Celebrate National Poetry Month with Poet Laureate Billy Collins

Mon, 04/02/2012 - 3:47pm by articia

In celebration of National Poetry Month and National Library Week, the Ypsilanti District Library is proud to present Poet Billy Collins on Thursday, April 12 at 7 pm at Washtenaw Community College’s Towsley Auditorium in the Morris Lawrence Building. Teens and adults are welcome to attend this special event which is free and open to the public.
Dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in The New York Times, Billy Collins is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observations on the everyday, reading and writing, and poetry itself. He served two terms as the U.S. Poet Laureate, from 2001-2003, was New York State Poet Laureate from 2004-2006, and is a regular guest on National Public Radio. He has taught at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, and Lehman College, City University of New York where he is a distinguished professor.
Collins was born in 1941 in New York City. He earned a BA from the College of the Holy Cross, and both an MA and PhD from the University of California-Riverside. Though Collins published throughout the 1980s, it was his fourth book, Questions about Angels (1991) that propelled him into the literary spotlight. Subsequent works garnered comments noting that Collins’s skillful, smooth style and inventive subject matter “helps us feel the mystery of being alive” and “Rarely has anyone written poems that appear so transparent on the surface yet become so ambiguous, thought-provoking, or simply wise once the reader has peered into the depths.”
A few of his major works include: Nine Horses: Poems (2002), The Trouble with Poetry (2005), Ballistics (2008) and Horoscopes for the Dead (2011). Collins has described himself as “reader conscious”—“I have one reader in mind, someone who is in the room with me, and who I’m talking to, and I want to make sure I don’t talk too fast, or too glibly. Usually I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong.”
The site of the reading will be at Washtenaw Community College’s Towsley Auditorium located at 4800 East Huron River Drive, Ann Arbor, MI.

International Romance: Embrace This Teen Novel

Fri, 03/30/2012 - 8:30pm by annevm

Jennifer E. Smith has created a mini-masterpiece in The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight. Sophisticated and heartwarming, the novel stars charming and intelligent 17-year-old Hadley Sullivan, who is four minutes late for a JFK-to-London flight for her father's second wedding.

Her feelings about the wedding, and the bride she has never met, are complicated, to say the least. As she waits for the next flight to London, she meets Oliver, a sharp, witty Brit who is going to college in the United States and is bound for London for complicated family reasons of his own.

Oliver is in seat 18C, Hadley is in 18A, and the elderly, long-married woman who at first sits between them is a hoot. There is plenty of snappy dialogue here, plus surprise plot twists and believability of characters. The plot, which unfolds over a 24-hour stretch, will make you -- or perhaps remake you -- into a true believer in true love when it is least anticipated. Sigh.

The book also does a fine job with family connections and humor. As Publishers Weekly notes, Smith's book is a "fast-paced and entertaining novel with a superlatively romantic premise."

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #321

Fri, 03/30/2012 - 7:50pm by muffy

A.J. Kazinski, is a pseudonym for Danish director/screenwriter Anders RØnnow Klarlund and novelist Jacob Weinreich. Their first collaboration The Last Good Man * (translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally) was an instant bestseller when published in Denmark.

According to Jewish scripture: there are thirty-six righteous people on earth, without them, humanity would perish. Across the globe, from Beijing to Mumbai, from Chicago to Moscow, there is a rash of horrendous deaths that look, to a beleaguered Italian cop named Tommaso, like murders. The telltale sign being the strange markings on their backs. By his count, there have been 34. Only 2 are left.

In Copenhagen, veteran detective and hostage negotiator Niels Bentzon also begins to piece together the puzzle of these far-flung deaths. With the help of brilliant astrophysicis Hannah Lund, they parse out that the last 2 deaths will occur in Venice and Copenhagen where President Obama is to attend a world climate conference, and a terrorist is on a deadly mission.

With cleverly inter-weaving plotlines, this gripping, cinematic, and character-driven, top-notched thriller will appeal to fans of Jo Nesbo, Jussi Adler-Olsen, and Peter Hoeg.

* = starred review

War is Coming

Fri, 03/30/2012 - 4:45pm by DaudiExperience

Sunday, April 1st marks the return of the award winning HBO drama Game of Thrones. In this second season HBO takes eager fans back into the land of Westeros, picking up where the first season ended and what is to be considered the second book of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. If you have not caught up on the first season you can get in line for the regular or blu-ray versions which are available at AADL.

