Monday, September 8, 2014

Literary Arts 30th anniversary.

Kelly and I attended this lovely evening which included two songs performed by Colin Meloy (of the Decemberists).  It also included a talk by Calvin Trillin, a poem by Zach Schomburg, and a poem by Bella Trent, who had an amazing voice.  Also Liz Gilbert* spoke on creativity.  AND because we were among the first 700 to purchase tickets we each got a copy of Elizabeth Gilbert's** Signature of All Things.  It was even autographed. It was a good evening.

ps.  Authors (at least the ones from out of town that spoke) really like to come to Portland.  Do you think they were just humoring us?

*That's what the program says:  Liz Gilbert.
**That's what the book says:  Elizabeth Gilbert

4 comments:

  1. Sounds like it was a very nice evening. And I don't think the authors were just humoring you. Who wouldn't like to go to Portland? I've hardly ever met anyone who didn't like it, except for my husband. *sigh*

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  2. I've been contemplating about picking up Signature of All Things. Have you read it? What'd you think of it?

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  3. I have read the Signature of All Things and I loved it. It's very long, though. But not hard to get through. Here is my Goodreads review:

    My Thanksgiving present to myself was the shunting aside of other reading obligations to dive into the very thick production of fiction by Ms. E. Gilbert. When an author has written something that I greatly enjoyed and then suffered a backlash for writing that very same something, I get protective of them. So I was nervous for this effort, because I worried that maybe Eat, Pray, Love was going to be it for Gilbert. (Although if she had only written The Last American Man, that would have been enough.) But no! This was great! I could tell from the first paragraph that this would be a feast of fiction and it was. Gilbert has the talent of co-opting the 19th century novel style while still being enjoyably readable for a 21st century audience. Her characters are wonderful, the lengthy book zips along and so deft is the mastery of her craft, I happily read multiple pages about a topic I care little about (ahem, moss.) Well done!

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  4. I love events that celebrate literary arts and allow for author celebrity. I always think how most authors, whom we love, are such hidden rock stars. Most go through their day to day lives and don't really get a lot of attention for being an author. We don't know what they look like (or their looks are very different from the author bio pic) and could just walk by that very favorite person of ours.

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