Beginning June 5, Sacramento’s Arden-Dimick Library will host “Hearing Voices – Author, Character and Narrator in Audiobooks,” a summer book club sponsored by the Sacramento Public Library and the California Center for the Book. At the first meeting, participants will meet the Audie and Audiofile Earphones award-winning Simon Vance, narrator of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and King’s Speech audiobooks. Vance will discuss his experience of what makes good literature and what makes good audio and how those two may differ. Registered participants will receive audiobooks and series materials, including author biographies and discussion questions. At each of the four remaining meetings, pa

Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington spoke last night at the Mondavi Center at UC Davis, as part of its Distinguished Speakers Series.  Her lecture was a free-flowing, spontaneous take on a variety of topics that fit loosely under the evening’s theme, “The brave new world of the new media: how technology is changing the way we think, learn, play, work, and vote.” As founder and editor of one of the most highly trafficked news aggregating/blog sites on the internet, Huffington has developed strong opinions about the direction journalism will take in the future.  Citing ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, she told the audience that because things are always in a state of flux, “you c

After the last strains of the first song, “Strangers in the Night,” at last night’s Cosmopolitan Cabaret production of “My Way, a Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra,” singer Karole Foreman (Woman No. 1) leaned into the crowd and whispered, “I bet everyone in this audience has a memory associated with that song.” Do they?  I had to ask myself if only gray-haired Sacramentans might be moved and entertained by a local show of Sinatra medleys. In truth, the answer is complicated. Last week, my 18 year-old son was driving me around town with his iPod plugged into the stereo.  He played, his choice, not mine, a remix of that very song, "Strangers in the Night," by the young Berkeley band, The Mor

Downtown's Crest Theater will screen A Christmas Story, the retro comedy classic based on Jean Shepherd's novel, in the third annual Christmas Story at the Crest event Saturday, December 19.  Beginning at noon, guests will enjoy several tables of home-baked sweets and hot chocolate in the lobby of the gorgeous art deco theater, while awaiting their turn to meet a real-bearded Santa, available to take gift requests and photos with hopeful children and adults.  The film begins at 1 p.m.  Ten dollar tickets will benefit Jesuit High School. For the uniquely uninitiated, A Christmas Story is the campy cult classic about 1940's school kid, Ralphie Parker, who wants nothing more than for Santa t

Last night, John Irving, National Book Award-winning author of twelve novels, including The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules and his latest, Last Night at Twisted River, appeared in conversation with UC Davis Director of Creative Writing, Pam Houston, before an appreciative full-house at downtown’s Crest Theater, as part of California Lectures’ 2009-2010 line-up of literary speakers. Irving told the audience he writes according to novelist Herman Melville’s warning, “Woe to him that seeks to please rather than to appall,” saying that his goal is “not only to frighten readers, making them anxious for the fates of characters I have made them like,” but