A Clash of Kings the second book in Martin’s series brings readers back into the land of Westeros where among all the other side stories that readers have come to love or hate, four kings are vying for power. Pick up the second book to find out what happens with the royal families as they continue playing the ever changing game of thrones.

AADL also carries A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons. The third, fourth and fifth books respectively in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series.

Be prepared for this season War is Coming April 1st on HBO.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #320

Wed, 03/28/2012 - 1:54pm by muffy

Ann Arborites are no strangers to Sanjay Gupta. This home-grown (raised in Novi, MI) celebrity, received his undergraduate and MD degrees as well as his neurological surgery residency at UM. In his copious spare time, he sang with the Men’s Glee Club. He is the author of 2 non-fiction titles, Chasing Life (2007), and Cheating Death (2009). Currently, he is the CNN's chief medical correspondent.

His debut novel Monday Mornings (in audio) follows the lives of five surgeons at Chelsea (Michigan) General (fictitious), as they push the limits of their abilities and confront their personal and professional failings.

Monday Mornings refers to the scheduled Morbidity and Mortality conference (known as M & M, considered the most secretive meeting in all of medicine) where surgeons answer for bad outcomes. The novel provides a unique look at the real method in which surgeons learn - through their mistakes as they strive for redemption.

"Hospitals are, after all, Gupta's turf. His insights into the craft of surgery combined with vivid storytelling make Monday Mornings a gripping and wonderful read right down to the wire." ~ Abraham Verghese

Shooting for Chelsea General, a TNT pilot based on Gupta's novel and starring Alfred Molina and Ving Rhames is already in progress.

A bit of Gupta trivia.... Gupta was named one of the Sexiest Men of 2003 by People magazine and in January 2011, he was named "One of the 10 Most Influential Celebrities" by Forbes magazine.

The Hunger Games Book and Movie

Sat, 03/24/2012 - 10:56am by annevm

With release this week of The Hunger Games movie, the Amazon Best Sellers for Teens list shows 11 of the top 15 books are from Suzanne Collins' mega blockbuster series: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. That's amazing, to think of all those teens reading all those books.

Meanwhile the film is rated 87 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.2 of 10 on IMDb. Entertainment Weekly has a piece called 'The Hunger Games': What the movie missed about the book. A young colleague who saw the movie last night said she liked the book better -- but enjoyed the film and appreciated that it was exciting but not gory, faithful to its PG-13 rating. What do you think?

2012 Indies Choice Award Finalists for Adult Fiction

Wed, 03/21/2012 - 3:17pm by prlhw

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) has released the titles of the 2012 Indies Choice Award Finalists for the adult fiction category.

From the ABA website: "The Indies Choice Book Awards reflect the spirit of independent bookstores nationwide and the IndieBound movement. Book of the Year winners and Honor Award recipients are all titles nominated by ABA member booksellers to the Indie Next Lists... [The finalists] were chosen by a jury of seven ABA member booksellers from titles appearing on the Indie Next Lists in 2011."

Last year, the winner of the adult fiction category was Room, by Emma Donoghue.

Finalists for 2012:
The Cat's Table, by Michael Ondaatje
Everything Beautiful Began After, by Simon Van Booy
1Q84, by Haruki Murakami
The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides
Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward
Wingshooters, by Nina Revoyr

The winner will be announced by ABA on April 5th, 2012.

March's Books to Film

Sun, 03/18/2012 - 4:38pm by muffy

The most anticipated feature film this spring is perhaps The Hunger Games (PG-13), to be release on March 23rd, based on the novel by Suzanne Collins. In a bleak future, the United States has been reduced to a dictatorship with 12 districts. Every year, in order to prevent uprisings, the ruling Capitol forces one boy and one girl from each district to fight each other to the death in a nationally televised arena --- and only one will survive. Pitted against highly-trained Tributes who have prepared for these Games their entire lives, Katniss is forced to rely upon her sharp instincts and make impossible choices in the arena that weigh survival against humanity and life against love if she's ever to return home.

Dr. Seuss' The Lorax is the 3D-CG adaptation of the classic tale of a forest guardian who shares the enduring power of hope. The animated adventure follows the journey of a 12-year-old as he searches for a real Truffula Tree, the one thing that will enable him to win the affection of the girl of his dreams. To get it, he must find the story of the Lorax, the acerbic yet charming character who fights to protect his world.

