Library Loot: March 30 – April 5

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

Claire has Mr Linky this week


These first four reflect the latest, though annual, obsession I'm about to dive into.

Script Frenzy starts at midnight tomorrow night. Twenty some hours away for me now.

These four scriptwriting books came home last Thursday.

Essentials of screenwriting : the art, craft, and business of film and television writing by Richard Walter

This is my favorite of the four scriptwriting how-to books I checked out last week. I've actually read a dozen or more pages in a row while I've mostly browsed in and read glossary entries and checked the indexes for specific topics in the other three.

The screenwriter's bible : a complete guide to writing, formatting, and selling your script by David Trottier

I've found some useful advice in here but it's not exactly a page turner. It is also BIG. Like a coffee table book.

The complete book of scriptwriting by J. Michael Straczynski

Straczynski has appeared in the credits of several TV series. Babylon 5 for one. Which is one of my all time favorite. So I am going to give him a serious listen.

A forth book, Writing the Script: A Practical Guide for Films and Television by Wells Root, is three decades old which is probably why I had trouble find an image of the cover.

Tomorrow I'll be picking up several actual scripts to read.

The Sufis by Idries Shah.

Also mentioned by Doris Lessing in Time Bites.

Who the hell is Pansy O'Hara? : the fascinating stories behind 50 of the world's best-loved books by Jenny Bond & Chris Sheedy.

This one popped up in my search a month or so back on all things Jane Austen.

Odd gods : new religions & the cult controversy edited by James R. Lewis.

This is another title to feed my obsession with this topic. Read my profile if you're wondering what that's about.

But this subject is also research for my fiction WIP as the theme of belief, especially eccentric beliefs and thought systems, is a recurring one in my stories.


Kalila and Dimna : selected fables of Bidpai retold by Ramsay Wood ; illustrated by Margaret Kilrenny.

These are ancient fables and teaching stories translated from Sanskrit.

I sent for this after finding them mentioned in Doris Lessing's Time Bites. Same for The Panchatantra, translated from the Sanskrit by Arthur W. Ryder. For which I could find no cover image. Besides my library copy is so old its dust jacket has been long gone. It also tickles my eyes and throat every time I open it. I may have to resort to the websites I found devoted to The Panchatantra:

The Panchatantra

Panchatantra.org

Tales of Panchatantra

Idyll banter : weekly excursions to a very small town by Chris Bohjalian

I'm reading Bohjalian's The Double Bind this week and when I went looking in the library catalog for what others of his I've missed, I found this collection of short pieces from a newspaper column. All the titles were listed and one drew my attention: Loosing a Library and I sent for this just for that one as my own experience with having our library system lock its doors for six months a few years back has me extremely sensitized to the issue. In this case Bojalian's small town library had been flooded. Descriptions of the water and mud damaged books being piled in dumpsters was heartbreaking.

The good terrorist by Doris Lessing

One of the Lessing novels I've missed. I have had it checked out before but found it too disturbing at that time. But it is considered one of her most important in some circles. So I want to give it another try.

A truth universally acknowledged : 33 great writers on why we read Jane Austen edited by Susannah Carson; foreword by Harold Bloom.

Also part of that Great Jane A catalog hunt last month.

I blush to admit that I am practically a Jane Austen virgin. I read one or two of the novels between 8th and 12th grades in the 70s. I'd seen one or two of the movies and/or mini-series based on her novels and a video bio. I can't even be sure which of the novels I read though I'm fairly certain it was one or both of the three word ones--Pride and Prejudice and/or Sense and Sensibility. It may be hard to determine now since I've seen films adapted from both and so if, when I start reading one of them and recognize scenes, it may be hard to know if I'm remembering the book or the film. This may not make sense unless you realize that I store memories primarily visually and more often than not as images in motion rather than still shots.