Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Meet the Author Tomorrow Night!
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| The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb |
In her national bestseller Alice I Have Been, Melanie Benjamin imagined the life of the woman who inspired Alice in Wonderland. Now, in this jubilant new novel, Benjamin shines a dazzling spotlight on another fascinating female figure whose story has never fully been told: a woman who became a nineteenth century icon and inspiration—and whose most daunting limitation became her greatest strength.
“Never would I allow my size to define me. Instead, I would define it.”
She was only two-foot eight-inches tall, but her legend reaches out to us more than a century later. As a child, Mercy Lavinia “Vinnie” Bump was encouraged to live a life hidden away from the public. Instead, she reached out to the immortal impresario P. T. Barnum, married the tiny superstar General Tom Thumb in the wedding of the century, and transformed into the world’s most unexpected celebrity.
Here, in Vinnie’s singular and spirited voice, is her amazing adventure—from a showboat “freak” revue where she endured jeering mobs to her fateful meeting with the two men who would change her life: P. T. Barnum and Charles Stratton, AKA Tom Thumb. Their wedding would captivate the nation, preempt coverage of the Civil War, and usher them into the White House and the company of presidents and queens. But Vinnie’s fame would also endanger the person she prized most: her similarly-sized sister, Minnie, a gentle soul unable to escape the glare of Vinnie’s spotlight.
A barnstorming novel of the Gilded Age, and of a woman’s public triumphs and personal tragedies, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb is the irresistible epic of a heroine who conquered the country with a heart as big as her dreams—and whose story will surely win over yours.
Check out the fascinating timeline of history during Vinnie's lifetime.
Jackie says:
"This is the story of 32 inch tall Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump Stratton Magri. A little lady who lived a very, very large life. Most folks know her as Mrs. Tom Thumb. She was a school teacher, world traveler, seasoned performer, the darling of many a royal court and American presidents, a sharp business woman, and a very unhappy soul. Her's is a fascinating story told with compassion by Benjamin, who throws in tidbits of history throughout the book that help the reader to understand the amazingly changing world that 'The Little Queen of Beauty' ruled over. This book transports you to a time and a place so vivid that, sometimes, when glancing up from the page, you are surprised to see modern things around you. I cannot urge you strongly enough to come dive into Vinnie's world--it's one heck of a ride!"
Benjamin will be reading from and signing her new book at 7:30 pm tomorrow night, August 3, at our Colfax Avenue store.
“Never would I allow my size to define me. Instead, I would define it.”
She was only two-foot eight-inches tall, but her legend reaches out to us more than a century later. As a child, Mercy Lavinia “Vinnie” Bump was encouraged to live a life hidden away from the public. Instead, she reached out to the immortal impresario P. T. Barnum, married the tiny superstar General Tom Thumb in the wedding of the century, and transformed into the world’s most unexpected celebrity.
Here, in Vinnie’s singular and spirited voice, is her amazing adventure—from a showboat “freak” revue where she endured jeering mobs to her fateful meeting with the two men who would change her life: P. T. Barnum and Charles Stratton, AKA Tom Thumb. Their wedding would captivate the nation, preempt coverage of the Civil War, and usher them into the White House and the company of presidents and queens. But Vinnie’s fame would also endanger the person she prized most: her similarly-sized sister, Minnie, a gentle soul unable to escape the glare of Vinnie’s spotlight.
A barnstorming novel of the Gilded Age, and of a woman’s public triumphs and personal tragedies, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb is the irresistible epic of a heroine who conquered the country with a heart as big as her dreams—and whose story will surely win over yours.
Check out the fascinating timeline of history during Vinnie's lifetime.
Jackie says:
"This is the story of 32 inch tall Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump Stratton Magri. A little lady who lived a very, very large life. Most folks know her as Mrs. Tom Thumb. She was a school teacher, world traveler, seasoned performer, the darling of many a royal court and American presidents, a sharp business woman, and a very unhappy soul. Her's is a fascinating story told with compassion by Benjamin, who throws in tidbits of history throughout the book that help the reader to understand the amazingly changing world that 'The Little Queen of Beauty' ruled over. This book transports you to a time and a place so vivid that, sometimes, when glancing up from the page, you are surprised to see modern things around you. I cannot urge you strongly enough to come dive into Vinnie's world--it's one heck of a ride!"
