I remember when we'd get our scripts for plays and musicals, when I was in high school, from Samuel French. They always had the same gold/yellow covers and by the time you finished rehearsals, they were always tattered and marked up on the inside with highlighers and red pens. Though I've never been to the actual bookshop, I think its a shame that it is closing down in favor of having an online-only store. Recently, the famed Seattle Weekly newspaper has decided to do the same.
Samuel French
Closing Hollywood Bookshop
The Samuel French
Film & Theatre
Bookshop in
Hollywood, Calif., will close effective March 31
Broadway World
reported that the company's "extensive collection of
iconic acting
edition play scripts and musical libretti will continue to
be available
online through the Samuel French website" as well as at
Samuel French's
bookshop in London's Royal Court Theatre, which
celebrates its
first anniversary next month.
Citing a
significant decline in sales for over the past decade, BWW
observed that more
than 80% of Samuel French's retail sales are now made
online.
"Although the
community loves the store and its exceptional staff, most
people are
choosing to buy their books from e-retailers these days,"
said company
president Nathan Collins. "It is an unfortunate situation,
in which many
other bookshops find themselves. However, the good news is
that Samuel French
continues to serve the world online with an
unparalleled range
of shows to license and scripts to purchase. This is
supported by our
expert staff in New York, London, and L.A. and their
outstanding
service to our customers."
Samuel French will
be donating scripts and other materials from the
closure to local
libraries, theaters and educational institutions.
"It's one
small way for us to give back to the community," Collins
added. "The
bookstore has been a beloved landmark for decades and we are
extremely grateful
to our dedicated staff and loyal customers who have
run and supported
it for so many years."
I am the leader/host of a long-running book club that meets once a month at my local branch of the King County Library System (KCLS), so I totally agree with this report. We aren't allowed to have alcohol at the library, and we do, indeed, spend a majority of the hour that we have talking about the book that we've all read. Sometimes we talk about the book for next month, or how our life experiences dovetail with that of the characters in the book, but for the most part we do stay on track with our discussions.
BookBrowse Report:
'The Inner Lives of Book Clubs
Book club meeting
at Island Books, Mercer Island, Wash.
The stereotype
that book clubs are "primarily social groups who use
books as a pretext
to get together for a gossip and a glass of wine" is
"far from the
reality," according to a new BookBrowse report called "The
Inner Lives of
Book Clubs." In fact, the vast majority of book
clubs--84% of
private book clubs and 90% of public ones--spend at least
40 minutes of each
meeting discussing a book, and most "designate a
facilitator to
keep the conversation on track."
Based on more than
5,500 responses, the report also found that book club
members are
happier with the book club the longer the club discusses the
book. For example,
in groups that discuss the book for 75 minutes or
more, some 81% of
respondents described themselves as "very happy" with
the group. By
contrast, in groups where book discussions are 20 minutes
or less, only 55%
of respondents are "very happy."
Socializing has
its place: "71% of those in private book clubs and 43%
of those in public
groups feel that a social element is very important,"
the report found.
Many respondents observed that friendships often grow
out of "open
debate and sharing of perspectives."
Another stereotype
is that book clubs "mainly consist of women reading
'women's' or
literary fiction," but nearly half (48%) of public book
groups have male
participants. While 88% of private book clubs are all
women, many would
be happy to include men, the report found.
Some 70% of book
groups do read fiction most of the time, but the books
"straddle
multiple genres, including nonfiction." Moreover, the longer a
group runs,
"the broader their reading tends to be."
While book club
members almost unanimously (98%) said respect for each
other's opinions
is very important, a majority of respondent (71%)
indicated that
it's very important that their group's book choices
challenge them as
a reader and 55% said they're drawn to books that are
"a bit
controversial."
Problems that lead
members to leave book clubs or cause book clubs to
disband include
"overly dominant participants, poor attendance, book
selection, group
size, and managing meetings."
Overall, the vast
majority of book club members describe their group as
"a vital and
fun aspect of their life. Book clubbers enjoy a sense of
community and,
often, personal friendships within their group; but,
above all else,
they value intellectual challenge and growth."
I'm really looking forward to seeing the television version of Pullman's His Dark Materials series, which I read and enjoyed years ago.
TV: His
Dark Materials
A teaser trailer
has been released for the big-budget His Dark Materials
adapted from
Philip Pullman's epic fantasy trilogy: Northern Lights, The
Subtle Knife and
The Amber Spyglass. Deadline reported that the BBC
partnered with HBO
on the Bad Wolf and New Line Cinema-produced series,
featuring Dafne
Keen, James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
"We wanted
fans to have a tiny glimpse of His Dark Materials," said exec
producer Jane
Tranter. "As with Lyra, there are many more worlds to
discover as we
start upon this epic journey."
I will be anxious to see how these co-editors turn things around for the New York Review of Books, after the scandal.
Co-Editors Named
at NYRB
Emily Greenhouse
and Gabriel Winslow-Yost have been named co-editors
of the New York
Review of Books, which has been without a top editor
since the sudden
departure of Ian Buruma last September
uproar over the
publication and ensuing defense of an essay about the
#MeToo
movement," the New York Times reported. In making the
announcement, NYRB
publisher Rea Hederman also said that longtime
contributor Daniel
Mendelsohn will assume the newly created role of
editor at large.
