Fear Not.  Our Guitar Hero World Tour Competition, Smell the Glove, is back!  Genre X will be opening the doors of the lovely Oak Park Public Library to Guitar Hero enthusiasts everywhere for this after hours event on Saturday, February 6.  Teams of four are needed to compete so if you have a merry band of players who would like to be part of the action, we’re looking for you!  Just read the complete rules & regulations for all the nitty gritty details & register your team by Friday, February 5.  After all, there will be prizes.

Not particularly skilled in playing remote control guitars?  Audience members are welcome, too - we certainly wouldn’t want the mock rock bands playing to an empty house, would we?  If this sounds enticing, pledge your allegiance to the event on facebook so we can look forward to seeing your enthusiastic faces.

Once again we’ve decided to kick off the new year with a lengthier read, but this time we’ve chosen to go with a science fiction cult classic. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson was written almost twenty years ago but it still holds its own and even appeared on Time magazine’s list of 100 all-time best English-language novels written since 1923. Here’s the Publisher’s Weekly review of this cyberpunk adventure:

In California of the near future, when the U.S. is only a “Burbclave” (city-state), the Mafia is just another franchise chain (CosaNostrastet Pizza, Incorporated) and there are no laws to speak of, Hiro Protagonist follows clues from the Bible, ancient Sumer and high technology to help thwart an attempt to take control of civilization–such as it is. When he logs on to Metaverse, an imaginary place entered via computer, Hiro encounters Juanita Marquez, a “radical” Catholic and computer whiz. She warns him off Snow Crash (a street drug named for computer failure) and gives him a file labeled Babel (as in Tower of Babel). Another friend, sp ok/pk Da5id, who ignores Juanita’s warning, computer crashes out of Metaverse into the real world, where he physically collapses. Hiro, Juanita, Y.T. (a freewheeling, skateboard-riding courier) and sundry other Burbclave and franchise power figures see some action on the way to finding out who is behind this bizarre “drug” with ancient roots. Although Stephenson ( Zodiac ) provides more Sumerian culture than the story strictly needs (alternating intense activity with scholarship breaks), his imaginative juxtaposition of ancient and futuristic detail could make this a cult favorite.

If you want to wrap up 2009 by entrenching yourself in a dystopian futureworld, copies of Snow Crash are now available for checkout with your OPPL library card at the Oak Park Public Library’s second floor Adult and Teen Services desk. Then we hope you’ll join us for our first 2010 discussion at Molly Malone’s (The Snug) in Forest Park on Tuesday, January 26 at 8pm!

image courtesy of Katie Kirk

Thanks once again to everyone who came out for Tuesday night’s discussion. In December we will be continuing our genre X tradition of taking a hiatus from our book discussion to host a White Elephant book swap. This year we will be hosting the swap on Tuesday, December 15 at 8pm at Molly Malones (The Snug). Everyone is required to bring one gift wrapped book, which can be a title that you’re willing to sacrifice from your own collection or a brand new copy of a title you want to share with someone else. Then prepare yourselves for the fun that only a White Elephant style swap can bring. And who knows there may very well be sweets and treats to enjoy on behalf of the genre X elves…

We hope to see you at 8pm at Molly Malone’s tonight for a  discussion of Jeannette Walls’ fascinating memoir The Glass Castle. If you’re like me and left wanting to know more, check out this PBS interview with Walls or catch this entertaining exchange with her from Colbert’s Nation. And then you may want to peruse these questions to get your mind in gear for another great genre X discussion!

Due to low contestant registration we’ve decided to postpone Smell the Glove until Saturday, January 30 2010. Fortunately this gives all of you guitar hero fanatics a chance to get your band together and polish up your act for the new year! So keep practicing and stay tuned for more details on Smell the Glove 2010.

We are thoroughly excited to invite you to our next genre x after hours program, Smell the Glove: A Guitar Hero World Tour Competition.  In celebration of American Library Association’s National Gaming Day, Smell the Glove will give you the opportunity to take the stage and perform songs on plastic drums and guitars in front of a roaring audience, all while competing for prizes!