Benjamin will be reading from and signing her new book at 7:30 pm tomorrow night, August 3, at our Colfax Avenue store.
If You Think YOUR Family Is Complicated, Check Out Katharine Weber's
The Memory of All That is Katharine Weber’s memoir of her extraordinary family.
Her maternal grandmother, Kay Swift, was known both for her own music (she was the first woman to compose the score to a hit Broadway show, Fine and Dandy) and for her ten-year romance with George Gershwin. Their love affair began during Swift’s marriage to James Paul Warburg, the multitalented banker and economist who advised (and feuded with) FDR. Weber creates an intriguing and intimate group portrait of the renowned Warburg family, from her great-great-uncle, the eccentric art historian Aby Warburg, whose madness inspired modern theories of iconography, to her great-grandfather Paul M. Warburg, the architect of the Federal Reserve System whose unheeded warnings about the stock-market crash of 1929 made him “the Cassandra of Wall Street.”
As she throws new light on her beloved grandmother’s life and many amours, Weber also considers the role the psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg played in her family history, along with the ways the Warburg family has been as celebrated for its accomplishments as it has been vilified over the years by countless conspiracy theorists (from Henry Ford to Louis Farrakhan), who labeled Paul Warburg the ringleader of the so-called international Jewish banking conspiracy.
Her mother, Andrea Swift Warburg, married Sidney Kaufman, but their unlikely union, Weber believes, was a direct consequence of George Gershwin’s looming presence in the Warburg family. A notorious womanizer, Weber’s father was a peripatetic filmmaker who made propaganda and training films for the OSS during World War II before producing the first movie with smells, the regrettable flop that was AromaRama. He was as much an enigma to his daughter as he was to the FBI, which had him under surveillance for more than forty years, and even noted Katharine’s birth in a memo to J. Edgar Hoover.
Colorful, evocative, insightful, and very funny, The Memory of All That is an enthralling look at a tremendously influential—and highly eccentric—family, as well as a consideration of how their stories, with their myriad layers of truth and fiction, have both provoked and influenced one of our most prodigiously gifted writers.
Her maternal grandmother, Kay Swift, was known both for her own music (she was the first woman to compose the score to a hit Broadway show, Fine and Dandy) and for her ten-year romance with George Gershwin. Their love affair began during Swift’s marriage to James Paul Warburg, the multitalented banker and economist who advised (and feuded with) FDR. Weber creates an intriguing and intimate group portrait of the renowned Warburg family, from her great-great-uncle, the eccentric art historian Aby Warburg, whose madness inspired modern theories of iconography, to her great-grandfather Paul M. Warburg, the architect of the Federal Reserve System whose unheeded warnings about the stock-market crash of 1929 made him “the Cassandra of Wall Street.”
As she throws new light on her beloved grandmother’s life and many amours, Weber also considers the role the psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg played in her family history, along with the ways the Warburg family has been as celebrated for its accomplishments as it has been vilified over the years by countless conspiracy theorists (from Henry Ford to Louis Farrakhan), who labeled Paul Warburg the ringleader of the so-called international Jewish banking conspiracy.
Her mother, Andrea Swift Warburg, married Sidney Kaufman, but their unlikely union, Weber believes, was a direct consequence of George Gershwin’s looming presence in the Warburg family. A notorious womanizer, Weber’s father was a peripatetic filmmaker who made propaganda and training films for the OSS during World War II before producing the first movie with smells, the regrettable flop that was AromaRama. He was as much an enigma to his daughter as he was to the FBI, which had him under surveillance for more than forty years, and even noted Katharine’s birth in a memo to J. Edgar Hoover.
Colorful, evocative, insightful, and very funny, The Memory of All That is an enthralling look at a tremendously influential—and highly eccentric—family, as well as a consideration of how their stories, with their myriad layers of truth and fiction, have both provoked and influenced one of our most prodigiously gifted writers.
Monday, August 1, 2011
For Some of Us, the Only Summer Travel We Get To Do is Between the Pages
Summer usually means vacation for most people. The country becomes electrified with tourists, festivals, concerts, and events. Although everyone else seems to be succumbing to their wanderlust, some of us are stuck at home in the heat with our responsibilities and frustrations.
