An article in The Plain Dealer described several independent bookstores in the Cleveland, Ohio area.  The reporter wrote a brief description of the store, I looked them up and added a book they are currently recommending to give an added feel for the store.

Mac’s Backs is a new and used bookstore described as “bohemian.”  They’re currently recommending The Short Stories of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes.

Visible Voice is a “bibliophile’s dream” with an edgy quality.  They are recommending 2666 by Roberto Bolano (so many people are reading this, I going to have to give it a try).

The Learned Owl Book Shop is a “quaint” shop with “top-notch” reading suggestions, on tap currently is The Little Book by Selden Edwards.  The recommending reader started it, put it down, weeks later returned to it and read it entirely in one day.

Fireside Book Shop is a “quaint throwback to a long gone era” reminiscent of George Bailey’s Bedford Falls.  They have an impressive recommendation section online, I chose Thread of Grace by Maria Doria Russell as the perfect vacation read for this summer.

Loganberry Books is “warm, slightly cluttered and completely inviting” with a bookstore cat, Otis.  They just started the Praise the Unsung Book Club to discover wonderful books few people have read and the first book is 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff.

Appletree Books is an “island of calm in an urban setting.”  One website compared it to the book shop in “You’ve got Mail.”  Unfortunately, they don’t have a bookstore website, so I can’t include any current recommendations.

Crooked River Reading Club has “an English reading room vibe despite it’s mall location.”  The website doesn’t have any reading recommendations but I like that as a downtown store they have their author signings during the lunch hour.

If you have a personal experience with any of these stores, please write a review and send it to us.  We’d love to learn more about these bookstores and have a separate post for each of them.

Allison Staton contancted us about writing a review of her favorite local bookstore, The Blue Bunny, and we’re thrilled she sent us this lovely review.  Allison is a resident of Dedham, MA, a mother of three children and advocates on behalf of low-income communities. She writes at Soccer Mom in Denial and shares the joint photography blog, Looking Into. She recently finished Geraldine Brook’s People of the Book and is currently reading with her sons The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke (years ago Claire and I read that book with our sons in our Family Book Group, I loved it).  Here’s Allison’s review:

Dedham’s colorful history also includes a distinctive pottery created in the early 20^th century. The blue-grey glaze was a fortuitous mistake that lead to the popular Dedham pottery that often had rabbits on the borders or in the middle of the plate or bowl. I wouldn’t doubt that at some point a piece of that pottery was in our house.

So it only makes sense that Dedham’s independent children’s book store, located in the historic Square, would be called The Blue Bunny. It incorporates the town’s history and conveys the colorful energy inside the bookstore. As a mom with twin 8-year-old sons and a nearly 5 year old daughter, all of whom literally seem to have a birthday party every weekend, I am grateful for a place that I can purchase books and simple toys as presents and know that I am supporting our local economy.

The store is co-owned by three Dedham residents – Peter H. Reynolds, author and illustrator of The Dot and Ish, his twin brother Paul and Paul’s wife, Janet. The three of them along with their talented staff are passionate about reading, children and creativity. You cannot walk into the store without being impressed with the selection, layout and atmosphere. A Putumayo CD is often playing and there are book shelves towering up to the beautifully restored tin ceiling. Books are organized by age and the staff are quick to help suggest a book. I feel strongly that birthday presents should include a book and a simple toy. Currently my favorite include decorate your-own projects (for instance a mirror or a memento box) that are reasonably priced. I’m able to get a paperback book and gift for between $12-15. Considering my sons are often invited to the same party, and they can’t very well “share” a gift, I’m grateful for the selection and reasonable prices.

My 4 year old daughter will often end up in the behind the register “helping” Janet wrap whatever book and gift we’ve purchased. Everyone at the Blue Bunny makes all of us, regardless of our ages, feel welcomed. They will host pre-school classes for story hour and will often refer to the children as “their students”.

