Providence Community Library welcomes Ryder Windham, author of over sixty Star Wars books, to Rochambeau Library on Saturday, May 15th. Ryder will present rare photos and illustrations related to Empire, and discuss vintage Star Wars toys, comic books, and comic strips.

Ryder will also be signing books and we will be giving away signed souvenirs.

Also present will be the worldwide Star Wars fan club, the 501st Legion, attending in costume. Shake hands with fully armored Imperial stormtroopers and other characters! This is the perfect opportunity to wear your Star Wars costume!  Contact: ddvorchak@provcomlib.org.

This event is sponsored by the Friends of Rochambeau.

2pm, Saturday, May 15th, Rochambeau Library, 708 Hope Street, 467.2700 ext. 1603

Join us at Smith Hill Library on Wednesday, April 7th at 6pm, as Kate reads from her new book “Town” and Read and Rap Youth read from their upcoming poetry book!

Kate Schapira is the author of TOWN (Factory School, Heretical Texts, 2010) and several chapbooks from Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Cy Gist Press, Flying Guillotine Press, Rope-A-Dope Press and Horse Less Press. She lives in Providence, where she teaches writing and coordinates the Publicly Complex Reading Series.

Read and Rap is a program for youth at Smith Hill Library that connects poetry to music and encourages youth to write their own poems, songs and raps. Kate Schapira has been a frequent guest poet at Read and Rap.

E-mail: jromans@provcomlib.org/Phone: (401) 272.4140

Our very own Annie Messier’s “Notes from a Seven-Year Study of the Domestic Short-Haired Feline” won the Not About The Buildings Writing Prize last month, and copies of the story are (finally) available for you to buy.  It was published in a limited run of 50 chapbooks. You can pick it up now at Ada Books (717 Westminster St) or the AS220 Project Space (95 Mathewson). Or, if you hate supporting local businesses, you can also buy it online.

The story, it should be noted, would make a great stocking-stuffer or present for your favorite book lover/cat lover/book-loving cat lover.  And it’s only seven dollars, which is even more exciting.

Gwendolyn, the Graceful Pig to be Read

A perfect day of ballet fun for the budding dancers and story lovers in your family will be held on Wednesday, December 16^th at 6 PM when the Festival Ballet Providence brings its ballerinas to perform and read at the Warwick, Barnes & Noble. Inspired by their favorite childhood stories, the dancers of FBP will bring one of literature’s most beloved children’s characters to life, Pippi Longstocking. A dancer dressed as Pippi Longstocking will be present in the store and special events, including a full range of dance activities based on the Pippi Longstocking books, will take place from 6 PM to 8:30 PM. As an added treat, at 7 PM a dancer will read a brand new children’s story, Gwendolyn, the Graceful Pig by David Ira Rottenberg with illustrations by Lesley Anderson. Mr. Rottenberg will be on hand to answer questions and sign copies of his book.

Gwendolyn, the Graceful Pig tells the tale of two friends, Gwendolyn and Omar, who have big dreams. Gwendolyn longs to dance ballet, and Omar wants to join the football team. There is just one problem— they’re both pigs!

For any adult or child who wishes to learn how Natasha Levertov, “the greatest teacher of dance in ze vorld,” helps make Gwendolyn’s and Omar’s dreams come true and see Pippi Longstocking through the magic lens of dance, as well as meet real ballerinas and a children story author, it is only necessary to come to the Warwick Barnes & Noble. Be sure to bring your cameras!

Barnes & Noble is hosting this wonderful event in its continuing efforts to help sustain and grow the Providence arts community. As part of its commitment, Barnes & Noble is contributing a percentage of every sale made by customers with special bookfair vouchers, or who simply identify themselves as supporters of the Festival Ballet Providence.

