Friday, June 19, 2009
Sapphire's PUSH is going to be a movie!
Watch the trailer for the movie (named after the book's main character): "Precious" here.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Jane Hamilton Was A Smash Hit!
We laughed, we cried (well, mostly we laughed!) Jane Hamilton arrived in Blue Island without fan fare or entourage; in fact, she's just found out her son was undergoing an emergency appendectomy that very bright, sunny Sunday morning. Yet, when she rose to the podium, her magical powers of story-telling swept away all other concerns as we experienced a few transcendent moments together as she read from her new book, Laura Rider's Masterpiece. She read a scene in which a man and woman encounter each other on the side of the road, after they each pull over to watch strange lights in the distance, possibly UFOs? Well, after her wonderful, whirlwind visit, I felt like we had had our own visit from Planet Oprah! It was truly an exciting experience!
Much thanks go to Rev. Judy Jones and the congregation of Christ Memorial Church for allowing us to use the church facilities for the event.
Thanks also go to Flowers by Bartles, Flowers by Cathe, and Carr Gardens for providing beautiful springy flowers to grace the stage and reception area. Thanks to Sandy for driving the flowers around!
The Friends of the Library did a spectacular job enthusiastically sponsoring the event, providing the pastries for the reception, and more. Friends President Julie Sklom presented Jane with a lovely framed portrait of the library--- thank you to Julie for her warm leadership!
Borders in Orland provided books and bookseller, and if I have forgotten anyone involved... please forgive me! Thanks to all!
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Blue Island Made The Wall Street Journal!
Aleksandar Hemon, a gritty, affecting writer who ditched Bosnia for Chicago in 1992, has a new book of short stories coming out called Love and Obstacles, which includes a short story set in Blue Island. The article in the Wall Street Journal describes a few of the places that have inspired Hemon in his writing--- and there is Blue Island, right at the very southern tip of the map. No freaking way! We're famous, people! We're on the map in the Wall Street Journal!
Aleksandar Hemon says about Blue Island:
"Blue Island is one of those little towns on Chicago's South Side where incinerators and pollution thrive. It's about 20 miles down Western Avenue from Ukrainian Village. I chose to set "Good Living," a story where the narrator sells magazines door-to-door in that working-class suburb. When I used to canvass for Greenpeace, Blue Island was my favorite turf."
Read the whole article here.
Here's a description of Love and Obstacles from the publisher... sounds good doesn't it!
"Aleksandar Hemon earned his reputation— and his MacArthur “genius grant”—for his short stories, and he returns to the form with a powerful collection of linked stories that stands with The Lazarus Project as the best work of his celebrated career. A few of the stories have never been published before; the others have appeared in The New Yorker, and several of those have also been included in The Best American Short Stories. All are infused with the dazzling, astonishingly creative prose and the remarkable, haunting autobiographical elements that have distinguished Hemon as one of the most original and illustrious voices of our time.
What links the stories in Love and Obstacles is the narrator, a young man who—like Hemon himself—was raised in Yugoslavia and immigrated to the United States. The stories of Love and Obstacles are about that coming of age and the complications—the obstacles—of growing up in a Communist but cosmopolitan country, and the disintegration of that country and the consequent uprooting and move to America in young adulthood. But because it’s Aleksandar Hemon, the stories extend far beyond the immigrant experience; each one is punctuated with unexpected humor and spins out in fabulist, exhilarating directions, ultimately building to an insightful, often heartbreaking conclusion. Woven together, these stories comprise a book that is, genuinely, as cohesive and powerful as any fiction— achingly human, charming, and inviting."
Love and Obstacles will be available mid-May through the library. (The official drop date is May 14, 2009.) Look for it!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Laura Rider's Masterpiece: A Review
This world is filled with hobbyists. You know who you are…. that lonely guy so ravenous to commune with ghosts, he spends an hour or two hunched over the library catalog to make sure he gets the latest copy of The Ghost Hunters on time… the Desert Storm veteran down in the basement building replicas of the planes he used to fly… the old lady whose cat talks to her without words each night on the couch as they share a can of tuna… a reserved Pillar of the Community who secretly watches the sky for a UFO to take him to a galaxy far far way… and my favorite, the scribblers, those women and men with torn notebooks full of poems that tell the truth at last, to the applause of absolutely no one but themselves.(Ok,Ok, that last one is me....)
Laura Rider’s Masterpiece is about two such people, a married couple who pursue their passions at the expense of their common sense. In the twelfth year of their marriage, creativity in the form of gardening, UFO memories, and romance novel writing has become a substitute for passion. (Freud called it sublimation.) When they do at last rediscover sex, it is not with each other but with the classy Jenna Faroli. Laura “looked into the grey eyes of Jenna Faroli and she silently asked this question: What, Jenna, is my calling? What is my true love?” The answer, it would appear, is Jenna herself. Jenna, however, is married to the staid intellectual Frank, and, though she and Frank condescendingly analyze the Riders' predilections over fancy French dinners, the fidelity of their marriage cannot stand the test of the Riders’ simple charm.
At first the driving force of the burgeoning attraction between Charlie and Jenna is Laura, perhaps because Jenna’s fame as a radio show hostess dazzles her or maybe because she is repressing a mid-life case of The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. For whatever reason, Laura thinks watching Charlie and Jenna will give her the insight and inspiration she need to become an author of a groundbreaking romance novel. Of course, control of the situation gets beyond her and Charlie and Jenna get, ahem, involved.
When Laura Rider submits her idea for a “conscious romance novel” to a literary curmudgeon at a weekend workshop, the teacher snaps, reminding her severely that “Love is savage, People. Sexual love blows apart your assumptions, your sense of self, your place in the world. It’s a hurricane--- it’s a nuclear bomb. Don’t kid yourself that Eros is a cute little winged angel with a rubber arrow. That arrow will… kill.” In response to these words of wisdom, Laura simply titters and goes on following her bliss. It seems she never did like literature much anyways. What she wanted was not the Nobel Prize in Literature, but rather what we all want: a little fun. Or as Freud would put it… um… Well, she isn’t hurting anyone by dreaming, is she?
This is, as the author herself says, a very fun “little poof of a book.” Laura Rider’s Masterpiece is sophisticated, laugh-out-loud funny, and yes, good and juicy.
Come see the beautiful Jane Hamilton read on May 17th at 2PM, courtesy of the Blue Island Public Library.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Guess Who Is Coming To Blue Island?
The most amazingly brilliant (funny, beautiful, and kind too!) Jane Hamilton...
She will be reading from her new novel Laura Rider's Masterpiece on Sunday May 17 at 2PM at the Christ Memorial Church, 2440 York in Blue Island. The event is sponsored by the Friends of the Library. Call Dan Carroll 708-388-1078 ext 30 for more information.
Read a very wise and true essay about marriage she wrote recently for the New York Times by clicking HERE.
Read a review of Laura Rider's Masterpiece from the Chicago Tribune by clicking HERE.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
