You can see more videos from our event with Alice Hoffman below: read more

A lot of you have mentioned how cool it would be if we could record our events, so people who couldn't make it get a chance to watch it afterwards. We recently filmed Alice Hoffman. Alice was here in June, and as you can tell from the footage, we had a lot of people in the store to hear the bestselling author!

Click here to see the first video. We'll be posting more of the talk, so check back.

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We occasionally have music concerts here at the bookstore after hours.  If you've never been to one, I encourage you to come this Saturday (that's April 11th) at 9pm to hear Hateful Little Cakes and Subject Bias.

Watching a show at RiverRun is a special experience.  Everyone is there to listen to the music-- there's no espresso machine chuggin in the background, nobody talking loudly and drunkenly into their cell phone.  Everyone is paying attention.

Both bands on Saturday night are great.  Hateful Little Cakes are from here in town, and are much nicer than their name suggests.  They play a kind of folk/electronic mix that I really like.  Subject Bias is out of Portland, Maine, and play well written alternative pop.  They've got great voices and are a really tight band.

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I'm looking forward to Ulrich Boser's appearance at the store this Wednesday, the 25th, at 7pm.  I love books about art, and art theft is always fascinating.  It seems strange that galleries have millions of dollars worth of paintings on display, but generally poor security systems and underpaid and under trained gaurds. 

Twenty years later, there is still no solid lead on where the paintings are.  Although Boser has made some headway in determining who might have committed the crime, those people certainly no longer have the paintings. 

So somewhere out there is a Vermeer, a Manet, two Rembrandts, and several other paintings worth an estimated 600 million dollars.  The largest unsolved art crime of all time.

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I can't contain my excitement over our brand spankin' new literary series that we're launching this week. Martini bars and writers go together very well, and that's why we've partnered up with  The Red Door in downtown Portsmouth.  We'll be hosting a bunch of innovative, talented contemporary authors at The Red Door on an ongoing basis, and we're kicking it off on Tuesday, February 24th at 7pm with comic novelist G. Xavier Robillard.  He'll be reading from Captain Freedom, a novel that is praised by RiverRun staff favorite Christopher Moore as ""a truly funny and energetic romp of a social satire, a terrific send up of not only of superheroes, but the cult of personality in general."

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The Kids Heart Authors day was a tremendous amount of fun. With 30 kids in attendence and 25 adults, the authors took turns presenting their books while kids sat and listened (captivated) or worked on books of their own at the craft table. Our eight authors came with all sorts of unique talents. 

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Media in one form or another, has existed for as far back as we can tell.  The need to share ideas or create meanings has shaped our societies, political systems and how we percieve the world.  In this blog, feel free to openly explore any of these questions or your thoughts and concerns about the topic.   

How does media reinforce or counter dogma?

How does our choice of media (liberal, conservative, green, democrat, anarchist, libertarian, republican, moderate, etc) reinforce our view of the world? Can this range of views promote diversity and a wide range of choices?  How does locking into one kind of perspective hinder open dialogue (the Socratic Method)? How does it maintain it?

What is a meme and how does that relate to the conversation of media? 

How much of the media we consume is a reflection of our state of mind?  

What does it mean to hide behind media?  Why hide?

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Join us on Valentine's Day from 10:00 am to noon for our kids Valentine festival with live children's music, face painting, story readings by authors and illustrators, valentine's snacks both healthy and not, signed books and conversation.  This is a new festival being held by indie bookstores all across New England as a way to support the love of reading in our youth and also to support the authors and illustrators who reach kids at a young age and stir in them a life long passion for books.  Experiences like this are known to stick with children and set alight a journey of curiousity and engagement with the world.  Plus, the authors are funny.

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Last night over fifty people came to our Holiday Book Recommendations event.  Lesley Vasilio and Ron Koltnow of Random House, Anne DeCourcey of HarperCollins, and Katie McGarry of Simon & Schuster spoke about some of their favorite books of the year that make the perfect gift.  Tom Holbrook, owner & manager of RiverRun, spoke about some of the great autographed books we have, like Pulitzer Prize-winner David Hackett Fischer's Champlain's Dream and Hannah Tinti's The Good Thief.

Books on the list are available at our store or on this website

For those of you who couldn't make it, I highly suggest you check out the list below.  There are more than just bestsellers on here.  Be sure to check out Anne's recommendation of State by State and Lesley's fun pick of Doomed Queens to see examples of the eclectic variety of this list!

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