Our programming gurus, Tom Bell and Terra Elan McVoy, take great pride in their ability to program for a diverse audience. They have, however, missed an important book loving segment, and we have been called out. A letter of protest has been received in our offices from Kona K., head of public relations at Bound to Be Read Books.

My name is Kona Kitty and I am the Director of Public Relations at Bound To Be Read Books, plus a paw model, and lead singer in the all-feline punk band Kona Kitty and the Kinky Whiskers. Purrhaps the name rings a tiny silver bell … Ding-a-ling? I’m also an author and currently shopping my life story, Furmoir: My Life in Fur, as well as my historical Southern epic, Fsst! with the Wind.

It has come to my attention that there is a paucity of pussycats in the 2010 Decatur Book Festival program. Not only is there a very blatant human bias in the featured authors and events, but I am deeply troubled that you included a “Man’s Best Friend Track” of talks by authors of books about dogs.

And where, purr-chance is the “Cats ‘R’ Cool Track” of talks by authors of books about kitties? In reviewing the program, I have identified not one author or event featuring writers of the feline purrsuasion. Once again cats have been pushed to the back of the pet carrier, leaving a slobbering face as the image of domesticated pets everywhere. I hiss in your general direction!

Maybe I could look beyond this egregious species bias had the books featured in your doggie track actually been written by dogs. But no—they’re written by humans! (I’m beginning to see a disturbing pattern here, Mr. Wang.) Why the Decatur Book Festival would want to highlight an animal that slobbers profusely and has to be walked to the toilet several times a day is beyond me. Dogs have as much in common with books as birds have with kilts. Cats, on the other paw, are like a good book in lots of ways, although space does not permit me to list them now.

It’s also imperative to mention the great legends of the feline literary canon whose names and masterpieces you have blatantly ignored. Who can forget the screwball comedy of Mr. Mittens’ zany tale of a jealous housecat who sells the new baby on e-Bay in I Bid You Adieu?

Who didn’t fear for all of their nine lives while reading Lady Bird Munchenstein’s thriller about a recovering catnip junkie stalked by a psychopathic gardener in Nip It in the Bud?

Who could quit turning pages to find out how an ordinary tomcat could pull off a pet store heist in Puss in Cahoots? Wonderful stories, all!

Clearly an injustice has occurred under your leadership, Mr. Wang, and recompense – or a tuna milkshake, at the very least – is called for.

This is a serious matter and, although I support the fabulous job that you do in the Atlanta literary community, we cats must stand up for dignity and inclusion. Therefore, I am calling for a feline boycott of the 2010 Decatur Book Festival.

That’s right, there will be no pussycats shyly raising their paws during the keynote speaker’s address to ask Mr. Franzen if he prefers short-hairs to long-haired breeds. There will be no cats to walk between Ms. Gruen’s legs and warm her ankles. And there will be no pussycat posse patrolling the Old Courthouse for rogue mice that may interrupt your little soiree with their tiny pitter-pattering feet.

I am feline; hear me roar!

If the kitty literati is not shown some love at the 2011 Decatur Book Festival, I promise you that books will be shredded, Mr. Wang, books will be shredded …

Miaow for now,

Kona Kitty,

Director of Public Relations

It's not as if my own cats haven't lodged this complaint with me personally. We should have been more sensitive to the issue

Bookzilla has arrived. I hope to see any and all of you Verb followers out on the Decatur Square this weekend for the AJC-Decatur Book Festival.

If you are a crackpot organization like the DBF, how do you celebrate your fifth festival? You host Grammy-winning musical icon, a Time-Magazine cover-getting, National-Book-Award-winning great American novelist, and then you add the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, just because you can. That's all in a three-week stretch. Muhamed Yunus, won the big one for his work in Microfinance, and will discuss his new book , Building Social Business. The event is free and open to the public. Please come out for a once-in-a-lifetime chance. We are co-hosting with Agnes Scott College and Coca-Cola.
Wednesday, August 25th, 8pm
Agnes Scott College, Presser Hall

The AJC Decatur Book Festival is the largest independent book festival in the country. It takes hundreds of volunteers to put on a world class book festival. Join the volunteer team during Labor Day weekend to help show the tens of thousands of people attending that Decatur knows how to put on a festival! Volunteers receive a distinctive Festival t-shirt.