The bookstore does host authors to sign books, sponsor events throughout town, donates items for fundraisers and helps promote literacy in the local public schools. But what makes The Blue Bunny extra special is its creative energy. There is a space in the back dedicated to workshops ranging from comic book design, making birdhouses to “Art for Creatively Challenged Adults”. I am a proud graduate of that evening class although was very relieved that wine was offered. Currently, they are launching a new kid’s literary magazine, Hutch, which publishes kid’s stories, poetry and art along with writing and art tips from Peter Reynolds.

Going to The Blue Bunny has become part of my daughter’s and my Friday ritual. We go to the local independent coffee shop for a latte (mine) and scone (my 4 year old’s). Then we cross the street to the bookstore. I have to restrain myself for buying something (or things) for the family every time we visit. But really just going into The Blue Bunny is a treat unto itself.

The Blue Bunny Bookstore

577 High Street

Dedham, MA 02026

ph: 781-493-6568

There is only one book that is perfect for this day of donning jeans, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares.  In case you haven’t heard the story, just before they leave for summer, four high school juniors find a pair of jeans in a thrift store that fits all of them even though they are different sizes (personally, I’m looking for a pair of pants that would fit me in the size I wore as a high school junior, now that would be magic).  They decide that they each will wear the pants for awhile, then ship them to the next girl for her turn.  The book follows the girls’ summer with four distinct voices, characters and experiences.  As the jeans travel around, they acquire patches and mementos and take on the character of a clothing scrapbook.  What I appreciate about the story is the emphasis on the importance of girlfriends and supporting your friends.  In this age of “mean girls,” it’s nice to have a book that shows how girlfriends mess up and still hang in there for each other.  Friendships take effort whether it be finding the time to have fun or being supportive or holding each other accountable or forgiving one another for blowing it.  This series of books (there are four in total) gives examples of the mistakes girlfriends make, but ultimately shows the triumph of their relationship.

The story has spawned other sharing adventures.  I learned of four girls who were so inspired by the book that they decided to get a pair of “magical jeans” themselves–a pair they could trade around all summer long while they went their separate ways to camp, summer houses, on trips, etc.  One mom took them shopping.  They wanted to buy the jeans used, like in the book, so they went first to a couple of thrift stores, but unfortunately thrift stores don’t have a wide selection of magical jeans–especially in girls sizes 10-12–so they wound up at the Gap where, after a very long time spent picking out pants and trying them on, they decided that a pair of denim shorts would best accommodate their different shapes and sizes, so those become their traveling pants.  And travel the shorts did–all over the country all summer long.  The girls worked out a very complicated schedule of mailing/passing the shorts back and forth (which one of the mothers thankfully simplified), ensuring that each girl would have the shorts during her biggest adventure of the summer. The mom whose daughter had them first ran out and bought lots of fabric paint and permanent markers, so the girls could decorate the shorts in some way that would remind them always of their summer adventures.  They also sewed on patches they found on their journeys, and wrote long entries in a journal that they passed along with the shorts.  When one girl found five dollars lying in the road while wearing the shorts, they all agreed the shorts truly WERE magical.  It was a pretty special things for friends to do.

In our family, Kelsey wanted to read this book in 4th grade.  We were standing in a bookstore and she brought it to me.  Making one of those off the cuff parental decisions, I told her she couldn’t read it until she was in 6th grade.  I pretty much made that up other than I saw some of the girl’s in Kyle’s class reading it when they were in sixth grade.  The minute school was out at the end of 5th grade and Kelsey was “officially” a 6th grader, she wanted to buy the book.  Amazing how she could remember that one conversation over a year earlier and she can’t remember to feed the dog unless reminded.  Personally, I think she may have been too young.  I think this series is far more mature than the Twilight saga.  But I’ve learned my lesson, now when she asks for a book that is too mature for her, I tell her she can read it in college.  When she is old enough in high school, I’ll get the book for her and look like a good guy.

