The Shreveport area chapter of the largest "meeting and discussing" book club in the world

Red River Pulpwood Queens

December Newsletter
By: Carey Weeks December 16, 2010

Interview with the “Imperfectionist”, Tom Rachman

How did you come up foreign desk of the Associ-

Upcoming Events:
• Jan. 13-16, 2011—
Girlfriend Weekend Author
Extravaganza!
• Thru Jan. 29, 2011—The
Making of “The Fantastic
Books of Mr. Morris
Lessmore” by William Joyce.
Artspace, 710 Texas St.
Shreveport.
with the idea for this
novel?
The Imperfectionists came
to me in stages, starting
with the characters, who
wandered into my imagi-
nation surprisingly well-
formed, even down to
their eyeglasses and the
stains on their shirts. I
organized them, placed
them in a setting I knew,
a news organization, and
watched what happened,
sometimes nudging them,
sometimes nudged by
them. The stories took life
as I wrote them, the out-
comes almost as unex-
pected to me at times as
to any future reader.
How much is the book
based on your own ex-
periences?
I worked for most of my
professional life in jour-
nalism, starting at the
ated Press in New York
and more recently as an
editor at the Interna-
tional Herald Tribune in
Paris. The depiction of
journalism in The Imper-
fectionists is accurate and
offers an inside view of
how the news is pro-
duced. But the characters
and stories are all fic-
tional.
Your book touches on
the problems faced by
today's newspapers.
Do you think they
have a future?
Unfortunately, print pub-
lications are in an in-
creasingly dire situation.
Their problems are nu-
merous, not least that the
Internet has habituated
readers to information at
no cost. Daily papers, to
hold onto their reader-
ship, offer most of their
work online for free. Yet
they must still pay the
vast costs of gathering
news. This obvious gulf,
plus a raft of other prob-
lems, is decimating the
industry. Nonetheless,
readers are more numer-
ous than ever, more edu-
cated, more cosmopolitan,
and they hunger for
trustworthy reports. So
the decline of papers can-
not kill the news busi-
ness. We're just not sure
how it will look in the
future.
Q&A taken from Tom
Rachman’s official website.
www.tomrachman.com

New Orleans Snags Vampire Novel

Up until now it’s only been rumors, but now it’s confirmed:
January Book
“Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter” —20th Century Fox’s big-
Selection
screen retelling of Seth Grahame’s revisionist-history horror novel
My Reading Life that reimagines the 16th president as a 19th-century Buffy —is set
by Pat Conroy to shoot in New Orleans starting late next month.

(Note: Signed books to be The film is being made under “Alice in Wonderland” director Tim
distributed at the Pat Burton’s production shingle, with Burton pal and sometimes col-
Conroy Luncheon at laborator Timur Bekmambetov lined up to direct. Burton is listed
Girlfriend Weekend)
as a producer on the project. (www.nola.com)
PAGE 2 R E D R I V E R P U LP WO O D Q U E E N S B Y : C A R E Y WE E K S

White House “Green Room” Uses Old Papers

In keeping with the
First Lady’s Christmas
theme of ‘Simple Gifts”
in the White House,
the “Green Room” has
been decorated with
newspapers and
magazines. Two trees
were created using rolled up newspapers
and painted a beautiful glittering gold.
75 lbs. of newspapers were up-cycled in
the process. Wreathes were also made
and placed in the windows above each
tree. Mr. Obama invited area children to
help her form miniature, table-top
Christmas trees out of 6 magazines. The
trees were later spray painted gold and
glittered to match the larger trees.
Tools and Materials
Old magazines of any size
Gold, silver, or clear spray paint
Glitter in desired colors
Bone folder (optional)
Magazine Trees How-To
1. Open magazine and bend to break spine.
2. Fold individual page from top right cor-
ner to inside seam. Fold same page from
bottom right edge to gutter.
3. Fold bottom triangle of each additional
magazine page up, making the bottom of
the tree flat. Then, fold top of all pages
down to form tree shape.
4. Spray-paint folded tree desired color.
Immediately sprinkle glitter over wet paint.
Let dry.
Tip: Use a bone folder to smooth paper
edges if desired. www.marthastewart.com

From Book To Film: Upcoming Novel Inspired Movies

Based on the best selling novel
by Sara Gruen, Water for
Elephants tells the story of a
young man named Jacob and
his time with a Depression-era
travelling circus. The film
version will star Robert
Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon,
and Hal Holbrook. The trailer
Coming to can be viewed at water-for-
theaters April elephants.the-movie-trailer.com
2011
There has been much buzz over
the film-adaptation of Kathryn
Stockett’s best-selling book The
Help. Young actress Emma Stone
will be playing the role of
“Skeeter”, a writer who decides to
document the lives of Jackson,
MS black maids during the Civil
Rights era. Other roles will be
Coming to played by Sissy Spacek, Cicely
theaters Tyson, Bryce Dallas Howard, and
August 2011 True Blood’s Anna Camp.

December Literary Birthdays

Christina Rossetti—Dec. 5, 1830
(English Poet)
John Milton—Dec. 9, 1608 (poet,
Paradise Lost)
Emily Dickinson—Dec. 10, 1830
(American poet)
Gustave Flaubert—Dec. 12, 1821
(Madame Bovary)
Jane Austen—Dec. 16, 1775 (Pride
and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility,
Emma)
Henry Miller—Dec. 26, 1891
(Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of
Capricorn)
Google honored the British
Rudyard Kipling—Dec. 30, 1865 novelist Jane Austen today with
(The Jungle Book) an illustrated logo on the splash
page for it’s U.K. site.