|
THE CHESTER COUNTY BOOK & MUSIC COMPANY
UPCOMING EVENTS AT OUR WEST CHESTER LOCATION - 2004
Wednesday, February 11 – Mark
Obmascik will sign and discuss his new book, The
Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession, at 7:00
PM. Every year on January 1, a quirky crowd of adventurers storms
out across North America for a spectacularly competitive event called
a Big Year – a grand, grueling, expensive, and occasionally
vicious, "extreme" 365-day marathon of birdwatching. For
three men in particular, 1998 would be a whirlwind, a winner-takes-nothing
battle for a new North American birding record. In frenetic pilgrimages
for once-in-a-lifetime rarities that can make or break their lead,
the birders race each other from Del Rio, Texas, in search of the
rufous-capped warbler, to Gibsons, British Columbia, on a quest
for Xantus's hummingbird, to Cape May, New Jersey, seeking the offshore
great skua. Bouncing from coast to coast on their potholed road
to glory, they brave broiling deserts, roiling oceans, bug-infested
swamps, a charge by a disgruntled mountain lion, and some of the
lumpiest motel mattresses known to man. The unprecedented year of
beat-the-clock adventures ultimately leads one man to a new record
– one so gigantic that it is unlikely ever to be bested...finding
and identifying an extraordinary 745 different species by official
year-end count. Award-winning journalist Mark Obmascik creates a
rollicking, dazzling narrative of the 275,000-mile odyssey of these
three obsessives as they fight to the finish to claim the title
in the greatest – or maybe the worst – birding contest
of all time. With an engaging, unflappably wry humor, Obmascik memorializes
their wild and crazy exploits and, along the way, interweaves an
entertaining smattering of science about birds and their own strange
behavior with a brief history of other birders. A captivating tour
of human and avian nature, passion and paranoia, honor and deceit,
fear and loathing, The Big Year shows the lengths to which
people will go to pursue their dreams, to conquer and categorize
– no matter how low the stakes. This is a lark of a read for
anyone with birds on the brain – or not.
Saturday, February 28 –
Becky Degan will entertain children (pre-school age
to 2nd grade) with her interactive CD, Hip Hip Hooray,
at 11:00 AM. This 13-song album is the debut effort for Degan, a
pianist and vocalist who works as a music therapist at The Arc of
Chester County in West Chester. Though many of the songs were inspired
by children with special needs, the music is appropriate for kids
of all ability levels. The album also encourages interaction between
parent and child, and focuses on developmental needs in areas such
as sensory, speech and motor skills. This CD is chock full of clever
songs, lively characters and education disguised as just plain fun.
Wednesday, March 3 – Peter
Manseau and Jeff Sharlet
will sign and discuss their fascinating new volume, Killing
the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible, at 7:00 PM. "If you
meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." The ninth-century sage
Lin Chi gave this advice to one of his monks, admonishing him that
this Buddha would only be a reflection of his unexamined beliefs
and desires. Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet took Lin Chi's advice
to heart and set out on a car trip around America, looking for Buddhas
along the road and the people who meet them: prophets in G-strings
dancing to pay the rent, storm chasers hunting for meaning in devastating
tornados, gangbangers inking God on their bodies as protection from
bullets, cross-dressing terrorist angels looking for a place to
sing. Along the way Manseau and Sharlet began to wonder what the
traditional scripture they encountered everywhere – in motels,
on billboards, up and down the radio dial – would look like
remade for today's world. To find out, they called upon some of
today's most intriguing writers to recast books of the Bible by
taking them apart, blowing them up with ink and paper. Rick Moody
recasts Jonah as a modern-day gay Jewish man living in Queens. A.L.
Kennedy meditates on the absurdity of Genesis. In Samuel, April
Reynolds visits a man of tremendous vision in Harlem. Peter Trachtenberg
unravels the Gordian logic of Job by way of the Borscht Belt. Haven
Kimmel dives into Revelation and comes out in a swoon. Woven through
these divine books are Manseau and Sharlet's dispatches from the
road, their Psalms of the people. What emerges from this work of
calling is not an attack on any religion, but a many-colored, positively
riveting look at the facets of true belief. Together these curious
minds tell the strange, funny, sad, and true story of religion in
America for the spiritual seeker in all of us: A Heretic's Bible.
Thursday, March 11 – It would be a
crime to miss legendary lawman Joe Pistone
– famed for his exploits as Donnie Brasco – as he visits
us to sign and discuss his book, The Way of the Wiseguy,
at 7:30 PM. Perhaps no man alive knows the inner workings and lifestyle
of wiseguys better than Pistone does, having spent six years infiltrating
organized crime as an undercover FBI agent. Now, years later, Pistone
reassesses what the underworld was really about. Occasionally poignant,
always in shocking detail, The Way of the Wiseguy gives
readers a first-hand look at the thinking, psychology, and customs
that make wiseguys a unique breed. The volume is divided into anecdotes
that reveal key principles of wiseguy life, including "Don't
Volunteer You Don't Know Something," "Be a Good Earner,"
"Look Like You Mean Business, "It's Your Best Friend Who
Will Kill You," and much more. The stories – more than
80 of them – are spellbinding, and the insights into this
lawless realm of the Mafia are often uncannily relevant to the workings
of the legitimate world of big business and everyday social discourses.
This book also includes a CD with shocking undercover surveillance
audio from the Donnie Brasco operation (with commentary by Joe Pistone).
Sunday, March 14 – The delightful Malachy
McCourt will visit to sign and discuss his books,
The Claddagh Ring and Voices of Ireland, at 1:00
PM. Part of a group of "finger rings" dating from the
Roman era, The Claddagh Ring, is formed by two clasped hands, symbolizing
faith, love, loyalty, and friendship. Said to have been first crafted
more than 400 years ago in Claddagh, a fishing village on Galway
Bay, there is much more to the ring's tale than simple popular history,
and McCourt is just the person to track it down and recount it with
his stellar storytelling finesse. And if there's one thing better
than a well-told tale, it's a baker's dozen of them. In Voices
of Ireland, an anthology edited by McCourt, readers are presented
with a marvelous collection of fiction, poetry, and essays by a
variety of esteemed Irish writers. From Jonathan Swift's "A
Modest Proposal" to Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading
Gaol and Other Poems to James Joyce's Dubliners
these literary masterpieces form a collective record of the modern
Irish experience. Come celebrate all things IRISH – and who
knows – Malachy may even favor us with a song or two!
Sign-up now to receive signing announcements and
our e-mail newsletter at ccbmc.com
Join us for Children's Story
Time at our West Chester location every Wednesday at 10:30 AM; and
at our Downingtown location every Tuesday at 10:30 AM, and every
Sunday at 1:00 PM.
|