Sunday, January 29, 2012

Susan Orlean added to the Faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference

Book Passage is delighted to announce the addition of author Susan Orlean to the faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference, August 9-12 in Corte Madera, California.

Susan Orlean
Orlean is a journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker. Her books include The Orchid Thief, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People, My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who’s Been Everywhere, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. She has contributed articles to Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside. Orlean lives in Columbia County, New York (with occasional stints in Los Angeles and in New York City) with her husband, her son, dog, and two chickens.

Read more >>

This four-day Conference offers an array of writing and photography workshops in the morning, a full afternoon of panels and discussions, and evenings of faculty presentations. There are optional, working field trips to explore the resources of the Bay Area.

The faculty includes publishers, magazine editors, photographers, travel essayists, food writers, restauranteurs, guidebook writers, travel bloggers, and more. There are hours of informal interaction between faculty and students at lunch and in other discussions that often last late into the evening.


There are optional writing and photography workshops on Thursday afternoon just prior to the Conference. They are available to participants for an additional fee.


Register >>

Optional private evaluations of student work are also available.


Stay close to our Facebook page, our Twitter feed, and BookPassage.com for the upcoming announcement of the complete Conference faculty.



David Corbett, Robert Dugoni, and Sheldon Siegel added to the Faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference

Book Passage is excited to announce the addition of David Corbett, Robert Dugoni, and Sheldon Siegel to the faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, July 19-22 in Corte Madera, California.

David Corbett
Corbett is a skilled private investigator, having worked 15 years for the famed private investigation firm of Palladino & Sutherland. He is also a highly-talented writer of crime fiction. His novels including Do They Know I’m Running?, Blood of Paradise, Done for a Dime, and The Devil’s Redhead.


Robert DugoniTwo-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest, Dugoni is the New York Times bestselling author of Murder One, The Jury Master, Damage Control, and Wrongful Death. Dugoni is a lawyer by training, and he practiced as a civil litigator in San Francisco and Seattle for 17 years before retiring to write full-time. His next novel The Conviction is due in 2012.


Sheldon Siegel
Conference co-chair Sheldon Siegel epitomizes the spirit of the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference. Siegel’s courtroom mysteries include Special Circumstances, Incriminating Evidence, Criminal Intent, Judgment Day and his newest book Perfect Alibi. Siegel is a Conference alumnus—his first book was published as a result of contacts he made at the Mystery Writers Conference.

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The collegial atmosphere of this four-day conference attracts students and faculty from all over the country, many for repeat visits. Opportunities abound for faculty and students to talk, laugh, and exchange ideas in classes, workshops, panels, and informal lunches.


Register >>

There are optional writing workshops on Thursday afternoon prior to the Conference
that are available to participants for an additional fee. Stay close to our Facebook page, our Twitter feed, and BookPassage.com for the upcoming announcement of the complete
Conference faculty.

 

Mac Barnett and Gennifer Choldenko Join the Faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Children's Writers Conference

Book Passage is pleased to announce the addition of Mac Barnett and Gennifer Choldenko to the faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Children's Writers and Illustrators Conference, June 14-17 in Corte Madera, California.

Mac Barnett
Barnett's books include Mustache!, Billy Twitters and his Blue Whale Problem, Oh No! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World), and The Clock Without a Face. Time magazine named his picture book Guess Again!, as the #2 Picture Book of 2010. The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity, the first Brixton Brothers book, was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2010. Mac’s on the board of directors for 826LA, a nonprofit writing center for students in Los Angeles.

Gennifer Choldenko
Choldenko is an experienced writer and an inspiring teacher. She’s won numerous honors for her work. Her book Notes from a Liar and Her Dog was a California Book Award winner. Her book Al Capone Does My Shirts was named a Newbery Honor Book. Her other books include Louder, Lili, If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period, Al Capone Shines My Shoes (a sequel to
Al Capone Does My Shirts), and No Passengers Beyond This Point. Gennifer is hard at work on the last book in the Al Capone trilogy, which is due out in 2012. A good deal of the research for the Al Capone books was accomplished while serving as a docent on Alcatraz Island.

Visit Gennifer Choldenko's website


Join us for the 6th Annual Book Passage Children’s Writers & Illustrators Conference. The Conference will cover all aspects of writing and illustrating for children—from developing ideas to honing skills to finding a publisher. Students will work closely with other writers and illustrators, as well as with agents, editors, and publishers. The conference is designed to meet the differing needs of those who create for different age groups.
 
Students choose an area of emphasis for the morning sessions, such as writing for picture books, early readers, young adult books or illustration, and then work with a teacher in a workshop setting. In the afternoon, students choose from panels of common interest, such as working with editors, working with agents, marketing and promotion. There will be many opportunities for faculty and students to talk, laugh, and exchange ideas in classes, lunches, and at evening events.


Register >>
 
Optional private evaluations of student work are also available.

 
Stay close to our Facebook page, our Twitter feed, and BookPassage.com for the upcoming announcement of the complete Conference faculty.


 

Friday, January 27, 2012

Come Celebrate World Book Night with Book Passage

World Book Night is an annual celebration designed to spread a love of reading and books. To be held in the U.S. as well as the U.K. and Ireland on April 23, 2012. It will see tens of thousands of people go out into their communities to spread the joy and love of reading by giving out free World Book Night paperbacks.


Book Passage is proud to participate in World Book Night 2012. Book Passage will be a community pick-up location for book givers and we will be sponsoring a World Book Night Pick-Up Party a few days prior to the event -- find out below how you can be a giver on World Book Night, but hurry--you must register by February 1!

From the World Book Night U.S. Team:

World Book Night, through social media and traditional publicity, will also promote the value of reading, of printed books, and of bookstores and libraries to everyone year-round.

Successfully launched in the U.K. in 2011, World Book Night will also be celebrated in the U.S. in 2012, with news of more countries to come in future years. Please join our mailing list for regular World Book Night U.S. news. And thank you to our U.K. friends for such a wonderful idea!

Additionally, April 23 is UNESCO’s World Book Day, chosen due to the anniversary of Cervantes’ death, as well as Shakespeare’s birth and death.

This site exists in order to learn more about World Book Night and to keep updated on new developments – and most important, to register to be a World Book Night U.S. book giver.

Register to be a WBN 2012 Giver - Must sign up by February 1, 2012!

Click for details

The Week Ahead @ Book Passage

Among the Bay Area’s many bookstores, Book Passage in Corte Madera has one of the most active schedules going of author events, readings, classes and other literary happenings. In fact, it’s not uncommon for more than one or two author talks or other events to take place here just about every day. And what's more, many of these events have a local connection. Looking to the week ahead, here are three events not to miss.

Group Poetry Reading with Conflux Press poets
-- Sunday, January 29 at 4:00 pm

Abby Wasserman
Various Bay Area writers associated with Conflux Press will present their work. Scheduled to read are poets Karen Benke, Karla Clark, Ed Colettie, CB Follett, Janet Jennings, Melanie Maier, Beverly Momoi, Daniel Polikoff, Susan Terris & Abby Wasserman.

