Re-enacting books as performance

Clare Thornton is running this performance re-enactment project based on various books.
Interesting idea, no?

Lauretta

What we are thankful for

To those of you in the USA - Happy Thanksgiving!

What we are thankful for this year - not necessarily in this order -
family,
friends,
books,
music,
movies,
sales (our customers have made this year better than last and we are VERY thankful in this economic climate)

What are you thankful for?
Lauretta

PS Remember books, CDs and DVDs are less expensive than most everything else - and they are durable and recyclable (by passing them onto your kids).

Wag the Dog Beinhart

I chose Wag the Dog as a light read to balance Bob Woodward's latest 'The War Within'. I didn't finish Woodward's book - so much detail I couldn't unravel but I did enjoy the conclusions. I did finish Wag the Dog.

What a scandalous mix of fact, fiction and conjecture. Beinhart even includes himself in the narrative, as the scribe. Footnotes and a last chapter on the first Gulf War complete the reality warp.

If you've seen the movie then the book is different. It is the same premise told from different characters' perspectives. There's a Hollywood PI/former Nam vet hardness here. As the author writes Barry Levinson had to make movie choices, he made book choices in the plot.

Bush Senior's ratings are going down and what could bring them up? A war. Like Maggie Thatcher's. This is Lee Atwater's last idea. And who could produce this war? Why, Hollywood - they've been so successful staging other wars. Now which mover and shaker, which director. It just gets better.

But this is Top Secret, we need a security firm. Here's Joe, our hero, a loyal maverick. He is willing to ferret out this secret for his lady love, a luscious Hollywood star. This coupling of Hollywood and Washington took me to a new level of cynicism. This book would be a great book club read especially if you threw in the movie as well.

Wine Tasting tonight + Girl Scout Cookies Sunday!

Friday, November 7, 2008, 6-9pm Wine and Music @ the Bookstore
Wine from Vino 100, Munchies from Virgil's, Music from local guitarist Steve Colon. What else do you need?

Sunday, November 9, 2008, 12-3pm Girls Scout Cookies
We'll have a local Girl Scout troop selling cookies today 12-3 to benefit a program that sends cookies to the soldiers in Iraq. Bring your appetite!

Edgar Allen Poe's 200th Birthday Celebrations

Baltimore is throwing lots of events for Edgar Allen Poe's 200th birthday and the details may be found here. The father of American Horror was not born in Baltimore, but he certainly died here and his body rests in the wonderfully creepy Westminster Burying Ground. There will be readings by John Astin, posters by school kids, music with the BSO and Paula McCabe, plays and puppets, amontillado wine tastings, and all sorts of fun. The actual birth date is January 19.

Just as an it's-a-small-world-aside: Paula was my voice teacher before I became a bookseller and she has an AMAZING voice.

Nevermore 2009! Forevah!
Lauretta

Vampires v. Zombies for the Fiction Heavyweight Title

One of my book distributor colleagues reckons that Zombies are the Next Vampires. For those of you looking through every section of the modern bookstore, you know Vampire stories have infiltrated just about every single fiction section and a couple of the non-fiction sections. While Zombie stories are definitely on the rise, can I really see them staggering into a) Romance - no(?), b) Westerns - well, maybe, c) Mysteries - OK, maybe, d) Poetry - yeah, Poetry is pretty inclusive, e) Young Adults - hmn, f) Middle-School - yes, they dig the Yuck Factor, g) Elementary Kids - maybe, h) Kindergarten/Pre-School - depends on whether the illustrators can make Zombies cute?

OK, maybe the distributor has a point.

The first Zombie book I ever read was The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton. Man, that made me scared to go to sleep. Then there's all the Walking Dead graphic novels and World War Z. Most recently, we received an anthology called The Living Dead, by John Joseph Adams...all zombies, all the time. Methinks George Romero was onto something. Something messy and drippy and gross and menacingly unstoppable.

I'm going to go wash my hands now.

Ick,
Lauretta

Tea with the Author - Harry Olson

Join Reisterstown author Harry Olson for a discussion of his book, "Power Strategies of Jesus Christ." Tea and cookies will be served.