Murder By The Book
3210 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, Oregon 97214

While in Portland this week helping take care of the Grandboy, I visited a wonderfully creative bookshop, called Murder By The Book. It’s a small shop located in east Portland in the middle of a unique neighborhood with all kinds of interesting and unusual shops. It’s just the kind of independent bookshop I love to find, and this one specializes in mysteries and thrillers, which I love.

For a small shop, it had a great inventory of both new and used books. But the best things about the shop were the names of their sections. They like “punny” names, and so I chuckled my way through the whole store. “Shot On Location” was the section which “featured detectives from other cultures, foreign & Native American.” “Through A Glass Darkly” featured classic and modern noir. “A Site for Sore Eyes” was a bookshelf holding their large print mysteries. The “Once Upon a Crime” section held historical mysteries, and “The Game’s Afoot” held all their “Sherlockiana.”

It was busy when I went in, but the staff was friendly and loves to give tours of their store. I didn’t have much time to spend there, but next time I’m in Portland, I intend to stop in again and thoroughly explore this welcoming and humorous bookshop.

This is my second independent bookshop I’ve enjoyed visiting for the Independent Bookstore Reader’s Challenge.

God, I love a good romance. A book’s just not satisfying to me unless there’s some kind of passionate coming-together in it of a man and a woman. My love of romance started with The Witch of Blackbird Pond and the manly, frequently annoyed sailor Nat, and continued on through Rhett and Scarlett, every Austen book (although only Emma and Pride and Prejudice REALLY satisfy) and Bronte of course-oh and don’t forget The Scarlet Pimpernel where Sir Percy is so freakin’ in love with his wife that he KISSES THE STAIRS where she walked-after being mean to her because he can’t let her know he loves her . . . Oh, GOD, it’s fantastic.

Excuse me a moment.

Cold water in the face. Okay. I’m better now.

The point is, I love that stuff. I eat it up. The smoldering, ultra-masculine hero, the woman he loves in spite of himself (very important-he has to love her SO MUCH that even though he knows better, he can’t tear himself away), the various complications and roadblocks, the intricate dance toward each other and then away again . . . and of course, most important of all, the final blissful realization that they can, do, and will love each other forever.

Sigh.

Best of all, the romances in these books mirror those in real life! I mean, they’re practically a mirror of the way people all around us meet, fall in love, and get married.

Note: I’m being sarcastic.

But you knew that.

I’ve been about as lucky in love as a girl can get. I’ve been married for almost twenty years to a man who’s kind, handsome, manly, smart, funny, loving to me and the kids . . . I could go on but he reads these posts and I don’t want him to start thinking that I’ll love him even if he doesn’t fix the water filter because that won’t work out well for any of us.

The point is, nothing about our courtship, marriage, or life together has been anything like the passionate, smoldering, “I hate you because I love you” (or is it “I love you because I hate you”?) romances you find in most novels.

We didn’t fight when we first met. We had a pleasant conversation. Later, he didn’t try to keep himself away from me, nor did he pursue me avidly. We got together a few times, mostly with other people around, and then we realized we liked each other a lot, and got together all the time, mostly without other people around.

There weren’t any real obstacles-I mean, I did have a boyfriend when we first met, but I broke up with him. Our families were all in favor of the relationship. There were no huge misunderstandings-a few arguments, a lot of wishing on my side that he worked shorter hours, different internal time clocks-but nothing that tore us painfully apart (so we could one day reunite passionately of course).

There was no smoldering on his part and no archness on mine. We made each other laugh and liked each other’s friends.

I could go on, but you get the point. He was no Mr. Darcy and I, sir, was no Elizabeth Bennet.

Life isn’t like it is in books and that’s truer about romance than anything else. I’m not sure why the romantic paradigm is so incredibly appealing to me and to most of the women and girls I know. Maybe it’s because it’s been around so long that we’re steeped in it before we’re even aware of it. Maybe it’s because women were economically so helpless in previous centuries that their ability to attract a man was the only power they had, so that became the pivot for stories women were likely to read. Maybe it’s something biological: we want monogamy for the sake of our offspring so we’re naturally responsive to anything that suggests lifelong devotion and passion can survive despite numerous obstacles and difficulites.