Each is talented, and each is multi-talented. Abby Wasserman, for instance, is a writer and artist and the former editor of the Oakland Museum of California's quarterly magazine. Her publications include The Spirit of Oakland, a multicultural history of the city, Portfolio, essays on 11 Native American artists, and Praise, Vilification & Sexual Innuendo, or How to Be a Critic: The Selected Writings of John L. Wasserman, which she edited. (The late John L. Wasserman, a much loved San Francisco Chronicle critic and entertainment writer, was her brother.) Since 2003, Wasserman has served on the Board of the O'Hanlon Center for the Arts in Mill Valley. She facilitates two writing groups at the Center while devoting most of her time to her poetry and her art.

Julia Flynn Siler, in conversation with Liz Epstein, discuss Lost Kingdom
-- Monday, January 30 at 7:00 pm

Julia Flynn Siler
Only one American state was ever a sovereign monarchy. That state is Hawaii – the subject of a new book by North Bay author Julia Flynn Siler. Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure (Atlantic Monthly Press) chronicles how this Pacific nation – inhabited by a proud but vulnerable Polynesian people, was encountered, annexed and absorbed by a relentlessly expanding world power, the United States.

Siler’s 2007 bestseller, Houseof Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, travelled similar ground. It told an epic story of a "takeover proof" family-controlled company which was sold over the objections of several key family members. Siler will be in conversation with Kentfield writer Liz Epstein.

One Book One Marin 2012 Celebration with Michael David Lukas
-- Thursday, February 2 at 7:00 pm

Michael David Lukas
Book Passage, along with The Marin County Free Library, City Public Libraries of Marin County and Dominican University of California, is pleased to announce the OneBook One Marin selection for 2012 – The Oracle of Stamboul (Harper Perennial), by Oakland-born author Michael David Lukas. This special event at Dominican University in San Rafael launches a county-wide celebration with a talk and book signing by the author.

Set in 19th-century Turkey (then the Ottoman Empire), beautifully written, passionate, and fragrant with political intrigue, historical upheaval and Eastern mysticism, The Oracle of Stamboul revolves around a girl who changes the course of an empire. The book is now out in soft cover. When first published in hardback, one reviewer called it “a bold portrait of an empire precariously poised on the chasm between an old and a new world.”

Lukas – who teaches in the East Bay – has been a Fulbright scholar in Turkey, a proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a Rotary scholar in Tunisia. He brings a raconteur’s sense of story telling and a traveler’s eye for detail to this, his bestselling debut novel. For more on One Book One Marin visit www.onebookonemarin.org.

Monday, January 23, 2012

The 2012 Notes & Words Essay Contest

Notes & Words is looking for the next great memoirist. We’re calling for short personal essays about the challenges of caring for a child (age 18 or younger), including medical issues (e.g., an accident, illness or diagnosis) or emotional crises (e.g., a death, divorce, breakdown) or one of any one of the more common parenting dramas (e.g., academic, social, athletic, epicurean).  We welcome both humorous and serious essays of up to 800 words.
The first prize winner will have one-on-one phone consultations with:
  • A senior editor at Random House/Ballantine
  • A top literary agent at ICM
  • The Executive Editor of O Magazine
and introductions to:
  • Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Anne LamottNew York Times bestselling author
  • John HodgmanThe Daily Show and HBO’s Bored to Death
  • Kelly CorriganNew York Times bestselling author

Finalists will receive two tickets to Notes & Words performance and after-party on April 28, 2012 at The Fox Theater in Oakland.
Click here for a list of Frequently Asked Questions
Click here for the Official Contest Rules

Read more about Notes & Words
 

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Interview with Mary Helen Stefaniak, Author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia

One of our Book Passage Signed First Editions Club members, Jaime Boler of Laurel, Mississippi, shared with us an interview she conducted with author Mary Helen Stefaniak for her book The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia. Jaime is a history instructor and she reviews books on her blog Book Magnet.


By Jaime Boler

The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia ($15.95)
Jaime Boler: When did you begin writing this novel?  And what inspired you to write it?

Mary Helen Stefaniak: I began writing this novel in March 2003 after reading a newspaper story about the shock-and-awe bombing of Baghdad.  I knew almost at once that I wanted to write a novel in which a group of Americans had a relationship to Baghdad—and everything Baghdad represents—that was different from the one being developed at the time.  I wanted to remind anyone who happened to read the book that Mesopotamia is the cradle of our civilization.

JB: Do you have a favorite character in the story?  If so, who and why?  Which character is most like you?

MHS: My favorite character?  I don’t know.  To tell you the truth, I love them all.  Well, maybe I don’t love Mr. Gordon and Mavis Davis, Sr., quite as much as I love the rest of them, but I do agree with whoever said that you have no business creating a character for whom you feel no sympathy.

The answer to which one is most like me has to be the same as Flaubert’s famous comment: “Madame Bovary, c’est moi!”  They are all me in some way or another or I couldn’t have imagined them onto the page.

JB:  Is the character May modeled on your grandmother Mattie?  Was she also a storyteller?

MHS: I never met my grandmother Mattie.  She died in childbirth with her sixth child.

JB:  In a different time, do you think Ildred and Theo would have been more than just good friends?  Or am I reading something that was not intended?

MHS: I think Ildred had strong feelings for Theo, and he obviously cared about her.  They respected one another’s intelligence and understood each other’s value.  Those are the kinds of feelings that could support a deep and lasting relationship.

JB:  What does the white dirt, or kaolin, symbolize in your novel?

MHS: I don’t know that it symbolizes anything, but it is analogous to natural resources that have led to conflicts and exploitation in other parts of the world.  As a defeated country occupied and exploited by victorious forces and plagued by terrorism in the aftermath of a bitter civil war, the American South has a history that is not unlike that of other countries that have been occupied and exploited by victorious forces and plagued by terrorism in the aftermath of a bitter civil war.

When Theo is pulled from the old kaolin pit, the deadly power of white dirt certainly suggests the deadly power of intolerance and hatred.

JB:  What was the most difficult part of writing this story?

MHS: Keeping everything straight is tough whenever the story is long and complicated enough to be a novel, and simply persevering to the end was sometimes difficult, but the hardest part, as Hemingway once put it, was “getting the words right.”

JB:  Your book is narrated by eleven-year-old Gladys Cailiff.  Why did you choose to use the first-person narrative?  Why did you choose Gladys as narrator?

MHS: I needed someone who would be perceptive and observant but also innocent, at the time—and someone who could be completely enamored with Miss Spivey.

JB:  I had very mixed feelings about Miss Grace Spivey.  On one hand, I applauded her for bringing life to Threestep and for opening the minds of her students to new cultures and a love of learning.  Yet, she has an affair with a minor and seems naïve as to the consequences of the actions she sets in motion.  What is your opinion of Miss Spivey?  How did you come up with her?  What do you think would have happened to her?

