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Showing posts from April, 2009

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Personally, I wasn't as into nonfiction…until I read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil , by John Berendt. Okay, okay I know the title is a mouthful, but trust me it’s a tasty bite. Midnight in the Garden... gives the first person account of a journalist's visit to the city of Savannah. During his visit, a crime occurred that featured some of the best characters to make it on the page. Gunshots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion, the Mercer House, leaving a redneck gigolo lying dead on the carpet and an aristocrat standing alive behind a desk…with the death-dealing weapon. That’s all it takes to set Savannah afire with speculation and gossip; was it murder or self-defense? As everyone has their bits of information about the two men, and new information surfaces everyday, that question becomes a little more difficult to answer. But with a little voodoo and a little faith, will the answer become clearer? All of the nonfiction I’d read before Midnight in the Garden… was

Fables created by Bill Willingham

Remember when you were younger and you were introduced to a cast of characters filled with princes and princesses, witches, talking animals and other magical creatures in those fantastical fairy tales? And I don’t mean Disney. I mean something more like The Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson. If you were anything like me, you fell in love with these characters that led you into a world of action, romance, violence, and comedy; where anything was possible, good always triumphed over evil, and there was always a happy ending. And then we got older and wiser and realized that we wouldn’t be visiting that fairy world for a very long time, if ever again. Or would we? What happened to those characters we fell in love with so long ago? In the graphic novel, Fables , Bill Willingham introduces the cast to us again in a brand new story where they visit our world…indefinitely...and not by choice. They’ve been driven from their homelands by an anonymous tyrant they only know as, ‘ The Adve

Dork Whore by Iris Bahr

Iris Bahr is pretty accomplished if you ask me. Her list of entertaining accomplishments match her list of academic accomplishments. Earning a degree in both theatre and neuropsychology at Brown University, she graduated magna cum laude, and also conducted fMRI research at Stanford and cancer research at the Tel Aviv University. Soon after, she moved to NYC to pursue acting full-time. Since then, she’s relocated to L.A. and been critically praised for her acting, writing, and directing. Possibly best known for her appearance on the show, Curb Your Enthusiasm , she’s also wrote an award-winning solo show, DAI . [www.irisbahr.org] In Dork Whore , Iris Bahr tells us of her personal mission to lose her virginity; the first time didn’t really count, I have only had it once , and that was kind of, and she feels more than ready after twenty years, the last two years spent in the Israeli army. She feels herself shy away from the other girls in her unit, who all hang out together gossiping abou

Breathers: a zombie's lament by S.G. Browne

breather : n. one among the living with the ability to breathe; one who is alive What if your afterlife happens to be living among the living? Depending on your viewpoint, when that afterlife is becoming a zombie, that may not sound too horrible…you’d think. S.G. Browne’s debut novel, Breathers: a zombie’s lament , gives us one possibility. Join Andy as he tries to cope and navigate thru his newly acquired lifestyle. He used to be alive with a wife and daughter until one sleepy night a bad turn that leads to a 20-foot launch into a Redwood tree trunk ends that life, only to give him a new one he isn’t sure what to make of, along with ruptured vocal cords and a limp. Two days after he’s reanimated, he’s picked up by the SPCA, who “is working to save more of us [zombies] by soliciting zombie foster homes” among their attempts. His parents begrudgingly come to claim him two days later. His new life is filled with “happy” days at home with his parents who, wished he would’ve stayed dead, a