I don’t know. But as I watch my 11-year-old daughter tear through novel after novel, I find myself wondering how I can adequately explain to her that the romances she’s so enthralled by are fantasy, pure and simple, and that if she looks for a guy who angers and enthralls her, she’ll probably end up with an egotistical jerk, that she needs to find someone like her father who’s kind and intelligent in equal measure, and that a man who’s willing to take out the compost so you don’t have to is showing more genuine love and compassion than one who smolders with jealousy when you flirt with another man. Which you shouldn’t do in the first place. There are rules.

I don’t get a lot of women’s fashion and style magazines-much as I love them-because I don’t want my daughter to measure herself against a standard of beauty that’s unrealistic, manufactured, and has the potential to destroy her self-esteem. Should I also be guarding her against a standard of romance that’s unrealistic, manufactured and has the potential to destroy her ability to recognize real love when it stutters, stumbles, and fumbles its way toward her one day?

I can’t deny her the pleasure of reading the books I loved or of the ones she’s avidly pursuing on her own. (Or rather, I don’t want to: why deny her a pleasure that doesn’t involve illegal substances or huge amounts of sugar?) All I can do is keep reminding her that real men aren’t vampires with wild passions for teenage girls: they’re just the male equivalent of us-flawed, hopeful, searching, and easily wounded.

Fantasy is a wonderful way to escape and be entertained. But in real life, go for the guy whose face lights up when you walk into the room-even if you’re wearing old sweats and haven’t showered in a couple of days. I tell you, that’s worth more than all the manly smoldering and sardonic grins put together . . . .

• Best Indie Buzz (fiction)
• Best Conversation Starter (nonfiction)
• Best Author Discovery (debut)
• Best Picture Book
• Best YA Buzz Book
• Most Engaging Author
• Picture Book Hall of Fame

The award “reflects the spirit of ABA member booksellers in the IndieBound movement and their dedication to handselling unique, thought-provoking, engaging fiction and nonfiction, children’s and YA titles.”  The finalists for the first five categories will be chosen by a jury of booksellers from books listed in the previous years Indie Next List and then all members will be able to vote for the winner.  The Most Engaging Author Award will go to an author who is great at readings and who has displayed a sense of how independent bookstores are important to their community.  There could be up to three picture books inducted into the Picture Book Hall of Fame each year and there will not be a publication date limitation on that award.  The winners will be announced at the BookExpo America in May.

Which book or author do you think should win?  I love the Indie Next Lists, but they aren’t seared into my brain, so I’m going to give it my best shot without that limitation, in fact, since it’s a new award, without any publication limitation:

• Best Indie Buzz Book – I think Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri has a good shot, I would love to see America, America:  A Novel by Ethan Canin win
• Best Conversation Starter – it doesn’t qualify because it was published years ago, but the nonfiction book that first came to my mind was Freakonomics by Steve D. Levit and Stephen J. Dubner
• Best Author Discovery – The Story of Edward Sawtelle:  A Novel by David Wroblewski will probably win, but I’d love to Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson win
• Best Picture Book – My kids are older so I don’t read many anymore, but I loved Mr. Lincoln’s Boys by Staton Rabin, illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline
• Best YA Buzz Book – I’ll ask my daughter to comment with her suggestion, she’s the expert in this house.  While I enjoyed Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer, I hope someone else wins
• Most Engaging Author – while I doubt he is on tour this year, I’ve been to two Michael Chabon author events and he was engaging, informative, personal, and I’ve talked about what he’s said about community long after I heard him
• Picture Book Hall of Fame – Time for Bed by Mem Fox, illustrated by Jane Dyer, it’s so beautiful it almost makes you want to have another child, almost

What are you suggestions for any of these awards?  I’d love to hear them!

