Questions?

Do you have to have a blog to participate? No.  You can do everything on the map above without linking the book to a review.
Do I have to have my post up by January 1st, 2011? No, but I would think you would want to get started right away at the beginning of the year.  However, you will be able to sign up throughout January as well.
How will people see my map? There are a couple of possibilities.  On your original challenge post you should have a link to your map.  You could also put it on your side bar to draw interest to it (see mine on my left side bar)

Muggings on Avenue C, punk bands at CBGB, youthful romance in Greenwich Village, parties in a nascent SoHo, dropping out from the famous Music & Art High School.  In this episodic, coming of age memoir, Josh Karlen chronicles growing up in New York’s Greenwich Village, East Village, and crime-ridden Alphabet City in the 70s and early 80s.  Lost Lustre recaptures a downtown Manhattan at a pivotal time of the city’s history, when New York was suffering its gravest financial crisis and soaring crime, yet also was home for a spectacular resurgence of the arts.  Karlen shares a fascinating personal history of the punk rock scene through a prism of The Lustres, a band that played venues such as CBGB a few years after its stage had held the Talking Heads, Patti Smith and the Ramones.  In the title chapter, Karlen poignantly pays homage ot the band’s charismatic and talented lead singer, whose life in many ways seemed to mirror his times in both its shining creativity and nihilistically destructive force.

For more information about Lost Lustre, check out the publisher’s website,TatraPress.com.

My Review:

I was completely engrossed in this book. Karlen has a way with words and this book was easily finished in one sitting. I enjoyed reading about a different time in New York and totally different way of life. If you like memoirs then this is a book you need to read.

'Til We Read Again,

Bobbie

Heidegger’s Glasses opens during the end of World War II in a failing Germany coming apart at the seams.  The Third Reich’s strong reliance on the occult and its obsession with the astral plane has led to the formation of an underground compound of scribes–translators responsible for answering letters written to those eventually killed in the concentration camps.

Into this covert compound comes a letter written by eminent philosopher Martin Heidegger to his optometrist, who is now lost in the dying thralls of Auschwitz.  How will the scribes answer this letter?  The presence of Heidegger’s words–one simple letter in a place filled with letters–sparks a series of events that will ultimately threaten the safety and well-being of the entire compound.

Part love story, part thriller, part meditation on how the dead are remembered and history presented, with threads of Heidegger’s philosophy woven throughout, the novel evocatively illustrates the Holocaust from an entirely original vantage point.

Thaisa Frank has written three books of fiction, including A Brief History of Camouflageand Sleeping in Velvet (both with Black Sparrow Press, now acquired by David Godine). She has co-authored a work of nonfiction, Finding Your Writers Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction,which is used in MFA programs.  Her forthcoming novel, Heidegger’s Glasses, is coming out this fall with Counterpoint Press.  Foreign rights have already been sold to ten countries.

Thaisa has taught in the graduate programs at San Francisco State, the University of San Francisco, been on the staff of various summer writing workshops, and written essays, including a recent Afterward in Viking/Penguin’s new edition of Voltaire.  You can find out more about Heidegger’s Glasses and Thaisa by visiting her website at  www.thaisafrank.com.

A rarity here at 'Til We Read Again would be for me to recommend a book to everyone. However, I am recommending this book to every reader out there. You need to experience it. It may not be your cup of tea or you may even come over here and tell me you hated it. That's okay because at least you experienced this unique book. I am so grateful I got the chance to receive this book and read it. It has been a long time since I have read a book that has enchanted me, engrossed me and above all shocked me. Not by it's plot or anything but by the fact it crept in and placed itself on top of my must read list. That is an amazing feat by itself. I want thank Thaisa Frank for drawing me into such a world and for bringing me such a book.  Just WOW.

'Til We Read Again,

Bobbie