This is another book that is getting moved to the front of my review queue, partly because it is so fabulous, and partly because someone else has put it on hold from the library so I have to return it. John Rocco's Blackout
is brand-new to the shelves and you may have seen it making it's rounds in internetland. In fact, it has been written about so much that there is hardly any point in my writing about it... and yet here I am.
The recent hot weather and my inability to run the a/c due to my 2 year old's opinion that planning with it buttons is a hilarious activity has reminded me of my first city blackout experience. It is also the one on which this book is based. In 2003, the huge Northeast power failure that shut down places from Ohio to New York. I remember walking home and feeling so incredibly fortunate that I was not on the subway at the time! I have an irrational fear of being trapped underground, and being stuck on the subway at such a moment would not have been good for my sanity.
While the overall "message" of the book is that families have more fun together rather than sitting separately in front of various electronic machines, the city scenes are a joy to look at. At the start of the book, the city is "loud and hot." But during the blackout, it's clear that while the city is still loud and hot, the noises are voices rather than machines, and the heat is mitigated with ice cream and fire hydrants rather than air conditioners. One of the city details that appealed to me most was when the family went up to the rooftops to see the stars and the neighbors had a "block party in the sky." I wonder if non-city dwellers realize how much of a role the rooftops of buildings play in urban culture. I certainly didn't know before I moved to NYC.
In any case, there's no need to wait for a blackout to enjoy this book.
Want More?
Read a more thorough review at NY Times.
Read an interview and see more lovely artwork at Seven Impossible Things or E. Dulemba's blog.
Watch the (very cute) trailer on you tube.
Enjoy another rooftops-at-night book, At Night.
Big Kid says: Let's turn off the lights.
Little Kid says: Night sky! Where's the moon?
I promised I'd post more pictures. A little late but better late than never! :)
(all photos by my little sister bina)
My new mini radio flyer. It's so cute!
Mr. & Mrs. Biggers. Hands-down the sweetest couple I know.
He's soo cuuute. He looked at each plush & handled them so gingerly.
He found a friend!!
Breakfast: blood orange & hibiscus flower doughnuts. YUM! But wayyy sweet after a while.
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It's been hella days since I blogged. So long that I'm already back in the bay area. But here's some catch up!
So, I spent day 4 at Bob's in Chelsea. This is the view:
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang, right??
Then day 5 & 6 at Pavithra's in East Village.
Her place is so charming and sweet. On my last night at her place, we watched game 4 of the playoffs over hard cider, levain cookies, high fives & high pitched screams. One of my favorite moments of the trip! Then it was back to Bob's for two nights and then to Park Slope for one night at Zach's. I'd like to give a special shout to every kind gentleman who carried my giant suitcase of craft fair supplies up the subway station stairs :)
We went to see Andrew Bird for free to kick off the summer concert series at Prospect Park and had some delicious pizza. The folks went out drinking while I was a good, responsible lady and went to bed by 1am to prep for my second round of Brooklyn Flea.
I love the illustrative-collage animation style of Brooklyn-based painter Jonathan Campo and hope he continues to explore this quirky approach to filmmaking. Especially if he applies it to something more substantial than tired “Adult Swim”-esque non sequiturs and awkward pauses.
(via Meathaus)
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Post tags: Brooklyn, Jonathan Campo
By: Maryann Yin,
on 3/3/2011
Blog:
Galley Cat (Mediabistro)
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On four different nights, novelist Blake Butler will host a marathon reading of his new book, There Is No Year. Held in four different locations, a team of New York writers will help read the complete novel.
Click on the image embedded above for the dates and exact locations. Participants include: “Ben Greenman, Emma Straub, John Dermot Woods, Justin Taylor, Jo Weldon, Rachel Shukert, Melissa Broder, Jonny Diamond, Adam Robinson, Dorethea Lasky, Shya Scanlon, Lincoln Michel, Butler and his own editor [at] Harper Perennial, Cal Morgan.”
Butler edits the literary blog HTML Giant and two journals, Lamination Colony and No Colony. In 2009, he published a novella called Ever.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
The holiday season must be here — otherwise, we are listening to Run-D.M.C.’s Christmas in Hollis for no good reason. (Other than the hell of it.)
Last night’s event with Skippy Dies author Paul Murray was, in a word, epic. Murray is impressively entertaining and well-spoken, and kept the crowd nodding and laughing throughout his reading and interview with Ed Champion. We’ve got a limited number of signed copies of both editions, so get ‘em while the getting’s good.
And then, of course, there’s this coming weekend’s Annual Holiday Open House to look forward to. The list of participating authors just keeps on growing, and we’re planning some fun goodies and surprises, so definitely stop by sometime Saturday and/or Sunday between noon and 4 p.m. (If you’re on the Facebook, you can RSVP!)
Let’s see, let’s see — oh, right, the gift guide! Let us make your shopping easier: just buy these books. And! We are now the exclusive source for signed and personalized books from local romance author and WORD favorite Sarah MacLean. You just try getting Stephanie and Jenn to shut up about her, go ahead. We dare ya.