So if you’re a Guitar Hero enthusiast with mad skills, we’re looking for you!  Just round up a band of four and register following the instructions below the jump.  Or if you’re more comfortable playing on Easy (like me), then stop by with your friends and cheer for your favorite mock band.  After all, participants will be judged not only on their score and accuracy but also on showmanship & audience response.  And yes, costumes and personas are highly encouraged - take this as a cue to come dressed as the members of Spinal Tap, your favorite rock band, or to unveil a band uniform of your own design.

Join us at Oak Park Public Library on Saturday, November 14 when the show must go on, or more precisely at 7pm.  This event is 18+, advance registration is required to compete, refreshments will be served, and it most definitely “goes to 11“.

Click on “the rest of this entry” for Complete Rules & Registration information.  Read the rest of this entry »

Just in time for the approaching Holiday season, we bring you one of the finest documents of dysfunctional family life in recent years.  Published in 2005, The Glass Castle spent a remarkable 100 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list which shows just how well loved Walls’ memoir has become.  Though the events of the story threaten to paint her eclectic parents in a less than favorable light, it is Walls’ sympathetic, non-judgmental tone despite everything she endured that makes this book so unique.  A review, from Booklist:

Walls, who spent years trying to hide her childhood experiences, allows the story to spill out in this remarkable recollection of growing up. From her current perspective as a contributor to MSNBC online, she remembers the poverty, hunger, jokes, and bullying she and her siblings endured, and she looks back at her parents: her flighty, self-indulgent mother, a Pollyanna unwilling to assume the responsibilities of parenting, and her father, troubled, brilliant Rex, whose ability to turn his family’s downward-spiraling circumstances into adventures allowed his children to excuse his imperfections until they grew old enough to understand what he had done to them—and to himself. His grand plans to build a home for the family never evolved: the hole for the foundation of the “The Glass Castle,” as the dream house was called, became the family garbage dump, and, of course, a metaphor for Rex Walls’ life. Shocking, sad, and occasionally bitter, this gracefully written account speaks candidly, yet with surprising affection, about parents and about the strength of family ties—for both good and ill.

Please join us to discuss this moving memoir on Tuesday, November 24 at 8pm at Molly Malone’s (The Snug) in Forest Park. If you need to pick up a copy of the book, just stop by Oak Park Public Library’s second floor Adult and Teen Services desk with your OPPL library card and we’ll set you up.

Image courtesy of ian_oji

Once again thanks to everyone who came out Tuesday night to discuss The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.  As is often the case, our discussion seemed to raise additional questions, some of which I hope to answer here.

Diaz packs his novel with dozens of “nerdboy” references and Spanish phrases, leaving those who are neither nerds nor Spanish speakers somewhat in the dark. Occasionally Diaz will illuminate the reader on references or phrases that he has deemed worthy of explanation, however most are left to readers to interpret as best they can. Although the novel can most definitely be enjoyed without an understanding of either, one reader decided to help the rest of us out by compiling an extensive annotated Oscar Wao. Beware though, when I say extensive I mean you could potentially get sucked in for hours exploring the vast array of pop culture, historical, literary and linguistic terms that are defined.

Naturally the group also discussed whether Diaz’s first novel was worthy of the 2008 Pulitzer it received. The application process and criteria for potential Pulitzer prize winning fiction titles are both surprisingly simplistic. Basically any book published in the United States in a given year is eligible. Knowing this, whats your take on the Pulitzer question - worthy or no?

And check out some interviews with Junot Diaz where he talks about some of the other issues that were discussed on Tuesday, such as the fuku concept, the use of footnotes, and just how autobiographical the book actually is (although Diaz admits that depending on which interview you read, his answer to this is slightly different each time).

We here at genre X apologize for our temporary, unplanned blogging hiatus. However we are back now and hope to resume our weekly blogging once again!