Well for those people without the time or the funds for a luxurious resort stay or a self exploring adventure with nothing but a backpack, here are a few of my favorite books that can instantly transport you into another time, place, or state of mind.
How to Deal by Sarah Dessen (YA)
How to Deal is one of those books that has really stuck with me since my teens. Actually How to Deal is two books that have stuck with me. This movie tie in version is two Dessen novels, Someone Like You and That Summer, that have been mashed together to make a screenplay. The book versions, however, are still separate and in the original form that Dessen intended. It is a great bargain and saves a ton of space in your purse, backpack, luggage, or whatever you will be carrying this summer. This is not the only reason why I recommend these books for summer; I do it because they both show the importance of friendship through life's hardships, curveballs, and blessings. Halley and Scarlett are the two main characters. Along with learning to drive and dealing with boy problems, they are faced with sex, pregnancy, family, divorce, death,
deception, trust, and change. The one thing helps carry these girls through all of this alive and intact is friendship.
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (Children's Fiction)
What better vacation spot than inside a child's imagination? Jess and Leslie are not
likely to become friends, but they soon become inseparable. As their friendship grows
and strengthens, so does the Imaginary land of Terabithia.
My fifth grade teacher read this out loud to our class and I have never been the same.
This very well may be THE book that taught me to love reading. This was the first book
that I remember totally being immersed into. Every afternoon, my classmates and I would leave our desks, climb a rope swing, and fly across the bridge to Terabithia. I still love this book and hope that someone else is out there reading to kids today.
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (Adult Fiction)
Like Water for Chocolate is a magical and scrumptious depiction of Mexico and its
traditions. Tita is the youngest daughter in her family. Because of her birth order, she is expected to dedicate her entire life to the care of her mostly ungrateful mother. Of
course, fate has other ideas for tradition. Tita falls in love. Since she is forbidden to marry, her true love is passed off to her elder sister. With this heartbreak, the story really begins. Everything that Tita feels begins to come out of her cooking. As her food is consumed, so are her family members. They are soon al taken over in one way or another by the magic of the food. This book is far too intricate to do any justice in a summary, but it is perfect for foodies, romantics, cynics, the heartbroken, the madly in love, and the imaginative.
Perfume by Patrick Suskind (Adult Fiction)
Not your typical beach read. There is nothing bright and sunny about this read. However, if you are in the mood to escape to the dark and disgruntled streets of 18th Century Paris, then this is the book for you.Jean- Baptiste is born with a superhuman sense of smell. He can smell a pleasurable note on the other side of Paris. As you can imagine, that might not be something that would be desirable in an overpopulated city at a time when bathing was rare and sickness was rampant. For Jean-Baptiste, this was indeed a curse. That is until he stumbled across a perfumery. This is where he finds his true gift, and his true obsession. Finding the perfect smell and distilling it into a perfume. The dark and distorted part of this novel is what he discovers to be the ingredient in this perfume. . .
Yes, it is about a serial killer. Yes, there is mutilation. Yes, it is a bit graphic. I assure you, it is so beautifully written, you will hardly notice. The sensory imagery in this novel is some of the best I have ever read. I smelled my way through it.
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (Adult Fiction)
I don"t even know where to begin with this one. No other book has so epitomized summer
like Dandelion Wine. Bradbury somehow found a way to put the innocence of childhood, the excitement of summer, the imagination of youth, and the naiveté of wonderment all into a
book. Some of the lines in this novel are so well written, I wanted to climb onto the roof and scream them to the world. This is truly fantastic writing, but very different from any other Bradbury you may have read. If you only read one book that I ever recommend, please let this be the one.
--Miki
Well for those people without the time or the funds for a luxurious resort stay or a self exploring adventure with nothing but a backpack, here are a few of my favorite books that can instantly transport you into another time, place, or state of mind.
How to Deal is one of those books that has really stuck with me since my teens. Actually How to Deal is two books that have stuck with me. This movie tie in version is two Dessen novels, Someone Like You and That Summer, that have been mashed together to make a screenplay. The book versions, however, are still separate and in the original form that Dessen intended. It is a great bargain and saves a ton of space in your purse, backpack, luggage, or whatever you will be carrying this summer. This is not the only reason why I recommend these books for summer; I do it because they both show the importance of friendship through life's hardships, curveballs, and blessings. Halley and Scarlett are the two main characters. Along with learning to drive and dealing with boy problems, they are faced with sex, pregnancy, family, divorce, death,
deception, trust, and change. The one thing helps carry these girls through all of this alive and intact is friendship.
