Friday, December 11, 2015

Books du Jour, ep #202, "Authoress, Writeress, Nothing Less."


Episode #202                        “Authoress, Writeress, Nothing Less”
  
Location sponsor: City Winery, New York

They call themselves actors when they really are actresses. Meet the new crop of authoresses: Amy Sohn, Stacey D’Erasmo, Alice Eve Cohen.



This week panel consists of women authors.  Whether we call them Authors or Authoresses, these writers (or shall we say writeresses?), have strong feminine voices, even more so while writing fiction.  Their characters may span a wide range of lives, from the evil-eyed memoir to the floundering of a movie star, but ultimately, they face tough choices, decide where the chase of a long coveted dream too long in coming is still worth it.

In Amy Sohn’s “The Actress” a young actress discovers that every marriage is a mystery and that sometimes the greatest performances do not take place on screen. Set in a tantalizing world of glamour and scandal, “The Actress” is a romantic, sophisticated page-turner about the price of ambition, the treachery of love, and the roles we all play.

Stacey D’Erasmo, “Wonderland,” drops us into the life of an indie rock star at the moment when she’s deciding whether to go all-in or give up on her dreams.
After taking a seven-year break, Anna gets a last chance to figure out whether the life she once had is one she still wants.

Alice Eve Cohen, “The Year My Mother Came Back.” Thirty years after her death, Alice’s mother appears to her and continues to do so during the hardest year Alice has had to face: the year her youngest daughter decides to track down her birth mother, and Alice herself gets a daunting diagnosis. A story of resilience, peace, and boundless love.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Books du Jour: Ep #201, "Of Dust, Data, and Words"


Episode #201                        “Of Dust, Data, and Words”


Welcome to a new season of BDJ. Today we talk about a dusty rock, data collection, and strange bohemians with Pamela Fiori, David Shafer, Justin Martin.

Host, Frederic Colier, introduces the first episode of the second season of Books Du Jour.  Whether deciphering an old parchment in some remote library or questioning the global culling of private data, authors always start with some treasure trove of information. Our first guests do not fall too far from the tree:


Pamela Fiori, “In the Spirit of Monte Carlo,” a colorful biography of Monaco, which depicts how a sun-baked desolate piece of rock clinging between France and Italy managed to become the must-place to live for the ultra riches.  Pamela’s story focuses on Monte Carlo, a district of Monaco.

David Shafer, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.” In this darkly comic novel, three young adults grapple with the usual thirty-something problems: boredom, authenticity, and a cloaked and omnipotent online oligarchy, an international cabal of industrialists and media barons, on the verge of privatizing all information.

Justin Martin, “Rebel Souls, Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians” is
an extraordinary book about New York City’s Pfaff’s Saloon, a basement bar on Broadway, near Bleecker Street, where the young Whitman and his “circle of Bohemians,” such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain, among others, were able to foster their talent as poets and writers.

Episode was shot at City Winery New York