Author and journalist Karen Spears Zacharias has written a moving post about Wanda Jewell, Executive Director of the Southeastern Independent Bookseller Alliance (SIBA):
If God were a writer and he was married to one woman, I’m pretty sure that woman would be Wanda Jewell. If God had his wits about him, that is, which always begs the question anytime you’re dealing with creators, whether writers or God, I imagine.
It would be the perfect union. He could stay home, write, and avoid people till his big ole heart was content. Trust Wanda to do all the footwork. That’s what untold numbers of us writers do already. We hunker down and create alternative worlds. Worlds in which everything goes the way we plan it, or at least thunk it, trusting all the while that when we are done that Wanda will help us get our books into the hands of booksellers and readers the nation over.
Here’s a review of Christopher Moore’s Fool by Yankee Rose from Atlanta’s A-List:
Fool! What Fool? King Lear’s Fool. Not up on your Shakespeare? No worries. We do read more than children’s books here at Atlanta’s A-List, though it has been years since we laid eyes on King Lear. Christopher Moore brings it all back for us…sort of.
If you don’t know him, Moore is the author of a little more than 11 novels (he republished one book, The Stupidest Angel, in a 2.0 version with a new chapter, so we’re nopt ready to give him an even dozen). He has lent his quirky, irreverent, and often marvelous humor to marine biology (Fluke), theology (Lamb), death (Dirty Job), and, of course, vampires (Bloodsucking Fiends, You Suck). With his latest, recently available in hardcover, he retells the tale of King Lear via his favorite fool, Pocket of Dogg Snogging (yes, that’s Moore’s name for him). In Moore’s world, Pocket is the black fool, the fool who can do no wrong.
Thursday, May 14th
Salon
7:00 P.M.
May’s salon topic is Entitlement: How much are we worth? Is entitlement the biggest economic threat to America? Do we blame others instead of accepting accountability? What is the fine line between responsibility and what we deserve?
This is Kona’s new favorite videos. She gives it five paws up!
City of Thieves (Plume, 2009, 272 pp., pbk., $15.00) by David Benioff
From the critically acclaimed author of The 25th Hour, a captivating novel about war, courage, survival—and a remarkable friendship that ripples across a lifetime.
During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.
By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.
Louise Brooks (Anchor Books, 1990, 609 pp., pbk., reg. $14.95; our used price $9.95) by Barry Paris.
Film historian Paris covers actress and author Brooks’ life (1907-1985) from her days as a precocious child in Kansas through her sexually promiscuous, hedonistic adult years, here detailed exhaustively. Only 15 when she arrived in New York to dance with an established company, Brooks fouled up this opportunity, like many others, through sheer carelessness. A promising star in early Hollywood films, she scorned later roles and decamped for Europe. Eminent German director G. W. Pabst then spotted the American “vamp” and chose her to play Lulu in the film that made her a screen icon, Pandora’s Box. It was downhill all the way after that as Brooks failed at everything, finally growing old, poor and alcoholic in New York. But she was discovered and befriended by one John Benz, whose influence brought her again to public attention and secured the home where she lived out her days, cared for and reasonably contented. The biography is a gossip lover’s feast, naming names and telling tales, yet also makes an addition to film history.
In 1991, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) released “Pandora’s Box (It’s a Long, Long Way),” which is about Brooks. Watch the video below.
Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes
To find out what happens, buy a book.