MHS: A reviewer named JoAnn Heydron described Miss Spivey as “cigarette-smoking, libidinous, and wildly generous.”  I think that’s about right.  I see her as a well-educated, highly privileged person who was really trying to do some good in the world but who wasn’t willing or able to suppress her own desires and interests while she did it. She probably has a lot in common with certain Teach for America volunteers of our own day.  As for what would have happened to her, I think she would have gone back to her privileged life, back “home to her Daddy,” as Theo predicts when he’s arguing with Force about her, and from there, she would set out again on future adventures.

I asked one book club with a high proportion of teachers among the members to let me know what they thought of Miss Spivey, and they were kind enough to take notes on their discussion.  They acknowledged that she wasn’t perfect—they were glad, at least, that Force was not one of her students—but they gave me a pretty long list of what they liked and admired about her, which included things like reading to the students, recognizing the importance of storytelling in teaching, the field trips, involving the whole community in school activities, valuing diversity (to put it mildly), and getting rid of the paddles.  What kept coming up again and again, though, was Miss Spivey’s attitude toward state mandated requirements, which, for the most part, she ignored.  Many of the teachers liked her for that.  There was some feeling that state mandates reduced opportunities for creativity in teaching.

Miss Spivey did for Gladys and Threestep what good teachers always do for us:  they transform us, they empower us, they endow us with a love of learning that lasts our whole lives—and then, in the vast majority of cases, they disappear from our lives before we’ve gotten wise enough to know what they’ve done.

JB:  You make such a convincing case for the existence of Baghdad, Georgia, that I did some research and expected to find such a place.  I was so surprised to learn you made it all up! What was your inspiration for creating this special town?

MHS: The name and the location and the one-and-a-half-room school house are inspired by the real town of Deepstep, Georgia, which claims to be the Kaolin Capital of the World.

JB:  I was especially interested in the story of Bilali Mahomet.  I’m a historian who specializes in slave culture and resistance. In some research, I came across African-American slaves who practiced Islam.  One notable person was Ibrahima, who was an African prince brought to Natchez, Mississippi.  His master renamed him Prince, yet Ibrahima still practiced some Islam.  Did you know Bilali Mahomet would be in your novel when you set out to write your story or did you learn about him later?

MHS: I “discovered” Bilali Mahomet on a visit to Sapelo Island.  I’d already been working on the book for close to three years at that point, and I needed a coastal island for purposes of the plot, so on our next trip to Georgia, my husband and I left my mother with her sister in Milledgeville and set out for the coast.  We were in the visitor’s center, where you buy your tickets for the ferry and tour (on a schoolbus driven by a Park Ranger) of Sapelo Island, when my husband spotted something amazing in a display case:  a picture of a little handmade notebook, lying open, its pages crammed with Arabic script!  Just like that, I knew that I had found a real cultural ancestor for Theo Boykin, the smartest person in Piedmont County.  I had even equipped Theo with a notebook before I learned about Bilali’s.  I started reading in that direction and found out about other literate Muslims from West Africa who wound up enslaved in the Caribbean and in the Southern United States.   And here I’d been thinking that it was kind of a stretch, to put Georgia and “Baghdad” together in one novel!

JB:  I like how you have Bilali Mahomet’s descendants naming their children Bilali. They may not know its original meaning, yet the name still means something to them.  That was one of many historical accuracies I found in your book. How important is real history in writing historical fiction?

MHS: It’s funny, but I don’t think of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia as historical fiction, which I define as fiction whose purpose is to allow readers to experience a time other than their own.  While I had to try and “recreate” rural GA in 1938-39 (not to mention the Arabian peninsula in 1916, the Georgia coastal islands in 1920 or so, a bit of General Sherman’s march to the sea, a journey from West Africa to Baghdad in 1775 or so, and scenes from 9th-century Baghdad), my purpose was not, primarily, to allow readers to experience those other times and places. 

My primary purpose was to help readers (and myself) to see our own time more clearly.  That said, whatever the novelist’s purpose in recreating another time in fiction, I think  writers are obliged to be as accurate as possible in using historical events and details.  My personal rule for the use of history in my fiction, borrowed from Donald Barthelme, is simply:  “It does not contradict what is known.”   You can find long, windy essays on the subject of using history in fiction, but I think Barthelme pretty much says it all in those seven words, which I try to live by.

JB:  I read where your mother went to the same high school as Flannery O’Connor.  Peabody High School in Milledgeville, Georgia.  Your mother graduated in 1943 and O’Connor in 1942.  Did they know each other?  Were they friends?  What is your literary relationship with O’Connor?

MHS: I was in high school when I found out about that.  Somehow, knowing that my mother had gone to school with the author of one of the stories in the anthology we were reading in English class, that she and O’Connor walked down the same school hallways, and so forth, made it seem more possible to be a writer. And the stories she wrote!  They made you believe in the power of fiction, that’s for sure. My mother and her sisters knew who she was, but they belonged to the socioeconomic class from which she drew many of her characters, rather than the one to which she herself belonged.  Maybe that’s one reason why I felt so pleased to have my mother and her sister and some cousins in the audience when I did a reading in the dining room at Andalusia, the O’Connors’ farm outside Milledgeville (where Flannery lived and wrote during the most productive years of her short life).  As I have said on other occasions, pretty much everything I’ve ever written has been a tribute to Flannery O’Connor and at the same time an argument with her.

JB:  You and your husband John live in a 150-year-old stagecoach inn you restored. What is it like living there? Could there be a future story there?

MHS: There are a hundred future stories there, but I haven’t written any of them yet.

JB: I read a review that compared The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.  But you really turn Harper Lee’s work on its head.  Can you talk about that?

MHS: I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time in a Great Books program. I was twelve or thirteen. I loved it immediately.  I’ve read it several times since. I owe a debt of gratitude, as a reader and as a writer, to Harper Lee, but as you say, there are some ways in which The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia turns To Kill a Mockingbird upside down. If Atticus Finch is the best read person in Maycomb, Alabama, then his counterpart in The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia is a 17-year-old African American named Theo Boykin.  (Not only that, but the only lawyer in Threestep happens to be the Grand Goblin of the local KKK.) In my novel, I wanted to give some credit to the less fortunate classes, both black and white.

JB:  What was your reaction upon learning your novel received the 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, an award that recognizes books that contribute to our understanding of racism and appreciation of diversity?

MHS: As I told the audience at the award ceremony in Cleveland, I was so thrilled to learn that people like the members of the Anisfield-Wolf award jury—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Joyce Carol Oates and Rita Dove and Stephen Pinker and Simon Schama–had read my book that they wouldn’t even have had to select it for the award.  Just knowing that writers and thinkers of their stature had read my work was so exciting.  Of course, I’m glad they chose it for the award, too.  If you go to the Anisfield-Wolf website and see the books and authors who have won the award in its first 75 years, you’ll have some idea of how honored I feel to have my book be among them.

JB: Who has influenced you the most in your writing?

MHS: I don’t know who has influence me the most, but I’ve learned a lot from Flannery O’Connor.

JB: You grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and vacationed in Georgia.  How was segregation different in the two very different places?

