Tampa Book Buzz

merry christmas to all and to all a good night

I give up.  I can’t be stressed out about not having time to blog at the same time I’m stressed out with last-minute Christmas shopping.  Having multiple things to be stressed out about causes me stress.

Since I can’t handle the sad faces and withering comments of friends and family members if I were to show up at their homes empty-handed, I’m going to take a break from blogging for the holidays.

Happy December Non-Offensive Non-Religious Just-A-Regular Day to you all.  See you in 2007!

tidbits about geraldine brooks, author of march

Did you know that…

• Geraldine Brooks was born and raised in Australia — on Bland Street, no less.
• Brooks has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia and worked for the Wall Street Journal.
• Brooks got the idea for March while living in rural Virginia in the 1990s.

Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about March:

Brooks’s luminous second novel, after 2001’s acclaimed Year of Wonders, imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. An idealistic Concord cleric, March becomes a Union chaplain and later finds himself assigned to be a teacher on a cotton plantation that employs freed slaves, or “contraband.” His narrative begins with cheerful letters home, but March gradually reveals to the reader what he does not to his family: the cruelty and racism of Northern and Southern soldiers, the violence and suffering he is powerless to prevent and his reunion with Grace, a beautiful, educated slave whom he met years earlier as a Connecticut peddler to the plantations.

“In between, we learn of March’s earlier life: his whirlwind courtship of quick-tempered Marmee, his friendship with Emerson and Thoreau and the surprising cause of his family’s genteel poverty. When a Confederate attack on the contraband farm lands March in a Washington hospital, sick with fever and guilt, the first-person narrative switches to Marmee, who describes a different version of the years past and an agonized reaction to the truth she uncovers about her husband’s life.

“Brooks, who based the character of March on Alcott’s transcendentalist father, Bronson, relies heavily on primary sources for both the Concord and wartime scenes; her characters speak with a convincing 19th-century formality, yet the narrative is always accessible. Through the shattered dreamer March, the passion and rage of Marmee and a host of achingly human minor characters, Brooks’s affecting, beautifully written novel drives home the intimate horrors and ironies of the Civil War and the difficulty of living honestly with the knowledge of human suffering.”

Publishers Weekly issue December 12, 2004
© 2004 Publishers Weekly

March by Geraldine Brooks is the TBB Online Book Club pick for this month.  The Tampa Book Buzz Online Book Club is housed at Target’s Bookmarked website.  Each month we pick a book to read and discuss on the Bookmarked site.  During the month, I’ll post tidbits about the author and/or the book here.  At the end of the month, I’ll tell you what I thought of the book and hopefully you’ll do the same.  Email me at tampafilmfan (at) aol.com for more info.

local author news:cowling and boucher

*Local author Jerry Cowling (Lincoln in the Basement) has had a busy book-signing schedule lately.  So far this month, he went to a book fair in Lutz and to the Christmas Festival in Brooksville.  On January 6, he has a booksigning at Village Voices in Bradenton and will be a vendor at the Brooksville Raid (a Civil War event) on January 20 and 21.

*Local author/artist/blogger Wendy Boucher (Parvenue Throws a Party) has been teasing her fans for months now.  At a book group meeting a few months ago, Boucher talked about her new book Teacup Travels, currently making the publishing rounds with her NY literary agent.  She also mentioned an earlier unpublished work of hers, a mystery titled Letters From A Dead Armadillo, that she might get around to publishing one day.  Well, that day has finally arrived!  

Letters From A Dead Armadillo has an official release date of May 18th, so Boucher fans don’t have too much longer to wait. And I think I read some small mention of Boucher’s upcoming art exhibit at the Lyssa Morgan Gallery in South Tampa…a minor, routine, everyday event…something about a solo month-long show of her work opening on May 18….or something like that.  Only five months and five days more to wait, Boucher fans.

alley cat players at st. pete main library december 12

Received via email:

Please join the Alley Cat Players for Axolotl, a dramatic reading of Julio Cortazar’s amphibious narrative of obsession, performed in English and the original Spanish, accompanied by projections and digital art of actual axolotls.

Tuesday, December 12th, at 7 p.m.
St. Pete Main Library, 3745 9th Ave. North, St. Petersburg  

Free and open to the public.