Many volunteer positions have already been filled but there are still numerous openings. Visit the website for a list of volunteer positions and job descriptions. Available positions include:
* Book Market on the Square Set Up - Saturday, September 4 from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. (great for groups). Volunteer early, so you can have uninterrupted enjoyment of the Festival.
* Book Market on the Square Close Down - Sunday, September 5 from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. (great for groups). A great way to cap off a great Festival.
* Author Talk/Signing Venue Support (including the Children's Stage and the Teen Stage/The Escape) - Various shifts available on Saturday and Sunday. Become one of our Festival ambassadors. Training is required.

To sign up to volunteer for a special weekend that includes a unique mix of authors, parades, meeting new people, and lots of fun, visit www.decaturbookfestival.com and go to "Participate" or contact Lee Ann Harvey with Volunteer! Decatur at leeann.harvey@decaturga.com or (678) 553-6548.

I love this graphic from Newsweek. Of course, this is the same magazine that sold for $1 earlier this week. No, not a copy of Newsweek. I mean the whole company.
Kind of makes their take on the future of publishing suspect.

Lisa's Book from aaron hughes on Vimeo.

Michael Largo: GOD'S LUNATICS: Lost Souls, False Prophets, Martyred Saints, Murderous Cults, Demonic Nuns, and Other Victims of Man's Eternal Search for the Divine.
Tuesday, June 22, 6pm
SCAD-Ivy Hall
Arm yourself with God's Lunatics before your next encounter with those who have been blinded by the light. Award-winning author Michael Largo, "the Capote of kaput" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), chronicles history's vast and colorful cast of true believers—from the hidden side of the Bible's eccentric characters to today's street-corner doomsayers, and from extraterrestrial communicators, levitating hermits, and flagellating ascetics to self-serving preachers of overindulgence who believed money, sex, and drugs were the keys to the portal to divine understanding. In addition to the firewalkers, serpent handlers, cultists, terrorists, and alleged time travelers, God's Lunatics also reveals the dubious foundations of the world's major faiths and the many religious customs and laws that continue to influence governments and society, whether you are a believer or not.

Largo, dubbed "the Capote of kaput" by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and "the curator of death" by Esquire, for his irreverent books on human mortality, takes on religious fanaticism in his new release, God’s Lunatics: Lost Souls, False Prophets, Martyred Saints, Murderous Cults, Demonic Nuns, and Other Victims of Man's Eternal Search for the Divine. His latest work examines celebrated mystics, martyrs, wizards, shamans, cult leaders, founding fathers of Utopian experiments, victims of demonic possession and the originators of New Age movements.

Largo is also the author of Genius and Heroin, The Portable Obituary and the Bram Stoker Award-winning Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die.

Jane Green: PROMISES TO KEEP
Friday, June 25^th 7:15
Decatur Library
Jane Green, the bestselling author of 11 popular novels makes her first visit to the Center for the Book with a compelling new novel just right for summer reading, Promises to Keep. It’s the story of one remarkable summer in Maine when the lives of several families intersect, and what happens when you have to be your parent’s child long after you’ve grown up. The novel focuses on enduring love, building relationships and making touch decisions, the challenges we all have to face. Green has won acclaim for her novels which include such favorites as The Beach House, Babyville, Dune Road and Second Chance.

Callie Perry has a pretty perfect life. It may not be everyone’s idea of happiness – her husband spends more time travelling for his job as a commercials director than he does at home – but it works for her. It gives her time to work – she is a successful family photographer – and be around for her two kids, and her friends. She lives in Bedford, New York, is beloved by all who know her, and wakes up every morning grateful for how happy she is.