Welcome to August - the hottest month of the year and the time when my reading malaise often kicks in. We thought we’d jump start the lazy days of summer with a fast paced techno-thriller from one of the brightest minds of our generation - Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow.

Here’s the review from Booklist:

Seventeen-year-old techno-geek w1n5t0n (aka Marcus) bypasses the school’s gait-recognition system by placing pebbles in his shoes, chats secretly with friends on his IMParanoid messaging program, and routinely evades school security with his laptop, cell, WifFnder, and ingenuity. While skipping school, Markus is caught near the site of a terrorist attack on San Francisco and held by the Department of Homeland Security for six days of intensive interrogation. After his release, he vows to use his skills to fight back against an increasingly frightening system of surveillance. Set in the near future, Doctorow’s novel blurs the lines between current and potential technologies, and readers will delight in the details of how Markus attempts to stage a techno-revolution. Obvious parallels to Orwellian warnings and post-9/11 policies, such as the Patriot Act, will provide opportunity for classroom discussion and raise questions about our enthusiasm for technology, who monitors our school library collections, and how we contribute to our own lack of privacy. An extensive Web and print bibliography will build knowledge and make adults nervous.

Please come join us in discussing this interesting title on Tuesday, August 25th at 8pm at Molly Malone’s (The Snug) in Forest Park. If you need to pick up a copy of Little Brother, please stop by the Oak Park Public Library’s Main Library second floor Adult and Teen Services desk with your OPPL library card and we’ll set you up with one!

In July we’ve decided to take on another nonfiction selection. This time we’re delving into our first collection of essays by the sorely missed David Foster Wallace. We felt this was a more manageable Wallace selection than Infinite Jest (although I have a feeling many of you are already experiencing an Infinite Summer).  Here’s the Booklist review for Consider the Lobster:

In his latest essay collection, Wallace, known best for his expansive metafiction, traverses a wide swathe of territory, swinging from a consideration of pornography to a reading of John Updike (perhaps not such a stretch), from the 2000 campaign trail of Republican John McClain to reflections on Kafka and Dostoyevsky, and from Bloomington, Illinois, to lobster-trawling Maine. The uberliterate Wallace is a subtle Hunter Thompson, pointed, yet sly, in directing transitions to reveal his true intention–that is, he misleads, then opens up. Humorous, engaging, albeit a bit perplexing in his style, he is a little too trendy in his postmodern use of boxes, arrows, footnotes, and so on. But when Wallace is on the mark, few can compare in craft and craftiness. And there is enough that is uncool here to make it cool in a truly culty sense. Wallace’s complex essays are written, and rightfully so, to be read more than once.

Please come join us in discussing the last collection of essays Wallace published on Tuesday, July 28 at 8pm at Molly Malone’s (The Snug) in Forest Park. If you need to pick up a copy of Consider the Lobster, please stop by the Oak Park Public Library’s Main Library second floor Adult and Teen Services desk with your OPPL library card and we’ll set you up with one!

Before Katherine Dunn charmed the world with Geek Love twenty years ago,  she had begun establishing a career writing about a different subset of society - the world of boxing. Last month she released an anthology of essays entitled One Ring Circus about this subculture she has come to know and love. Guernica magazine caught up with Dunn this month to discuss both works.

Get yourself into discussion mode by pondering some of these Geek Love questions and then come on out to Molly Malone’s (The Snug) this evening at 8pm to share your thoughts on the freaks and geeks!

Like most any child of the 80’s, I must admit I do get really excited when I see that say the cast of Goonies was recently reunited or that Cameron Frye’s home from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is up for sale. I will watch I Love the 80’s whenever its on usually, even though I’ve seen all of the episodes already. There is no end to the enjoyment I continue to derive from reminiscing over the pop culture of my childhood.