Call 813-231-8478 or visit www.alleycatplayers.org for more info.

great opening lines:company by max berry

Monday morning and there’s one less donut than there should be.

Keen observers note the reduced mass straightaway but stay silent, because saying, “Hey, is that only seven donuts?” would betray their donut experience.  It’s not great for your career to be known as the person who can spot the difference between seven and eight donuts at a glance.  Everyone studiously avoids mentioning the missing donut until Roger turns up and sees the empty plate.

Roger says, “Where’s my donut?”

Elizabeth dabs at her mouth with a piece of paper towel.  “I only took one.” Roger looks at her.  “What?”

“That’s a defensive response.  I asked where my donut was.  You tell me how many you took.  What does that say?”

“It says I took one donut,” Elizabeth says, rattled.

“But I didn’t ask how many donuts you took.  Naturally I would assume you took one.  But by taking the trouble to articulate that assumption, you imply, deliberately or otherwise, that it’s debatable.”

          — from Company by Max Berry

book buzz:voyagers by k.l. nappier

Voyagers by K.L. Nappier, ISBN # 1-55404-312-3

It’s autumn in 1896 in St. Louis, Missouri.  Greta Roscoe, a weary, beautiful redheaded young courtesan, pastes a fake smile on her face and tries to hide her internal shame and sorrow, being the perfect consort she was hired to be in order to save her younger sister from a similar fate as a paid companion.  At an elegant party, she meets the Reverend Aaron Shane, a young, enthusiastic Episcopalian priest who wants to save the souls of St. Louis’ wealthy high society. Greta and Aaron are introduced, make small talk and then go their separate ways, never to see each other again except at the occasional social gathering.

Until they are murdered on the same night and forced to go through the Afterlife together solving their own murders, that is.

Once dead, Greta and Aaron discover that their murders are related and it’s up to them to solve the crimes.  Aridite, their guide through the Afterlife, tells them that they “are dead too soon.  You can’t come forward, you’re not prepared…I just need to set you up with a goal to accomplish and then you can come forward.”

With Voyagers, K.L. Nappier has created an intriguing supernatural murder mystery that pulls you in from the first sentence.  Turning each page is like peeling another layer from a sweet Vidalia onion; layers of historical fiction, murder mystery who-done-it, romance, supernatural thriller, philosophical musings of the afterlife, drama, detective work and suspense make for a most delicious reading.

The back cover of the book sums it up perfectly: “If only things in the Afterlife were as simple as they seemed.”

Book Buzz Barometer: A-

Click here for Nappier’s profile page at Double Dragon Publishing.

december’s online book club pick is…

…March by Geraldine Brooks. March tells of the Civil War adventures of Mr. March, the father from Little Women.

The Tampa Book Buzz Online Book Club is housed at Target’s Bookmarked website.  Each month we pick a book to read and discuss on the Bookmarked site.  During the month, I’ll post tidbits about the author and/or the book here.  At the end of the month, I’ll tell you what I thought of the book and hopefully you’ll do the same.  Email me at tampafilmfan (at) aol.com for more info.

online book club review:running with scissors by augusten burroughs

Running With Scissors is a strange book about Augusten Burroughs’ strange life.  Burroughs recounts the story of his absent father and his mentally-ill mother, who ships him off to live with her eccentric psychiatrist. This new “family” consists of angry, depressed, confused, unusual people living in a filthy house who live by their own rules.

What makes this book quirky and interesting instead of depressing and annoying is Burroughs’ writing.  Phrases like:

My mother began to go crazy. Not crazy in a let’s paint the kitchen bright red! sort of way. But crazy in a gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God sort of way.

show Burroughs’ dark sense of humor.  Like I said, it’s a strange book.

What did you think?

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs is the TBB Online Book Club pick for this month.  The Tampa Book Buzz Online Book Club is housed at Target’s Bookmarked website.  Each month we pick a book to read and discuss on the Bookmarked site.  During the month, I’ll post tidbits about the author and/or the book here.  At the end of the month, I’ll tell you what I thought of the book and hopefully you’ll do the same.  Email me at tampafilmfan (at) aol.com for more info.