MHS: A librarian in Macon, Georgia, once told me, “In the North, segregation was spatial.  In the South, it was psychological.”  Growing up in the 1960s in a working class neighborhood on the south side of Milwaukee, I had no occasion to meet or speak to an African American until I went to high school. By contrast, in the little town where my aunt Sissie lived in Jones County, Georgia, her neighbors across the street were black, as were the families who lived down the road behind her little house. Not that I didn’t know there were official rules separating blacks and whites in Georgia.  But I can also remember thinking, as a kid, that the reason there were no “whites only” signs on drinking fountains in Milwaukee—we call them bubblers there—probably was that the nearest African American was likely to be miles away from that bubbler, there being no black people in sight.

JB: Did you find any people, events, or issues in your research for The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, that you would like to return to someday?

MHS: Issues, yes.  I think it’s so instructive to realize that racism is the same and different—in its manifestations and its targets—from generation to generation.  I’ve made some notes for a novel starring the interracial couple we meet in The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia:  Ralph Ford, who saved Gladys Cailiff’s daddy, you may recall, in the Great War, and Lily.  Ford, I’ve decided, is from Milwaukee, where he grew up in an Italian neighborhood in the Bay View area (not far from the house where we lived with my Croatian/Hungarian grandparents when I was very small).  Ralph Ford’s father went through hell and high water in the 1890s, let’s say, to win permission to marry Ralph’s mother, who was the child of Italian immigrants.  He had to convert to Catholicism and move in with his in-laws before they would give their blessing.  His own English/Irish/German-American family disowned him in the meantime.   His son Ralph Ford, who “grew up Italian,” may have hoped that his family would accept his marriage to Lily because of the obstacles that his own parents faced back when Italians and other Southern Europeans were “blacks” as far as white Anglo-Saxon Protestants were concerned.

JB: What do you hope readers take with them after reading The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia?

MHS: A different, more intimate and affectionate, feeling about the word “Baghdad” and the whole broad swath of history and culture that word represents—and more awareness of the long history of Islam in the U.S.  (I also hope that Gladys and Mavis and Force and Theo will live in their hearts forever!)

JB: What’s next for you?  I read where you were working on something that involved baseball?

MHS: The truth is that I’m working on three projects—two fiction projects and one nonfiction—waiting to see which one demands to be next.  Baseball plays a part in two of the three.

Friday, January 20, 2012

The Week Ahead @ Book Passage

Among Bay Area bookstores, Book Passage in Corte Madera has one of the most active schedules going of author events, readings, classes and other literary happenings. In fact, it’s not uncommon for more than one or two author talks to take place here just about every day. And what's more, many of these events have a local connection. Looking at the week ahead, here are three events not to miss.

Sarah G. Allen discusses Field Guide to Marine Mammals of the Pacific Coast
-- Sunday, January 22 at 1 pm


Don’t miss local scientist Sarah G. Allen as she presents her Field Guide to Marine Mammals of the Pacific Coast: Baja, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia (University of California Press, $24.95), a handy guide to the identification, natural history, and conservation of species which inhabit the spectacular coastal region we call home.

This interpretive field guide – which includes color illustrations, photographs, drawings, and maps – describes the various whales, dolphins, seals, and otters that are resident in, migrate through, or forage the waters from the Baja peninsula in the south to British Columbia in the north – with stops along the way in the waters off Marin County. And what’s more, this new book tells where and how to view these many fascinating creatures.

Algonquin Book Club Night with Naomi Benaron, author of Running the Rift
-- Tuesday, January 24 at 7 pm



Algonquin books, the fiercely independent publishing house that launched national bestsellers like Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and When She Woke by Hillary Jordan comes to Book Passage to showcase some of their new and forthcoming releases. Algonquin's director of marketing will share book club recommendations while also answering questions about writing and publishing in today’s ever changing literary landscape. Highlighting the event will be Algonquin debut novelist Naomi Benaron, who will introduce her Bellwether Prize winning novel, Running the Rift (Algonquin, $24.95) the Indie Next Pick for January. Book Passage favorite Barbara Kingsolver called this new book “Ambitious, beautiful, and unapologetically passionate.”

Those in attendance will have a chance to win $150 worth of Algonquin titles. As well, complimentary Algonquin catalogs and tote bags will be available, as will a sampling of wines which pair perfectly with Algonquin's full-bodied, hand-crafted, fiction.

Literary Luncheon & Chinese New Year Celebration with Ying Compestine
-- Friday, January 27 at 12:00 noon


Join multi-talented Bay Area author Ying Compestine as she presents Ying’s Best One-Dish Meals: Quick & Healthy Recipes for the Entire Family (Sellers Publishing, $18.95), a collection of delicious meals "Designed for working families who want to eat nutritious, home-cooked meals with fast-food timelines" (Contra Costa Times). Prepared for modern families short on time but wanting to eat healthy, these recipes allow readers to pull together satisfying meals in a snap.

Besides her many accomplishments as a speaker and food editor, the Chinese-born Compestine has also authored notable books for young readers including Revolution is Not a Dinner Party (2007), a winner of the California Book Award and the One Book/One County pick in San Mateo, and A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts (2009), which was chosen by the AARP as a Grandparent's Book for Children. Tickets are $35.00. Admission includes 3 courses, tea, and a signed copy of Ying’s Best One-Dish Meals. Call Book Passage to reserve a seat.

MORE INFO: Unless otherwise noted, all events take place at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., in Corte Madera. Call (415) 927-0960 or visit www.bookpassage.com for details.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

A bit mad for Downton Abbey

The staff and customers at Book Passage, like much of the rest of the country, have gone a bit mad for "Downton Abbey," the hit historical drama which airs Sunday nights on PBS. The show is, as the New York Times dubbed it, the darling of American public television. And, it is also the subject of something of a frenzy of reader interest. Like the earlier and widely acclaimed "Upstairs, Downstairs," "Downton Abbey" is set in the years just before, during, and after the First World War.

Our "Downton Abbey" display at Book Passage.

Book Passage customers are keen on not just books about the series, like the lavish pictorial, The World of Downton Abbey (St. Martins, $29.99) by Jessica Fellowes (the niece of show writer Julian Fellowes), but also books which tie in directly to the story on the screen, like Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle, by the Countess of Carnarvon (Broadway, $15.99). And then there are related titles like the recollections of a lady’s maid Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor (Penguin, $15.00), by Rosina Harrison - and What the Butler Winked At (Westholme Publishing, $14.95), by Eric Horne, a memoir by a someone who worked as a butler for more than 50 years. And don't forget Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid's Memoir That Inspired "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "Downton Abbey" (St. Martins, $22.99) by Margaret Powell. It too is very good.

Another view of our "Downton Abbey" display.

We picked out some of these titles and a few others titles - fiction, memoirs and a biography - and made a display at our store in Corte Madera. Why not drop by and check it out. You can find each of the Downton Abbey-related titles mentioned in this blog for sale at Book Passage.

