Newest articles on The Sacramento Press written by Shelley Blanton-Stroud

Hearing Voices audiobook club at Sacramento Public Library

2011-05-23T23:51:51Z

Beginning June 5, Sacramento’s Arden-Dimick Library will host “Hearing Voices – Author, Character and Narrator in Audiobooks,” a summer book club sponsored by the Sacramento Public Library and the California Center for the Book.

At the first meeting, participants will meet the Audie and Audiofile Earphones award-winning Simon Vance, narrator of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and King’s Speech audiobooks. Vance will discuss his experience of what makes good literature and what makes good audio and how those two may differ. Registered participants will receive audiobooks and series materials, including author biographies and discussion questions.

At each of the four remaining meetings, participants will hear from experts on what to listen for in audiobook narration, the future of audio and book technologies, how the brain processes stories you hear versus those you read, and more.

Participants will also discuss how a particular audiobook performance of a well-regarded print novel affects the reader’s perception of the voices of the author, the narrator and the characters.

The series will focus on four audiobooks, beginning with Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, a classic treatment of urban, turn-of- century, American class and gender relations, in which narrator Lorna Raver implies the angst bubbling below buttoned- up New York society. This audiobook was the winner of a 2009 Audie Award.

Participants will also discuss Bloody Jack, by L. A. Meyer, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery and The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.

The first meeting will be held from 2-4 p.m. in the community room of Arden-Dimick Library, 891 Watt Avenue, Sacramento.

Interested listeners can register to reserve copies of the audiobooks by calling (916) 264-2920 or by visiting www.saclibrary.org.

Ariana Huffington celebrates the age of citizen journalists

2010-02-27T20:04:14Z

Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington spoke last night at the Mondavi Center at UC Davis, as part of its Distinguished Speakers Series. Her lecture was a free-flowing, spontaneous take on a variety of topics that fit loosely under the evening’s theme, “The brave new world of the new media: how technology is changing the way we think, learn, play, work, and vote.”

As founder and editor of one of the most highly trafficked news aggregating/blog sites on the internet, Huffington has developed strong opinions about the direction journalism will take in the future. Citing ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, she told the audience that because things are always in a state of flux, “you can’t step into the same river twice,” meaning that journalists would be wrong to try to recreate news on the web as a slightly tweaked version of news on paper.

Instead, she lobbied for a hybrid journalism emphasizing the “fairness, accuracy and fact-checking” of print and the “transparency, immediacy and openness” of the web. She called this “the age of Citizen Journalists” (Sacramento Press, anyone?) who can report news more accurately, immediately and locally than traditional news organizations, citing the fact that CNN operations were shut down in Iran’s recent uprisings, while independent citizens freely delivered news from that region through Twitter and Facebook posts too diffused for the government to control.

Huffington argued that because traditional news media enjoy far greater access to newsmakers, traditional reporters often fail to accomplish accurate reporting. She claimed that traditional organizations so value their access that they fear to put it at risk by reporting information that might anger newsmakers. As an example, she referred to Bob Woodward, claiming that his unfettered access to the Bush White House lead him to write two books that did not deal meaningfully with the biggest issues of that presidency.

Huffington remained on stage late, answering so many questions from the receptive audience that she apparently had to remove her shoes to keep standing.

Cosmopolitan Cabaret presents My Way, a Sinatra revue that is a little bit sauced, a little bit saucy

2010-01-30T22:07:33Z

After the last strains of the first song, “Strangers in the Night,” at last night’s Cosmopolitan Cabaret production of “My Way, a Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra,” singer Karole Foreman (Woman No. 1) leaned into the crowd and whispered, “I bet everyone in this audience has a memory associated with that song.” Do they? I had to ask myself if only gray-haired Sacramentans might be moved and entertained by a local show of Sinatra medleys.

In truth, the answer is complicated. Last week, my 18 year-old son was driving me around town with his iPod plugged into the stereo. He played, his choice, not mine, a remix of that very song, "Strangers in the Night," by the young Berkeley band, The Morning Benders. And it was good.

