are $10.00 and our cookbooks are $10.00 as well.

Holiday hours: The library will be closed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.


Friday, October 31, 2014

Passenger Pigeon Discussion

The library will hold a discussion of A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction by Joel Greenberg on Monday, November 10 at 7:00 PM. This will be the second in a series of book discussions on the theme “Extinction!”

In the early nineteenth century 25 to 40 percent of North America’s birds were passenger pigeons, traveling in flocks so massive as to block out the sun for hours or even days. But as naturalist Joel Greenberg relates, the pigeons’ propensity to nest, roost, and fly together in vast numbers made them vulnerable to unremitting market and recreational hunting. Although a billion pigeons crossed the skies 80 miles from Toronto in May of 1860, little more than fifty years later passenger pigeons were extinct. The last of the species, Martha, died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo one hundred years ago, on September 1, 1914.

The passenger pigeon’s demise, as recounted by Greenberg, is “a story of unremitting, wanton, continental-scale destruction,” says the New York Review of Books. It is “equal parts natural history, elegy, and environmental outcry,” says The New Yorker, which notes that, “answering even basic questions about the passenger pigeon requires a sort of forensic ornithology, which gives [this book] an unexpected poignancy at the very points where it is most nature-nerdy.” The Chicago Tribune hailed this account as “a brilliant, important, haunting and poignant book.”

The “Extinction!” series will conclude with a discussion of Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante Pääbo on December 8.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

James Thurber Discussion

The library will host a discussion of two stories by James Thurber as part of its Book Club for Writers program on Thursday, October 23 at 7:00 PM. Copies of “The Catbird Seat” and “You Could Look It Up” will be available in advance at the library, and the discussion will be free and open to the public.

James Thurber (1894–1961) was one of America’s foremost humorists, best known for his cartoons and short stories, which mostly appeared in The New Yorker. He began his career in journalism with his hometown newspaper, the Columbus (OH) Dispatch, and moved to New York to work for the New York Evening Post. With the help of E. B. White, he joined the staff of The New Yorker as an editor in 1927, but did not begin his career as a cartoonist until 1930, when White found some of his cartoons in the trash and submitted them for publication in the magazine.

Thurber’s best-known works include Is Sex Necessary? (co-written with E. B. White), My Life and Hard Times, The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, My World and Welcome to It, and the short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” one of the most frequently anthologized stories in American literature. “Mitty” was adapted for a 1947 film starring Danny Kaye – an adaptation that Thurber disliked – and was recently adapted a second time for a film released last year. Thurber’s work has also inspired other films, plays, and television shows; “The Catbird Seat” was the basis for the movie The Battle of the Sexes. The Thurber Prize for American Humor is named in his honor.

Book Club for Writers is a fiction discussion program that meets four times a year. Discussions are open to all, and focus particularly on questions of craft and technique that will interest writers and aspiring writers. Created by the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, Book Club for Writers is sponsored locally by a fiction writing group that meets weekly at the Haverhill Corner Library.

The next Book Club for Writers discussion will be held January 15, 2015 and will feature “A Conversation with My Father” by Grace Paley and “The Harvest” by Amy Hempel.

Saturday, September 13, 2014


Saturday & Sunday
September 27-28

Stop by 
from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm
both days!

Sunday, August 10, 2014

The Haverhill Library is delighted to be participating in the Festival of Earthly Delights! The library will be selling a delicious pork dinner for $10 (proceeds to benefit the library). 
Those not attending the Festival can still get a pork dinner and support the library, we will be positioned at the fence and selling take-away meals to those outside the grounds.
SUNDAY AUGUST 10th 3pm - 6pm

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Book Club for Writers: Barrett and Shepard

The library will hold its next Book Club for Writers short story discussion on Thursday, July 31 at 7:00 PM. Copies of “Servants of the Map” by Andrea Barrett and “Ancestral Legacies” by Jim Shepard will be available to pick up at the library in advance, and the discussion is free and open to the public.

