February 2009

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Indie Choice Book Awards

February 23, 2009 in award, Literary Event by Kim | No comments

rally_one_of_us_front-small1The American Booksellers Association (ABA) announced the Indie Choice Book Awards.  Awards will be chosen in seven categories:

  • 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:

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G.J. Ford Bookshop, St. Simon’s Island

February 22, 2009 in bookstore by Kim | 2 comments

gjford

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 Read the rest of this entry »

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Want to Write Your Own Screenplay?

February 21, 2009 in film by Claire | 2 comments

First buy a book . . .

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: Read the rest of this entry »

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I Predict Slumdog Millionaire will Win the Oscar for Best Adapted Writing

February 19, 2009 in film, Uncategorized by Kim | 1 comment

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, Read the rest of this entry »

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Laguna Beach Books

February 17, 2009 in bookstore by Kim | 1 comment

Laguna Beach BooksLast month, my husband and I found ourselves without any kids for 24 hours.  One child was away on a school trip and another at a sleep over.  In celebration, we dashed down the coast for a quick get away in Dana Point, CA.  On the way home we putt-putted up the Pacific Coast Highway and stopped for a peek into Laguna Beach Books.  This lovely bookstore is part of The Old Pottery Place, a former pottery outlet revitalized into several unique businesses including a chocolate shop, a gallery, and a wine and cheese shop  (this could be as close to heaven as we’re getting on earth).   In fact, the goal of The Old Pottery Place is to create an intimate shopping experience by having only independent businesses.

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 Read the rest of this entry »

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