Western Book Roundup
Temple Grandin’s Life Story Hits the Small Screen
By Jenny Shank, 2-10-10
Claire Danes as Temple Grandin in HBO's "Temple."
The movie ”Temple Grandin,” about the life of Temple Grandin, the Colorado writer, animal expert, and advocate for people with autism, premiered on HBO this weekend. The movie stars Claire Danes, a casting choice that Grandin told Erin O’Toole of KUNC she was “absolutely delighted” with. Grandin spoke with O’Toole as she was in the midst of traveling around the country to promote the film.
Grandin said of Danes, “She put this wig on and dressed up in my clothes and became me.” Grandin is pleased with the movie. “I love the way the movie shows how my mind works,” she said. (I reviewed Grandin’s most recent book, Animals Make Us Human, last year.)
• One of my favorite writers, Edward P. Jones, is the “eminent writer in residence” at the University of Wyoming in Laramie this semester. I saw on the Wyoming Arts Blog that Jones will read and sign his books Thursday, Feb. 18, at 5 p.m. in the University Wyoming Union ballroom. If you haven’t checked out Jones’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Known World or his two masterful story collections, do yourself a favor and get reading!
The Washington Post recently ran a fascinating essay by Neely Tucker on the “enigmatic” Jones. Among the insights: Jones “hasn’t written a word of fiction in four years. There is not a draft in a drawer, not a scrap of paper with notes for a story or a novel.” And Jones “grew up in an unhappy line of low-rent shacks and tenements in Washington,” many of which make their way into his fiction.
• Also reading in Laramie this month is Alyson Hagy, who will discuss her new story collection Ghosts of Wyoming on Friday, February 12th at Second Story Books (7 p.m.) and on Sunday, February 21st at the Albany County Public Library (2 p.m.).
• Down in Arizona, the Patagonia Public Library is gearing up for its big 7th annual fundraiser, The Writers’ Round-Up, on February 13, in Cady Hall (10 a.m.-3 p.m.). Over two-dozen writers will join in the festivities, including Philip Caputo, Gary Paul Nabhan, and Stephen Strom, who produced my favorite Western photography book of last year. Tom Miller will be there to sign copies of his new Revenge of the Saguaro: Offbeat Travelers Through America’s Southwest, and in an email, he described the event in this way:
“It’s a terrific small-town event. A bunch of authors show up, sit behind tables stacked with their books, and for five hours from out of the canyons and high desert come ranchers, teachers, retirees, Border Patrolmen, merchants, housewives, NVMSers ("No Visible Means of Support"), dopers, divorcees, hipsters, and snow birds, to talk with writers and buy books. Once a year for half a day we enjoy the illusion that there’s a literary world in the folds of the Santa Cruz County, Arizona borderlands.”
Sounds like fun to me. Warm fun. Anything that takes place outside of the endless winter we’ve been having in Boulder sounds fun at this point.
• Barnes & Noble recently named the finalists for their Discover Awards, which will be presented on March 3, and among the three contenders in the nonfiction category is Denver writer Dave Cullen for his book Columbine.
• The New Mexico Book Awards were recently announced. There are so many winners in this one, you’d better check the complete list, because you might be a winner too. Over three-dozen winning books were named in thirty-six categories ranging from “Young Readers Book (to grade 3)” (the winner was Beverly Eschberger’s An Elephant Family Adventure: The Elephants Tour England) to “Religious Book” (the winner was Judith McLaughlin’s Sacred Feminine). The title of “Best of Show Book” is shared by Jillian Brasch’s The Last Gifts: Creative Ways to Be with the Dying and Lois Manno’s Visions Underground.
• And while I’m on the subject of awards, the Denver Public Library is recently announced the winners of its Colorado Blue Spruce Award, which “recognizes the most popular books among middle and high school students in the State of Colorado.” Teens nominate and vote for their favorite books, and this year fantasy choices were top contenders, with The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins garnering the most votes.
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Jeff Kass takes a more straightforward approach in "Columbine: A True Crime Story," working backward from the events of the fateful day.
The Denver Post
Mr. Cullen insists that the killers enjoyed "far more friends than the average adolescent," with Harris in particular being a regular Casanova who "on the ultimate high school scorecard . . . outscored much of the football team." The author's footnotes do not reveal how he knows this; when I asked him about it while preparing this review, Mr. Cullen said he did not necessarily mean to imply that Harris was sexually active. But what else would such words mean?
"Eric and Dylan never had any girlfriends," the more sober Mr. Kass writes, and were "probably virgins upon death."
Wall Street Journal
I am hoping for a new Edward P. Jones book soon, too. But according to that profile in the Washington Post, the fact that he's not actually writing doesn't mean he's not cooking something up--apparently he thinks his stories through in his head before writing anything, and that can take him years.