Barnes and Noble is particularly pleased to support The Festival Ballet Providence which is one the country’s top regional ballet companies, performing both modern and classical ballets, including the perennial Christmas favorite, the Nutcracker. The Festival Ballet Providence also serves as a vital center for dance education for both children and adults. Through its Educational Outreach program the company provides a series of ballets specifically for children. As part of this years 2009/2010 season, the FBP is performing a ballet based on Pippi Longstocking at the intimate FBP Black BOX Theater in March. Its December production of the Nutcracker will be held at the Providence Performing Arts Center.

For more information on this free Barnes & Noble event contact: The Festival Ballet Providence, 825 Hope St, Providence, RI | 401-353-1129

When: Wednesday, December 16^th beginning at 6 PM.

Where: Barnes & Noble Bookstore, 1350 Bald Hill Rd, Warwick, RI 02886-4263, (401) 826-8885

As a long time fan of Tufte, and one time cartoonist, I was instantly addicted to David McCandless’ new visual styling in The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide To The World’s Most Consequential Trivia.

Some of today’s most difficult issues to digest, let alone agree upon, such as the evolution of dance or rock music, the hot colors for the upcoming season, military spending, the greatest digital distractions, global climate change, become much more easily grasped with the intensely colorful visual portrayals of information far too dense for non-statisticians to grok.

Have a hard time explaining what a difference individual actions can have on global climate change? There’s an illustration for that. Have a hard time understanding the impact humans have had on carbon emissions? There’s an illustration for that.

The pages also contain visual representations on common miscellany, such as why people break up, what gay and straight folks look for in relationships, ridiculously overblown media coverage, the overall similarities in our DNA, how to maximize your survival chances in plane travel.

I have literally been carrying the book around with me, and with the exception of a couple of drawings lacking labels (possibly intentionally?) not one of the 200 images isn’t worthy of a good glance, if not studious review.  I plan to make this a staple holiday gift. If you see me out and about with my backpack, chances are you can catch a glimpse. I will use it anytime I need to explain why we don’t have time to pretend global climate change is up for dispute — as well as making sure New Agers realize what bunk the world ending in 2012 is.

Meet Maryalice Huggins, author of Aesop’s Mirror, today at Books on the Square.

What antiques restorer Maryalice Huggins knew when she stumbled across the mirror at a country auction in Rhode Island was this: She was besotted. Rococo and huge (more than eight feet tall), the mirror was one of the most unusual objects she had ever seen.

Local hook? The mirror was passed down through the Brown family. This is the stuff they’re unloading! The Brown ‘attic’ must be something to behold.

2pm, Saturday, Books on the Square, 471 Angell Street

Online-only, literary mag Wag’s Revue just launched their third issue since March, when the four editors were seniors at Brown, and errant friends and housemates of mine.

The issue includes an interview with George Saunders; a short story by Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish; a nonfiction rainbow of words, marshmallow Peeps, comics, video and audio; and a range of experimental translations in the poetry section.”

They’ve been well-received by the July/August issue of Poets and Writers, the Literary MagNet column, The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog, January Magazine, Live Nude Books, and Fiction Writers Review, among others.

Note also this chance to win some dollar bills through your skill with pen and paper:

“The arrival of Issue 3 heralds the opening of the Wag’s Revue Winter Contests in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The winners receive a $500 prize and publication in Issue 4, alongside whatever luminaries we can muster for that edition. Find submission guidelines here.”

Ada Books owner, Brent Legault, invites you to hear words spoken by Brian Shawn Oakley, Eric Paul, Melanie Hayze and Robert M. O’Brien.  Also experience some music by Drew Swinburne. It’ll be fun.

$5, 4pm, Ada Books, 717 Westminster Street

Just a little heads-up on an upcoming event I organized:  Not About The Buildings is holding a summer Read-A-Thon to benefit the Providence chapter of Books Through Bars.

Basically, a bunch of people have volunteered to read books over the summer, and we’re looking for people who want to sponsor them.  It’s sort like one of those charity bike races where you donate a certain amount of money for every mile the person rides, only without any of that pesky physical activity.  There’s 11 readers currently signed up and there should be a couple more by this weekend.  Visit the website, choose your favorite reader, and then follow the instructions on how to become a sponsor.  If you donate $1 per book, and they read a book a week, that’s $10 by Labor Day, which will go directly to Books Through Bars.

