No literary event would be complete without a marching band to open ceremonies the right way!

The hard-working BiblioWorks team (Matt & Co!) working in Bolivia recently coordinated Sucre’s first ever book fair with the help of a number of volunteers.

You can also read more from the point of view of one of the volunteers who was instrumental to pulling the project together and making it such a resounding success.

Congratulations, BiblioWorks!

This is Biblioworks’ first library in 2 years, so we’re excited to see Tomina up and running and benefiting the community!  Way to go Matt and Maritza and all the folks who helped make this happen!

Letters with Character: Have you ever finished a book and found yourself angry at the main character, or bemused by a background character that you wanted to get to know more? If you have ever wished that you had a way to vent your spleen to the characters whose lives you have voyeuristically consumed, stand strong, my friend.  You aren’t alone…so go ahead and write Frodo a warning about Gandalf’s intentions, or try to convince Belle Watling that all Rhett Butler needs is a tight corset and just go and see what other bibliophiles have to say about your favorite books.

52 Stories: Each week, a piping hot short story is delivered to this great site, as well as delivered directly to your email address should you choose to sign up. Currently showing is Neil Gaiman’s “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains.”  Harper Collins is behind this delightful service, which began last year.  The theme for 2010 is “Discovery.”

BibliOdyssey: This blog is amazing – it is a regularly updated collection of high quality scans of book illustrations covering a wide spectrum of styles and topics. Offering a book with the same title, author PK described it as “eclectic and rare book illustrations derived from many digital repositories, accompanied by some background commentary…from astronomy to zoology and from Art Nouveau to the Renaissance.” I call it eye-candy for my daily news feed.

Don’t forget, Biblio has a Facebook! Click here to visit the page, “Like” us and keep in touch…

We also Twitter. Do you?

This special collection is not usually open to the public due to the delicate nature of rare books. The collection was donated by ASU past president and alumnus Bill Rhinehart and his wife Maureen of Melville, N.Y.

Members of the Richard T. Barker Friends of the Library will be conducting tours, and retired Appalachian English professor Dr. John Higby will be on hand to show visitors some of its more fascinating books.  A unique collection of Victorian page turners and an exhibit featuring books on the history and literature of Scotland will also be on display. The library houses a number of other special collections including the Eury Appalachian Collection, Stock Car Racing Collection, University Archives and the Instructional Materials Center, which focuses on teacher education.

The community is invited to enjoy birthday cake in the building’s atrium and tour the building between 2 and 4 p.m. Parking will be available in the College Street parking deck adjacent to the library. For more information about the celebration, call Lynn Patterson at 828-262-2087.

Carol Grotnes Belk LibraryAddress:

(828) 262-2186

Click the link below to visit ASU’s press release about this event:

Tour of library and rare books and special collection room offered June 20 » News Archive » Appalachian State University News.

To visit their “Special Collection” index online, visit the following link:

http://www.library.appstate.edu/collections/sc/index.html

Francois Truffaut: Correspondence, 1945-1984

Noteworthy correspondents include Jean-Luc Goddard, Alfred Hitchcock, Louis Malle, Helen Scott, Eric Rohmer, and lifelong friend Robert Lachenay.

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel: Autobiographical Screenplays François Truffaut followed the life of one of his favorite characters from rebellious adolescence to irresponsible adulthood over the course of five  films. The Adventures of Antoine Doinel traces Antoine (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud) and his ongoing battle against proper society in the movies The 400 Blows (aka (Les 400 Coups), Antoine and Colette, Stolen Kisses (aka Baisers Volés), Bed and Board (aka Domicile Conjugal), and Love on the Run (aka L’Amour en Fuite).

Eric Rohmer worked almost exclusively with series. His most famous films, including Claire’s Knee and My Night at Maud’s are two of a six-part series entitled “Six Moral Tales.” Other series include “Tales of the Four Seasons” and “Comedies and Proverbs.” Rohmer’s wrote the “Six Moral Tales” as a novel before it was a film.

“This is the only major vintage Book & Ephemera event held in the greater Philadelphia region and offers an unparalleled opportunity for Book & Ephemera lovers,” writes event coordinator Flamingo Eventz, LLC.

A partial list of Exhibitors includes: Walk A Crooked Mile Books of Philadelphia, PA; Bayberry Antiques of Orleans, MA; Mary Martin, Ltd of Perryville, MD; Dan Miranda of Brookline, MA; T.W. & Barbara Clemmer of Leighton, PA; Willis Monie of Cooperstown, NY; Wilfrid M. deFreitas of Montreal, Canada; Atomic Age of Brooklyn, NY; Eclectibles of Tolland, CT; Kevin T. Ransom of Amherst, NY; Mori Books of Milford, NH; Lee & Mike Temares of Plandome, NY; Old Editions of Buffalo, NY; Cara Hermann of Philadelphia, PA; Books End of Syracuse, NY; Bill Hutchison of Mendenhall, PA; Frank Corrado of Drexel Hill, PA; Edward N. Bomsey Autographs, Inc of Annandale, VA; and Read‘em Again Books of Montclair, VA. These and many other fine Exhibitors will be found only at this exceptional show. Be sure to check our website – FlamingoEventz.com – for a complete Exhibitor List.

