The Book Shopper

The Book Shopper Video

Earlier this month, I did a reading of The Book Shopper: A Life in Review at A Cappella Books.  You can view the video at Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Atlanta Forum Network (Click here).

The 35-minute video opens with storeowner Frank Reiss saying a few kind words about the book followed by my reading of a couple of chapters. At approximately the 23-minute mark is a Q&A session, where I failed miserably at repeating the questions from the audience for the viewers at home (so much to learn).

One technical note: I had trouble playing the clip on RealPlayer (if that's your default player), but it worked fine fine with Windows Media Player.

Wise Blood on DVD

 

As mentioned in earlier posts, I finally watched the film version of Wise Blood, John Huston’s film adaptation of the Flannery O’Connor novel of the same name. The movie was released in 1979, but until recently it was available only on VHS.

The film adaptation is faithful to the O’Connor book about the war vet Hazel Motes (played by Brad Dourif of "Deadwood" fame) who returns to the South to begin his own Church of God Without Jesus Christ. Movie goers will also recognize a couple of the huckster street evangelists played by Ned Beatty and Harry Dean Stanton. The film also includes my favorite line of the book: “…her brown hair was so thin it looked like ham gravy trickling over her skull.”

 Although the book was originally published in 1952, the film time frame (judging by the cars, the store advertisements, dress and hair styles) has been updated slightly to the late 60s or early 70s. (The movie was filmed in Macon.). I can’t say that this bleak film makes for an entertaining evening, but if you are curious to see a glimpse of the South about 40 years ago, it’s worth renting for the cinematography alone.  If that is too much effort, you can always visit Greg Germani’s website Atlanta Time Machine, which is filled with photos of Atlanta’s past.  

Flu Pandemic Revisited (with Thomas Mullen)

Back in March the Decatur Public Library hosted a panel called “The Sophomore Slump: Writing the Second Book,” about the landmines confronting authors who have published a successful first book. The local panelists included Jack Riggs, Renee Dodd and Thomas Mullen.

The evening wasn’t the most memorable (I recorded no blog entry), but Thomas Mullen did make made an impression on me. He discussed his own first book, The Last Town on Earth (2006), a fictional story of a secluded logging and mill town in Washington State that quarantines itself during the 1918 flu pandemic. Of course, by now we’ve all been saturated for months with news reports of H1N1 flu going global. When Mullen posted an entry recently on his own blog about the irony of publishing this book this year, it reached critical mass for me and I went over to Blue Elephant Book Shop and bought a copy. 

 

Political Brains in Town

With Howard Dean coming to Atlanta later this week to talk about health care reform, its interesting to consider the psychological strategies another expert advises when trying to convince people to make health-related changes. Here is Denise Casey’s account of Emory neuroscientist Drew Westen’s June 25th lecture at the CDC:

It’s easier to persuade people when we understand how our brains make connections, says Drew Westen, neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University. Westen spoke about the mental networks we unconsciously use to make decisions. These connections are made up of bundles of thoughts, feelings, sounds, and images that become linked in the brain, and activating one can lead to a string of predictable results.

The Book Shopper at A Cappella in Atlanta

On Wednesday, July 8th at 7 p.m. I will be doing a reading and book signing of my book,  The Book Shopper: A Life in Review at the Opal Gallery, which is next door to A Cappella Books. (Click on the link for directions.) See you there?