In case you didn’t know, Books Through Bars sends books to some of the two million people that are currently in prisons across the country.  They get about a hundred requests a week from prisoners, many of whom are in facilities that don’t have libraries.  Unfortunately, shipping is expensive, and they’re having trouble keeping up with all the requests, so anything you can donate would be a great help to them.

I’ll be honest: I get a teeny bit jealous of writers who publish good books before they’re my age (throwing murderous glances at Jonathan Safran Foer and Lorrie Moore).  And now I have another author for my dartboard: Jon Fasman.  I finally read his novel The Geographer’s Library, and now I have to let you know what you’re missing.  Especially here on the Daily Dose, where Rhode Island references are not just appreciated but expected. more »

Every week at the Guardian John Crace reads a horrible-sounding book and hilariously breaks it down for you, sparing you the trouble of actually having to read it.  This week, he tackles Kaylene Johnson’s book about Sarah Palin; as usual with anything written about Palin, the line between ridiculous and possibly true is completely non-existent:

Faith has always had a profound influence on Sarah’s life. Like her siblings she was baptised a Catholic but she went on to find a more meaningful path to God after joining her father on an expedition to Mount McKinley. “We came across a perfectly preserved dinosaur skeleton that was only 3,000 years old,” she explains. “I realised the creation story must be true and I joined the Wasilla Assembly of God.”

[And if you're wondering, yes, I did choose this excerpt as an excuse to use this picture again.]

[via bookslut]

Now that the holidays are over and the weather is frightful, or at least blah, I’m reading again.  And it was hard not to pick up a book tagged, “What did Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, and my sister have in common? They were all my friends, and they died” paired with the synopsis, “This story of death, life, love, and rock & roll defies genre conventions while paying tribute to the classic time travel tales that came before it.”

Jacob LaCivita’s Timely Persuasion takes “Quantum Leap” one step further.  Its protagonist’s wild ride to save his sister’s life without ruining everything references things most Dosers will like: the importance of libraries; Britpop; sci fi; movies like Being John Malkovich and Wayne’s World; a Nirvana concert at Fitchburg State University I attended in high school; and of course what all Rhode Islanders love best: local mentions of Providence, including a specific show or two at Lupo’s.  What’s not to love?
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Photographer Richard Benjamin will be discussing his new book Narragansett Bay this afternoon at Books on the Square.  This work is a collaboration with John Torgan, Baykeeper for Save the Bay, who provided the text. Benjamin will be signing after the talk. (No indication that Torgan will be part of this event which is too bad because he totally rocks.)

2pm, Books on the Square, 471 Angell Street, 331-9097

Today’s the first day of the Providence Public Library’s annual book sale.  If you want the best books, you can pay $15 to get there at 1 this afternoon, but then it opens to the public at 4.  (nb: I have a feeling the $15 might be worth it, actually, because the books are priced to move and you know what those book dealers are like…)  Tomorrow and Saturday it runs 10-5, and then Sunday it’s only open to non-profits and charities.  Last year I picked up some cool German Agatha Christie translations, as well as a bunch of other things that I’m completely incapable of reading.  Yay!

We’re still not at the point where we can say, unequivocally, that our potential vps know that Africa is a continent and not a country, but at least we have a local university president who is interested in bringing scholars and artists from all over said continent to our fair city. Brown’s Department of Africana Studies, along with The Office of The President, have kept esteemed novelist Ngügï wa Thiong’o in Providence for the better part of a week, hosting several forums for the community. Today at 6pm Professor Ngügï, as he likes to be called, will read from his sensational new book, The Wizard of the Crow. The reading, which takes place at 324 Brook St. in MacMillan Hall’s Starr Auditorium, is FREE and open to the public.