Famous Short Story

SHAFTSBURY — Artists Renée Bouchard and Genevieve Plunkett will be conducting six classes in image and text landscape study in and around Robert Frost's Vermont home. Beginning on May 12, participants will meet once a month to explore, record, and contemplate the beautiful and history-laden setting. You can register for all six (two-hour) classes, three classes, or just one. Equipped with both visual and literary arts, the class will explore what it means to be an observer, and how best to capture a sense of place through memory, color interaction, composition, and text. How do the descriptive passages from our favorite works of literature inform our painting? How can visual cues reshape the way we use language? And what does the landscape itself have to say about it? Both instructors will come prepared to share their favorite techniques, but be ready to get experimental, get out o...

Chris Bournea  |  ThisWeek USA TODAY NETWORK Viewers of the Emmy-winning Hulu series "The Handmaid's Tale" have speculated that author Margaret Atwood foreshadowed modern-day events when she wrote the 1985 novel on which the show is based. Atwood will visit central Ohio to describe her work 7 p.m. June 15 at the Palace Theatre, 34 W. Broad St., Columbus. "A Conversation with Margaret Atwood" will be presented by a consortium of central Ohio libraries: Bexley Public Library, Columbus Metropolitan Library, Grandview Heights Public Library, London Public Library, Plain City Public Library, Southwest Public Libraries, Upper Arlington Public Library, Westerville Public Library and Worthington Libraries. Atwood's appearance was scheduled for 2020, but the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic caused it to be postponed, Bexley librarian Ben Heckman said. "We were very excited to get her," he said. "I think the idea for this was for centra...

Audio Articles on Hometown Focus is sponsored by Rock Ridge Public Schools.   Well, I guess my spring-themed recipes from a couple of weeks ago didn't do the trick. We still continue to have cold, snowy, blustery days which (as of this writing) are expected to continue well into next week, or longer. I don't know how raisin recipes got into my mind—truth be told, I don't really like raisins. Let me qualify that by saying, I don't like to eat them just as-is, but I like them in recipes. If I have a trail mix, I much prefer craisins over raisins. Maybe the raisins are just a bit too sweet by themselves. I have to admit, I was on an oatmeal raisin cookie kick for a while—not baked by me— but fresh-baked purchased from the grocery store. They were my favorites for quite a while until I discovered no-bake chocolate, peanut butter, oatmeal cookies—once again, purchased fresh ...

Amazon World Book Day is celebrated every year on April 23 and Amazon is once again  giving away 10 Kindle ebooks  from around the world to celebrate the occasion, alternatively referred to as World Book and Copyright Day or International Day of the Book, organized by UNESCO. You must have an Amazon account to download the books and a Kindle , Amazon Fire tablet or the Kindle app on a smartphone, tablet or PC to read them, but there aren't any restrictions or special memberships (you don't need Amazon Prime) required to download them. The 10 ebooks are free through April 27. Like last year's list of free ebooks, the titles truly are from around the globe, with 10 separate countries and various genres represented. And yes, they've all been translated into English.  Read more : Best E-Readers for 2022 ...

Jonathan Tostado-Marquez, Ames Public Library  |  Special to the Ames Tribune With the new year comes new beginnings, new adventures and, for some, new resolutions and goals. Whether you are interested in finally finishing up that small project you keep putting off or picking up a new skill or hobby, the Ames Public Library has a wide range of books, CDs and, other materials to help you along the way. If, in this new year, you would like to express more of your artistic side consider checking out books on topics like woodworking, painting, drawing, knitting and so much more. If woodworking seems appealing, consider the book, "Woodworking: The Complete Step-by-Step Manual" by D.K. Publishing. It contains a wealth of knowledge on the types of tools, techniques, and materials you need to become a master woodworker. The book also contains various sample projects, each with step-by-step instructions and photo references to guide you. For those interested in lea...

High schoolers, beware: Before you annotate your next copy of The Great Gatsby, check the publication date. It might be worth a fortune. "The Great Gatsby is considered, in collecting terms, the No. 1 American novel to collect," says the London-based rare book dealer Peter Harrington. "A lot of that has to do with the dust jacket — people just seem to desperately want it." Harrington will soon bring a first edition of the 1925 book, widely considered F Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, to New York's International Antiquarian Book Fair, which runs from April 21-24 at the Park Avenue Armory. Harrington's book is priced at £275,000 (about $360,000), placing it at the upper tier of a booming collectible market. "For 20th century literature, this is definitely up there," he says. "The truth is, the lockdown and that whole period had been very kind to the rare book market." Determining value Like most b...

CINCINNATI — A first-time local author is now a first-time bookstore owner and trying to help kids become authors too.  What You Need To Know J.M. Clark left work in banking to start writing in 2018, within a year he authored a science-fiction trilogy He's set to open a new book store in Cincinnati on April 18 Within the first month of opening, Clark is planning to have writing classes up and running to help kids become authors "It kinda started there, just being a writer and being in book stores while writing, cause I write outside of the house," said Clark. Clark said within a year, he wrote The Palace Program, a science fiction trilogy.  "I actually wrote all three books within a year's span, so I was like really into it, and I was inspired by different fiction books that I was into at the time," said Clark. Now he wants to help everyone, from adults to kids, find a passion for writing, something he said w...