Her younger sister, Steffi, the baby of the family, has never grown up. In her early thirties and the epitome of a free spirit, she’s never held down a job, or a boyfriend, for longer than six months. Her latest incarnation is as a vegan chef. She’s living with the latest unsuitable man, in a sixth floor walk up in Soho, and her parents have almost given up hope that she’ll ever learn what it is to be responsible.

Lila Grossman is Callie’s best friend. Single, she’s finally met the man of her dreams. Ed has a son she adores, a crazy ex-wife she doesn’t, and she finally feels ready to settle down. If, that is, their goals are the same.

And then there are Callie and Steff’s parents. Walter and Honor . Divorced for almost thirty years, they haven’t spoken for most of that time. They may share two grown-up daughters, but it is agreed by all who knew them, they share little else.

Until they all receive a shocking phone call that changes their lives forever, and brings them all together one short, snowy winter.

Promises to Keep is about the hard choices we sometimes have to make; about having to be a child, long after you’ve grown up, and mostly, about the enduring nature of love.
(Jane gets a shout out mainly because she has a book called The Love Verb. We think all titles should have "Verb" in them.)

Dorothea Benton Frank: LOWCOUNTRY SUMMER: A Plantation Novel
Foxtale Book Shoppe
Woodstock GA
Saturday, June 26^th 6pm
Starred Review. Here's one for the Southern gals as well as Yankees who appreciate Frank's signature mix of sass, sex, and gargantuan personalities. In this long-time-coming sequel to Plantation, opinionated and family-centric Caroline Wimbly Levine has just turned 47, but she's less concerned with advancing middle age than she is with son Eric shacking up with an older single mom. She's also dealing with a drunk and disorderly sister-in-law, Frances Mae; four nieces from hell; grieving brother Tripp; a pig-farmer boyfriend with a weak heart; and a serious crush on the local sheriff. Then there's Caroline's dead-but-not-forgotten mother, Miss Lavinia, whose presence both guides and troubles Caroline as she tries to keep her unruly family intact and out of jail. With a sizable cast of minor characters with major attitude, Frank lovingly mixes a brew of personalities who deliver nonstop clashes, mysteries, meltdowns, and commentaries; below the always funny theatrics, however, is a compelling saga of loss and acceptance. When Frank nails it, she really nails it, and she does so here. (June)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

New York Times bestselling author of RETURN TO SULLIVANS ISLAND, BULLS ISLAND, THE CHRISTMAS PEARL, THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS and many others, has written the sequel to PLANTATION. When Caroline Wimbley Levine returned to Tall Pines Plantation, she never expected to make peace with long-buried truths about herself and her family. The Queen of Tall Pines, her late mother, was a force of nature, but now she is gone, leaving Caroline and the rest of the family uncertain of who will take her place. In the lush South Carolina countryside, old hurts, betrayals, and dark secrets will surface, and a new generation will rise along the banks of the Edisto River. In her novels, Frank, a native of the South, captures the beauty, atmosphere, characters and the eccentricities of life in this area.
(We love Dottie. She's a hoot and a half.)

Julie Andrews, has rescheduled forLittle Shop of Stories on Julie 9th, at 6pm. She cancelled back in May, and I may have said some things about her that Captain Von Trapp would not have approved of. Since she was kind enough to reschedule, I've decided to rename the entire month of July for her.
So go over to Little Shop and get in line for your tickets now--they'll be available on July 6th. You can camp out in front of the store. Guitar Red will serenade you every day, you can get all your meals at the Brick Store, which is opening early every day for World Cup, and also have a good claim on that bench for the Fireworks on the Fourth. Starbucks is right there--you can get your coffee every morning when they open. They only have two hundred tix, so you better get going. Hell, there are people lined up for their iPhone, and they had about 600,000 of those to sell. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I talked about Bruce Feiler on City Cafe today, but didn't include him in my notes below. Here's the release about his event tomorrow at Agnes Scott. I'll be doing a welcome, and dropping a few DBF hints as well. Come on out--Bruce is a great speaker.