When I was a 22 year old grad student in 1984, I did have a memorable night dancing on a table at Senor Frogs in Mazatlan over spring break with other ridiculous, North American, college-aged beach lovers, singing “New York, New York,” very badly.

I think many of the songs Frank Sinatra made famous continue to attract new listeners, because their lyrics and their tunes (and Frank’s particular vocal style) often suggest a mix of longing, regret, self doubt, resilience and intoxicated hubris, a mix that remains very current. So, though the crowd last night was full of gray-haired guests who knew all the words and raucously bantered with the four singer-stars while rattling the ice in their old fashioneds, I could also picture twenty-somethings enjoying the night, so long as they appreciate a little bit of camp and a little bit of syrup, as I do.

The four member cast includes Karole Foreman, the charismatic Woman No. 1, Laura Dickinson, a real throw-back to 1940's beautiful lady-crooning, and Jeffrey Christopher Todd, a young, trim, handsome and funny guy (presumably a reminder of young Frank) who makes a perfect foil for Old-Frank, Michael G. Hawkins, who, even if he does not sound just like Vegas-era Sinatra, surely does channel his sauced and saucy persona. He was my favorite. None of the singers tries to replicate Sinatra's delivery, and that is good, since it would be impossible. But they do a very nice job of reminding us of the shifting tones of Sinatra's songs. And if you are not totally bowled away with the first half of the show, hang on. The best moments happen after intermission, beginning with "Losers Medley," which I loved, and ending with "I'll Be Seeing You," for those who like to drink through the show and cry a little at the end.

At the Cabaret's 200-seat venue next to the Cosmo Cafe, guests can choose table or tiered seating with beverage counters for cocktails and snacks, making it a very comfortable, friendly and fun setting, not too crowded, but certainly not sparse. The show will run for fifteen weeks, through May 9. Tickets cost $33-$43 and are available online at www.CosmopolitanCabaret.com or by calling the Wells Fargo Pavilion Box Office at 916-557-1999.

A Christmas Story at the Crest

2009-12-14T23:15:38Z

Downtown's Crest Theater will screen A Christmas Story, the retro comedy classic based on Jean Shepherd's novel, in the third annual Christmas Story at the Crest event Saturday, December 19. Beginning at noon, guests will enjoy several tables of home-baked sweets and hot chocolate in the lobby of the gorgeous art deco theater, while awaiting their turn to meet a real-bearded Santa, available to take gift requests and photos with hopeful children and adults. The film begins at 1 p.m. Ten dollar tickets will benefit Jesuit High School.

For the uniquely uninitiated, A Christmas Story is the campy cult classic about 1940's school kid, Ralphie Parker, who wants nothing more than for Santa to deliver an "Official Red Ryder, Carbine-Action-Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle" on Christmas morning, in spite of all the tyrannical, short-sighted adults who can only obsessively respond "You'll shoot your eye out!"

En route to this goal, of course, hilarity ensues. Ralphie is regularly chased by the neighborhood bully, watches his buddy freeze his tongue to the school flagpole, and has his own mouth washed out with soap (Lifebouy, to be exact) for uttering words he learned from his father, who "wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan."

The film, which airs on television throughout the holiday season, is only seen once a year locally on the big screen, and then at the only local theater with the proper historical street cred to do it justice. The Crest lobby and big theater set the right tone -- a little bit old fashioned, a little bit edgy, a little bit sweet, a little bit tongue-in-cheek.

Tickets can be purchased at the theater box office or online at tickets.com.

John Irving entertains full house of readers at Crest Theater

2009-11-06T18:52:58Z

Last night, John Irving, National Book Award-winning author of twelve novels, including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules and his latest, Last Night at Twisted River, appeared in conversation with UC Davis Director of Creative Writing, Pam Houston, before an appreciative full-house at downtown’s Crest Theater, as part of California Lectures’ 2009-2010 line-up of literary speakers.

Irving told the audience he writes according to novelist Herman Melville’s warning, “Woe to him that seeks to please rather than to appall,” saying that his goal is “not only to frighten readers, making them anxious for the fates of characters I have made them like,” but also to frighten himself, by looking directly at the things he fears most.