A visitor curling up with a book in G.J. Ford Bookshop

This review is submitted by Leslie Boatwright, my bookstore-visiting-buddy.  I’ve mentioned her in passing in prior posts, but truly, I rarely visit a bookstore alone, I’m either with my husband or Leslie, primarily Leslie.  We both love to travel and plan into our trips letterboxing and visiting independent bookstores.  Our kids don’t know that there is any other way to travel, they gave up complaining about it years ago.  Last fall as the plane was landing in Denver, I mentioned to Leslie that we were visiting five bookstores that afternoon, she was shocked “Five!?!,” I told her I would let her eat lunch, and off we went.  In the end we found seven that weekend, and Leslie was by my side at the cash register at every store along the way.  We may be poor in our retirement due to our book purchases, but we’ll have a lot to read!  Here is Leslie’s review of G.J. Ford Bookshop:

My mother-in-law moved several years ago to St. Simons Island, a small island located east of Brunswick, Georgia. It’s part of a series of three islands – Jekyll Island has had both books written and a movie made about it and Sea Island is where the very upscale Cloisters Resort is located.  It’s an absolutely beautiful area, yet quaint with noteworthy historical landmarks such as Fort Frederica National Monument, which dates back to 1736 and was built to protect the then territories from British invasion. My mother in law, also an avid reader, read an article about St. Simons Island and decided it would be a great place to live, so they packed up and moved there.

One of things I most look forward to doing when we visit them is going to G.J. Ford Bookshop. I’ve spent many hours at Ford’s meandering through the shelves. Ford’s isn’t huge, but it’s large enough to have well stocked shelves of everything from the latest children’s books, fiction, and non-fiction, to a really informative area of books related to local interest. I always end up with at least a book (or two or three) to put into my suitcase to bring home.

Ford’s has a lovely table for children to sit, relax and look at books as well as the other children’s crafts that they sell. And, if you just want to while away some time, there’s a cozy couch to sit and read for as long as you like. The store is bright, welcoming and comfortable. Its website encourages people come by and hang out; its motto is “find a book . . .make a friend” and that has been my experience every time I drop by.  Ford’s has a knowledgeable staff that will special order books for you, look for out of print books and will gift wrap your purchases for you as well as send them.

The folks at Ford’s put out a newsletter every month called Book Chat that showcases many of the new books coming out as well as the picks from the staff.  I always find a book or two in Book Chat that I hadn’t heard of and end up reading. Sadly, Book Chat is not available online, so I’m dependent on my mother-in-law to send it to me, but it’s worth the wait.

G.J. Ford Bookshop

600 Sea Island Rd.

St. Simons Island, GA 31522

T:  912.634.6168

F:  912.634.8987

It’s awards season, the time when people all across our great country are thinking, “I could write a better screenplay than THAT.”  In an incredible show of goodguyship, my husband Rob took a break  from writing episodes of “The Simpsons” to read and review some of the top screenwriting how-to guides for those who want to plunge in.  The rest of this post is all him:

Aspiring novelists who walk the fiction aisles at the bookstore wonder how it must feel to finally have a book published after years of hard work, and then they all have the same thought:  maybe I should just write a screenplay.  Movie scripts are a lot shorter, pay a LOT better than novels, and if you do sell one, you’ll have time and money to write your novel, for which, of course, you’ll write the screenplay.  Or maybe you should just write the screenplay first.

The problem is, how do you go about writing a script?  Might there possibly be a book out there that tells you in insufferable detail how to go about the process?  Actually, there are several hundred of those–leading to the thought that maybe the aspiring writer should skip both the novel and the screenplay and go right to publishing his own writing guide.

Anyway,  Claire and Kim asked me to come up with a list of the best screenwriting how-to books, but after agreeing, I realized that I haven’t bought one of these books in years.

