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        <title>BOOKBUFFET.COM AUTHOR INTERVIEW RSS FEED</title>
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        <description>bookbuffet.com::for book groups that click</description>
        <copyright>Copyright 2007, Bookbuffet LLC</copyright>
        <pubDate>Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:46:08 -0700</pubDate>
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            <title>bookbuffet.com::for book groups that click</title>
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            <title>Dickens 2012: The Biggest Literary Celebration</title>
            <link>http://www.bookbuffet.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/news.article/type/home/article_ID/9F6A90DA-4E78-4E6F-86EF755ED33445F8/index.cfm</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Next year will mark the 200 anniversary of the birth of English author Charles Dickens, and all kinds of things are planned to mark the occasion. Check out www.dickens2012.org. I just downloaded a cool App for my iPad. It&#039;s a narrated and illustrated copy of Dickens: Dark London by the Museum of London that is interactive, and takes users on a journey through the darker side of Charles Dickens’ London in a unique series of interactive graphic novels narrated by Tinker Tailor Solder Spy actor Mark Strong. It&#039;s compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.2.1 or later.


Since it is "that festive time of year" let us focus on Dickens&#039; classic short novel  A Christmas Carol. The book has remarkably been in print continuously for 167 years. The novella was first published by Chapman & Hall on 19 December 1843 during the Victorian era when people were experiencing a nostalgia for traditions - the Christmas carol and the German tradition of decorating evergreen trees.  In fact, Dickens is credited with changing the way Great Britain, the rest of the Commonwealth and western Christian society now celebrates this holiday, which before the runaway success of A Christmas Carol wasn&#039;t even a bank holiday. This Penguin copy, Classics Christmas Carol And Other Christmas Writings has a wonderful combination of stories you can read aloud in your family to start your own family aural tradition. 

Each year our local library puts on a collective reading of  A Christmas Carol for the public. And each year our family watches the black and white remastered film version starring Alister Sims on Christmas Eve, all of us huddle together on our old couch at the ski cabin with a fire blazing, hot rum toddies and various savory treats along with Nana&#039;s traditional Christmas fruitcake with a large chunk of aged cheddar on the side, and Purdy chocolate balls wrapped in green or red tin foil being tossed around the room along with Mandarin oranges that we compete to remove the skins in one intact piece. Get the new Blu-ray version.]]></description>
            <author>PKS</author>
            <category>Author Interviews</category>
            <pubDate>Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0700</pubDate>
            <source
                url="http://www.bookbuffet.com/feeds/bb-interviews-rss2.php">Bookbuffet LLC</source>
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            <title>An Economist&#039;s Views On The Occupy Movement</title>
            <link>http://www.bookbuffet.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/news.article/type/home/article_ID/F7ACFD8E-73A1-468F-812E6DE77597A81F/index.cfm</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Jeffrey Sachs is a writer economist with numerous distinctions; he&#039;s on the list of the 100 most influential people in the the world, the 50 most important leaders in globalization, the 500 most influential foreign policy advisors, and he&#039;s the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. In his previous 14 books and publications Sachs has written about the economies of the developing world and macroeconomics of the globe. He&#039;s been a champion of people in extreme poverty and as director of the UN Millennium Project he helped write the Millennium Development Goals among other groundbreaking initiatives. He&#039;s been criticized as "leftest" and "neoliberal". His latest book, The Price of Civilization: Economics and Ethics After the Fall (Random House 2011) turns the telescope away from those "other nations" and focuses it firmly on the USA. And although the book was written before the "occupy movement", he feels that it is the banner to which his book&#039;s message speaks. 