Dates: May 21 & 22, 2010
Location: The Greater Philadelphia Expo Center, 100 Station Ave, Oaks, PA 19456. NOTE: Set your GPS to 1601 Egypt Road, Phoenixville, PA 19460 (Upper Providence Township)
Hours: Friday, 4-8pm/Saturday, 9am-4pm.
Admission: Adults: $6, Youths 12-21: $3, Under 12: free w/Adult, plenty of free parking.
Directions: From PA Turnpike – Exit at Valley Forge and stay to the right. Exit Rt. 202 South (West Chester) Stay in right lane for Rt. 422 West (Pottstown). Exit Rt. 422 at Oaks, left onto Egypt Road, Left at Station Ave. (3rd light), Follow signs for the Expo center. Check the website: www.FlamingoEventz.com for easily downloaded maps.
Miscellaneous: Refreshments available on site.

Since 2002, the first Saturday in May has been celebrated as Free Comic Book Day in independent comic book stores internationally.

Don’t know where to go? You can search out your comic book crew when you check out the official website at http://www.freecomicbookday.com/ They have a handy store locator with participating sellers searchable by zipcode.

Not every comic is free, but you won’t know what your favorite shop will have until you stop by and ask. Get your freebie, and then buy a book or two, a set of dice, and leave knowing you’ve supported your local community!

In honor of this grand festival of geekery, I present for your edification two of my favorite comic books and graphic novels.

Elfquest:

Wendy and Richard Pini set my heart aflame with their Elfquest series.  The elves live, hunt, and howl with their wolves on the world of Two Moons.

This series has been a cult hit since it started in 1978.  While it is no longer being published, the fandom is strong.

To make it count for Free Comic Day, I’ll be happy to let you know that the Pinis  have every single issue available to read for free on their website in high quality detail and color:  http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html

Sandman:

Neil Gaiman has held goth girls in thrall since 1989 with his astoundingly tangible story that follows Morpheus, the King of Dreams, and his odd family of forces also known as the Endless. As a fan of alliteration, I must present their titles: Dream, Death, Desire, Despair, Destruction, Destiny, and Delirium (once known as Delight).

The Sandman is thickly woven with folklore and mythology from every corner of the world.  The constantly changing art styles offer  a treat for the eyes.

This is a series that I pick up and lose myself in at least once a year, and I always find something in it that I missed before. I encourage anyone with a love of STORY to pick up an issue or two, if not one of the softback collections, and enjoy them for years to come!

“At the age of 9, he traded a set of tin soldiers for a battered magic lantern, a possession that altered the course of his life. Within a year, he had created, by playing with this toy, a private world in which he felt completely at home, he recalled. He fashioned his own scenery, marionettes, and lighting effects and gave puppet productions of Strindberg plays in which he spoke all the parts.” (Mervyn Rothstein, New York Times, 31 July 2007)

See the terrific Swedish television documentary, Bergman Island, and hear an 87 year-old, and still charming, Ingmar Bergman tell the story of how he got the lantern in the first place. In short, his brother was given the lantern at Christmas, to his brother’s great disinterest, and Bergman’s immediate and crippling heartbreak. Eventually, after a few months of strategic planning, Bergman “traded [his] entire army [of toy soldiers] for the magic lantern. Swords into ploughshares indeed.

All of this is to say that Ingmar Bergman, who died at age 89 in 2007, has some great, if simply unusual stories from his long and storied life. The Magic Lantern, his autobiography from 1988, is one great story of many, many smaller stories. I’ve read it several times, and return to it often.

There are a many autobiographies out there by similarly luminous thinkers, in other arts and professions. In most of the examples to follow, the autobiographies serve doubly as personal narrative and historical survey. Sometimes, as with Bergman’s The Magic Lantern, the stories contain philosophical treatises, artistic theory, and a healthy measure of gossip.

Here are some other books from people who couldn’t help but talk about everything they did, felt, thought about, or otherwise:

The Scent of Roses, by Mary O’Hara   Mary O’Hara is an Irish soprano and harpist. She recorded and popularized many traditional Irish songs in the early days of the folk revival in the 1960′s in the U.S. and the U.K.