Friday, December 30, 2011

New novel depicts 1920s coming of age story

Charming and a little different, Caroline Preston's new novel, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (Ecco / HarperCollins Publishers), is a hybrid work where the pictures do the talking.One might describe it as something F. Scott Fitzgerald might have come up with for the Saturday Evening Post had he been a collage artist or even, in today's parlance, a graphic novelist. Like the best stories of that Jazz Age writer, this engaging work is poignant, tender and leaves you wrapped up in the tangled plight of its protagonist.

In many ways, Frankie Pratt is a typical small town young woman of the 1920s -- she's envious of the flappers she has read about in magazines, but is tentative about copying their modern ways. She is also looking for love and success, and dreams of being a writer.

For her graduation from high school, Frankie receives a scrapbook along with her father's Corona typewriter. A bright young thing, she begins to fill her scrapbook with clippings as well as her own thoughts and observations. Frustrated in her ambition, and about to see her dreams fade away, Frankie forgoes a scholarship to Vassar in order to help her widowed mother. Still living at home, a mysterious WWI veteran named Captain James sweeps Frankie off her feet; her mother must find a way to protect Frankie from the less-than-noble intentions of this unsuitable admirer.

Frankie eventually makes it to Vassar, and there crosses paths with other co-eds turned flappers as well as a real writer -- alumna Edna St. Vincent Millay, who encourages Frankie to move to Greenwich Village and pursue her dreams.

In New York, she finds a job writing for a pulp magazine while also experiencing big city heartbreak.  Frankie then sets off for Paris and en route keeps company with a spinster adventuress. Once in the French capital, Frankie takes a room above Shakespeare & Company -- the hub of expat life, and pursues her dreams until the Captain from her past reappears.

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a coming-of-age story composed of visual scraps -- postcards, photographs, letters, advertisements, ticket stubs, maps, catalog pages, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, headlines, fashion spreads, menus, and other ephemera from the roaring Twenties. Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, John Barrymore and T.S. Eliot are all referenced visually. Though images dominate, text nevertheless plays a vital role in advancing the narrative -- and ever-so gracefully, Preston's tone is right on the mark.

I was impressed, for example, when I read that the 1918 Corona Portable used by Preston in the typewriting of the captions is the same model used by another writer who came of age in the 1920's, Ernest Hemingway. That is the kind of detail one finds in this unusual book which helps enrich the story. (Font enthusiasts will know what I mean.) One reviewer has described this book as "lighter than lightweight" -- but in a complementary way. It is that, certainly, and also a lot of fun and a worthwhile read.

Preston's new book will also appeal to memorabilia collectors and those who scrapbook, as well as Jazz Age enthusiasts and those seduced by the charm and history behind Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist or Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. They each tread similar ground. And what's more, there is full-color vintage ephemera from the author's collection pictured on every page.

Preston has collected antique scrapbooks since she was in high school, and has become an expert on the history of the scrapbook in America. She has worked as an archivist at the Peabody/Essex Museum and Harvard University Houghton Library. Preston is also the author of three previous novels, Jackie by Josie (a New York Times Notable Book), Lucy Crocker 2.0, and Gatsby's Girl. The latter is another charming Jazz Age period piece, the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald's first love -- a pre-Zelda Chicago socialite named Ginerva.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Who’s Snooping Around Bookstores?

Lots of people, it appears.


by William Petrocelli

Browsing in a bookstore is one of the world’s greatest forms of entertainment. The price is right, the pace is leisurely, the resources are unmatched, your fellow browsers are usually thoughtful, and the intellectual stimulation is endless. Many people never get tired of it. We own a bookstore, but we still find it invigorating to walk into someone else’s bookstore and look around.

But when does browsing become a bit abusive? According to the New York Times, it’s probably when browsing morphs into “showcasing.” According to Julie Bosman (NYT 12/5/11),
“Bookstore owners everywhere have a lurking suspicion: that the customers who type into their smartphones while browsing in the store, and then leave are planning to buy the books online later.”
And they’re not buying them, one suspects, from the store that hosted their research.

Is this such a bad thing? In small doses, of course not. But when the practice begins to mushroom, independent booksellers start wondering if publishers ought to be paying them an advertising fee to showcase books that many are buying elsewhere. A recent survey conducted by the Codex Group, a book market research and consulting company, showed that 24% of the people who bought a book from an on-line retailer said they had looked at the same book in a brick and mortar bookstore before making that purchase. In the case of customers purchasing from Amazon.com, that number jumped to 39%.

Ah, Amazon.

If there’s a questionable practice going on anywhere, you can usually count on Amazon.com to push it over the limit.

Not content with the advantage it gets when 39% of its customers kick the tires on the merchandise in someone else’s showroom before buying from Amazon, that online giant decided to go a little further. In December 2011 Amazon instituted a program by which customers could earn a $5.00 discount on any purchase if they first went into a brick and mortar store and checked out the same merchandise.
And, yes, they have an app for that.

Amazon customers were told how they could walk into a neighborhood store with their hand-held device and gather information. “Check prices instantly,” the Amazon webpage proclaimed. The customer was told to find the merchandise they wanted and then “scan it, snap it, say it, or type it” into their smart phone. That information then became a part of Amazon’s vast data-mining operation, and the customer received $5.00 off the purchase of the same item from Amazon. Spies apparently work cheap these days.

The uproar in the retailing world over Amazon’s tactics was immediate. The Alliance for Main Street Fairness said, “Small-business owners aren’t happy that Amazon is trying to turn their Main Street storefronts into digital showrooms.” Literary agent Andy Ross focused on the data-mining of the device: you are “uploading information to Amazon including the geographical coordinates of your price check. You are, in effect, an Amazon secret shopper.” Senator Olympia Snowe called it “an attack on Main Street businesses that employ workers in our communities. David Didriksen of Willow Books & Cafe in Acton, Mass., called it “another in a long series of predatory practices by Amazon. You would think that a company of that size would be willing to just live and let live for small retailers who can’t possibly affect them. But, no, they want it all.” Oren Teicher, executive director of the American Booksellers Association, wrote an open letter to Jeff Bezos, president of Amazon, concluding: “We suppose we should be flattered that an online sales behemoth needs a Main Street retail showroom. Forgive us if we’re not.” Author Richard Russo, in a N.Y. Times editorial (12/13/11) said:

Is it just me, or does it feel as if the Amazon brass decided to spend the holidays in the Caribbean and left in charge of the company a computer that’s fallen head over heels in love with its own algorithms?

Given Amazon’s history of predatory pricing, sales tax evasion, and arbitrary delisting of authors, we probably shouldn’t be surprised at this. A company that would spend the holiday season flooding us with ads in which the female actor is referred to as “Happy Pants,” is insensitive enough to do almost anything.

***

Snooping on bookstores is one thing; snooping on readers is far worse. But in a way, the two things are connected.

There’s a growing concern among civil libertarians and others that the reading habits of book purchasers may be in jeopardy. The first hint of this problem came in Kenneth Starr’s probe of President Bill Clinton. He issued a subpoena to KramerBooks in Washington. D.C., trying to obtain records of books purchased by Monica Lewinsky. The court struck down the demands of the Special Counsel as being overly broad and infringing on the First Amendment Rights of book purchasers.
The next big test came in Colorado, where investigators in a drug case issued a search warrant against Tattered Cover Books for the book-puchasing records of a suspect. In the landmark decision of Tattered Cover, Inc. v. City of Thornton, the Colorado Supreme Court limited the power of the police to those cases where the information being requested met a strict constitutional standard.
That’s two big cases and two wins.