So I headed over to The Writer’s Store in Los Angeles.  I spoke with Anthony, one of their extremely knowledgeable salesmen, and asked him to name their top-selling screenwriting book.  He immediately said, “Save the Cat” and pointed to a big empty space on the shelves where it sits when it’s not sold out.  I bought several others he recommended, found my old favorites, and borrowed Save the Cat from a friend, knowing full well that just because it was the flavor-of-the-month didn’t mean it belonged on my list.  From those choices I compiled my top-five list of screenwriting books:

1. Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder. If your goal is to write a marketable movie script, this is the book to buy.  Snyder is one of the few guys to write a screenwriting guide who has actually sold a bunch of scripts (and had a couple made).  His tastes are grossly commercial (he turns up his nose at the film Memento, choosing instead to give a structural analysis of the Sandra Bullock movie Miss Congeniality), but he has good advice on every page.  He breaks your unwritten movie down into fifteen parts, even telling you what page things need to happen on — “Catalyst, p. 12.”  “Bad guys close in:  pp. 55-75.”  While he backs up his theories with lots of examples from movies (including a few too many from his own scripts), Snyder follows a rule that the other authors on this list have forgotten:  keep it entertaining and short.
2. Writing for Emotional Impact, by Karl Iglesias.  Iglesias begins his book,  “There are three kinds of feelings when reading a story – boredom, interest, and WOW!”  (When I read this to my friend Joel Cohen, he said, “What about, ‘WOW, this is boring’?”)  You’d be forgiven for closing the book after this opening, but it is worth forging ahead.  The book is filled with good lessons, especially when it sticks to its theme.  In fact, I’d say it’s too filled with good advice:  if you were to read the whole book, I think the appropriate response would be to feel overwhelmed by the writing task ahead of you, drink yourself into a stupor, and not start a screenplay.  At least, that’s what I did.  But you should buy it.
3. Screenplay:  the Foundations of Screenwriting, by Syd Field.  This is the granddaddy of script writing books, published first in 1979, and a generation of movie and TV writers made fun of it, while at the same time following everything Syd told them to do.  Screenplay was a break-through book that laid out the three-act structure of the screenplay, and explained, in a somewhat hectoring tone, what should happen in each act.  And if you love the movie Chinatown, this is the book for you, because Syd loves Chinatown much more than you do.
4. Making a Good Script Great, by Linda Seger.  Another book getting a little long in the tooth, but if you’ve already written a script and are stumped about ways to improve it, there are helpful ideas in here, from re-structuring, to re-envisioning character.
5. The Screenwriter’s Bible, by David Trottier.  This makes the list mostly because it has an excellent section on how to format your script.  Even if you’re using screenwriting software like Final Draft, you’re still going to have lots of questions, such as when to use ANGLE ON and when to use REACTION SHOT.  Trottier has a pretty complete set of instructions.

I also have to recommend William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade, which is not technically a screenwriting book, but which still has insightful advice within it, amidst great stories about the business.

And for general books about the writing process, my personal favorites are Stephen King’s On Writing and Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art, which I think has the best advice of all for how to write a screenplay:  tell your inner demons to shut up, then get up off your ass and write.

UPDATE: Slumdog Millionaire wins the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay!

Not that this prediction is risky, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ won the writing award at the Golden Globes, the Writer’s Guild Association Awards and at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards.  It won all of those awards before I read the book, originally called Q&A by Vikas Swarup, or saw the movie.  I  wondered, why the hat trick?  As a I wrote in previous posts, ‘The Reader,‘ ‘Frost/Nixon,‘ and ‘Doubt’ are fine examples of writing in their original format and  the screenplays did a good job of portraying the story.  ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ irritated me because it wasn’t that story, it was a different one.  But I hope it encouraged people to read F. Scott Fitzgerald and Brad Pitt will be pretty to look at on Sunday night.

I kept hearing different opinions about the movie, a girlfriend told me it was uplifting, a story of hope, and a review called it a present day fairy tale.  But standing in the bathroom line at the movie theatre (men miss out on bathroom line conversations) a woman said it’s the most depressing movie she had seen all year (I wanted to ask if she had seen ‘Revolutionary Road’ or ‘The Reader’ or even ‘Doubt,’ but I waver on whether or not I can contribute to line conversations).  Then, the conversation between Claire and Catherine in the comments section of a previous post described the movie as painful to watch, Claire couldn’t, Catherine squirmed the whole way through.  The Indians are not happy with the movie.  But, it’s winning awards everywhere and not just for writing, it’s sweeping the non-actor major categories.

