Signature Views Mini-Doc – The restaurant Egg in Brooklyn holds a monthly event called Tables of Contents where authors give readings, and dishes based on passages from their books are served. Chef Evan Hanczor gives an inside look at the dinner series, featuring authors Adam Gopnik, Victor LaValle, and Sarah Gerard.

Not really, just a play on the Bonnie Tyler song. You can stream it through your library and Freegal!

Today is the Solar Eclipse and the librarian in me wants to share some information. While this is a very exciting event, if you don’t have the proper solar eclipse glasses, don’t look at it. That’s it, plain and simple.

So what happens if you just take a peek? According to scientists and ophthalmologists, all it takes is thirty seconds (30!) to cause permanent damage to the eye. Apparently, you may not feel it right away, but a day or two later you could have a permanent blind spot in one or both eyes or other permanent visual problems.

There is a story going around on Facebook and via email, etc. about a man who damaged his eyesight during the 1962 eclipse. This is not just a rumor, you can see it here:

To be safe, you can watch it outside with the correct glasses. The American Astronomical Society has a list of approved vendors and what to look for here. It is rather surprising that the manufacturers of these products did not produce enough supply to meet demand. I don’t understand how these companies missed the boat on this. They were making a product that had a guaranteed, short shelf life and they easily could have sold tons more, just based on the number of phone calls and requests that I have had at my library.

The safest way to watch it, and for me in south Florida, the only way to see the full eclipse, is to watch it on TV or stream it online.

NASA.GOV

NASA.gov/eclipselive will stream 10 live webcasts, each with a different angle. See the eclipse from the International Space Station. Watch ground footage from the point of greatest eclipse outside Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Catch the view from 11 international spacecraft. Or watch the eclipse from near-space: NASA Space Grant Consortium volunteers are launching 57 high-altitude balloons across the nation, each with its own Raspberry Pi camera.

NASA expects 100-500 million site hits, so as a backup, you can also catch the balloon webcast here: eclipse.stream.live

SOCIAL MEDIA

200 million Americans live within a day’s drive of totality, so the Great American Eclipse will be all over Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. The official hashtag is #eclipse2017.

As soon as the event is over, Eclipse Megamovie will compile everyone’s smartphone footage into a continuous video showing the solar eclipse from start to finish. Watch their replay here: https://eclipsemega.movie

ASTRONOMY.COM

See what the eclipse looks like on the ground from Denver, Colorado.

http://www.astronomy.com/eclipsestream

Hope this helps and please stay safe!

I’m a long time fan of Andy Cohen, and through reading his books learned that SJP, as she is affectionately known, is a big reader. So I was not surprised when the American Library Association launched “Book Club Central with Sarah Jessica Parker.”

Here Sarah Jessica Parker recommends four books she’s recently read – enjoy!

I couldn’t be there but hope to go next year! Here are the winners of the 2017 Thriller Awards!

Click to purchase

BEST HARDCOVER NOVEL
Noah Hawley — BEFORE THE FALL (Grand Central Publishing)
The stories of 10 wealthy victims of a boat sinking intertwine with those of a down-on-his-luck painter and a 4-year-old boy, the tragedy’s only survivors. By the Emmy-, Golden Globe- and Peabody Award-winning writer of Fargo.

Click to purchase

BEST FIRST NOVEL
Nicholas Petrie — THE DRIFTER (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Forcing himself to manage his PTSD when a fellow Marine commits suicide, Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Peter Ash helps his friend’s widow and discovers a cache of money and explosives that place him at the center of a wide-scale plot with ties to the world he tried to leave behind.

Click to purchase

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL NOVEL
Anne Frasier — THE BODY READER (Thomas & Mercer)
For three years, Detective Jude Fontaine was kept from the outside world. Held in an underground cell, her only contact was with her sadistic captor, and reading his face was her entire existence. After her experience with isolation and torture, she is left with a fierce desire for justice—and a heightened ability to interpret the body language of both the living and the dead.

Click to purchase

BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL
A.J. Hartley — STEEPLEJACK (TOR Teen)
Repairing roof fixtures in her ethnically diverse industrial city in an alternate world resembling Victorian South Africa, 17-year-old Anglet Sutonga investigates the death of a young apprentice while caring for her sister’s baby against a backdrop of racial tensions, political secrets and a stolen historical icon.

Click to purchase Kindle ebook

BEST E-BOOK ORIGINAL NOVEL
James Scott Bell — ROMEO’S WAY (Compendium Press)
Mike Romeo, the former cage fighter living low in L.A., doesn’t look for trouble. He doesn’t have to. It comes after him. So when he’s hired by a California senatorial campaign to do undercover work, Romeo doesn’t have any illusions. If there’s one thing Romeo wants, it’s justice. And he’s going to get it––his way.
 

BEST SHORT STORY
Joyce Carol Oates — “Big Momma” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine)

Also receiving special recognition during the ThrillerFest XII Awards Banquet:

Lee Child, ThrillerMaster
In recognition of his legendary career and outstanding contributions to the thriller genre.

Lisa Gardner, Literary Silver Bullet Award
Tom Doherty, Thriller Legend Award

IMHO, there are some movies that were at least as good as the book; most of the Harry Potter films, The Lord of the Rings films, Gone with the Wind, The Godfather (1 & 2, don’t even mention 3 to me!) There is at least one film that was much better than the book – The Devil Wears Prada. I’m sure there are some more. But even so, these are infinitesimal is the world of films based on books. I’d love to hear some comments on this!

Signature Views Mini-Doc – If the book is always better than the movie, why bother adapting a book? Consider some of these reasons. 

It’s the first day of summer – Read It Forward editors Abbe and Emma give six recommendations for summer reads!

Jeffrey Tambor discusses how he landed the role of George Bluth, Sr. on ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, and what he remembers from the show.

I read this very upsetting article in The Guardian –

Cheap books, high price: why Amazon.com’s ‘one-click’ sales can cost authors dear

US sales on the web giant have recently begun defaulting to secondhand merchants, meaning writers receive nothing at all from purchases

It is a hard sell: the idea that cheaper books might be a bad thing. But an adjustment to how Amazon sells books on its site is being attacked by authors’ groups, which claim secondhand copies of new books sold at rock-bottom prices are selling in such high quantities from the retailer that authors are unable to earn a living.

A week ago, buyers on Amazon.com, the US site, began seeing heavily discounted secondhand copies of books sold by third-party sellers being presented as the default buying option, instead of new copies supplied to Amazon by publishers. Using that “buy-in-one-click” button for, say, George Saunders’s novel Lincoln in the Bardo, you’ll get it for a bargain $10.52 – but that’s an “as-new” copy from a secondhand seller, not a new copy sourced by Amazon.com (which will cost you $14.64).

Read the rest here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/may/17/secondhand-book-sales-authors-cheap

I link all my reviews to Amazon because I try and make enough money to pay for my website, and I usually just about break even. But it is upsetting to learn that if you buy a “used” new book from a third party seller, the author doesn’t make a dime. I like cheap books as much as anyone, but authors deserve to get paid. This practice doesn’t seem to affect anyone else – the publisher still makes their money, so why shouldn’t the author?

So if you are going to buy a book on my recommendation, please click through the link I provide – usually in the book cover. Then make sure you are purchasing a NEW copy, if that is what you want, directly from Amazon and not from a second party seller.

Climbing off my soapbox now.

Thanks.