The following video posted on You Tube comes from a talk he gave at the Toronto Public Library. It is a 3 part series.]]></description>
            <author>PKS</author>
            <category>Author Interviews</category>
            <pubDate>Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700</pubDate>
            <source
                url="http://www.bookbuffet.com/feeds/bb-interviews-rss2.php">Bookbuffet LLC</source>
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            <title>Boomerang: Michael Lewis Takes On The Globe</title>
            <link>http://www.bookbuffet.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/news.article/type/home/article_ID/9BDD6A6F-7DF3-4D9B-8E979E4C6E66FAA3/index.cfm</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Michael Lewis, author of  The Big Short has a new book out that essentially takes TBS on a world tour.  Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World is Lewis&#039;s take on how the world financial markets got caught in the financial crisis. He devotes a chapter each to Iceland, Germany, Greece and Ireland and asigns sweeping character assessments to explain their investor Gestalt. Forbes says "[Boomerang] demystifies Germany&#039;s role in the global debt calamity."  Jackie McNish at the Globe and Mail says, "In Boomerang, a travelogue through the globe’s economic ruins, Lewis takes us into the lives of the hapless and misguided government officials, bankers and speculators who stoked the 2008 financial fires we wishfully and wrongly believed had been doused by massive government bailouts. Turns out, taxpayer dollars only stalled the carnage. Like a boomerang, the crisis is now swinging back with a vengeance and this slight, poignantly humorous 212-page book tells even the most informed student of global economics why it was inevitable." Check out Lewis&#039;s interview on You Tube with PBS economics correspondent, Paul Solman at this cozy little European-style restaurant in Washington, DC. What I love is how Lewis pokes a stick in the eye of all the people who he says thought they could beat the system. He says they were that guy in a dark room sitting next to a wad of money. Who could resist? They all knew what they were doing, and they handled it in their own stereotypical way. Don&#039;t take offense. The world tour&#039;s last stop is America, where Lewis claims that Americans, adept at re-inventing themselves without the fear of a European-like stigmata post-bankruptcy will use their "stories of woe" to rise pheonix-like out of the current world quagmire. My stock portfolio could use a little boost - thanks Michael..]]></description>
            <author>PKS</author>
            <category>Author Interviews</category>
            <pubDate>Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700</pubDate>
            <source
                url="http://www.bookbuffet.com/feeds/bb-interviews-rss2.php">Bookbuffet LLC</source>
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            <title>The Leader Gets A Haircut by Idris Ali</title>
            <link>http://www.bookbuffet.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/news.article/type/home/article_ID/7B12399C-63B0-4669-B8DAF849DDEE4F5B/index.cfm</link>
            <description><![CDATA[I&#039;ve been looking for a novel that captures the essence of life for the citizens of Libya during the Quadafi regime, and found it in Egyptian author, Idris Ali&#039;s The Leader Gets A Haircut. Unfortunately, I cannot read Arabic. If anyone knows of an English translation - please let me know;  info @ bookbuffet.com. The Sept 5th, 2011 edition of The New Yorker has a feature by Hisham Matar, a Lybian writer, who describes his own experience under that regime; the disappearance of his father who became a permanent statistic of men who crossed Quadafi&#039;s political boundaries and paid the price with their life. Matar explains how Haircut derives its title: it is based on a well-circulated account of the day all the barbershops in Libya were closed by order of Colonel Muammar Quadafi. Apparently the dictator had had a nightmare where he was getting a haircut and a shave at a local barbershop and the razor-weilding barber slits his throat. Convinced that his dream is a premonition of some diabolical plot against him, the ensuing public consequence demonstrates how irrationality became the norm for the citizens of Libya. Arabic Literature in English writes "The 130-page book was based on Ali’s four years (1976-1980) as a foreign worker in Libya, and describes Egyptians toiling there under inhumane conditions. According to the the website Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), the book &#039;included testimonies of Libyans about social life there and how it was affected by repression under the rule of Colonel Quadafi.]]></description>
            <author>Paula Shackleton</author>
            <category>Author Interviews</category>
            <pubDate>Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700</pubDate>
            <source
                url="http://www.bookbuffet.com/feeds/bb-interviews-rss2.php">Bookbuffet LLC</source>
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            <title>On The Outside Looking Indian</title>
            <link>http://www.bookbuffet.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/news.article/type/home/article_ID/DD9AF4D3-FCEF-4CDE-9F5A651D0416046B/index.cfm</link>
            <description><![CDATA[With so many wonderful Indo-diasporan authors making waves in the fiction world over the years: Kiran Desai, Salmon Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Vikram Chandra, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy... the list goes on, here is an interesting new book by Rupinder Gill, On the Outside Looking Indian (McClelland Books, 2011) that details a spirit and insight through her own non-fiction coming-of-age story that is both laugh-out-loud funny and full of universal truths. Listen to her interview on BookLounge.ca here. And if you&#039;re intrigued, there&#039;s also this excellent in-depth interview by Allan Gregg on TVO via YouTube. 

The author&#039;s blurb goes: "There&#039;s a phenomenon in Amish culture called Rumspringa, where Amish adolescents are permitted to break free from their modest and traditional lifestyles to indulge in normally taboo activities. They dress how they want, go out if and when they please, smoke, drink and generally party like it&#039;s 1899. At the end they decide if they will return and join the Amish church.

"I am 30 years old. I wore my hair in two braids every day until I was 12. I dressed more conservatively than most Amish, barely left my house until I was 18 and spent the last 12 years studying and working hard on my career like a good little Indian girl. The time has come; you are witness to the dawning of my Indian Rumspringa, a Ram-Singha if you will. But instead of smoking and drinking Bud Lights in a park while yelling &#039;Down with barn raising!&#039; I plan to indulge in a different manner — by pursuing everything I wish had been a part of my youth. Things I always felt were part of most North Americans&#039; adolescent experience... 

"This is the story of the ultimate New Year&#039;s resolution, more akin to a new life resolution. Will it all be fun? Will my friends and family support my walk down memory-less lane? Will it all matter in the end? I don&#039;t know yet but much like my young Rumspringaed-out counterpart, I will decide whether or not there is any going back."]]></description>
            <author>PKS</author>
            <category>Author Interviews</category>
            <pubDate>Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700</pubDate>
            <source
                url="http://www.bookbuffet.com/feeds/bb-interviews-rss2.php">Bookbuffet LLC</source>
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