Unique Gifts at Beehive Books!

The original designer reusable bag: Envirosax!
Envirosax help spread the environmental message with style. Eco-chic Envirosax are made of durable waterproof lightweight polyester, built for toughness and extra strength.
Beehive Books carries the shopping bag as well as a lunch bag, with many fabulous patterns & colors to choose from!

 Cuddle up with these cuties this holiday season!  The K'NITS

 are soft, cuddley, and safe for children of all ages. 

Choose a watch as unique as the wearer with these delightful children's watches with ranging designs and colors, from butterflies to baseball. 

Fed up with all the technology this holiday season? Try a Paper Tweet by KNOCK KNOCK, and peruse our wide selection of laugh out loud KNOCK KNOCK merchandise. 

Have a sweet tooth to shop for? 

Try our selection of chocolate goodies
to stuff the stockings with!

Charm your favorite tea drinker with this
'Tea Duckie' tea infuser

Any gal will love this 'camera bag' purse!
Also available in black!

I AM NOT A PAPER CUP! Cups, lids, sleeves - all dishwasher friendly! Go green in style.

Support your fav local bookstore with
these awesome socks!

Adorable (and lavender scented!) paperweights
do an excellent job of keeping your papers
tidy, while adding charm to your home or
office.

Sweet, cozy book ends give your bookshelf
some character!

These adorable, handmade shirts & onesies
make a unique gift for any tot on your list.

Locally made, these knit hats are warm and super soft
Sure to please!

Your teen will love this trendy 'love songs' tape
change purse!

Craft time just got more exciting!
40 pages of'Create-a-Person' will be a fun
 activity for young ones

An abacus is a fun and educational
toy! Have fun while learning numbers
and counting!

Market Spice smells heavenly and festive,
citrusy orange & spicy cinnamon. Candles,
cookies, and tea make the perfect gift set. 

GO BUCKS! Get your Buckeye gifts here! 

Can't forget Fido's present under the tree!

Share the love with these heart shaped
ice cube trays!

Beehive Books pint glasses -
coffee mugs available as well!

Stop in Beehive Books this holiday season for many more unique gifts and, as always, our wide variety of books! Any book you're looking for you'll be sure to find, and if we don't have it here, we will gladly order it for you! We're looking forward to seeing you!!

Don't forget to check us out on Facebook!!

Worker Bee

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Music to my ears

American Music: A Novel by Jane Mendelsohn

Reviewed by Pam Spence

If there were one book I had to choose to give to the person I cherished the most in the world this holiday season, I would chose Jane Mendelsohn’s American Music (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010). The book came into my life from my long time best friend who called me and told me she had read the most incredible book – but she couldn’t send me her copy because she could not let it out of her possession. She had ordered the book for me, however, and was having it sent directly. Since we swap books as readily as we swapped sweaters in high school, I was intrigued.

American Music did not disappoint: it is, quite simply, a stunning accomplishment of story and style. The story is built around two characters: Milo, a severely wounded soldier from the Iraqi war, languishing in a veterans’ hospital; and Honor, a young physical therapist who comes to treat him. As Honor begins to work on Milo’s ruined body, stories and images arise in both of their consciousnesses—unbidden, mysterious and compelling.

The reader is required to “go with the flow” and allow these wonderful stories to unfold. Initially, one can’t quite grasp whose stories they are, what they signify and how they are related. How does this young couple in the ‘30s relate to this sultan’s beautiful concubine in the seventeenth century, for instance? And what about the young wife who sits in the courtroom watching her husband on trial during the Viet Nam War era - how does she fit in? As the novel progresses, however, these threads are woven into a magical tapestry of history, dream, desire and heartbreak.

American Music does not readily fit any category of fiction: it hints at magical realism and yet feels like an entirely American form - organized, as it is, around the central motif of jazz. It is a dream, a dance, a masterpiece.

Mendelsohn has a rare grace with words. The language and imagery are sumptuous yet entirely subtle. You are enthralled – as you might be if you sat at the feet of Scheherazade as she spun her tales to the king in the Arabian Nights. After I finished this book, I could not look at another book for a week or more, not wanting to diminish the joy I felt from this encounter.

Mendelsohn is also the author of I Was Amelia Earhart and Innocence.

Cozy up with 'Russian Winter' this winter

Thanks to Pamela Spence, loyal customer & reviewer (as well as my mom! :) - Iris) for this wonderful review.


Russian Winter

Daphne Kalotry has crafted an epic, powerful novel that unfolds in the artists’ community during Stalin’s repressive regime and resolves, finally, in Boston. Nina Revskaya, once a prima ballerina for the Bolshoi, who escaped to the West in the 1950s, in her declining years decides to auction off her jewels to benefit the Boston Ballet Foundation. Ostensibly prompted by altruism and love of the art, privately Revskaya wishes to tie up all the messy emotional loose ends of her life and to put ghosts and bitterness and regrets to rest. Eager young auction house associate Drew Brooks however, is inspired to research and dig and publicize the rare pieces in the ballerina’s collection – including an amber bracelet and earring set – which prompts an anonymous donor to bring forth a pendant that is a probably part of the original set. Brooks unwittingly sets into motion the unraveling of secrets and mysteries that have profoundly affected the lives of Revskaya, her friends, family and colleagues and which resolve in unexpected ways.

Mystery and intrigue abound in this satisfying first novel as well as a huge, savory dollop of political history. Katotay immerses the reader in the backrooms of the ballet and the auction house and pushes us directly into the middle of erupting social and political change.

This is a perfect read for long winter nights in a snowy cabin or during those 4 hour layovers that often characterize holiday travel. Once you step into the drawing room of Nina Revskaya you will not want to leave until you have heard all of her story.

What's Happening this November at Beehive Books?

