Thousand Oaks Reads What is the What Together!

We are thrilled that the Thousand Oaks Public Library has selected What Is the What as the book for this year's One City, One Book Program! Not only is this a beautifully composed and well-paced book, one our very favorites, but the subject, the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng's who was a "lost boy of Sudan," gave us great insight into the complicated history, lives and politics of Sudan.


What Is the What is a also a universal tale of the remarkable human capacity for courage, hope, and love.

Recently we had the opportunity to meet with Dave Eggers, the author of What Is the What. He told us that there is a book coming soon about the diaspora of Sudanese Lost Boys. We are very inspired by the quality and range of Eggers' talents and projects, and thanked him for it! He has a publishing house for great literature and one for human rights issues, nationwide tutoring centers for children, a clever and humorous website, a magazine, and beautifully written novels, and his own autobiography.

Mark your calendars: There will be a month long celebration of the book from September 20 - October 18, 2008.
Also, Dave Eggers will be in town on Saturday, October 11, 2008, at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza Kavli Theater.

Read further on the Thousand Oaks Reads website!
Get the book here. All proceeds from the book go to aiding the Sudanese in America and Sudan.

Cozy Up to the Fireplace with Two Great Eugenides' Books!

Last week, we attended a lecture at UCSB's Campbell Hall by Jeffrey Eugenides, the Pulitzer prize winning author of Middlesex: A Novel . If you have not read this book already, we highly recommend it! It is one of our very favorite books, one we have given to many friends to read also.

Eugenides described the nine year process of creating this "comic epic" which spans 80 years, including so many wonderful anecdotes and coincidences that occurred along the way. We learned about the inspiration for some of his characters, settings and even the way that the title came about (it was the name of the street that he grew up in Detroit!)

We were also thrilled to meet him, and have his new anthology, My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro signed by him. It features authors who we love, like William Faulkner, James Joyce, Vladmir Nabokov, George Saunders, Milan Kundera, and Miranda July, and all proceeds from this excellent book go to 826Chicago, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

It also has a beautiful cover!

From the introduction:
"It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer."--Jeffrey Eugenides

What a perfect Valentine's Day gift for a loved one to cozy up to the fireplace with!

Santa Barbara Film Festival

The 23rd Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival is on from January 23rd to February 3rd!
The film festival will honor, among others, Cate Blanchett, Angelina Jolie, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Gosling, and Javier Bardem.
It will also feature many wonderful films from all around the world, and many World and/or American premieres.

Major categories of films this year are:

EASTERN BLOC-featuring films from Eastern Europe;
REEL NATURE- the nature films series programmed by renowned nature cinematographer and Santa Barbara resident Mike DeGruy
EAST X WEST- a collection of the best cinema from Asia
TO THE MAXXX-is programmed by Santa Barbara filmmaker Russ Spencer and features extreme sports films and documentaries including the World Premiere of Jeremy Gosch’s “Bustin’ Down The Door,” with Shaun Tomson, Peter Townend, Mark Richards, Wayne Bartholomew, Ian Cairns, narrated by Edward Norton and featuring one of Santa Barbara’s main pastimes…surfing!
LATINO CINEMEDIA- offers a collection of films from Spain and Latin America.
SANTA BARBARA FILMMAKERS, which includes 7 World Premiere films.