Book Magic

Palette cleansing time!  The past few weeks have been devoted to reading, and re-reading some light philosophy, psychology, and pop-psychology books and articles for my HTR column.  I needed a break from wading through (and hopefully correctly interpreting) the high powered language.  Like magic, Horten's Incredible Illusions dropped in my lap.  The cover clearly draws on the wild popularity of The Mysterious Benedict Society series, but that's OK.  It worked.  It got me to read the book.  Tween and young adult fiction always get me through transitions, and times when I just can't concentrate on anything more challenging. 

 I'm not quite ready to dig into The Family Fang, our book discussion title for July.  In fact, I'm a little worried about how it will be received.  It's a dark comedy.  That's all I'll say since I blogged about it in the past....loved it...but I'm still worried - and excited- to see what everyone thinks.

No, on to "Horten..."

Trapped in the Beeton Museum inside the Pharaoh's Pyramid, Stuart slotted a star shaped disk into place, the pyramid fell open and he was in the middle of a desert.  Just when height-challenged Stuart Horten thinks his big adventure is over, he discovers that Great Uncle Tony has left behind yet another mystery for him.  He has hidden his will,  and his magic tricks are clues to its location. 

Great mash-up.  Mystery with magic.  I love magic and was lucky enough to see Doug Henning twice. My friend, Chris, did sound, or was it lights? for a magician for a while right out of college.  He had to sign all sorts of agreements that he would never reveal any of the secrets, and to this day, I have only been able to pry one out of him.  William Pounstone wrote several  Big Secrets books in which he reveals, among other things, how several high tech magic tricks are done.  Believe me, they are high tech, and the descriptions are so complex that the magic has not been ruined for me. 

Anyway, Horton will be published in September.  Watch for it.

Other stuff....

• I'll be closing out the events blog soon.  Instead, I put an events tab at the top of this blog. 
• We're working with Alison Arngrim, Nellie from the "Little House on the Prairie" series.  She'll be appearing at an Historical Society event in August and she has asked us to be there to sell books with her.
• Check out Heart-A-Rama blog on July 3rd for an announcement about the 2013 theme.  www.heartarama.blogspot.com .
• Emily Trask will be playing Lady Macbeth in Rhode Island this summer. 
• Caught up with Brendo and Jenny this past week.  Now I need to find out what Jacque has been up to.  It is great to keep in touch with these past employees.  I valued them as workers, and value them even more  as friends. 

This new Blogger platform continues to terrorize me, but I am getting the hang of it.  It can do some fun tricks, but, in the hands of a techno-phobe like me, those tricks oftem backfire. 

Reading what's trendy has never appealed to me.  I skipped the entire vampire business, which thankfully appears to be over.  We're now on to near-future, post apocalyptic fiction.  Confession:  I did read The Hunger Games (just the first one) and was captured by it once I accepted the premise. 

Of course, the big deal these days is erotic fiction, sometimes described as mommy-porn.  Not getting on that bandwagon any time soon!  Instead, I dug into an old Francine Prose novel with a cover that hints at trouble between the pages.  Actually, the cover photo is deceptive.  Yes, the story does involve a student-teacher relationship, but the student is in college, and the relationship involves extortion, not sex.  OK, there is a bit of sex...but it's intended as parody, nothing else/

Swenson is a creative writing professor who hasn't had much publishing success in his own right.  Then a punky student appears on the scene named Angel, and his life changes.  He finds her a gifted writer, and together they head down a dangerous path, all in a book  filled with biting satire, and lots of laughs.  David Sedaris (my fave) is a fan and that's what prompted me to pick up this book.

Prose fills the pages with excerpts of Swenson's students' work, mostly bad examples of college kids who finally feel the freedom to put all the dirty words they want into an assignment without fear of being sent to the principal.  The dirty words take precedence over plot, character, theme, and just about any other element that Swenson is trying to impress upon them as being styllistically sold.  

Beware...there are explicit scenes, (one involving a chicked - a cooked chicken) and lots of crude language, but not in the mommy-porn genre.  It's there to heighten the...well, I'll let you be the the judge.  Prose cleverly wraps her thesis of abuse of power with satire and humor. 

So, whether you choose to pick up the vapid "Shades of..." series, or dive into something gritty but thoughtf provoking...have a hot week.  It supposed to be in the 90's.

Thanks for stopping by.

Ray Bradbury died last week.  Science Fiction challenges me, and generally too far out there for a pea-brain like me.  Without realizing, I was introduced to Bradbuy's  work on "The Twilight Zone," a half-hour show, hosted by Rod Serling who was just chilling enough to to hold my attention, but not creepy enough to force me to flee from my spot on the saggy sofa.