The leaves continue to change their brilliant colors and begin to fall to the ground to crunch underfoot. The weather is steadily cooling down and frost ices our lawns and cars in the morning. Soon the hustle and bustle of the holiday season will be upon us - if it isn't already! Be sure to take time out of your busy schedule to enjoy some of the events we have planned at Beehive Books, your favorite local independent bookstore. :)

Monday 11-8-10 7:00pm

Reading & Signing

Joan Murchland - author of The Dragon Under the House

Beehive Books welcomes Joan Murchland and her recently published memoir about growing up in Saint John, Canada, romance and adventure, being a student in Ohio and her career in music as a singer, a musical actress and piano teacher. Beneath the charming surface of her story we hear the wistful strains of life's deeper mysteries.

Sunday 11-14-10 2:00pm

Poetry & Prose Reading

Katherine Burkman

Katherin Burkman, recipient of a poetry award at Sanctuary for The Arts' Gallery in the Garden, will be reading new poetry as well as excerpts from the recently published (and Katherine-edited) Kerouac Ascending, written by her cousin, a close friend of Jack Kerouac.

Tuesday 11-16 4:00pm
OWU Modern Language House presents Open readings in Foreign Languages
Reading poetry or prose in foreign languages, OWU students and anyone from the community may read. Call Beehive or OWU Modern Language House to sign up, or just come and listen!

Saturday 11-20-10 1:00pm
Reading and Book Signing
Sherry Hartzler - author of Island Passages
Beehive warmly welcomes back Sherry with her new book! Join us for her reading and a short talk: The Artful Soul of Women's Fiction

Also be sure to join us every 1st & 3rd Monday from 6:30 for our Good Living Book Club
Currently reading Catherine Friend's The Compassionate Carnivore
(After Monday 11/15 we'll be taking a break for the holidays until January!)

Bartoli - Coppi, and...

 Looks like there's room between Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi for Pantani!

Review of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom

Thanks to Beehive customer & book reviewer, Chris Echesabal, for his review:


I liked this book. I’m just going to come right out and start with that. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. This is an important declaration to make because I absolutely did not want to like this book. I’d spent the last month purposely avoiding every article and interview about Freedom or about Jonathan Franzen and his utter genius as a novelist. I saw his face on the cover of Time magazine and I thought he looked like a joke; like the obnoxious parody of what a serious novelist is supposed to look like. Everyone was crazy about this book and so, trying to be unique and elitist, I refused to jump on the bandwagon. It was not until I stumbled upon a review of Freedom in the Economist’s arts & culture section that I was willing to give it a chance. Not a periodical prone to exaggeration, the Economist proclaimed this novel as the next in a long line of great American novels.

And so it was, as I found myself reading the novel, that nothing came to mind so much as William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, a book that hadn’t once crossed my mind since I read it with great difficulty in my 10th grade English class. And then as the book progressed I began to think of it less in the style of the American classics and more like one of the great tragedies of antiquity. Finally, after the novel takes a turn that is somehow both completely unexpected and entirely predictable, I found myself unable to compare it to anything at all. It was this feeling that made me most glad that I’d read this book.

At the risk of inadequately summarizing a plot that spans several characters and several generations across a century of time, I will attempt to explain what Freedom is about. It revolves around a family, that much is easy to say. This family, the Berglunds, has its fair share of issues including dishonesty, mistrust, depression, paranoia, and an overwhelming sense of purposelessness. It’s the relatively benign nature of these issues (that is to say, none of the problems in this family are particularly overt, they all simmer beneath the surface) that drives the plot of the novel forward in its own unusually cerebral, somewhat painful way. There are few big events in Freedom but they build in such a gripping way, like a pot of water slowly boiling before dramatically spilling over.

Okay, that was a weak metaphor but I don’t want you to get the feeling that this is a boring book. It truly is not. If you’re someone who needs adventure and action in your novels then you probably will not enjoy this book. Freedom is not your fun summer read and Jonathan Franzen is not Dan Brown. Franzen’s skill comes in his creation of wholly realistic and gripping characters with serious emotional problems that, for their own individual reasons, they are entirely unwilling to deal with until the book’s dramatic conclusion. The problems within and around the Berglund family are the problems of an American, mid-western, middle class kind of family which perhaps lends Freedom its nature as a particularly American novel.

Freedom is both a painful and entirely rewarding read and, in spite of all my earliest inclinations, I found myself completely in love with this book. It’s not a short book and it’s not an easy book to get through but if you can make it all the way to the end you’ll find yourself happy that you made the effort. And when this book becomes a standard text on American lit curricula in the future you’ll impress all your classmates by having already read it.

It's a Book! It's a Classic!

Every book lover needs a copy of this hilarious picture book, which perfectly captures why the old-fashioned "book" is still a necessity in today's technology-enamored world.  It's all done with large doses of humor  and simple appealing illustrations featuring a mouse, monkey and jackass. (Just the fact that author/illustrator Lane Smith can get away with calling the donkey a "jack-ass" in a children' book and it's still a hit with teachers and librarians is proof enough that this book is a classic).
Open to the book to the first page, where you'll find Monkey quietly reading a book, and his friend, the jackass, who asks:  "What do you have there?"  Monkey replies, "It's a book," to which the befuddled jackass asks, "How do you scroll down?"  And the story is off and running, with he jackass peppering the monkey with questions like "Do you blog with it?" and "Can it text? Tweet?" and "Do you need a password?"  Finally, the monkey just hands the book to the jackass, who settles down to read. The hours go by, the jackass is hooked and he's soon headed off to the library to get a book of his own, but not without a final parting comment from the clever little mouse hiding under the monkey's hat.  I read this book to my 11-year-old son, who laughed out loud and even put down his I-pod and logged off the computer for a few moments.  Great fun!  -- Erin