 Red Room Writer Profile
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Lauren John's Blog
November 8, 2009
- Last night, George and I went with our friends the Trautmillers to see and hear the "Portrait of Leonard Bernstein" concert at Stanford Lively Arts. As a long time musical theater/American songbook/Bernstein fan, I was the catalyst for this evening. And now I feel really bad about that.It was not good. It was expensive for us as community members not affiliated with Stanford. And ...
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October 31, 2009
- Two weeks ago, Nick Szegda and I did a Bride of Frankenstein program at Menlo Park Library.Nick's presentation was so wonderful, that I asked him to share his notes with us--so that you can use them for your own program at home or in your library or classroom. When I started working at the reference desk at Menlo Park Public Library, filling in for Nick at busy times, long-time patrons would ...
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October 26, 2009
- "The four most dangerous words in investing are: This time it's different" So says Barbara Ehrenreich, the American feminist author, sociologist, and political activist, who has a new book out called: Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan Books, October 2009)I haven't read the book yet, but I did hear her speak at the ...
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October 19, 2009
- How do you run a Frankenstein book/film discussion group? It helps if you have a dark and stormy night—but in our case we met on a cloudy October afternoon in the meeting room of the Menlo Park Public Library.It also helps if you have funding for film/book discussions. That was provided by friends of the late Menlo College theatre/literature professor, Dr. Al Jacobs, who loved and studied ...
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October 14, 2009
- In the interest of full disclosure, I have long admired Elaine Elinson, co-author with Stan Yogi of Wherever There's A Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California (Heyday Books, 2009, $24.95). Elaine was the communications director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California for over twenty years and we ...
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October 11, 2009
- If you are planning a book discussion of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the Swedish noir, "closed room... or in this case, closed island" mystery by Stiegg Larsson, this blog entry is for you. It will save you hundreds of dollars in book group leader fees (the going rate now in SF for private groups is between $200 and $250) and distills years of my book group leadership ...
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October 6, 2009
- I still can't figure out why eighteen people showed up last Tuesday night at the Menlo Park Library to discuss Stieg Larsson's Swedish noir mystery The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Add in two librarians--me and youth services librarian Jennifer Wilkins--who made a cameo appearance to talk about the Girl With the D.T.'s more wholesome Swedish forebearer, Pippi Longstocking---and you've got twenty ...
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October 2, 2009
- Satirist Mark Twain. Pessimist Joan Didion, Activist Mario Savio, Conservationist John Muir. You can find their works at the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley--and I do mean YOU!The library and its services are available to everyone--on Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Yes EVERYONE--FREE---you don't have to be a Berkeley academic or a famous ...
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September 10, 2009
- "Food, like the people who eat it, can be stimulated by wine or spirits. And, as with people, it can also be spoiled. The quality in a white or red wine, vermouth, Madeira, or brandy which heightens the character of cooking is not the alcohol content, which is usually evaporated, but the flavor. Therefore any wine or spirit used in cooking must be a good one. If it is excessively fruity, ...
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August 14, 2009
- If I had more energy after a day of book slinging…and owned a different sort of wardrobe, I would be attending THE social/literary event of the fall season: Litquake’s (www.litquake.org) Goth Hop at The Verdi Club, located at 2424 Mariposa Street, San Francisco. The fun begins tonight, Friday August 14th at 8:30 p.m. and is slated to end at “the witching hour of Midnight.”A ...
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August 2, 2009
- My fourteen-year-old nephew ,Vishu, from northern New Jersey, should have known better than to arrive on summer vacation at Aunt Lauren's house with a paperback copy of Steinbeck's East of Eden in his luggage. (It was his honor's English summer reading--and he figured he could get through most of it on the long plane rides). His sister and traveling companion, sixteen-year-old Yeshda should ...
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July 14, 2009
- Does your summer vacation come with a reading list?Before you decide that this is a ridiculous, elitist question filled with travel one-upmanship (more on that in a moment)--consider what I do for a living. People are always asking me what they should read and/or listen to on tape either just before or during a vacation.Question: Lauren, I am going to Napa Valley--what should I read?Answer: ...
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June 20, 2009
- Novelist/social satirist Christopher Buckley 's new memoir Losing Mum and Pup--is my suggested read for Father's Day...and beyond. Here's what it's about. In the course of a year (2007-2008), only-child Christo (his family nickname) lost both of his charismatic, extraordinary parents, Pat and Bill Buckley. If you read Vanity Fair and the New York Times and Washington Post society and/or ...
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May 25, 2009
- Senator Ransom Stoddard: You're not going to use the story, Mr. Scott? Reporter Maxwell Scott: No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. The lines were delivered in the 1962 film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in which John Ford directed John Wayne, Lee Marvin, and Jimmy Stewart. I saw the film over Memorial Day Weekend at the magnificently restored ...
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May 5, 2009
- My long gone grandmothers would never have written essays about being grandmothers. For one thing, Grandma Rose, a seamstress born in Shepetovker, Ukraine, could not read or write. Thoroughly modern American-born Grandma Becky, a ballerina in her youth and Bloomingdales salesperson in an era when there was only the one store in Manhattan--rarely wrote more than a few lines on a greeting card. ...
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