8/8/2019 RRPQ August Newsletter

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By Carey Weeks

Red River Pulpwood QueensNewsletter

The Shrevepor t a rea chapter of the la rges t "meet ing and d iscuss ing" book c lub in the wor ld

Upcoming Events:

9-10/11-2010 Centenary24th Annual Muses Book Bazaar, Gold Dome on cornerof Woodlawn Ave. and KingsHwy, Shreveport. Free. 4-9pm Fri, 9-4pm Sat.

9-11-2010 Book signing of Historic Haunts of Shreveport byDr. Gary Joiner at the Broad-moor Library, 1:00pm-3:00pm

9-28-2010 Book signing of Ninth Ward by Jewell ParkerRhodes. Barnes & Noble,Baton Rouge.

10-2010 Book Signing of Dracula In Love by Karen Es-sex. Beauty and the Book,

Jefferson, TX. Time and dateTBA

10-16/17-2010 Texas Book Festival, State Capital Building,Austin, TX.

10-30-2010 Acadiana Book Festival, Cite de Arts, down-town Lafayette. Free. 8:00am-5:00pm

The history of New Orleans can't properly betold without a healthy dash of mythology, thetallness of the city'soverall tale being a key

ingredient to its legen-dary mystique. In thefive years since the bigstorm it's been hard not to notice that themythology part of it hasbecome mostly about recovery -- which is fine,because that also makesit about faith, and faithhas healing properties.

Faith is what brought ushome. Faith is what fixed

the roof. Faith is how we'll get past the current tragedy in the Gulf, and it's how we'll get throughwhatever yet-to-be-known calamities aresure to follow.

But recovery? The word feels good in my ear, thesound of it nearly re-

August Book Selection: Zeitoun by Dave EggersRemembering Hurricane Katrina + 5

August 31, 2010

Author Jewell Parker Rhodes Donates Book To RRPQ

Popular author JewellParker Rhodes has sentthe Red River PulpwoodQueens an advancedreader's copy of her new young readers book NinthWard . Contact me tocheck out this quick read.

Rhodes is best known forher historical novelsVoodoo Dreams, MagicCity, and Douglas Women.

Ninth Ward has recently been selected by Today Shows Al Roker for his

young readers book club Als Book Club For Kids.

Jewell will be signingcopies of Ninth Ward on September 28,

2010 at the CitiPlaceCourt Barnes & Noblein Baton Rouge.

are, informed who we'll be, and altered our per-ception of where we camefrom. Pre-Katrina life hasbecome a thing of nostal-gia, like Elvis Presley and sock hops, not quite real anymore but ever-

precious in our hearts.Many years from now our grandchildren will ask usin wide-eyed wonder

about it all -- and we'll tell. And then we'll go onabout our recovery evenas the wetness of our eyes contradicts thewords on our lips. - excerpt from author LouisMaistros article Finallyunpacking boxes, feeling at home , The TimesPicayune, August 19, 2010

deeming -- but it doesn't entirely ring true. What happened to us in thesummer of 2005 isn't something you recover from. It's something that

you stand up to if you'reable, and it's somethingyou may conspire to defy if you choose -- but younever really recover from it. In the beginningwe dreamed of beingwhole again and somarched blindly in thedirection of that dream,never really knowinghow the story would re-solve, or even if it could resolve. We're still on

that road and still can't say for sure where it will take us, but we have tobelieve it'll be someplacebetter.

The Katrina experiencewas a rude thing that dared to define each of us without our permis-sion. It changed who we

Sept. Book Selection

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A Confederacy of Dunces is 30 yearsold.

Thirty years ago, adisheveled malcontentnamed Ignatius Reillyemerged from the depthsof Constantinople Streetin Uptown New Orleansto become a worldwideliterary sensation.

Reilly is the protagonistof A Confederacy of Dunces: the novel thatwon a posthumous Pulit-

zer Prize for its author,John Kennedy Toole, andinspired panel discus-sions, articles in learned

journals, blogs, anddramatic readings.

nola.com

Alfred Lord Tennyson Aug. 6,1809 (Poet Laureate of the U.K.)

Alex Haley Aug. 11, 1921( African-American writer)

Mary Shelley Aug. 30, 1797(novelist, short story writer)

Dorothy Parker Aug. 22, 1893(American poet & satirist)

Ray Bradbury Aug. 1920(fantasy, science fiction writer )

Herman Melville Aug. 1, 1819(American novelist, essayist)

Roots was publishedin 37 languages and

Haley won a Special Award for the workin 1977 from the

Pulitzer Board. Thet.v. series reached130 million viewers.

Book Festival News!

Book News

August Literary Birthdays

PAGE 2RED RIVER PULPWOOD QUEENS NEWSLETTERBY CAREY WEEKS

To Kill A Mockingbird Turns50 The novel, which won the1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction andbecame an Academy Award-winningfilm starring Gregory Peck, hasnever been out of print. In fact, onemillion copies are sold each year in40 languages. The Library of Con-gress even has said that"Mockingbird" is second only to theBible as books most often cited asmaking a difference.

Now at the age of 84, Lee still livesin Monroeville, Alabama, the townwhere she grew up in and the loca-tion upon which "To Kill a Mocking-

bird's" Maycomb was based. As de-scribed in the first chapter, "it was atired old town when I first knew it.In rainy weather, the streets turnedto red slop. Grass grew on the side-walks. The courthouse sagged in thesquare." -abc news

Anne Frank Tree Falls

A chestnut tree beloved by Holocaust

victim Anne Frank as she wrote herdiary in hiding in the Netherlandsfell down Monday, the Anne FrankHouse museum told CNN. The tree,which was more than 150 years old, hadbeen diseased since 2005 and had a sup-port structure to help keep it upright.

But it fell early Monday afternoon, Anne Frank House representativeMaatje Mostart said. "It's a pity. It's animportant tree," she said. "Anne Franklooked down on it from her hidingplace. It was the only piece of natureshe could see." "Something went wrongwith the support," she added. "Happilyit fell the right way. It didn't fall on thesecret annex or on a person, so that wasa relief for us." - cnn news

The Texas Book Festival in Aus-tin has officially announced its

star-studded line-up for thisyears festival!

Some of the fantastic authorsattending festival on October16-17, 2010 are Laura Bush, Al-ton Brown (Food Network Person-ality), Justin Cronin (The Pas-sage), Abraham Verghese(Cutting For Stone), Leila

Meacham (Roses), Claire Robin-son (Food Network), Robin

Oliviera (My Name Is MarySutter), David Grann (The LostCity of Z), Tom Grimes (Mentor:

A Memoir) and more. Visitwww.texasbookfestival.org formore information .

The newlyformed Acadiana

Book Festival inLafayette, LA will be taking the

Louisiana BookFestivals place

this year onOctober 30. More

informationto come!