Dina’s story is also verified to be true. Some of the paintings she did for Mengele in Auschwitz survived the war and are at the Auschwitz Birkenau Museum. The story of her painting the mural of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on the children’s barrack has been corroborated by many other Auschwitz prisoners, and of course her love and marriage to the animator of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the Disney movie after the war in Paris is also documented.

Why wasn’t the Rosenblatt’s story checked out before it was published and picked up to have the movie made?? I would like to see true and wonderful stories like Dina’s be publicized, not these hoax tales that destroy credibility and trust.

Check out The Green Ray, translated by Karen Loukes and published by Luath Press Ltd. It’s a recently discovered classic and a fascinating read that will remind you how “literary” science fiction is.

Selections for Fall 2008 are:

Five Skies by Ron Carlson
Three Day Road by Joseph Boydon
and
Truck: A Love Story by Michael Perry

Copies of Five Skies are now available at the Library’s information desk. We’re doing something special for this first meeting — we’ll give away 5 autographed copies of this selection at the Tues., Sept. 16 meeting! You must be present—and have read the book — to win. I’ll post more on this selection in the coming days.

See you on the 16th!

Cindy

I’ve picked some titles that will hopefully appeal to afficianados of the genre as well as novices. First, on Septmber 4, well discuss Alastair Reynolds’ Chasm City. Besides being a personal favorite, Reynolds has become a leading voice in the genre, garnering rave reviews and award nominations for nearly all of his works. Chasm City, Reynolds’ second novel, injects his usual space opera and technopunk trappings into a noir framework.

Next up, for October 2, is Alfred Bester’s classic The Stars My Destination. Bester has the distinction of being the recipient of the first Hugo award. He worked in virtually every medium open to Science Fiction, writing novels, short stories, comic books, screenplays, and radio play episodes. The Stars My Destination is classic Sci-Fi from the golden age of the genre, giving the reader high adventure set in the cold depths of outer space. It is a swiftly paced novel of revenge and redemption that is a certified classic.

Rounding out the quarter November 4, we’ll take a look at Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunk classic Snow Crash. Often mentioned alongside William Gibson’s Neuromancer as the prototype of the cyberpunk Science Fiction movement, Snow Crash is the story of a near future in which a pizza deliveryman named Hiro Protagonist must rescue a friend whose brain may have been destroyed by an experimental drug. Employing everything from plausible technological innovations to ancient Sumerian mythology, Snow Crash is a big, ambitious novel that maintains a fast pace throughout.

After that? Why we’ll explore another literary genre. Stay tuned for details. They will be forthcoming (I promise this time).

I think the real Big Macs are the writers who never manage that; the Danielle Steels et al. Koontz, too; he managed brilliant with one or three, but mostly, not so much anymore.

It’s a shame most critics don’t consider “literature” the books most people actually read.

Great FIREwall of China…that’s priceless.

Brad

I felt a little nonplussed by the ending myself. I guess the things that I really loved about Water for Elephants had more to do with the historical background than the actual characters. I think the line was \”I\’m marrying you as soon as the ink is dry on that death certificate\” that stopped me cold in my tracks. However, it did rekindle my classic fantasy of running away from home to join the circus (which I feel like I\’ve sort of done every time I walk out of my apartment and onto the streets of Nanjing – there are street performers everywhere, and all kinds of strange things floating around, like fetal chickens in barrels… for snacks…).

I\’m excited to hear what everyone has to say about What is the What!