Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down. A self-described Francophile from when he was little, Rosecrans Baldwin always dreamed of living in Paris–drinking le cafe, eating les croissants, walking in les jardins–so when an opportunity presented itself to work for an advertising agency in Paris, he couldn’t turn it down. Despite the fact that he had no experience in advertising. And despite the fact that he barely spoke French.

Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales. Growing up in a family of political journalists, Ali Wentworth rebelled against her blue-blood upbringing, embracing Hollywood, motorcycles, even a few wildly inappropriate marriage proposals. Today she is an acclaimed comedic actress and writer, and takes us through the looking glass and into the wonderland of her life.

Jeneration X. Jen Lancaster is finally ready to put away childish things and tackle the grown-up activities she’s resisted for years, and with each rite of passage she completes, she’ll uncover a valuable–and probably humiliating–life lesson that will ease her path to full-fledged, if reluctant, adulthood.

Ruby Ruggles and the miller John Crumb stand out to me as the most “Dickensenian” characters in this book so far, with their clever names.  Ruby Ruggles is so alliterative, I can’t help smiling everytime I read the name.  And Crumb seems a fit name for someone involved in bread, as John Crumb is a miller.  I look forward to more of these two!

Then there’s talk of Sir Felix  eloping with Marie.  “I shouldn’t know where to take her”, said Sir Felix, almost stunned into thougtfulness by the magnitude of the proposition made to him.  “All that about Scotland is done with now.”   Sir Felix is probably referring to Gretna Green, a village in Scotland famous for runaway marriages.  At one time, there were numerous small towns in the United States referred to as Greta Greens, for their easy path to marriage–a couple that needed to marry in a hurry, perhaps without family permission or knowledge, would make tracks for such a town.  The town of Aberdeen, Ohio, along the Ohio River, was such a town for most of the nineteenth century, where approximately 25,000 couples wed quickly with no questions asked.  Aberdeen still celebrates their Scottish history each year with a festival.

“Every vice might be forgiven in a man and in a son, though every virture was expected from a woman and especially from a daughter.”  Lady Carbury’s blunt difference in expectations and affection for her son and daughter stood out to me as the theme in this segment.  I thought the lowest moment was the thinly disguised exchange of money from Roger Carbury to Lady Carbury in exchange for Lady Carbury’s bringing her daughter to Roger Carbury’s estate for a visit.

“Wonderful are the ways of trade!  If one can only get the tip of one’s little finger into the right pie, what noble morsels, what rich esculents, will stick to it as it is extracted!”

Paul Montague makes a connection with Melmotte for the Great South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway project. Melmotte may be the Bernie Madoff of his time, the Railway project could be another dot com bust, Enron collapse or savings and loan collapse.  The Railway project takes a role in the novel like the lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce in Dickens’ Bleak House.  All the characters are building their lives around the thin chance of winning millions.  MegaMillions, Pick3, or Classic Lotto, anyone?

Who is your favorite character, or least favorite character, at this point?

Next reading:  Begin Chapter 16, to end of Chapter 30.

The jurors for selecting the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for fiction submitted three unranked finalists to the board: David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, Karen Russell’s Swamplandia and Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams.  The board rejected these choices, and for the first time since 1977, did not award a prize for fiction.

Did you read any of the submitted titles?  Vote here for your choice!

In Pauline  Kael A Life in the Dark, Brian Kellow gives  a richly detailed look at one of the most astonishing
bursts of creativity in film history and a rounded portrait of this remarkable and driven woman.  Check out the career spanning collection  The Age of Movies  Selected Writing of Pauline Kael  for  her appraisals of the films that defined an era-among them Breathless, Bonnie and Clyde, The Leopard, The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, and Nashville.

Ebert and Kael have been the most prominent movie critics of the recent past.  Catch one of the fastest rising film critics right here at our Main Event Speaker Series, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky.  His writing covers movies from the silent era to the Internet and everywhere in between.  Since 2011, Vishnevetsky has co-hosted the PBS program Ebert Presents: at the Movies.  His writing is featured on Notebook, a digital magazine of international cinema and film culture published by Mubi.com, The Chicago Reader, and Cine-File.

Mark your calendar now for his multi-media presentation at Main Library on Wednesday, May 9, at 7 p.m.!

Today marks the beginning of our blog’s read along of Anthony Trollope’s “The Way We Live Now.”   First reading segment starts with Chapter 1, concludes at the end of Chapter 15.  Read this and you can add another notch in your belt of really long books you’ve  read!

Which of these behemoth books  have you read?
 
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A central character in Brian Selznick’s book, the Invention of Hugo Cabret, and in Martin Scorcese’s film of the book is the complex automaton that writes.  Turn the key and click for these other tales of automata!

At the time of the French Revolution, a young inventor’s greatest device–a talking mechanical head– crowns his career and leads to an execution as tragic as that of Marie Antoinette, and far more bizarre.  Hailed by critics for the shimmering brilliance of its inventions and its uncanny fidelity to the textures of the past, A Case of Curiosities places the author Allen Kurzweil in the ranks of the finest literary artists of our time.

The Turk, by Tom Standage, is the true account of the 18th-century mechanical man, powered by clockwork, dressed in a Turkish costume, and capable of playing chess. Created by a Hungarian nobleman, the machine-man known as The Turk traveled Europe and America, made the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin, Catherine the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Father’s Day: A Journey Into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son. Buzz Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights, journeys across country and into the psyche of his son and traveling companion. Born just a few minutes after his twin, Bissinger’s 24-year-old son Zach is a savant, in some ways intellectually limited yet also boasting an extraordinary memory and navigational skills.