Irving teased reviewers who “trivialize and ransack” his fiction looking for facts from his own biography. “If readers want to know the important connection between my books and my life, they would look at the way my books obsessively return to the things I most fear, things that have never happened to me, but which I obsessively imagine.”

Irving said that his stories, including Twisted River, are full of dying children and spouses and other catastrophes that befall characters who set tragedy in motion by keeping secrets. In his fiction, he said, “there is always danger in a family that hides relevant information from its children.”

Though Irving clearly preferred not to focus on the connections between the facts of his biography and his fiction, he did respond to questions on the topic, saying that every word spoken by the character Kurt Vonnegut to writer Danny Angel in Twisted River is taken from Irving’s memory of things the real life Slaughterhouse-Five author told Irving as his mentor at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

At a post-lecture dinner at The Grange Restaurant and Bar in the Citizen Hotel, Irving told his favorite story about Vonnegut. Dining out together one night at a tony New York restaurant, Vonnegut began to cough uncontrollably. Because his grandfather had choked to death at a Christmas Eve dinner, Irving began to panic at the thought of reliving the experience with his mentor. Irving jumped up to administer the Heimlich, but because Vonnegut was over six feet tall, and Irving is five foot seven, the physics would not work. Irving threw Vonnegut to the floor, where he landed on all fours. Irving swiftly moved behind him, wrestler-like, and squeezed Vonnegut’s torso repeatedly. Finally Vonnegut was able to stop Irving, gasping “John, I’m not choking. I’ve got emphysema.” The wrong-headed rescue left Vonnegut with a broken rib and some entertaining headlines in the next day's New York papers.

At the end of the evening, when asked if he was ever surprised by the reading public in big cities or small towns, Irving answered that there is no way to predict the quality of thinking in a community, as he has lectured in huge cities, like London, that were extremely provincial in their ideas and limited in their reading, and small towns, like Lake Forest Park, Washington, where everyone appears to read everything, and to have something intelligent to say about it. Irving said he did find it sad, though, that he sells so many more books in the Netherlands than he does in the United States.

Big week for local book-lovers

2009-07-06T21:30:53Z

This will be a big, varied book week in Sacramento, with events ranging from a volunteer chapbook-making workshop to a Second Saturday reception for local art-book author Doug Biggert.

Monday, July 6, 8:00 p.m. The Moody Blues Poetry Series. A Taste of Laguna Southern Cuisine. Weekly poetry reading hosted by Ms. La-Rue, with music by DJ Barney B. $5. A Taste of Laguna. 9080 Laguna, Elk Grove 95758, (916) 691-663
Tuesday, July 7, 7:30 p.m Poets’ Workshop. Sacramento Poetry Center. Weekly workshop moderated by Danyen Powell. Bring 15 copies of your one page poem to be read and critiqued. Free. Hart Senior Center. 915 27th Street, Sacramento 95816, (916) 264-5462 or (530) 756-6228.
Wednesday, July 8, 6-9:00 p.m. The Bone Folders: Poems-For-All Folding Party. The Book Collector. Help build little books of poetry. Poems-For-All needs help folding hundreds of little poem booklets to be given away during Jack Hirschman's San Francisco International Poetry Festival, starting July 23. No previous experience necessary. Refreshments provided. The Book Collector. 1008 24th St., Sacramento 95816, (916) 442-9295.
Thursday, July 9, 6:00 p.m. One Book, One Sacramento: The Soloist. The Sacramento Public Library enters its fifth One Book program with a reading group discussion of Steve Lopez’s The Soloist, the now-famous story about the relationship between an L.A. Times reporter and a homeless, classically trained musician. The Soloist is also a major motion picture from DreamWorks, starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. One Book events will continue through the fall. (The next scheduled reading group event will be Tuesday July 14.) The Central Library, 828 I Street, Sacramento 95814 (916)264-2700.
Friday, July 10, 7:30 p.m. The Right Place for Love, by Chris Reed. Reed, his wife Sophie and his two young daughters sold everything they owned and left Davis for Normandy, France. Reed told about the journey in a series of columns for the Davis Enterprise. What didn’t appear in the columns, however, was the collapse of the Reeds’ marriage and Chris’ downward spiral into a life of drunken crisis. The Right Place for Love is his memoir of this period. Free event. The Avid Reader, 617 Second Street, Davis 95616, (530)758-4040.
Saturday, July 11, 6:00-10:00. Second Saturday reception -- Doug Biggert's Hitchhikers. The Verge Gallery and Studio Project will showcase forty years of photography by Sacramentan Doug Biggert, long known to locals as the Tower Books buyer and godfather of the zine movement. The show includes photographs of nearly every hitchhiker Biggert has picked up (over 400). Seventy of these photographs appear in his book, Hitchhiker. Free event. Verge, 1900 V Street, Sacramento 95818.
Sunday, July 12, 11:00 a.m. El Camino Poets Workshop. Hart Senior Center. Hosted by Carol Louise Moon. Bring eight copies of your poems for critique. Hart Senior Center. 915 27th Street, Sacramento 95816, (916) 264-5462.

