Hey, Boo

Watch Harper Lee: Hey, Boo on PBS. See more from American Masters.

 

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill a Mockingbird is a book I associate with summer. Maybe you do, too.

If you’re a fan of the book (or movie) and haven’t seen Harper Lee: Hey, Boo – about the phenomenon behind the novel and its reclusive author – check it out. The documentary explores the story behind the story, and the interviews with Lee’s sister (still a practicing lawyer in her 90s) are priceless.

And, as long as we're here, another Southern Pulitzer Prize-winner who told the story she wanted to tell and then stepped out of the spotlight: playwright Margaret Edson.

What’s on your summer reading list, BPT? (part two)

A few weeks ago, we asked BPTers to share the titles on their night stands with us. Here's part two of the official BPT summer reading list...

Masha Obolensky

I am looking forward to reading Laura Harrington's new book Alice Bliss (http://www.lauraharringtonbooks.com/alice-bliss/), and then I will hopefully finally get around to read Patti Smith's Just Kids. And if I am really ambitious (which is unlikely considering the overwhelming desire I now have to sleep all the time) I will read: Middlemarch (Eliot), Freedom (Franzen), Cleopatra (Schiffer), and Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story.

One of my jobs involves doing research on hope and optimism for an author -- so I will be reading books by Martin Seligman and the like (including Learned Optimism).

Marc Olivere

Summertime and some parts of the winter are the only periods when I can get caught up on my reading list. This summer my list includes An Object of Beauty, by Steve Martin. Yes, that Steve Martin, the comedian. It’s his second novel, I believe. A tale involving the art collectors and auction houses in NYC, and a fast, somewhat loose, but no less aggressive woman’s rise to the top of that industry. It started out slow, but quickly picked up steam and became quite compelling. He’s really a fine author.

After that, I’m now into Richard Russo’s book The Risk Pool, a coming of age story set in mid nineteenth century, somewhat autobiographical in nature. He wrote it back in the eighties. It’s part of my quest to read everything he’s written.

Beyond that, I’m looking forward to Phillip Roth’s Nemesis, a must-read-everything-the-author-has-written thing. The same applies for TC Boyle, When the Killing’s Done. And there are two new writers for me to check out: David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, in honor of his passing. And Rikki Ducornet’s Netsuke. Don’t know anything about her except she’s the Rikki in Steely Dan’s “Rikki don’t lose that Number,” but it sounds like an interesting book.

Hopefully, I’ll get it all in before mid-August when I start up work again.

What’s on your summer reading list, BPT? (part one)

Whether it’s for professional development, self-improvement, or purely for pleasure, summer is traditionally a great time to kick back and read. We asked BPTers to share the titles on their night stands with us (and, not surprisingly, there’s a lot of reading going on)…

Ginger Lazarus

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. I'm not a big sci-fi reader, but I'm enjoying this classic. I randomly decided that a character in the play I'm writing reads Heinlein, and then realized I should probably know what I am talking about. So far I'm gratified by my choice. As is my husband, the true sci-fi aficionado, who has happily lined up my next ten books or so. We'll see about that...this summer I'm also hoping to get to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life.

Emily Kaye Lazzaro

This is hardly a unique opinion, but for me summer is a time for obsessive, easy-thinking novels. Crime novels, mysteries, romantic chick-lit, young adult fiction, that kind of thing. It's a Harry Potter, Twilight, Pillars of the Earth kind of time. So this summer I am going to read the last of the three Stieg Larsson crime novels (I just finished The Girl Who Played With Fire so now it's on to The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest). Then I'm going to go full YA with The Hunger Games. Put me in a beach house, on the front porch early in the morning, with a cup of coffee and a big, fun novel and I am happy as can be. Mind you, I'm also tempering this with the full body of work of Edward Albee, Peter Shaffer, and Wendy Wasserstein, so as not to let my brain go completely mushy. It's all a matter of balance.

Kushner Making a Living as a Playwright, Not.

Thank you to our friends at Colab and Stagesource for picking this one as it hit the blogosphere last week.   If Tony Kushner can't make a living as a playwright,  how could we?

Read more here.











And if you're interested in the book Outrageous Fortune.  Pick it up here.  (A review of this book will be forthcoming on this blog as part of our summer reading list. There's a summer reading list?  There is now.)