So, here's the thing: In the fight to keep people reading, and to make sure there continue to be good books…
Month: December 2012
Big Boi Reads The Grinch
A little bonus holiday cheer for you today: watch Big Boi reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas. But, to quote the…
Paper Doll Jules Verne Gives You a Free Book!
Paper Doll Jules Verne looks pretty pissed to be posing in his NASA P.J.'s! We're a little short on time…
Writing on Film: Ruby Sparks and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl
Last week, a customer asked me what the difference is between Fiction and Non-fiction. (Surprised? This happens more often than you’d think.) The easy, mnemonic device to remember this is “Fiction is fake,” and that’s what I told her. But that’s not really what I believe. I think Fiction is often more real than Non-Fiction, because Fiction allows us to explore the mind, motivations and reality of another person. Maybe the character isn’t real, but, in a well-written story, the experience is. In fact, that experience can feel so realistic that we sometimes have trouble separating it from actual reality.
Enter Ruby Sparks, a movie about the blurry line between fact and fiction. The basic plot is this: A writer has trouble writing (I can relate). He has trouble finding love (um, again … I can relate). One night, he has a dream about a girl, and when he wakes up and writes it down, he can’t stop thinking and writing about her. He’s obsessed with creating, and he’s excited about writing again. And then he’s super freaked out, because this girl he’s been writing about — this Ruby — shows up in his kitchen one day, cooking him eggs.
Paper Doll H.G. Wells Wants to Give You Free Books!
Paper Doll H.G. Wells goes extraterrestrial in his alien costume. Think getting books from a paper doll is weird? Well,…
What Should You Get ____? A Book! Always a Book.
There are so many bookish holiday gift guides floating around that they sort of become white noise. But we love this…
Leaving Tuscaloosa: An Alabamian Tells a Civil Rights Story
I enjoyed the book The Help, and I think it brought up some important civil rights issues — or at least helped us understand, through story, a little of the pain people were subjected to not very long ago. But something about the author Kathryn Stockett’s research — a lot of her first-hand knowledge of the African-American perspective came from her observations of the family’s black maid — never sat right with me. I know she was a child at the time, and not the perpetrator of abuse. Still, it seemed odd for a white woman to tell a black woman’s story (and, yes, I know that the storyline of The Help is about a white woman who tells black women’s stories).
Walter Bennett signs books at Emmet O’Neal Library.