What better vacation spot than inside a child's imagination? Jess and Leslie are not
likely to become friends, but they soon become inseparable. As their friendship grows
and strengthens, so does the Imaginary land of Terabithia.
My fifth grade teacher read this out loud to our class and I have never been the same.
This very well may be THE book that taught me to love reading. This was the first book
that I remember totally being immersed into. Every afternoon, my classmates and I would leave our desks, climb a rope swing, and fly across the bridge to Terabithia. I still love this book and hope that someone else is out there reading to kids today.
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (Adult Fiction)
Like Water for Chocolate is a magical and scrumptious depiction of Mexico and its
traditions. Tita is the youngest daughter in her family. Because of her birth order, she is expected to dedicate her entire life to the care of her mostly ungrateful mother. Of
course, fate has other ideas for tradition. Tita falls in love. Since she is forbidden to marry, her true love is passed off to her elder sister. With this heartbreak, the story really begins. Everything that Tita feels begins to come out of her cooking. As her food is consumed, so are her family members. They are soon al taken over in one way or another by the magic of the food. This book is far too intricate to do any justice in a summary, but it is perfect for foodies, romantics, cynics, the heartbroken, the madly in love, and the imaginative.
Not your typical beach read. There is nothing bright and sunny about this read. However, if you are in the mood to escape to the dark and disgruntled streets of 18th Century Paris, then this is the book for you.Jean- Baptiste is born with a superhuman sense of smell. He can smell a pleasurable note on the other side of Paris. As you can imagine, that might not be something that would be desirable in an overpopulated city at a time when bathing was rare and sickness was rampant. For Jean-Baptiste, this was indeed a curse. That is until he stumbled across a perfumery. This is where he finds his true gift, and his true obsession. Finding the perfect smell and distilling it into a perfume. The dark and distorted part of this novel is what he discovers to be the ingredient in this perfume. . .
Yes, it is about a serial killer. Yes, there is mutilation. Yes, it is a bit graphic. I assure you, it is so beautifully written, you will hardly notice. The sensory imagery in this novel is some of the best I have ever read. I smelled my way through it.
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (Adult Fiction) I don"t even know where to begin with this one. No other book has so epitomized summer
like Dandelion Wine. Bradbury somehow found a way to put the innocence of childhood, the excitement of summer, the imagination of youth, and the naiveté of wonderment all into a
book. Some of the lines in this novel are so well written, I wanted to climb onto the roof and scream them to the world. This is truly fantastic writing, but very different from any other Bradbury you may have read. If you only read one book that I ever recommend, please let this be the one.
--Miki
What If You Had a Chance For a Do-Over?
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| What Alice Forgot |
What would happen if you were visited by your younger self, and got a chance for a do-over?
Alice Love is twenty-nine years old, madly in love with her husband, and pregnant with their first child. So imagine her surprise when, after a fall, she comes to on the floor of a gym (a gym! she HATES the gym!) and discovers that she's actually thirty-nine, has three children, and is in the midst of an acrimonious divorce.
A knock on the head has misplaced ten years of her life, and Alice isn't sure she likes who she's become. It turns out, though, that forgetting might be the most memorable thing that has ever happened to Alice.
What author Liane Moriarty has to say about her book:
"I had always wanted to write a story about time travel but I found the logistics made my head explode. Then I read a story about a woman in the UK who lost her memory and behaved like a teenager – she didn’t recognise her husband or children. I realized that memory loss is a form of time travel. So I came up with the idea of a woman, Alice, who loses 10 years of her memory. She thinks she is 29, pregnant with her first child and blissfully in love with her husband. She is horrified to discover she is 39, with 3 children and in the middle of a terrible divorce. It’s like the younger Alice has travelled forward in time. Readers tell me that what they liked best about this novel was how it made them think about the choices they’d made and wonder how their younger selves would feel about the lives they are leading now." Check out her website.
Read an excerpt.
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