Shelley Blanton-Stroud

A Christmas Story at the Crest Theater

Appearing Saturday, December 19, at 1 p.m. Press photo. Loading 1 of 1 This weekend, Sacramento downtown's art deco masterpiece, the Crest Theater, will screen A Christmas Story, the 1940's era comedy classic based on Jean...

Book clubs are talking about author John Irving: "some mistakes can never be redeemed"

When National Book Award-winning author of Last Night at Twisted River, John Irving, spoke at Sacramento’s Crest Theater last night at a California Lectures event, he told his riveted full house of readers that he learned his...

Second in Food Book Talk Series Today

The Arden Dimick Open Book Club meets at 2:00 p.m. today, Sunday, October 25, at the Arden Dimick Library Community Room, to discuss the second in its fall series of food-related books, Michael Pollan's In...

Book club 101: ten ways to enhance your book club meetings

Even book clubs who are deeply comfortable with the way they have been meeting and speaking about books for years can benefit from a little shake-up every now and then. Believe it or not, if you try a few...

Official Woodstock photographer Jim Marshall's book Proof shows the photos behind the photos we know

Readers celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock can choose no better book than historic rock photographer Jim Marshall’s Proof, a big book of pictures you will actually read addictively, return to, pull out at parties, and wield...

Rock and roll documentary videos on Woodstock photographer Jim Marshall

Woodstock afficionados will enjoy this documentary video of rock and roll photographer Jim Marshall, shot and edited by Brian Pollzzie in 2007. In this video, Marshall discusses the experience of photographing John Coltrane, Janis Joplin, Duane Allman, Johnny Cash, and...

Five books for book clubs who love Mad Men's Don and Betty Draper

If your book club members are as obsessed as most well-read, sensible, good-tv fans are with AMC’s Mad Men, set to begin its third season this Sunday night, how about organizing a book clubs series around...

Book Club 101: discussion questions for The Stories of John Cheever

If your book club is hooked on AMC's Mad Men, starting its third season this Sunday, suggest they scratch that itch in a literary way by reading and discussing Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner's source material, The Stories...

Books and libraries, who will use them?

Who reads anymore? More specifically, who reads books? And most specifically, who reads books they find in libraries? In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas H. Benton writes that many of his students never enter their university library...

Julia Child memoir provides a model of open-hearted, open-minded curiosity and self-acceptance

Book clubs are buzzing about Julia Child, many provoked not only by the upcoming Julia & Julia film, but also by cyber-ink recently devoted to the female figure most baby boomers remember as 1970s Dan Akryoyd's blood-spurting...

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