After reading the book and seeing the movie, I understand better.  I agree, which surprises me, I thought I was going to vote for ‘The Reader.’  Q&A is a quick, mostly fun book.  It is the story of a poor, uneducated orphan who picks up knowledge from his experiences and gets lucky on a game show.  The living conditions are terrible, but not unrealistic.  Ram, the name of the lead character in the book, bounces from one job to another, collecting friends along the way and finally falls in love with a prostitute.  He needs the show winnings to pay off her pimp.

The movie keeps the essence of the book, the fairy tale rags-to-riches tale, but the screenwriter, Simon Beaufoy, said that he had to re-write the story for the film.  Jamal, formally Jamal in the book thereby losing the meaning of his name, has a brother, but far fewer friends.  We lose the experiences with a middle class actress and a foreign spy.  Jamal’s brother is far more ruthless than anyone character in the book, but he portrays in one character the ruthless road to survival that is only hinted at with several other characters in the book. 

Latika doesn’t appear in the book at all, she’s a completely new character, although we see Jamal try to protect the girl next door and then his girlfriend so his caring nature carries through both genres.  His constant hope and essential goodness are apparent.  He is the good guy that the reader and viewer want to cheer for, he plays a knight galloping in to save a damsel in distress in both the movie and the book. 

While the structure of the book is a little contrived, asking Jamal to explain how he knew the answers to each of the questions so the reader/viewer gets a view of his life, I liked it.  It felt clever to me, but I wouldn’t think it was clever again, it’s one time trick.  The book largely stays in that confine, with a separate story and chapter for each question.   I think would feel tiresome in a movie.  I liked having a smaller part focus on answering the questions and a larger section of the movie follow the love story.

Plus, the music is great.  So, I’ll pick ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ as the winner of the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay because Simon Beaufoy had less to work with than the other writers, yet created a movie that kept the core of the original book while changing it for the screen format.  Just to hedge a bit, I’d be very happy if ‘The Reader’ won.  We’ll all find out the answer on Sunday night following the words “And the winner is . . .”

Laguna Beach Books benefits from its proximity to the University of California, Irvine, famous for its graduate school writing program (think Michael Chabon).  Some of the students work at the store and share their discoveries with the customers.  For example, when I walked in the owner was discussing Stoner by John McGahern, recently re-published by New York Review Books Classics.  She pointed out Stoner, suggested by a UCI grad, as a  good book group choice.   It sounded great, so I bought it.  As I was leaving and chatting with the owner, she mentioned that a popular book at Laguna Beach Books is Hunting and Gathering written by Anna Gavalda and translated by Alison Anderson.  The owner of Laguna Beach Books learned of Hunting and Gathering from a student, loved it, and the store sold more than 550 copies last year by word of mouth.  Of course, I bought it and left the story feeling like I hit the jackpot.  My experience at Laguna Beach Books was exactly what I look for in every shop I visit, a chance to learn about authors and books that are relatively unknown from people who are passionate about books.

Laguna Beach Books also supports the writers in its community by hosting the Second Sunday Open Mike series.  Any writer can stand in front of the mike and read a piece for three minutes.  At the end of three minutes, a buzzer goes off and the reader stops.  I wonder how many bookstore reviews I could rattle off in three minutes?  What a fun way to take part in the creativity in the area.

The shop is comfortable and welcoming to meander around.  They have all genres of writing, plus a beautiful selection of Southern California boating, beach, architecture and cuisine books.  If you’re exploring the coast, drop by and find a great book (then get some chocolate next door).

Laguna Beach Books

1200 S. Coast Hwy, Ste. 105

Laguna Beach, CA 92651