Greenhouse, who
was most recently managing editor of the New Yorker,
worked at the
Review in 2011 and 2012 as an editorial assistant to
Robert Silvers,
who co-founded the publication in 1963 with Barbara
Epstein and died
in 2017.
Winslow-Yost began
working at the Review, also as an editorial assistant
to Silvers, in
2009, rising to the position of senior editor.
Greenhouse and
Winslow-Yost told the Times they believe that their
longtime
friendship, and most importantly the time they spent working
together for Silvers,
will help them share power.
I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell is the March book chosen by my Tuesday Night Book Group at the local library for discussion. It is the second book of O'Farrell's that I've read, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox being the first. This book is comprised of 17 chapters wherein the author describes times when she nearly died. While the subject matter is grim, O'Farrell uses her excellent command of language to paint gorgeous pictures of places and people whom she's loved and encountered while she was recovering, or prior to, her various dates with death. Here's the blurb: On seventeen occasions, Maggie O’Farrell has stared death in the
face—and lived to tell the tale. In this astonishing memoir, she shares
the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life:
The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was
not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended
in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And,
most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her
daughter from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to
life’s myriad dangers. Here, O’Farrell stitches together these discrete
encounters to tell the story of her entire life. In taut prose that
vibrates with electricity and restrained emotion, she captures the
perils running just beneath the surface, and illuminates the
preciousness, beauty, and mysteries of life itself.
I found myself becoming annoyed at Maggie's continued disregard for her own safety, when it is apparent that she is accident prone at best and unlucky at worst. She seems to almost have a death wish, but once she becomes a mother, seems determined to save her fragile daughter from the ravages of an extreme form of eczema that makes her skin crack and bleed. Yet it seems bizarre to me that Maggie would even have a third child, considering that she nearly died of miscarriages and after having her first child was told she could not and should not have more children. My frustration with her death wish got to be a bit much by the end of the book, yet I still felt that the luminous prose made it worth reading. I'd give this medical memoir a B, and recommend it to all those who survived accidents and assaults when no one thought that they would.
Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson is a delightful epistolary novel about an older farm wife who begins a correspondence with a museum curator in Denmark. They get to know one another and compare their very different lives over the months and years, and eventually seem to develop a true affection for one another. This book reminded me of Helene Hanff's 84 Charring Cross Road, which was such a beautiful compilation of the letters Hanff wrote to a bookseller in England during WWII. Tina and Anders are much less passionate than the protagonists of Charring Cross Road, however, mainly because the two are hard working introverts who tend to see the beauty in details of the natural world. Here's the blurb:
In Denmark, Professor Anders Larsen, an urbane man of facts, has lost
his wife and his hopes for the future. On an isolated English farm,
Tina Hopgood is trapped in a life she doesn’t remember choosing. Both
believe their love stories are over. Brought together by a shared fascination with the Tollund Man, subject of Seamus Heaney’s famous poem, they begin writing letters to one another. And from their vastly different worlds, they find they have more in common than they could have imagined. As they open up to one another about their lives, an unexpected friendship blooms. But then Tina’s letters stop coming, and Anders is thrown into despair. How far are they willing to go to write a new story for themselves?
I loved reading the letters Anders wrote to Tina, right up until the end, when, SPOILER ALERT, we never learn if Tina actually gets on a plane or train and fulfills her dream of seeing Anders and Tollund Man! We are left with Tina's heartbreak after her creep of a husband cheats on her with the one woman in town she despises most, and she moves out, only to get a final letter from Anders imploring her, once again, to come to him in Denmark. Ugh. I hate it when authors leave the ending of a book up in the air like that! It is not at all fair to the reader. So what was a book that deserved an A now is demoted to a B, and recommended only to those who don't mind lousy nebulous endings.
When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare is a witty romance novel that, while full of the romance novel tropes and cliches that I normally despise, was still a sporran full of fun. The dialog was zingy, the characters full bodied and realistic, and the plot moved along like a beach breeze on a June day. Here's the blurb:
On the cusp of her first London season, Miss Madeline Gracechurch was
shy, pretty, and talented with a drawing pencil, but hopelessly awkward
with gentlemen. She was certain to be a dismal failure on the London
marriage mart. So Maddie did what generations of shy, awkward young
ladies have done: she invented a sweetheart.A Scottish sweetheart. One who was handsome and honorable and devoted to her, but conveniently never around. Maddie poured her heart into writing the imaginary Captain MacKenzie letter after letter . . . and by pretending to be devastated when he was (not really) killed in battle, she managed to avoid the pressures of London society entirely. Until years later, when this kilted Highland lover of her imaginings shows up in the flesh. The real Captain Logan MacKenzie arrives on her doorstep—handsome as anything, but not entirely honorable. He's wounded, jaded, in possession of her letters . . . and ready to make good on every promise Maddie never expected to keep.
Maddie and Mac are a match made in the scruffy part of heaven, and their journey to love and partnership is a real delight to read. Even the inevitable sex scenes were dealt with in a manner that wasn't too melodramatic or grotesquely sexist. Hence, I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone looking for an absorbing beach read or a distracting read on an airplane or while at the doctor's office.
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