But those two victories for reader privacy happened only because some courageous booksellers refused to comply with the initial demand and insisted on a court hearing. They could just as easily have said yes and handed over the records, as many big companies have done in similar situations. When First Amendment issues are at stake, there are few people as stubborn or feisty as independent booksellers.

The problem of protecting reader privacy has grown significantly more serious with the advent of the e-book. In the April 2011 hearings leading up to the new California Reader Privacy Act, the State Senate cited an NPR Report of March 2010:

“Digital book services have the ability to collect and retain very detailed information about readers. The level of detail that these services can collect would require an offline library or bookstore to hire an agent to follow each individual patron around the stacks, throughout their day, and finally into their homes. Digital book providers can easily track what books an individual considers, how often a given book is read, how long a given page is viewed, and even what notes are written in the “margins.” As reading has moved online, it also has become much easier to link books that are browsed or read with a reader’s other online activities, such as Internet searches, emails, cloud computing documents, and social networking. With all of this information, companies can create profiles about individuals, their interests and concerns, and even those of their family and friends.”

The California Reader Privacy Act, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2012, is a partial response to this problem The act says a bookseller shall not “knowingly disclose to any government entity, or be compelled to disclose to any person, private entity, or government entity,” any information about a customer without a proper hearing and court order. It applies in criminal cases, but it also applies in civil matters in which an enterprising attorney may obtain a subpoena for evidence in, say, a tax case or a divorce case This Act is an important first step, but it still leaves some pretty big holes in reader privacy.

First of all, the Act doesn’t apply in cases involving a federal investigation. There, it is possible that a bookseller could be served with an FBI request under the Patriot Act. In many of those cases the booksellers can neither contest the government’s demand or even reveal the fact that it was made.

Perhaps more significantly, the California statute only regulates disclosure to a governmental entity or disclosures made in a legal proceeding. It makes no mention of voluntary disclosure to anyone else: that apparently is left up to the bookseller’s own internal policy.

In evaluting a company’s privacy policy, a reader needs to look at how much wiggle room it contains. Sometimes you almost need a lawyer to figure out what it really means. For example, Apple says this in its e-books privacy policy:

“Apple shares personal information with companies who provide services such as information processing, extending credit, fulfilling customer orders, delivering products to you, managing and enhancing customer data, providing customer service, assessing your interest in our products and services, and conducting customer research or satisfaction surveys."

Amazon, for its part, uses this language:

“As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy stores, subsidiaries, or business units. In such transactions, customer information generally is one of the transferred business assets.”

One way to look at the potential threat to reader privacy is this: When you purchase an e-book, you are not really purchasing a book but rather access to the contents of that book in a vast, cloud-based digital system. As e-book designers add features to the system to make it smoother for the reader, they inevitably end up gathering more information about the reader. The database will not only show what you bought, but when you bought it, how fast you read it, what parts you went back and read again, and what page you were on when you put it down.

How important is any of this? Readers have to decide that for themselves. But in an e-book world, they would do well to get over the notion that a book is something they’re reading in the privacy of their own surroundings. The cloud-based data system knows what you are reading and a lot more personal information as well.

(And, yes—if you’re the one reading this article—that data system also knows you took that job of snooping around a store for a mere five bucks.)

***

William Petrocelli is an author, a bookseller, and a former attorney. For the past 35 years, he has been the co-owner, with his wife Elaine, of Book Passage in San Francisco and Corte Madera, California.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Book Passage picks on the Ronn Owens Show

Elaine PetrocelliRonn OwensElaine Petrocelli was on the Ronn Owens Show on KGO on December 21st, where she and show host Ronn Owens discussed some recommended books. The shows feature engaging conversation and excellent reading recommendations! Here is a checklist of the titles they spoke about. A more fully annotated and illustrated page listing these books has been posted to the Book Passage website.

 GIFT BOOKS 

Grantland
McSweeneys $19.95
call (415) 927-0960 to place an order

Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees
Nancy Hugo $29.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781604692198

Italian Racing Bicycles: The People, The Products, The Passion
Guido Rubino $39.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781934030660

The Conference of the Birds
Peter Sis/Rumi $29.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781594203060

Italian Baker (revised)
Carol Field $35.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781607741060

Pilgrimage  *** 
Annie Leibovitz $50.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780375505089

NON-FICTION

Extra Virginity  
Tom Mueller  $25.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780393070217

The Time of Our Lives: A Conversation about America
Tom Brokaw  $26.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781400064588

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
Robert Massie $ 35.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780679456728

The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation
Elizabeth Letts, $26.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780345521088

The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food
Adam Gopnik $25.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780307593450

FICTION

The Language of Flowers  
Vannessa Diffenbaugh $25.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780345525543

-- companion book
A Victorian Flower Dictionary
Mandy Kirkby, Vanessa Diffenbaugh $22.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780345532862

The Cat’s Table  *** 
Michael Ondaatje $26.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780307700117

The Buddha in the Attic
Julie Otsuka  $22.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780307700001

The Drop
Michael Connelly $27.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780316069410

Love and Shame and Love  *** 
Peter Orner $24.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780316129398

Oracle of Stamboul
Michael David Lukas $13.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780062012104

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson  $15.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780307949493

Dead Love  zombie fiction
Linda Watanabe McFerrin $14.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781933330907

The Hunter
not yet released
John Lescroart  $26.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780525952565

KIDS BOOKS & BOOKS FOR YOUNGER READERS

Lonely Planet Not-for-Parents Travel Book
Michael DuBois, Katri Hilden, Jane Price
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781742208145

Lonely Planet Not-for-Parents London: Everything You Wanted to Know
Klay Lamprell
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781742208169

Lonely Planet Not-for-Parents Paris: Everything You Wanted to Know

Klay Lamprell
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781742208176

Lonely Planet Not-for-Parents New York: Everything You Wanted to Know

Klay Lamprell
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781742208152

Lonely Planet Not-for-Parents Rome: Everything You Wanted to Know
Klay Lamprell
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781742208183

Time Travelling Fashionista
Biana Turetsky $17.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780316105422

Inheritance
*** 
Christopher Paolini $27.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780375856112

Book Thief

Markus Zusak $12.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780375842207

Here Comes Grandma!
Janet Lord and Julie Paschkis  $13.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780805076660

Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site
Sherri Duskey Rinker (Author), Tom Lichtenheld (Illustrator)   $16.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780811877824

Secrets at Sea

Richard Peck and Kelly Murphy  $16.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780803734555

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell the Tales

Chris Van Allsburg $24.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780547548104

The Scorpio Races
Maggie Stiefvater $17.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780545224901

The Emerald Atlas
John Stephens  $17.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780375868702

Bigger than a Bread Box
Laurel Snyder  $16.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780375869167

 ***  some autographed copies available

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend

One of the most popular books at Book Passage this Holiday season is Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend (Simon & Schuster, $26.99). It is the story of a dog – a very special dog, as those who attended Orlean's earlier Book Passage event were fascinated and delighted to find out.