And here is a little peek ahead at next week:

Tuesday, July 14, 6:30 p.m. One Book, One Sacramento – The Soloist. Book discussion. South Natomas Library, 2901 Truxel Road, Sacramento 95833, (916) 264-2920.

Wednesday, July 15, 11:30 and 5:30. Chef Mark Miller. Grange Restaurant and Bar

. Join Chef Miller for an exclusive book signing of his highly anticipated cookbook,

Tacos,

at Grange Restaurant & Bar, during lunch and dinner hours. Grange Executive Chef Michael Tuohy will create a special menu for the occasion highlighting dishes from

Tacos

. Early in his career, Miller worked at Chez Panisse before starting his own Fourth Street Grill, also located in Berkeley, in 1979. Since then he has created more than 13 restaurants on three continents, most notably in 1985 when he opened Coyote Café in Santa Fe. Other projects have included Red Sage and Raku in Washington, D.C., Loongba

Arden Dimick fall book club theme -- all about food

2009-06-30T19:30:24Z

The Arden Dimick Library open book club has announced a fall theme for foodies – reading about eating, cooking and sharing food. Recent slow food events in Sacramento have illustrated the region’s deep interest in sustainable food issues. Michael Pollan’s California Lectures event sold out. The Crest Theater continues to be pestered by callers looking for opening night of sustainable food documentary Food Inc. Local foodie websites like Vanilla Garlic and Poor Girl Eats Well garner huge audiences and serious praise. With that in mind, this summer may be the perfect time to read about food, preparing you to take part in the book club discussions this fall.

September 20, the club will discuss Julie Powell’s Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen. Powell wrote a wildly popular, comic memoir blog (The Julie/Julia Project) detailing the daily difficulty of trying to recreate 524 recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, while working at New York’s ground zero by day. The blog begat the book and the book begat the movie (Julie & Julia), which debuts August 7, starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell.
October 25, the group will discuss Berkeley professor Pollan’s In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto, whose world-famous mantra -- “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” has captured the attention of readers, eaters, chefs and policy-makers everywhere. Pollan spoke to a standing room crowd at Westminster Presbyterian in June. Now he will appear in the documentary Food Inc, opening with a panel discussion at the Crest Theater Friday, July 3. In Defense of Food is Pollan’s newest and most straightforward read, about the simple premises he thinks can improve the quality, health and pleasure of our eating lives.
November 15, just in time for Thanksgiving, the club will read New York Times food critic Ruth Reichl’s humorous and poignant memoir of her lifetime love of food, Tender at the Bone: Growing up at the Table. Reichl’s food skills grew in part out of her very real need to survive with a mother who was not only taste-blind but disparaging of the dangers of rot.

All the book club talks will be held on Sundays, from 2:00-3:30, at Arden Dimick Library, 891 Watt Avenue, Sacramento. Email with any questions.

Poetry, a film opening and a writing contest: literary Sacramento this week

2009-06-29T17:09:09Z

This is a great week for book-minded Sacramentans, with plenty of literary events taking place in libraries, movie theaters, community centers and museums. Read on.