As always, feel free to stop in and let us know your own gifty favorites, be it here in the comments, on Twitter, Facebook, or (GASP) in person. Happy holidays!
Highlights from the past week:
- The fabulous ladies of Passion (Rachel Kramer Bussel, Monica Day, Emerald, and George Storey) along with historical romance author Sarah MacLean, kept the crowd laughing (and rapt) during their reading this past Thursday. I also had the best cupcake of my life, in celebration of Rachel’s birthday, thanks to the Kumquat Cupcakery.
- Local illustrator Lucy Ruth Cummins and author Shrill Travesty (The Taking Tree) proved to both be entertaining and talented. Mr. Travesty regaled us with some (unrepeatable) stories from the underbelly of the children’s book industry (NO SERIOUSLY), and Lucy did a speed drawing from crowd suggestions that is now proudly hanging on the wall of our basement.
- Last night, Greenpoint rooftop farmer Annie Novak interviewed author Katherine Leiner (Growing Roots) on the new faces of food activism. It was a great discussion about where our food comes from, who grows it, what we should be thinking about when we buy it, what we can do to keep our food supply sustainable and healthy, and so on. We highly recommend stopping by Eagle Street Rooftop Farm to get great food (and/or get your hands dirty); if you see Annie, tell her we say hi!
We’ve got more event awesome coming up; check out our event calendar for the full details. See you there!
Warning! Most of the pictures are of TREES & what they're supposed to look like in autumn.
I traveled to one of my favorite spots in New York... Dumbo, specifically the area by the park & Powerhouse.
Mmmm... look at that orange!
I sat down on the rocks, used the crevices as my cup of water & started painting.
A gent from the NY Daily News was snapping pics of me as I painted. It was very awkward & flattering.
Yay powerhouse arena! Infinite love for his place.
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Trees don't really do that in California.
Long Island City
The Strand!
Tri!
Cafe Habana corn!! Oh brother, hell yes!
Mmmm.. My days are passing in NYC and tomorrow I depart. So gotta make it count today! The plan is to venture to
powerhouse, one of my faaaavorite bookstores in bk, paint by the bridge & enjoy ice cream & shake shack (again?!) with lovely friends. Weeeeee!! Goodness, I have to stop falling in love with every city I visit. New York is special though & definitely deserves an indefinite revisit.
image: Sophie Blackall – Big Red Lollipop
As is now routine, I moseyed through the park and did my weekly grocery shopping at the Grand Army Plaza greenmarket on Saturday. This time, though, I wasn’t too loaded down with pickles and goat cheese, and actually had the energy to stop at the Central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
I’d been meaning to hit the BPL because, though I’ve always been a huge library supporter (it’s in my blood, thanks mom and dad), lately I’ve been in the bad habit of buying books instead. But with student loans looming this November (it’s been nearly 6 months already?!), it is time to tighten the finances and catch up on my reading – for free.
I was disappointed that I didn’t find anything super fresh and exciting in the YA section… but I guess it’s good that teens are checking them all out. Next time, I’ll have to bring a bigger list. I DID get the chance to see the Drawn In Brooklyn! exhibition of children’s illustration – and that, in itself, was worth the trip.
Drawn In Brooklyn! is a 4-month long festival of 34 local artists, celebrating the borough with the largest concentration of children’s book illustrators on the planet. In close proximity to Manhattan, illustrators can network with the publishing and art worlds first-hand… but then find both community inspiration and a bit of creative peace back here. No wonder Brooklyn is home to, well, almost everyone I admire.
image: Peter Brown – Chowder
In the vast display of work in the Grand Lobby of the BPL, there were many, many familiar names, including personal heroes (Leo and Diane Dillon, Ted and Betsy Lewin, Paul O. Zelinsky), current favorites (Sophie Blackall, Peter Brown) and former professors (Pat Cummings, Megan Montague Cash). Also, a few illustrators I’d never heard of before: both Daniel Salmieri and Sergio Ruzzier‘s whimsical, quirky characters made me smile. Here they are below!
image: Daniel Salmie
Hey, we know you have too many books. It’s a common problem around these parts. But you still want more books. Because books are fantastic. And also you love libraries. Whatever can you do?
You can attend our first-ever book swap this Saturday, 7/31, from noon to 4pm!
As part of the Greenpoint Business Association’s Last Saturdays of Summer promotion, we’ll be hosting a book swap outside (if weather permits; if not, we’ll take it into our basement). Here’s the deal:
- Bring up to five books
- Take up to five books
- Leave a suggested donation of $1 per book
All donated money will go directly to the Greenpoint Public Library, the better to help them when the re-open after their renovations are complete.
So spread the word! Especially amongst your friends with great book collections. If this one goes well, we will definitely have more in the future.
Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant
The forces of real estate development and rebranding campaigns are transforming urban landscapes around the world─and Sharon Zukin has seen much of it first hand. In the following podcast she explains what happens to the people when a city gains financial capital or decides to change its image. Zukin teaches sociology at Brooklyn College and the City University Graduate Center, and is author of this year’s Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.
Sharon Zukin: The basic industry of New York has been real estate for many years—the selling of land, the building of more expensive offices and apartments to replace the buildings that came before. This is just an unrecognized, really big part of New York City. New money from bigger investors comes in and drives out the people who are still paying low rents.
Michelle Rafferty: So Manhattan has become a place where many people who work in the city can’t actually afford to live there. Where else do you see this happening in the world, and how do we know when a city is on its way to becoming more elite or less diverse in terms of class?
Zukin: In every city of the world where the center of the city is redeveloped for the financial class and welcomes expatriates and transnational investors, that’s where the local population is being kicked out to the edges of the city. Yes it’s happened in New York, but it’s also happening in Shanghai. Yes it has happened in London, and Paris, but it’s also happening in Nam Ping. The centers of the city, in contrast to the 1960s and 70s have become valuable again. They’re valuable financially, they’re valuable logistically, they’re valuable culturally.
Rafferty: You just were talking about other cities in the world and I know you travel a lot. You get to see how a lot of other cities are changing, compare those changes to New York City. I know recently you went to Amsterdam, and specifically you saw what was going on in the Red Light District. I’m wondering if you can talk about that a little bit more, how that area is changing.
Zukin: The Red Light District has begun to look like a serious disadvantage for marketing Amsterdam. There’s even a kind of “I Love Amsterdam” campaign that copies the “I Love New York” campaign of the past few decades. So the new marketing of Amsterdam is more family friendly and really can’t deal with the drug traffic and the human trafficking of the sex industry. So there’s an attempt to evict those uses of the space and turn the windows of the brothels at least temporarily over to fashion designers and visual artists who display their work in the shop windows.
There was a very interesting exhibition at the Amsterdam Historical Museum this year that shows Ed Kienholz’s installations that reproduce the interiors of some of the very sordid rooms of the prostitutes of the Red Light District. But the exhibition also documents–in video form and in printed interviews–the desires of many of the prostitutes to continue working in the center of Amsterdam. There’s a curious dynamic of women’s control over their bodies and their work in a legalized prostitution situation, and the criminality of a lot of that industry, all of which is played out in urban redevelopment.
That’s right, this time next week you should be prettying up and getting ready for WORD’s Prom Night Literary Matchmaking Mixer!
To get in the mood, here’s a heartwarming story from our last matchmaking mixer, from an anonymous attendee:
“I went to WORD’s literary mixer in January expecting to find a bar full half full of females and half empty, but my friend had asked me to go along as her wingman and at worst I figured we would enjoy a drink and each other’s company, and maybe flirt with the bartender. Surprise: the place was packed with interesting females and males alike. I’d never been to a singles mixer before, and noticed immediately how easy it was to start conversations–after all, everybody was there to meet people, so one needed only make eye contact to initiate conversation. My friend exchanged numbers with three or four guys that night, and I with one, a boy who turned into a fun month-long fling, exactly what I wanted at the time. There was another guy I met that night, who I later kept running into in my neighborhood. Happy ending: we fell in love. As if WORD weren’t already the best bookstore in NYC….”
All together now: AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.
Want to prepare? There’s still time to submit your Worst Prom Story. Send it to info at wordbrooklyn dot com by Tuesday the 15th—the winner will be announced at the event.
Otherwise, we’ll see you in a week for drink specials, two guest authors (Virginia Vitzthum, My Blind Date Went Blind, and Erin Bradley, Every Rose Has Its Thorn), and, of course, romance. Facebook RSVP here (appreciated but not required).
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Mom says:
was inspired by his memories of this white winter wonderland as a boy. Even though I still love snow as an adult I have to admit that no one finds more joy in a new snowfall than a child.
Mom says:
by Jonathan Bean is about a girl who can't sleep. Instead, she takes her pillows and goes up to her rooftop garden to enjoy the cool night air where she can imagine herself in the wide world and relax. It is a bit of an urban camping trip. What I love: the lovely watercolor artwork starts local, focusing up close on the girl and her journey up to the rooftop, then expands out to the wider landscape of the city and the water and bridges and lights. It is a lovely representation of the rooftop world of the city, which can be a refreshing, green haven in the summer for those who live in apartments. I also love the way the girl's mom follows her up to the top to watch over her without the girl ever knowing.
Mom says:
is a charming book about the daily routine of a girl living in brownstone Brooklyn.
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0 Comments on Autumn in New York... Swooon! as of 1/1/1900
I seem to remember reading somewhere that there are two different books on this topic and the other book is better. Perhaps I will research it as a follow up to our circus theme.
I am going to look for this book, and maybe the other one too. Thanks!
I like the cover! This would probably be a great time to read them to my girls, since we crossed over lots of bridges on our trip to and from the West.
I didn't know that! Interesting story.