An informal interview with Paul Harding

By michele on July 13, 2010 | Add a Comment

What are your five favorite bands of all time?  
Impossible question! Off the top of my head, five of my all time favorite bodies of music are:
    1.    Pretty much anything by the Rolling Stones
    2.    Beethoven’s piano sonatas
    3.    John Coltrane’s classic quartet
    4.    Sly Stone’s album, Fresh
    5.    Prince’s album, Dirty Mind
 
But that list already makes me feel very disloyal to a whole lot of musicians and composers…. 


What about your five favorite books of all time?

 Mostly, the usual suspects….
    1.    Moby Dick
    2.    War and Peace
    3.    Absalom, Absalom!
    4.    The Magic Mountain
    5.    Moby Dick, again….
 
This makes me feel disloyal, too…. 


What I Talk About When I Talk About Things That Gwen Makes Fun Of Me For

By liberty on July 05, 2010 | 2 comments

It’s summer! It’s vacation time! Know what you need? A really big, epic book to read – and I have just the book for you. Two words, my little book kittens: LONESOME. DOVE. The Pulitzer winner by Larry McMurtry. Now, I know I’m a little late to the Lonesome Dove party. And trust me, I’ve been kicking myself for it.

This weekend, I re-read the Life as We Knew It series. I enjoyed reading them again, and couldn’t put them down. The reason I re-read them was because the third book in the series, This World We Live In, came out, and I forgot what happened in the two books before that. I would recommend the Life As We Knew It series for 13 year-olds and up. Out of five stars, I would give the whole series a 4.
 
The book I just currently finished is called The Girl Who Fell from the Sky. It’s a book about a girl named Rachel. Rachel was in a terrible accent with her mom, sister, and brother. She was the only one that survived. Rachel then goes to live with her strict grandmother, and tries to fit in at school. All of Rachel’s classmates are either black or white. She is light brown and it’s hard for her to fit in. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is an amazing book and one of my favorites. I would give it 4 ½ stars!
 read more

Guest blog post on boredom by author Lee Rourke

By michele on June 18, 2010 | Add a Comment

Note on the author: Lee Rourke is the author of the short story collection Everyday. He is also one of England's leading young literary critics, writing regularly for The Guardian, The Independent, TLS and the New Statesman, as well as leading book blogs such as Ready, Steady, Book. He is Contributing Editor at 3:AM Magazine and also blogs at Sponge! He lives in London. Lee will be reading at RiverRun Bookstore tonight at 7pm!

Tarjetas Postales y Yo

By michele on June 11, 2010 | 1 comments

Luis Alberto Urrea will be reading at RiverRun Bookstore on Thursday, June 17th at 7pm. For more information on the event, go here.

A Lannan Literary Award winner and recent inductee into the Latino Literary Hall of Fame, Urrea is one of the most critically acclaimed novelists writing today. The Hummingbird’s Daughter, his novel which followed the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Devil’s Highway, won him wide-spread accolades and even comparisons to the great Gabriel García Márquez. Now Urrea continues to create spell-binding literature with his brilliant new road novel, Into the Beautiful North. 


We recently asked him to write a guest blog post for us, and here it is: 

Tarjetas Postales y Yo
By Luis Alberto Urrea

1.