Monday, June 29, 7:30 p.m. Poetry reading -- Dorine Jennette and Valerie Fioravanti. Sacramento Poetry Center. Hosted by Frank Graham Dixon. Davis resident Jennette has published poems, essays, and reviews in The Journal, Ninth Letter, Coconut, Court Green, Memorious, Puerto del Sol, and the Georgia Review. She has a poetry collection, Grace by Degrees, coming out in 2010. Valerie Fioravanti writes fiction, essays, and prose poems. Her story collection, The Brooklyn Shuffle, was a finalist for the Tartt First Book Award. Her stories have appeared in North American Review, Cimarron Review, Hunger Mountain, and Green Mountains Review, among others. Her stories and prose poems have earned four Pushcart Prize nominations, and special mention in Pushcart Prize XXVIII. She received a Fulbright Fellowship (Italy) to research her novel, Bel Casino, which is one of two novels currently in the works. She teaches short story and multi-genre classes online for the UCLA Writers' Extension and private workshops from her home in midtown Sacramento. She has also taught writing for New Mexico State University and National University's MFA Program. Free event. Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 25th Street, Sacramento 95816, (916) 979-9706.
Tuesday, June 30 (and ongoing through 8/1), Focus on Writers contest. Sacramento Public Library. Spend your Tuesday looking into the rules for the contest and choosing what you’d like to submit. California writers are invited to enter entries for a chance to win $250 for first prize, $150 for second prize and $75 for third prize in six categories. For information about the categories, visit www.saclibraryfriends.org. Contest entries must be postmarked by 8/1.
Wednesday, July 1-August 19, once/week, 6:30-9:00 p.m., Research and Interviewing Techniques for Nonfiction Writers, U.C. Davis Extension. Elisabeth Sherwin will lead this eight week course for students who want to learn how to gather information and track down interview sources in preparation for publishing. Students will explore many forms of nonfiction writing and learn how to tailor their work to the market. $325.00 tuition. Sutter Square Galleria, 2901 K St, Sacramento.
Thursday, July 2, 8 p.m. Joe Montoya’s Poetry Unplugged. Luna’s Cafe. There will be an open mic, before and after guest hosts Frank Andrick, Mario Ellis Hill, Geoffery Neil & B.L. Kennedy. Two dollar cover fee or one drink minimum. Luna’s Café, 1414 16th Street, Sacramento 95814, (916) 441-3931.
Friday, July 3, 8:00 p.m. Special screening of Food Inc., followed by panel discussion. Crest Theater.Pesticide Watch Education Fund will host a special opening-night screening of Robert Kenner’s red-hot film Food, Inc. Following the film, chefs, academics and activists will participate in a lively discussion on how the region, state and country can tackle the challenges facing farms and the food system. Food Inc, said to be the next Inconvenient Truth, features interviews with authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food). Pollan spoke this summer at a sold-out California Lectures event and Eric Schlosser is scheduled to speak through California Lectures' 2009-2010 season. The Arden Dimick Library open book group will read In Defense of Food this fall. Tickets for this special screening are $12 and they are on sale now at tickets.com, Crest box office, or by calling 1-800-225-2277.
Saturday, July 4, 10:30 a.m., Teen Advisory Council meeting. Rancho Cordova Library. Join the teen library council, which meets the first Saturday of each month. Help plan and run programs for the library. Advise on books, music and DVD choices and programs. Receive community service credit. Rancho Cordova Library, 9845 Folsom Blvd, Sacramento 95827, (916) 264-2770.
Sunday, July 5, 12:00-5:00 p.m. With Malice Toward None: Abraham Lincoln exhibit. The California Museum. Celebrate Independence Day weekend by visiting this Library of Congress exhibit commemorating Lincoln’s two hundredth birthday. It charts Lincoln’s growth from politician to statesman, addressing his presidency’s controversies, including challenges to civil liberties and the Constitution, slavery and race, and the dissolution of the Union and the Civil War. Exhibit continues through August 22. $8.50 for adults, $7.00 for seniors (65+) and college students, $6.00 for youths aged 6-13 and free for children 5 and younger. California Museum, 1020 O Street, Sacramento 95814, (916) 653-7524.