Winner of the National Book Award and the Story Prize, Andrea Barrett is also the recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant.” She is especially well known as a writer of historical fiction and her subjects frequently include science and scientists. Her collection Servants of the Map was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and was hailed by the New York Times for “a wonderful clarity and ease, the serene authority of a writer working at the very height of her powers.” She teaches at Williams College and published her most recent novel, Archangel, last year.

Jim Shepard is the author of six novels and four collections of short stories, including the Story Award-winning Like You’d Understand, Anyway, in which “Ancestral Legacies” appears. His stories range widely in subject matter and are frequently grounded in substantial historical research; his last two collections included lengthy lists of sources. He is known for vigorously plotted stories that frequently end in the middle of the plot’s events, and for his resistance to what he terms “the tyranny of the epiphany.” Time permitting, the discussion will also take up Shepard’s story “Love and Hydrogen.” Like Barrett, Shepard teaches at Williams College. His most recent collection, You Think That’s Bad, was published in 2011.

The next Book Club for Writers discussion will be held on Thursday, October 23 and will feature two stories by James Thurber, “The Catbird Seat” and “You Could Look It Up.”

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Friday, April 11, 2014

Next Book Club for Writers

The library will hold its next Book Club for Writers discussion on Thursday, April 24, featuring short stories by James Baldwin and Percival Everett.

Copies of “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin and “The Appropriation of Cultures” by Percival Everett will be available from the library in advance. The discussion will begin at 7:00 PM at the library and will be free and open to the public.

In fiction, plays, and essays, James Baldwin (1924–1987) was one of the foremost social critics of mid- and late-twentieth century America, addressing issues of race, class, and sexual orientation. His non-fiction works include Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time (which put him on the cover of Time magazine), and The Evidence of Things Not Seen, while his novels include Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, and If Beale Street Could Talk. “Sonny’s Blues,” which appeared in the 1965 collection Going to Meet the Man, is frequently anthologized.

Percival Everett is Distinguished Professor English at the University of Southern California and author of more than twenty books. Noted for the wide variety of his work, Everett has written novels with settings ranging from the American West to ancient Greece. He has won the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction and twice won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction. His most recent novel, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was named one of the best books of 2013 by Publishers Weekly. His other books include Erasure and I am Not Sidney Poitier.

Book Club for Writers is a fiction discussion program that meets four times a year. Discussions are open to all, and focus particularly on questions of craft and technique that will interest writers and aspiring writers. Created by the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, Book Club for Writers is sponsored locally by a fiction writing group that meets weekly at the Haverhill Corner Library.

The next Book Club for Writers discussion will be held on Thursday, July 31 and will feature “Servants of the Map” by Andrea Barrett and “Ancestral Legacies” by Jim Shepard.

Calvin Trillin Book Discussion

The library will host a discussion of Third Helpings by Calvin Trillin on Monday, April 21 at 7:00 PM. The program will be free and open to the public.

Readers will find Third Helpings collected in Trillin’s omnibus volume The Tummy Trilogy. This program is the third and final in the library’s discussion series featuring American food writing, led by writer and editor Linda Landrigan.

Calvin Trillin is a journalist, humorist, and food writer. He wrote the “U. S. Journal” feature for The New Yorker for fifteen years; a weekly, syndicated newspaper column, “Uncivil Liberties,” for over a decade; and a weekly column for Time magazine. Also a longtime contributor to The Nation, he currently writes the “Deadline Poet” feature. He was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2012 and in 2013 was inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame.

Trillin’s essays on food were collected in American Fried; Alice, Let’s Eat; and Third Helpings, and these three books were subsequently published as a single volume, The Tummy Trilogy.

Though he has written extensively, and with participatory zeal, about food during his career, Trillin once explained to the New York Times that he had no desire to be a restaurant critic. “I’m not interested in finding the best chili restaurant in Cincinnati,” he said. “I’m interested in Cincinnatians fighting about who has the best chili.”

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

MFK Fisher Book Discussion

The library will host a discussion of Serve It Forth by M. F. K. Fisher on Monday, March 17 at 7:00 PM. The program will be free and open to the public.