So of course I was also excited to read about what the cast of Footloose is doing now. I was not so excited to find out there are plans to remake this 80’s favorite, possibly with Hayden Panettiere of Heroes fame, in the female lead. Unfortunately it seems Hollywood has decided that its time to recreate practically every eighties film that still holds a nostalgic flame, cult classic status or was even remotely successful the first time around. We have already seen the beginnings of this trend with the recent remake of Friday the 13th and it continues later on this year with the ressurection of Fame. Oh how I wish it ended there. But sadly the list goes on and on.

With all of the great new talent that has emerged out of Hollywood over the last 5-10 years, do we really need to revisit Arthur, the alcoholic womanizer, with this guy? Or even crazier yet, are audiences seriously begging to peer inside a 21st century Videodrome? If only there were some standards for remakes that everyone could agree upon. It would make my future rounds of “Remember when…” far less painful.

One of us! One of Us! One of Us!

Reading Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love for this month’s Genre X has gotten me thinking about the circus sideshows of the early 20th century. And that gets me thinking about Tod Browning’s cult classic, Freaks.

If you’ve never seen Freaks, you should run right out and add it to your Netflix queue (or your library hold list) right away. Filmed in 1932 with actual circus perfomers, Freaks is the story of a group of sideshow performers who take revenge on some of the “normal” performers after years of abuse. The original film shocked audiences and censors, and its original 90 minutes was cut down to just over an hour. The original footage is now considered lost.

Audiences were initially so uncomfortable with the deformity of the main players that the film was often banned, most notably in the UK where is was banned from viewing for 30 years. Freaks resurfaced as a cult hit in the 1960s and 70s, where it was frequently shown at Midnight Movie screenings. In 1994, the National Film Registry chose Freaks to be selected for preservation based on its cultural and historical significance.

If you’re interested in more film and television looks at circus life, you might also try:

Carnivale: the short lived HBO series about a traveling carnival during the Dust Bowl era.

The Elephant Man: the David Lynch directed film about a severely disfigured man who earns his living as a sideshow performer until a surgeon (Anthony Hopkins) attempts to give him a new life.

La Strada: Fellini’s early masterpiece features a girl who is sold to a traveling strongman by her destitute mother.

Something Wicked This Way Comes: Even though this film adaptation pales in comparison to the Bradbury book of the same name, I couldn’t leave the list without this story of a sinister traveling carnival and the town librarian forced to save the day.

Don’t forget to join us for our discussion of Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love at 8pm on Tuesday, June 23 at Molly Malone’s in Forest Park.

This June, genre X is taking a plunge into the world of geeks with Katherine Dunn’s cult classic, Geek Love. Keep in mind, however, that these are not the same geeks lovingly portrayed in Judd Apatow’s darling television series, Freaks and Geeks. Instead, Dunn dreams up a family of carnies who’re at times hard to empathize with but entirely impossible to ignore. A synopsis, from Library Journal:

“Guiding us into the world of the grotesque, Dunn produces a novel of compassion, insight, and macabre humor. At its center are Al and Lil Binewski, carnival owners who breed freak offspring through drug use so that they can perform in the show. Over the years, this ghoulish process becomes the norm; indeed, as we share the experiences of the children, we find that for this close-knit family, a child’s signs of normalcy are seen as a real threat. What elevates this work is Dunn’s controlled, matter-of-fact narrative, her skillful character development, and her relentless insistence that we address these people and their concerns in human terms.”

Please join us on our journey into the horrifying and engrossing world of the Binewski family. And if you’re in the Chicagoland area, we’d love to see you at our discussion of Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love at 8pm on Tuesday, June 23 at Molly Malone’s in Forest Park.

drawing of Kundera by Adolf Hoffmeister

We hope to see both new and old faces at Molly Malone’s this evening at 8pm for what is bound to be a hearty discussion of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera. If you’re looking for some points to ponder before then, you might want to check out Philip Roth’s 1980 interview with Kundera in which the author offers up his perspectives on many of the more discussable aspects of the book. Numerous critics and fans have also ruminated over some of Kundera’s favorite concepts and conventions like the emigre experience and bending the definition of the novel, but I want to know what underlying theme resonated most with you?