Today's sci-fi is filled with imaginary worlds populated by characters with unpronounceable names.  These worlds span volumes, most of which exceed the 400 page mark.  Several of Bradbury's short stories were anthologized in the American Lit text we used when I was teaching.  Reluctantly, I did the right thing.  I followed the curriculum.  Mind you, I put off prepping those stories to the final second, figuring I could fake my way through them.  After all, I was an "Oedipus" and Hawthorne devotee, and  if I could sell kids on those complex pieces, how tough could these stories be?  But, Bradbury surprised me with depth, talent, and universalty.   His work was smart.  He referenced fine pieces of literature.  He challenged conventions, and prejudices  He predited the explosion of technology and unmasked people's fears.  He did this and more in a readable style that was sometimes lyrical, sometimes brazen.  Always entertaining

I was especially fond of Dandelion Win, and used several excerpts as Forensic selections.  It is rumored that Ray Bradbury did not fly.  Another little know fact is that from time to time, he rented space at The Clearing in Door County - a haven where he could write without the interruption of cars, phones, media, or fans. 

The smiling weather reporter on TV 11 promises a 90 degree weekend.  What better reason to read a book about fire.  Fahrenheit 451...it's time.

Guest Blogger Craig Johnson

Our faithful guest blogger, Steve, sent me this post by his favorite author, Craig Johnson.  So, what we have here is a Guest Blogger's Guest Blogger's post.  I don't even know if it's leagal to reproduce this, but really, would Mr. Johnson object to the publicity?  Read on....and watch the series if you can.  For some reason, westerns are hot again.  Lots o new books piopping with western themes, and many of them are geared to female readers.  Hmmmm....

This Sunday, June 3rd, the first of ten episodes of Longmire will debut on A&E at 10pm EDT, and I’m just hoping I can watch it. Having your books turned into a television series is pretty weird, and the only way I can describe the experience is that it’s something like having a houseplant in your house for eight years and suddenly having it start talking to you one morning--wondrous, but weird.

The weirdness started when I walked on the set and saw the county designation 24 on the Wyoming license plates for the fictitious, Absaroka County (Wyoming has only 23 counties). Later, I was having a hard time concentrating on what Robert Taylor, the actor who plays Walt, was saying in the back of the sheriff’s cabin in the Bandolier National Forest above Los Alamos on the first day of shooting. I kept staring at the elk horn handles on Walt’s .45 Colt just like the ones my buddy Richard Rhoades (the model for Omar) had made for me, and the Ray-Ban sunglasses like the ones I’ve worn my whole life. I was finally aware that Robert had been talking to me for about ten minutes, describing to me the innermost aspects of the sheriff’s character. He paused and laughed at himself, “I can’t believe I’m standing here telling you about Walt Longmire.”

The Longmire novels are written in first-person, which means that the sheriff is never very far from my thoughts or narrative. I tend to refer to Walt as a detective for the disenfranchised, a man whose secret weapon is his compassion for the less fortunate or forgotten members of society. I think he has an empathy for the outsiders because, in a sense, he’s one himself; a rogue male somewhat driven off from the herd, even if it is a self-imposed exile. Another thing I like about him is his ability to surprise me. I was talking to Greer Shephard, the producer of the A&E series based on the books, and she asked me if I thought of Walt as being a verbose person and I said yes. She told me to go through one of my books and highlight his dialogue, what he actually says… She was right; he thinks a great deal but doesn’t say much—it was a genuine revelation.

Robert got called onto the porch where they were shooting the scene with Cassidy Freeman, who plays Cady, Walt’s daughter. They ran the lines a few times and then started filming the scene where Cady gently rakes him over the coals for not doing something with the tea tin that contains her mother’s ashes, “Dad, people want to know where they can go to pay their respects, and I can’t tell them to go stand in front of the refrigerator.” There I was watching the first scene of the television show adapted from my books being filmed. Then something strange happened. My eyes started welling up, and I had to turn away and walk off the set. There was something about watching these characters, these people I’d created, going about their lives and discussing the innermost workings of their hearts that hit me like a war lance. I went up on the hillside and just stood there breathing. I’m hoping to do better come Sunday night.

he TV Tie-In paperback of The Cold Dish is on the stands for a limited time, so if you’re a real collector of Absarokania get out to a book store  and get yours! And they make great starter-kits for friends and family who might not know that the A&E drama is from the award-winning and best-selling novels by your truly! Also, if you’re looking to buy the Absaroka County hats, mugs, and bumper stickers remember that you can throw Jen an email at craigallenjohnson@rangeweb.net to get the wheels slowly turning…