Rin Tin Tin was the name given to a puppy found on a WWI battlefield that went on to star in more than twenty films. Extraordinarily popular in the 1920's, Rin Tin Tin was a major movie star, reportedly won an Academy Award, and helped save Warner Brothers from bankruptcy. The dog’s name was subsequently given to several related German Shepherds featured in later films, books, comics, and radio and television programs.

Orlean’s book traces the legacy of not only an entertainment icon, but also a cultural icon which helped shape the changing role of dogs in American society, including military service. In her book, Orlean puts it this way: “I knew I loved the narrative of Rin Tin Tin because it contained so many stories within it: it was a tale of lost families, and of identity, and also of the way we live with animals; it was a story of luck, both good and bad, and the half turns that life takes all the time. It was a story of war as well as a story of amusement. It was an account of how we create heroes and what we want from them. It laid out, through the story of Rin Tin Tin, the whole range of devotion – to ideas and to a companion – as well as the pure, half-magical devotion an animal can have to a person.”

The book also tells the story of the American soldier – one time Oakland resident Lee Duncan, and his special relationship with the orphaned pup whom he found and called Rinty and brought to world fame. Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend is the poignant story of man’s love for man’s best friend. Recently, Susan Orlean took time to answer a few questions from Book Passage staffer & film buff Thomas Gladysz about her bestselling book.

Thomas Gladysz: In your book, you write about the Rin Tin Tin figure which sat on your grandfather’s desk which you admired as a youth. When and how did the idea of writing about Rin Rin Tin come to you as an adult and as a writer?

Susan Orlean: I hadn’t thought about Rin Tin Tin for decades. Then I was working on a story about animals in Hollywood for the New Yorker, and Rin Tin Tin’s name came up, as it inevitably does when you look into that particular subject. I was astonished by how powerful the memory was, and by how many memories rushed back the minute I was reminded of him. When I discovered that his story was far more complex than I had imagined – that he wasn’t merely a television character but in fact a real dog with a long and intricate history, I was fascinated – and immediately convinced that I had to write a book about him.

Thomas Gladysz: Rin Tin Tin was found as a puppy on a WWI battlefield. What was special about the relationship between Rin Tin Tin and the American soldier, Lee Duncan, who became the dog’s original owner & trainer?

Susan Orlean: The bond between devoted owners and dogs is universal. In the case of Lee and Rin Tin Tin, they were almost inseparable from the time they first came together, when the puppy was just a few days old. That gave them an extraordinary connection, as did Lee’s focus on training the dog and spending so much time with him. But there was something else – something that’s impossible to define, that made their connection so intense.

Thomas Gladysz: Lee Duncan was raised in an orphanage in Oakland, and visited there later in life with his famous canine. Does the Bay Area play a significant part in Lee Duncan’s life?


Susan Orlean: Lee’s years in Oakland molded him for life. He was only in the orphanage for four years, but they were formative ones, and even after his mother reclaimed him and took him back to southern California, he remained permanently fused to his memory of his days in Fred Finch. It was central to his character and his emotions. He visited Fred Finch many times throughout the remainder of his life, returning to Oakland as often as he could.

Thomas Gladysz: The early films which feature Rin Tin Tin – especially the silent films – are very entertaining. Rin Tin Tin himself had real charisma, and great athletic ability. Do you think Rinty was in any sense an actor?

Susan Orlean: Yes! He performs not just as a dog responding to commands but as if he had a sense of what he was trying to portray. I don’t think you can teach that; I think the dog had to have had a sense of being observed, of needing to put his heart into his behavior. Once you seen those early films, you can’t help but think he was an actor.

Thomas Gladysz: Your book takes readers through nearly 100 years of history and culture while examining the enduring appeal of Rin Tin Tin. Why do you think the dog, as a character and as a symbol, lasted so long? Could there be a Rin Tin Tin today?

Susan Orlean: Rin Tin Tin has lasted for several reasons. The people who were drawn into his life were unusually committed to the bigger idea of keeping his story alive, rather than what would have been easy — cash in and move on. And he connected with a need and desire the public has had to believe in a heroic character. Could we still feel that today? We’re in the post-heroic period these days, but we may be moving past that. The idea of a hero, of rising above circumstance, braving the risks, being selfless — those are eternal, and even if the last few decades of skepticism and disappointment have made it harder to believe in that, I think people will always want something to dream about. Maybe we’re ready to embrace Rin Tin Tin as that figure once again.

Thomas Gladysz: Finally, there have been many Rin Tin Tins. Do you have a favorite?

Susan Orlean: The dog who starred in the television series was the most beautiful of the Rin Tin Tins, and he was the dog I imprinted on as a kid, so that’s my favorite Rin Tin Tin to gaze at and pine for. But the first Rin Tin Tin is the most charismatic of them all, and his life was so amazing that it’s hard not to be awed by him. And he could jump over the moon.



Fans of Susan Orlean will be pleased to learn that the acclaimed writer has agreed to participate in the 21st annual Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference, which will takes place August 9th through August 12th in Corte Madera. Watch this blog and the Book Passage website for details.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Some recommended film books published in 2011

There have been a number of excellent film books published in the course of the year. A number of them have looked back to classic Hollywood, and a number of them have been biographies, memories, or biographical or career studies. We've put together an annotated list of what we feel are some of the best films books from 2011. Each can be ordered through Book Passage.


Harlow in Hollywood: The Blonde Bombshell in theGlamour Capital, 1928-1937, by Darrell Rooney and Mark A. Vieira (Angel City Press)
This is Jean Harlow like you've never seen her before. Rooney is one of the foremost collectors of Harlow memorabilia, and Vieira is one of the foremost authorities on classic Hollywood photography. (Vieira has a handful of other recommended pictorial books to his credit). They've joined forces in authoring this gorgeous pictorial which not only tells the story of the life and career of the famous platinum blonde but also features a remarkable assemblage of images, the majority of which are little known. Harlow is lovely in most every one; this equally appealing and elegant book is a fitting testimony to her legend.


What do actress Hedy Lamarr, avant-garde composer George Antheil, and your cell phone have in common? The answer is spread-spectrum radio, a revolutionary inven­tion based on the rapid switching of communications sig­nals among a spread of different frequencies. Without this technology, many of the devices we take for granted, such as cell phones, wouldn’t work. As it turns out, the idea of spread-spectrum was thought up & patented not by a computer engineer in recent years, but by a beautiful actress and an experimental composer during WWII. Their idea, then, was to create a jam-proof radio guidance system for torpedoes. Pulitzer Prize winner Rhodes tells their story.

