"Bearpond Books

This lushly detailed novel from the author of Possession centers around Olive Wellwood, a famous children’s author at the end of the Victorian era. The lavish parties she throws at her family’s rambling country house are attended by a circle of intellectuals, Arts & Crafts adherents, anarchists, socialists and their children. Her life seems as charmed and magical as the fairy stories she weaves, but when the family’s dark secrets are revealed the drama unfolds and sweeping changes overtake England at the end of the Edwardian era and the beginning of the Great War.

Bambi Vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business
by Mamet, David

Tim’s Review:
In Bambi vs. Godzilla, writer and director David Mamet takes on the Hollywood machine in a brutal and hilarious examination of the industry’s inherent hypocrisies and delights. In forty-two short essays that are part theory, part criticism and part expose, Mamet tackles subjects as various as the crew (working-class heroes), producers (hucksters and sycophants), test screenings (joyless exercises that turn the audience into a jury), and the modern screenplay (like a personals ad). But the tone is not entirely bilious; he clearly reveals a deep, intractable love of classic cinema in its purest forms (film noir, Preston Sturges, Tony Curtis). It is this primal attraction to and respect for cinema’s ability to convey truth and beauty that sets up a deep disappointment with Tinseltown’s current valuation of commerce over art.