Laurie Sandell's Blog, page 371

Said goodbye to a friend (and in unrelated news, it's hot outside)

[image error]My friend Alissa Quart is off to Harvard for a year-long fellowship; here's a photo from her going-away party. I had an interesting conversation there with Danielle Grace Warren, director of operations for  The Op-Ed Project, an organization dedicated to "expanding public debate" by getting more women to write and submit newspaper editorials. It's such a cool idea. She said that women tend to share information with people who look like them (!) pointing out that we shared a passing resemblance.

Just did a Podcast for The Forward

[image error]Recently my old friend Adam Rovner got in touch with me; back in the early nineties, he was my roommate in Israel. He's living in Denver now, working for a Jewish organization, and asked if I'd done anything yet with the Jewish newspaper The Forward. Leave it to Adam: Within short order, he'd made a few phone calls, and today I sat down with Dan Friedman, the Arts & Culture editor, for a taped interview. It was originally supposed to be a vidcast, which is why I'm all dressed up. There were a fe

Shooting a web episode

[image error]Two lovely filmmakers came to my house yesterday to shoot an episode of a brand-new series they're putting together called Stacked Up. The premise? Interview writers about what they have on their bookshelves. My episode is the first, so who knows if it'll make it onto the air, but I have to say, I love the idea. It's fun to show off your favorite books, plug your author friends and yes, even admit to harboring self-help literature (lots of it.) I had a great time with these two…though I do regre

Stacked Up

[image error]This afternoon I'm shooting an episode of a new web series called "Stacked Up." The show profiles various writers; specifically, what books they have on their shelves. So last night I did a little tidying up: I tried to group my favorite memoirs, novels and comic books together, as well as multiple books by the same author. But the real rub lies in the fact that I have a number of books I'd rather not share with the World Wide Web: Self-help relationship books, self-help money books (with the ex

Back in town just in time to send off two friends

[image error]Ahhh, it's nice to walk in the door to a spotless apartment. Tonight I'm going to a small goodbye party for my friends Alissa Quart and Peter Maass, two brainy writers who have secured fellowships at Harvard (or maybe it's just Alissa who has the fellowship? I'll check.) I met the two of them at Blue Mountain Center, a writer's colony in the Adirondacks (this is Alissa and me right outside the cottage she and Peter were staying in–nice, huh?) Alissa is a cultural critic who has written several b

District 9 blew my mind

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photo: Sony Pictures

Yesterday I met with my Hollywood book-to-movie agent and he mentioned a movie I hadn't yet heard of: District 9. So I went to see it last night with my friend Karen Ramos. We arrived at the theater to find a line of fanboys wrapped around the block (Karen's comment: "Bit of a sausage party here." Yeah. To put things in perspective, we were deciding between this and Julie & Julia.) The film was absolutely stomach-churning at times, and rattled our eardrums with near-constant

Book tour comes to a close

[image error]I haven't been able to blog because the friend I'm staying with in Los Angeles doesn't have Internet in her apartment (I'm sitting on the floor of a long hallway in her building). In the end, the reading at Book Soup went well. I had technology issues again—the projector wouldn't work—and this time, it was a full 45 minutes before I was able to start my presentation. With 30 or so people waiting for me to start, I sat in the parking lot in my car, near tears, on the phone with my publicist. She

Tonight: Book Soup in LA at 7:00 PM

[image error]I can't say I had the best luck in San Francisco…first I had to wait two hours to pick up my rental car, then I got stuck in horrible rush hour traffic, then when I finally made it to the bookstore 1/2 hour before my reading (arteries hardening as I drove), I discovered that the cable that came with the rental projector didn't fit into the port on my computer. I had to drive, pell-mell, to the Mac store to buy an adaptor while the good folks at Books Inc. stalled the crowd at the store. When I f

Reading at Books Inc. in San Francisco tonight

[image error]Stop #2 on the tour: Books Inc. in San Francisco. I'm flying out of Portland today. I'll miss Portland, but I have lots of friends in SF I can't wait to see. Kind of wishing I'd scheduled more than one night there. I'm hoping everyone will come out, and bring their friends, and their friends' friends…and that you guys will spread the word amongst your San Francisco friends. Time to pack and hit the road!

My new obsession: Geocaching

[image error]Seriously, how have I never heard of this before? And now that I have heard of it, does that mean it's jumped the shark? (See: Birkenstocks, which I finally decided I liked a good 10 years after college.) What it is: a massive, world-wide treasure hunt. You download an app on your iPhone, and are able to look for more than 900,000 "caches" that are hidden, well, everywhere. They come in all shapes and sizes: They can be as small as a thimble or as big as a suitcase (this is my friend Geoff, with