The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams, by William Carlos Williams  Not only was WCW a medical doctor with a home-based practice in Paterson, NJ. He also utterly revolutionized American and possibly all poetry with his rhythmically metered, colloquial books of verse. He also wrote several novels, an experimental collection of essays on American history, and a book of personal stories from his medical practice.

Robert Creeley and the Genius of the American Commonplace, by Tom Clark and Robert Creeley  This autobiography is furnished with several interviews between poet/essayist Tom Clark, and American poet Robert Creeley. Creeley’s way of speaking is utterly inimitable and the book is as good as the poem copied below:

Myself

What, younger, felt
was possible, now knows
is not – but still
not chanted enough -

Walked by the sea,
unchanged in memory -
evening, as clouds
on the far-off rim

of water float,
pictures of time,
smoke, faintness -
still the dream.

I want, if older,
still to know
why, human, men
and women are

so torn, so lost,
why hopes cannot
find better world
than this.

Shelley is dead and gone,
who said,
“Taught them not this -
to know themselves;

their might could not repress
the mutiny within,
And for the morn
of truth they feigned,

deep night
Caught them ere evening . . .”

The springtime approaches, heralded by these buffeting rain and winds. It’s grand entrance is lauded by the territorial songbirds and the low hum of working bees. I heard springtime itself, just the other morning, proudly crowing from the throat of a nearby rooster.

Spring is the time of year to encourage reckless hopes and wild fantasies,  and yet prepare to have them dashed by the thaw and flood of March and April. It is time to crave the senses of summer while it is still romantic: bonfires under the forest canopy, the crisp palate of fresh foods pulled from the soil, and the ecstasy of sun-warmed bare shoulders.

But for now, while we are still shivering at city crosswalks in our hoodies with damp sneakers, it is time now to enjoy the emergence of this season and to appreciate it through the intense prism of poetry, from ancient to modern, sensible to strange.

Each author’s name is a link to their current listings on Biblio.com

Bird

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography -
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.

Pablo Neruda
______________________________________

The Music We Are

Did you hear that winter’s over? The basil
and the carnations cannot control their

laughter. The nightingale, back from his
wandering, has been made singing master

over the birds. The trees reach out their
congratulations. The soul goes dancing

through the king’s doorway. Anemones blush
because they have seen the rose naked.

Spring, the only fair judge, walks in the
courtroom, and several December thieves steal

away, Last year’s miracles will soon be
forgotten. New creatures whirl in from non-

existence, galaxies scattered around their
feet. Have you met them? Do you hear the

bud of Jesus crooning in the cradle? A single
narcissus flower has been appointed Inspector

of Kingdoms. A feast is set. Listen: the
wind is pouring wine! Love used to hide

inside images: no more! The orchard hangs
out its lanterns. The dead come stumbling by

in shrouds. Nothing can stay bound or be
imprisoned. You say, “End this poem here,

and wait for what’s next.” I will. Poems
are rough notations for the music we are.

Jalal ad-Din Mu?ammad Rumi (1207-1273)
______________________________________

Spring Pools

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers
beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods -
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.

Robert Frost

______________________________________

in just-

in Just-
spring       when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles       far       and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far       and       wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan       whistles
far
and
wee

e.e. cummings
______________________________________
These, I, Singing in Spring

THESE, I, singing in spring, collect for lovers,
(For who but I should understand lovers, and all their sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
Collecting, I traverse the garden, the world—but soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side—now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail fences, where the old stones thrown there, pick’d from the
fields,
have accumulated,
(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones, and partly cover
them—Beyond
these I pass,)
Far, far in the forest, before I think where I go,
Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,
Alone I had thought—yet soon a troop gathers around me,
Some walk by my side, and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,
They, the spirits of dear friends, dead or alive—thicker they come, a great crowd,
and I
in the
middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing in spring, there I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens—tossing toward whoever is near me;
Here! lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in Florida, as it
hung
trailing
down,
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me—and returns again, never to separate
from
me,
And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades—this Calamus-root shall,
Interchange it, youths, with each other! Let none render it back!)
And twigs of maple, and a bunch of wild orange, and chestnut,
And stems of currants, and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar:
These, I, compass’d around by a thick cloud of spirits,
Wandering, point to, or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,
Indicating to each one what he shall have—giving something to each;
But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,
I will give of it—but only to them that love, as I myself am capable of loving.

Walt Whitman

The book: Being There by Jerzy Kozinski

The film: Being There by Hal Ashby

The book: Le Feu Follet (The Fire Within) by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle

The film : Le Feu Follet (The Fire Within) by Louis Malle

The book:  The Trial by Franz Kafka

The film: The Trial by Orson Welles

The book: Rashomon and other stories  by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

The film: Rashomon byAkira Kurosawa