A tale of killing God, crying at heaven and pretty ladies who are waiting at the door to hand you a cold, hard drink-The Edge of Doom indeed. Daily Treats are sweet finds from our Treat Avenue Donation Center. Hungry for more collectibles?  Find us at Amazon and AbeBooks.

Filed under: Daily Treat, Katie Sue Ambellan | No Comments »

By Mary Ellen Hannibal As much as I anticipate the Laureates dinner every year, I am amazed anew at the moving singularity of each event.  And it’s all because of the writers.  The Laureates dinner is Friends’ major fundraiser, in which we take over the Main Library. The Chronicle raved about it today.  Laureates always [...]

Filed under: Literary Events, Mary Ellen Hannibal | No Comments »

By Michelle Jeffers Earth Day is this Thursday so I had to draw attention to this “green” library—the Battery Park City branch of the New York Public Library. “A library that most can only dream of,” says the headline and it’s definitely a dreamy branch. Sure, maybe I’m a little green with envy, but not [...]

Filed under: Michelle Jeffers | No Comments »

Finally a bibliography for the Apocalypse. Daily Treats are sweet finds from our Treat Avenue Donation Center. Hungry for more collectibles?  Find us at Amazon and AbeBooks.

Filed under: Daily Treat, Katie Sue Ambellan | No Comments »

By Oscar Villalon As a book critic, you sometimes have to work with short word counts. This is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. To repeat the mantra from The Wire:  It is what it is. After all, it’s one’s job to come up with something cogent and interesting, no matter the assignment. [...]

Filed under: Oscar Villalon | 1 Comment »

By Marcia Schneider For over four decades, Alan Dundes, professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, taught an enormously popular undergraduate class on folklore and urban legend. Possibly tens of thousands of students attended his classes over the years (he filled lecture halls with as many as 400 students per class), at first [...]

Filed under: At the Library, Literary Events, Marcia Schneider | No Comments »

By Katie Sue Ambellan [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ3VcbAfd4w&feature=player_embedded] Author Philip Pullman recently addressed a crowd at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford.  When asked if the title of his latest novel, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, would cause offense to “an ordinary Christian,” he had this to say on censorship: It was a shocking thing to [...]

Filed under: Katie Sue Ambellan | No Comments »

By Byron Spooner Just read, in succession, three novels by Dan Fante (son of John Fante, screenwriter and author of Ask the Dust), all of which are short—125-195 pages—and padded out to make ‘em that long. Chump Change, Mooch, and Spitting Off Tall Buildings (1998, 2000, 2001; all reprinted by Harper Perennial, 2009). They’re pretty [...]

Filed under: Byron Spooner | No Comments »

By Anne Wintroub Yesterday was the first ever National Bookmobile Day, and here in San Francisco we marked it in high style with an adorable celebration at the Main Library. On hand were lots of little ones with hands a-clapping, Boswick the clown, bookmobile advocate and filmmaker Tom Corwin, City Librarian Luis Herrera and Board [...]

Filed under: Anne Wintroub, Literary Events | No Comments »

Feast your mayhem tooth on this first edition of An Unsinkable Titanic (1912). Daily Treats are sweet finds from our Treat Avenue Donation Center. Hungry for more collectibles?  Find us at Amazon and AbeBooks.

Filed under: Daily Treat, Katie Sue Ambellan | No Comments »