Readers will find Serve It Forth collected in Fisher’s omnibus volume The Art of Eating. The program is the second in the library’s discussion series featuring American food writing, led by writer and editor Linda Landrigan.

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (1908 – 1992) is regarded as one of America’s premier food writers, the author of some 27 books of which the first, in 1937, was Serve It Forth. It was hailed by the New York Times as “erudite and witty and experienced and young . . . stamped on every page with a highly individualized personality.”

Raised in California, Fisher left college to marry and move to Dijon, France, at the time considered one of the culinary centers of the world. For the next several decades, she divided her life between California, France, and Switzerland, writing and publishing steadily, but slow to win wide recognition. As late as 1982, the New York Times Book Review lamented, “In a properly run culture, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher would be recognized as one of the great writers this country has produced in this century.” She died in 1992 in California at the age of 83, having long suffered from Parkinson’s disease and arthritis.

“It seems to me,” Fisher wrote, “that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it.”

The library’s series on food writing will conclude on Monday, April 21 with a discussion of Third Helpings by Calvin Trillin (collected in The Tummy Trilogy).

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Lincoln Program Postponed!

The February 5 program on Abraham Lincoln (noted below) has been postponed due to inclement weather.

The three-program series will now begin on Wednesday, February 12.

Our apologies for the last-minute change.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Abraham Lincoln Programs

The library will offer a series of programs in February exploring the character and inner life of Abraham Lincoln, presented by Haverhill Corner resident David Pruitt, a longtime student of Lincoln’s life and thought.

The programs will be offered on three Wednesdays: February 5, 12, and 19. They will be held at the Haverhill Congregational Church Parish Hall at 7:00 PM and will be free and open to the public.

The February 5 program will focus on “The Faith Journey of Abraham Lincoln.” Pruitt, himself a minister, will address such questions as:

  • Is it true that Lincoln never joined a church? 
  • Was he ever an atheist? 
  • Was he a Christian? 
  • What forces developed and deepened his faith? 
  • Was there anything central to his faith that we would find “hard to swallow”? 
  • Why was his second inaugural address one of the most astonishing sermons ever delivered? 
  • What can we learn from his journey? 

In two subsequent programs, Pruitt will draw on a wide range of sources to explore further aspects of Lincoln’s inner life and character.

Last fall, Pruitt presented a well-received program commemorating the 150th anniversary of the delivery of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, discussing its original delivery and subsequent historical and cultural significance. That brief speech is today regarded as one of the premier examples of American oratory.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Short Story Discussion

The library will hold its next Book Club for Writers discussion on Thursday, January 23. The discussion will feature short stories by George Saunders and David Foster Wallace.

Copies of “Mister Squishy” by David Foster Wallace, and of “In Persuasion Nation” and “The Semplica Girl Diaries” by George Saunders, will be available from the library in advance. The discussion will begin at 7:00 PM at the library and will be free and open to the public.

George Saunders is a writer known primarily for his short stories. His most recent collection, Tenth of December, was published last year; it was a national bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Award, and was named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review. Last year, Saunders won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and he had previously been the recipient of both a MacArthur Fellowship (the so-called “genius grant”) and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His other books include CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil. He teaches at Syracuse University.

David Foster Wallace was “one of the most influential and innovative writers of the past twenty years” according to the Los Angeles Times. He is best remembered for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, named by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. Wallace was also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and he taught at Illinois State University and Pomona College, but after years of battling depression, he committed suicide in 2008. His unfinished novel The Pale King was published posthumously in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His other books include the story collections Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion, and the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster.

Book Club for Writers is a fiction discussion program that meets four times a year. Discussions are open to all, and focus particularly on questions of craft and technique that will interest writers and aspiring writers. Created by the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, Book Club for Writers is sponsored locally by a fiction writing group that meets weekly at the Haverhill Corner Library.

The next Book Club for Writers discussion will be held on Thursday, April 24 and will feature “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin and “The Appropriation of Cultures” by Percival Everett.

Annual Meeting of the Haverhill Library Association - Jan. 20, 2014



The annual meeting of the Haverhill Library Association is Monday evening, January 20th at 7:30 pm.
The public is invited to attend.