John Carter, a Disney production (PG-13) based on Sci-fi novel A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton, this sweeping action adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars) tells the story of John Carter, who is inexplicably embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, and discovers that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

Based on the fairy tale of Snow White by The Brothers Grimm, Mirror, Mirror (rated PG) retells a wicked enchantress's schemes and scrambles to control a spirited orphan's throne and the attention of a charming prince. A star-studded cast - with Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen; the fresh-faced Lily Collins as Snow White; gorgeous leading man Armie Hammer as the Prince, and the incomparable Nathan Lane as Brighton, the Queen’s right hand man.

THE MOVIE I AM MOST EAGER TO SEE :
Already out on the coasts but hopefully coming to theaters near us is Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, starring eye-candy Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt, and the dynamic Kristin Scott Thomas; directed by Lasse Hallström ( Chocolat)

Based on the 2007 novel by Paul Torday, where a visionary sheik believes the peaceful pastime of salmon fishing can enrich the lives of his people, and he dreams of bringing the sport to the not so fish-friendly desert. Willing to spare no expense in order to turn the dream into reality, he enlists Britain's leading fisheries expert and the Prime Minister's overzealous press secretary. This unlikely team will embark on an upstream journey of faith and fish to prove the impossible, possible. Check out the recent review and trailer in EW.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #319

Sat, 03/17/2012 - 6:58pm by muffy

The title, taken from a 1979 dissident journal published in St. Petersburg, Russian, Jennifer DuBois' debut A Partial History of Lost Causes * links two disparate characters, each searching for meaning against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Retired Soviet world chess champion Aleksandr Bezetov has turned to politics, launching a dissident presidential campaign against Vladimir Putin, risking everything he holds dear, as well as his life.

30 yr.-old Cambridge (MA) English professor Irina Ellison is on an improbable quest of her own. Her future is defined by a cruel disease inherited from her father, among whose belonging she finds copy of a letter, seemingly unanswered, that her father wrote the young Aleksandr Bezetov. Leaving everything behind, Irina travels to Russia to find Bezetov and get an answer for her father, and for herself.

Spanning two continents and the dramatic sweep of history, Partial History explores the power of memory, the depths of human courage, and the endurance of love.

- "A braiding of historical, political, and personal, each strand illuminating the other. Wonderful characters, elusive glimpses of wisdom, and a gripping story that accelerates to just the right ending. An amazing achievement." ~ Arthur Phillips

- "Thrilling, thoughtful, strange, gorgeous, political... In prose both brainy and beautiful, she follow her characters as they struggle to save each other. This is a book to get lost in." ~ Elizabeth McCracken

Readalike for fellow Iowa Writers' Workshop and Wallace Stegner Fellowship alumnus Julie Orringer; and the Orange Prize for Fiction and PEN/Faulkner Award winner Ann Patchett. Jennifer Dubois teaches at Stanford.

* = starred review

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #318

Fri, 03/09/2012 - 5:15pm by muffy

Debut novelist Catherine Chung's Forgotten Country * * is praised by reviewers as "superb", "elegantly written, stunningly powerful, simply masterful", "darkly luminous"; endorsed and favorably compared to works by Amy Tan, Eugenia Kim, Lisa See, and Chang-Rae Lee. And I was not disappointed.

Janie (Jeehyun), bookish, dutify and the older of two girls from an immigrant Korean family must set aside her academic pursuits (University of Chicago) to returm home to Michigan to care for her father who has just been diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer. More pressing still is her parents' insistance that she finds her younger sister Hannah (Haejin), who disappeared over a year ago. Janie is resentful because of their prickly relationship and the rivalry, but also fearful because of her knowledge of the family's legacy that for three generations they have lost a daughter, circumstances often shrouded in mystery.

When her father decides to seek experimental treatment, the family returns to Korea, a homecoming that is both bittersweet and illuminating, making clear the reason for her parents' sudden move to America twenty years earlier. Like invisible threads, the fragile and implacable bonds of shared history could hold a family together even across the seemingly impassable chasm of different cultures and changing generations.

The jacket cover mentioned that the author lived in Michigan and the character Janie attended the University of Michigan. I was curious and contacted Catherine Chung (author website). Here is what she wrote:

"My family moved to Okemos, Michigan when I was eight years old, and I grew up and went to school there. My father was a professor at Michigan State--I don't have any official connection to Ann Arbor: I just had a lot of friends who went to school there and visited often!"

For further reading on the Asian immigrant experience, try Jean Kwok's Girl in Translation and Bich Minh Nguyen's Short Girls (also set in Michigan and Ann Arbor).

* * =Starred reviews