AJC Decatur Book Festival to Host Bestselling author Bruce Feiler

Presser Hall at Agnes Scott College

May 25, 2010

Bruce Feiler

“The Council of Dads”

Bruce Feiler, the best-selling author of “The Council of Dads,” will speak at 7 p.m. May 25 at Presser Hall at Agnes Scott College in an event presented by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival (AJC DBF), and sponsored by DeKalb Medical.

Hosted by Agnes Scott College and the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, Feiler will be in town days after the publication of his latest book and an appearance on the Today Show.

“We are delighted to have the opportunity to present Feiler and give readers in Decatur and metro Atlanta the chance to hear his story,” Daren Wang, Executive Director of the Festival, said.

The author of nine nonfiction books including “Walking the Bible,” “Abraham,” and “America's Prophet,” Feiler is one of only a handful of writers to have four consecutive New York Times nonfiction bestsellers in the last decade. He is also the writer/presenter of the PBS miniseries “Walking the Bible.”

Cheryl Iverson, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at DeKalb Medical, said, “Presenting the actual Festival over Labor Day weekend has been quite rewarding, and having the chance to be involved with year-round AJC DBF events and wonderful authors such as Bruce Feiler is a tremendous opportunity.”

He was a young father when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. He instantly worried what his daughters’ lives would be like without him. “Would they wonder who I was? Would they wonder what I thought? Would they yearn for my approval, my love, my voice?”

Three days later he came up with a stirring idea of how he might give them that voice. He would reach out to six men from all the passages in his life, and ask them to be present in the passages in his daughters’ lives. And he would call this group “The Council of Dads.”

“I believe my daughters will have plenty of opportunities in their lives,” he wrote to these men. “They'll have loving families. They'll have each other. But they may not have me. They may not have their dad. Will you help be their dad?”

Feiler is a graduate of Yale and Cambridge Universities. He is a frequent contributor to NPR, CNN, and Fox News. The native of Savannah lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and twin daughters.

The AJC Decatur Book Festival will celebrate its fifth year of bringing a wide variety of authors and events to the Decatur Square Labor Day weekend, Sept. 3-5, 2010.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical is the largest independent book festival in the country and the fourth largest overall. In 2009, more than 300 authors and tens of thousands of festival goers crowded the historic downtown Decatur Square to enjoy book signings, author readings, panel discussions, an interactive children’s area, live music, parades, cooking demonstrations, poetry slams, writing workshops, and more. For more information visit www.decaturbookfestival.com.

The Decatur Book Festival is bringing Bruce Feiler to town on May 25th. He'll be at Agnes Scott College at 7pm at Presser Hall.

Bruce is a great speaker, and this is his most personal book:

Bruce Feiler was a young father when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. He instantly worried what his death might mean for his daughters. “Would they wonder who I was? Would they wonder what I thought? Would they lack for my approval, my discipline, my voice?”
Three days later he came up with a stirring idea of how he might give them that voice. He would reach out to six men, from all the passages in his life, and asked them to be present through the passages in his daughters’ lives. And he would call this group of men, “The Council of Dads.”
“I believe my daughters will have plenty of opportunities in their lives,” he wrote to these men. “They’ll have loving families. They’ll have welcoming homes. They’ll have each other. But they may not have me. They may not have their dad. Will you help be their dad?”
The Council of Dads is the inspiring story of what happened next. Mixing the harrowing tale of his treatment with the uplifting lessons of these men–“Approach the Cow,” “Pack Your Flip-Flops,” “Live the Questions,” “Harvest Miracles”–Feiler’s account is touching, funny, and ultimately a deeply moving account of parenthood, loss, and love.

I'm really looking forward to having Bruce here on campus--this should be a marvelous event.