April is jam-packed with fantastic events in both our stores. We're
delighted to offer you eight (EIGHT!) thrilling and wonderful book
events. Feel free to come to as many as you'd like!
If you've
never been to an event at Oblong before (and I know this applies to
many of you!), don't be afraid. Readings are a great (and FREE) way to
spend an evening learning about something new.
Here are some photos from recent readings!
-Suzanna
Rebecca Skloot, author of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" reads to a packed house.
 | Joshua Ferris signs "The Unnamed" and holds his baby at the same time. This guy has skills!
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  Thursday, April 8th, 7:30pm
Oblong Millerton
James McGrath Morris
Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power
James McGrath Morris discusses and signs his new book Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power.
Like Alfred Nobel, Joseph Pulitzer is better known today for the
prize that bears his name than for his contribution to history. Yet, in
nineteenth-century industrial America, while Carnegie provided the
steel, Rockefeller the oil, Morgan the money, and Vanderbilt the
railroads, Pulitzer ushered in the modern mass media.
James McGrath Morris traces the epic story of this Jewish Hungarian
immigrant's rise through American politics and into journalism where he
accumulated immense power and wealth, only to fall blind and become a
lonely, tormented recluse wandering the globe. But not before Pulitzer
transformed American journalism into a medium of mass consumption and
immense influence. As the first media baron to recognize the vast
social changes of the industrial revolution, he harnessed all the
converging elements of entertainment, technology, business, and
demographics, and made the newspaper an essential feature of urban
life. Pulitzer used his influence to advance a progressive political
agenda and his power to fight those who opposed him. The course he
followed led him to battle Theodore Roosevelt who, when President,
tried to send Pulitzer to prison. The grueling legal battles Pulitzer
endured for freedom of the press changed the landscape of American
newspapers and politics.
Based on years of research and newly discovered documents, Pulitzer is
a classic, magisterial biography and a gripping portrait of an American
icon.
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 Saturday, April 10, 7:30pm
Oblong Millerton
LAUNCH PARTY: JESSE SAPERSTEIN
Atypical: Life with Asperger's in 20 1/3 Chapters
Please join us in celebrating the publication of Jesse Saperstein's Atypical: Life with Asperger's in 20 1/3 Chapters. Jesse will read from and sign copies of his new memoir. Though a serious memoir, this book is laugh-out-loud funny.
Jesse Saperstein grew up in his family's department store in Millerton and graduated from Hobart and William Smith
Colleges. A popular speaker in the autism community, he is committed to
the cause of demystifying Asperger's and autism.
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 Tuesday, April 13th, 7:30pm
Oblong Rhinebeck
Carol Goodman
Arcadia Falls
Oblong favorite Carol Goodman returns to read from her new book, Arcadia Falls.
Carol Goodman is the author of The Night Villa and The Lake of Dead Languages. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Greensboro Review, Literal Latté, The Midwest Quarterly, and Other Voices.
After graduation from Vassar College, where she majored in Latin, she
taught Latin for several years in Austin, Texas. She then received an
M.F.A. in fiction from the New School University. Goodman currently
teaches writing and works as a writer-in-residence for Teachers &
Writers. She lives on Long Island.
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 Thursday, April 15th, 7:00pm
Oblong Rhinebeck
Oblong Book Group
Discussing David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Our
book group meets on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00pm. We are
always looking for more people, so if you're interested in joining, email Suzanna.
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 Saturday, April 17th, 7:30pm
Oblong Rhinebeck
Cathleen Schine
The Three Weissmanns of Westport
Cathleen Schine reads from her newest novel, The Three Weissmanns of Westport.
Read the RAVE for Cathleen's book in the New York Times Book Review.
Cathleen Schine is the author of the internationally best-selling novels The Love Letter (1995), which was made into a movie starring Kate Capshaw, and Rameau's Niece (1993), which was also made into a movie (The Misadventures of Margaret), starring Parker Posey. Schine's other novels are Alice in Bed (1983), To the Bird House (1990), The Evolution of Jane (1999), She is Me (2003), The New Yorkers (2006) and, most recently, The Three Weissmanns of Westport (2010). In addition to novels she has written articles for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. She grew up in Westport, CT.
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 Tuesday, April 20th, 7:30pm
Oblong Rhinebeck
Poetry Night
In celebration of National Poetry Month, we're having a Poetry
Night! Bring your favorite poem to share or just come to listen. The
emcee of the evening will be poet Diana Ayton-Shenker.
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 Wednesday, April 21th, 4:00pm
Oblong Millerton
KIDS' EVENT: Pam Muñoz Ryan Booksigning
The Dreamer
Pam Muñoz Ryan is the author of more that thirty books for young readers, including four beloved novels, Riding Freedom, Esperanza Rising, Becoming Naomi León, and Paint the Wind,
which collectively have garnered, among countless accolades, the Pura
Belpré Medal, the Jane Addams Award, and the Schneider Family Award.
She lives in Southern California with her family. You can visit her at www.PamMunozRyan.com.
In The Dreamer, Ryan narrates the childhood of the
painfully shy, awkward, imaginative boy Neftali Reyes, who, despite the
opposition of his cruel, authoritarian father, eventually became one of
the most widely read poets in the world, Pablo Neruda. Ryan weaves
sound poems and thought-provoking questions into her exquisitely
crafted prose to create a narrative tapestry of color, rhythm, and
emotion, while celebrated artist Peter Sís's delicate, mesmerizing
drawings transport readers to the lushness of the rainforest, the
vastness of the sea, and the whimsy of Neftalí's imagination.
Much
to his father's disappointment, Neftalí is not like other children.
Frail and desperately shy, he spends most of his time alone: collecting
treasures, reading, writing, and daydreaming. Neftali finds beauty and
wonder everywhere: in the oily colors of mud puddles; a lost glove,
sailing on the wind; the music of birds and language. While his father
plans to build him into a robust doctor, Neftalí has other longings
stirring inside him. The natural world in his native Chile and the
painful injustices he witnesses there move him equally. Against all
odds, Neftali prevails against his father's cruelty and his own
crippling shyness to win the Nobel prize for Poetry, writing under the
name Pablo Neruda. How Neftalí reconciles his own dreams with his
father's is at the heart of this inspiring, radiant, and profoundly
moving story of self-discovery.
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 Saturday, April 24th, 7:30pm
Oblong Millerton
Pearl Abraham
American Taliban: A Novel
Critically acclaimed author Pearl Abraham follows a young surfer/skater
on a distinctly American spiritual journey that begins with
Transcendentalism and countercultural impulses, enters into world
mysticism, and finds its destination in Islam.
Pearl Abraham is the author of The Seventh Beggar, Giving Up America, and The Romance Reader,
and the editor of an anthology about Jewish heroines in literature, Een
sterke vrouw, wie zal haar vinden?. Her stories and essays have
appeared in newspapers, literary quarterlies and anthologies. Abraham
teaches literature and creative writing at Western New England College
and lives in both Springfield, MA, and New York City.
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