The Inspired Fireplace

Thousand Oaks Reads What is the What Together!

2008-05-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-01-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-16T14:26:00.000-08:00

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.

There is Nothing Like Cooking Over a Wood Fire...

2007-10-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

Alice Waters has been our heroine for a very long time. She has not only spearheaded the movement towards organic, seasonal, sustainable, slowly-cooked and locally grown food, but she has also started a wonderful project called The Edible Schoolyard which teaches children to respect and value nutritional, natural food from a very young age.
We have used her cookbooks faithfully over the years, with wonderful results every time. At her charming restaurant in Berkeley, Chez Panisse, (considered the birthplace of California Cuisine) they use a wood-fired oven fueled by grape wood.
Great food and atmosphere evokes wonderful memories, and our times there are unforgettable!
Alice Waters has a new book out that we will definitely be reading soon:

Another Book For Us to Read By the Fireplace This Fall!

2007-10-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Doris Lessing for being awarded 2007's Nobel Prize in Literature!

She is described on the Nobel Prize site as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny."

We love her already!

We are adding her most famous book, The Golden Notebook, to our "Must Read By The Fireplace This Fall" list.

Also, next Friday, Orham Pamuk, last year's Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, and author of Snow, My Name is Red, and Istanbul: Memories and the City will be at UC Santa Barbara's Campbell Hall at 8pm.

2007-10-10T17:21:00.000-07:00

Ira Glass, producer and host of our favorite radio show, This American Life, introduces his new anthology The New Kings of Non-Fiction this week. “Kings” include authors Malcolm Gladwell (Blink; Tipping Point), Susan Orlean (New Yorker; Orchid Thief), and Chuck Klosterman (Fargo Rock City). We are very excited...Earlier this week, our friends in New York saw them all speak on such diverse topics as the changing role of women in history, the significance of ever-shrinking diapers, Susan's three-week "interview" process, and the unbearable weight of being one of Gene Simmons' dedicated devotees. We can't wait for Ira Glass to come our way on November 4th.

2007-10-06T19:01:00.000-07:00

The 8th Annual Ojai Film Festival is on this Weekend! October 4-7
Click here for schedule
We are adding "Lili and the Baobab" and "The Devil Came on Horseback" to our "must see" list!

2007-10-05T00:22:00.000-07:00

Celebrate Intellectual Freedom! Banned Books Week: September 29-October 6

“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Our favorite "banned book" is this amazing science-fiction book by Lois Lowry.

Books We're Reading by the Fireplace

2007-10-02T19:03:00.000-07:00