John Huston: Courage and Art, by Jeffrey Meyers (Crown Archetype)
As much as anyone – and perhaps more, John Huston was a literary filmmaker; thirty-four of his thirty-seven films adapted important novels, stories or plays. In fact, Huston got his start as a journalist and short story writer before moving on to the movies and work as a screenwriter. Huston’s Oscar nominated success as a screenwriter led to his work as a director. He then made an auspicious debut with a film based on a novel, The Maltese Falcon (1941). Fittingly, Huston’s life story is recounted by a literary scholar in a fine new biography. Meyers’ briskly told biography of the writer, director, actor (Chinatown), and Hollywood bon vivant details one of the more colorful lives of the 20th century.


Michael Lindsay-Hogg is a British director best known for his work on stage, on television - notably the much admired Brideshead Revisited, and for his concert films and music documentaries including The Beatles’ Let It Be and The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. Lindsay-Hogg is also the son of Warner Bros. star and Academy Award nominee Geraldine Fitzgerald - Wuthering Heights (1939). His biological father, as is revealed in this beautifully written book, is none other than Orson Welles.


Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl in Hollywood, by Emily W. Leider (University of California Press)

Leider, the author of acclaimed biographies Rudolph Valentino and Mae West, has penned a thoroughly researched and stylishly written biography of an accomplished actress who was more than just her screen credits. Leider puts it this way in her introduction. “From day one Myrna Loy’s screen image has conjured mystery, a sense of something withheld, something intriguing because it seems unknowable. ‘Who is she?’ was a question posed in the first fan magazine article published about her, in 1925. This book attempts to fill in some of the gaps and to counter the relative neglect that has befallen her abundant legacy.” Leider accomplishes this and more in detailing the career of an actress whose career began in the silent era and lasted into the era of television.

Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, by Brian Kellow (Viking)

For better or worse, and there are plenty on both sides of the fence still willing to argue their case, Pauline Kael (1919-2001) is the most influential film critic of the last 50 years. Not only did Kael influence a generation of critics - namely those we read today, she also affected the climate for filmmaking in America (according to Roger Ebert). Her witty, biting, and highly opinionated reviews - many of which were published in the New Yorker over the course of Kael's 20 year association with the magazine - also made her the most prominent film critic of her time. Kellow's new biography shows what made Kael tick - namely, her love of the movies. In reference to her film criticism, Kael once wrote "I'm frequently asked why I don't write my memoirs. I think I have." Also just out is a 750 page collection of Kael's criticism and essays, The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael (Library of America), edited by Sanford Schwartz. Consider it a companion book, and a kind of alternative biography.

Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood'sLegendary Director, by Marilyn Ann Moss  (University Press of Kentucky)

Along with Frank Capra and John Ford, Raoul Walsh (1887-1980) was one of Hollywood's early mavericks. Walsh's career spanned more than fifty years - from the silent era through the 1960's, and he helped create the American action adventure film. Whether directing a swashbuckler, a Western, a gangster film, a war epic, a drama or even a musical, there was often something of a romantic flair about Walsh's films - much of which has held up remarkably well. The Thief of Bagdad (1924), What Price Glory? (1926), Sadie Thompson (1928), The Roaring Twenties (1939), Dark Command (1940), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), High Sierra (1941), White Heat (1949) and The Naked and the Dead (1958) are all his work. Moss's thoroughly researched book is both exemplary and groundbreaking, as this is the first full-length biography of a dominant figure in the history of film.

Rin TinTin: The Life and the Legend, by Susan Orlean (Simon & Schuster)

Rin Tin Tin tells the story of the famous canine who went from an orphaned puppy found on a WWI battlefield in France to an extraordinarily popular Hollywood movie star (so much so he helped save Warner Bros. from bankruptcy and reportedly won an Academy Award) in the silent era to international icon and television star in the ensuing decades. Rin Tin Tin is also the poignant exploration of the bond between one man (the lonely American soldier who found Rinty) and one dog – as well as a history of 20th entertainment and the changing role of dogs in the American society. As such, this book strays from film history to cultural history - but is nevertheless a great read. In its review, The New York Times Book Review asked “Do dogs deserve biographies?” In Orlean’s hands, the answer is an affirmative “Bark.”


John Bengtson is an archeologist of the cinema. And his new book, the last in a trilogy-of-sorts, is a visual excavation of the past. Following books devoted to Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, Silent Visions now explores the films of Harold Lloyd. Bengtson’s detailed examination and comparison of scene stills and screen captures with old maps, city directories, newspapers, photographs and dusty building records (and yes, Google maps too) reveals not only where Lloyd shot films in Los Angeles and New York, but also how those two great cities have changed in the meantime. “History is hidden in the background of films” is this way lawyer by day / film historian by night put it in a recent interview. Bengtson's new book is a brilliant then-and-now triumph. Silent Visions includes a foreword by 2010 Academy Award winning film historian Kevin Brownlow.

Sitting Pretty: The Life and Times of Clifton Webb, by Clifton Webb and David L. Smith (University Press of Mississippi)
The never finished autobiography of one of the top moneymakers at 20th Century Fox, as completed by David L. Smith. Though his star has waned in the years since his death, Webb (1889-1966) knew pretty much everyone who was anyone during Hollywood’s golden age. This book makes for interesting reading, and includes a foreword by actor Robert Wagner.





Spencer Tracy: A Biography, by James Curtis (Knopf)

Since his death, Spencer Tracy has become one of the cinema’s most misunderstood figures and the subject of unsubstantiated claims, many of which center on the nature of his 26-year, extra-marital relationship with actress Katharine Hepburn. Which is a shame, because Tracy is still considered one of the finest actors in film history The sturdy, congenial everyman won back-to-back Oscars in 1937 and 1938, and in the course of his long career, was nominated for the Best Actor award a record nine times. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Tracy among the ten greatest male stars. Spencer Tracy attempts to set the record straight regarding the stories and legends which have grown up around the actor. And that it does in a detailed and definitive manner. This impressive, 1,000 page book concludes with a frank appraisal of the bookshelf worth of recent biographies of Hepburn, many of which the author dismisses.

Thomas Ince: Hollywood's Independent Pioneer, by Brian Taves (University Press of Kentucky)

Ince turned an art form into a business. Progressing from actor to screenwriter and director, Ince revolutionized the industry by developing the role of the producer. In addition to building the first major Hollywood studio - dubbed "Inceville," this industry pioneer and "Father of the Western" had a hand in more than 800 films. Taves chronicles Ince's life from his early days on the stage to his sudden death at a time when he was about to join forces with William Randolph Hearst. Taves details Ince's impact on the Hollywood production system, his creation of the first American movies starring Asian performers, and his cinematic exploration of the status of women. Until now, Ince (1882-1924), one of the most influential and neglected of early moguls, had not been the subject of a biography. This authoritative work, scrupulously researched, offers considerable insight. 

This list was compiled by Book Passage employee Thomas Gladysz, an early film buff and the Director of the Louise Brooks Society, an internet-based archive and international fan club devoted to the legendary silent film star. He has contributed to books on the actress, organized exhibits, appeared on television and radio, and introduced Brooks' films around the world. Last year, he edited and wrote the introduction to the “Louise Brooks Edition” of Margarete Bohme’s The Diary of a Lost Girl.