Shelf Life

Twenty-six-year-old Jenna Woginrich rents a cabin in Vermont, where she raises chicken and sheep, grows vegetables, and bakes bread. Though she works 9-to-5 as a web designer, she lives off the land as much as she can.

She chronicles her homesteading triumphs and mishaps at coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com, the Huffington Post, and now in her new book, "Made From Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life" (Storey). It is a how-to as well as a what-not-to-do. Her dogs killed her chickens when she turned her back for a minute. Her bees died because she didn't know they needed a queen.

Woginrich suggests that aspiring homesteaders begin their research online, though she emphasizes the value of human contact. When moving to the country, she writes, "make sure there's a nice elderly couple next door to dispense advice."

Old-timers' stories about country living form the backbone of another new book, "Just a Thought" (Frost Hollow), by Paul Dryden Lynn, town historian and longtime resident of Woodstock, Conn. It celebrates Yankee frugality, a sense of community, a penchant for practical jokes, and simple pleasures. Lynn reminisces about enjoying a cup of tea and an afternoon of conversation with an elderly neighbor named Clara. She made use of everything, even dried orange peels. When she cooked them on her kerosene-fueled stove, a pleasant aroma filled the room.

Poets have a new place to publish: inside fortune cookies. Cambridge poet populist Peter Payack is producing fortune cookies containing two- or three-line verses by notable local poets such as former US poet laureate Robert Pinsky. Each set of 10 cookies comes in a Chinese takeout box, sold for $6 in Cambridge at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop and the city's Arts Council office. A new batch of poems and cookies is in the works. Proceeds benefit the council.

A 30-year veteran of book publishing, Trish O'Hare has launched her own company to publish fiction by Irish writers, memoirs, and whatever else moves her.

In its first year the Boston-based GemmaMedia has published six books of Irish short fiction, including "Not Just for Christmas," by Roddy Doyle. Upcoming are stories by Maeve Binchy and Tom Nestor, a longtime columnist for Ireland's Limerick Leader.

Gemma's first memoir is "Lola's Luck: My Life Among the California Gypsies," by Carol Miller. An anthropologist who studied the Machvaia Roma of California in the 1960s, Miller was drawn into the world of a fortuneteller named Lola.

Also published this year is the young-adult novel "Oliver's Surprise: A Boy, a Schooner, and the Great Hurricane of 1938," by Carol Newman Cronin. An Olympic sailing champion, Cronin set the novel in her hometown of Jamestown, R.I., where seven children were swept to sea in the hurricane.

"World at Risk: The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism," by Senator Bob Graham et al. (Vintage)

"Joy's Life Diet: Four Steps to Thin Forever," by Joy Bauer (Collins Living)

"Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach," by Meryl Gordon (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Pick of the week

Bridget Allison of Phoenix Books, in Essex, Vt., recommends "The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange," by Mark Barrowcliffe (Soho): "Barrowcliffe's touching and hilarious memoir of his teenage years playing fantasy role-playing games champions the cause of a widely unacknowledged population of geeks, nerds, and dorks."

Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com.

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