So here we are in Egypt. All I really want is a little heat and a deck chair on a boat sailing down the Nile. A boat like in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. Specifically the 1978 film version with Bette Davis and Maggie Smith so I can snoop on their conversations along with Hercule Poirot. Watching Maggie Smith is one of the great pleasures in life, in Harry Potter, in Downtown Abbey, A Room with a View, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Gosford Park... Why the entertainment never ends! She is joined by Peter Ustinov as Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot, and Mia Farrow, David Niven and Angela Lansbury also. I love Maggie’s mannish costumes, the plot machinations, the nostalgia of rewatching something from long ago, and the sightseeing at Abu Simbel, Karnak and the Pyramids.

And next to rewatch Cairo Time with another actress I never tire of: Patricia Clarkson. She of The Station Agent, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Pieces of April, and Lars and the Real Girl. This is a different kind of movie about Egypt entirely, a slow character driven art piece about a woman contemplating an affair with an Egyptian friend of her husband. It treats Egypt as a place where people live, instead of merely as a backdrop. As in Lulu in Marrakech, it considers the relationship between the expats and the natives.

As for books about Egypt, two come to mind. Our son loved the kids’ book Adventures in Ancient Egypt by Linda Bailey. This entertaining comic book series drawn by Bill Slavin has three kids jumping around in time thanks to the Good Times Travel Agency. After visiting Egypt, you may want to keep travelling to the Middle Ages, Ice Age, China, Ancient Greece and to meet the Vikings. There are reams of other interesting books for kids under Dewey Decimal number 932!

For adults who enjoy literary fiction, Anatomy of a Disappearance opens in Alexandria, Egypt. Author Hisham Matar gives us Nuri, a young boy mourning the death of his mother. He falls in love with a beautiful woman named Mona, whom his political dissident father weds. It is an uneasy trio of characters full of hidden motivations. When his father is kidnapped and disappears, Nuri struggles to understand. He slowly unravels the truth, and learns to live with the huge absence of his father.

Next stop on our Around the World in 80 Days Virtual Tour: Iran.

Join this year's Commuter Challenge by getting to work by any means other than your own car. Register yourself or your workplace and compare your results to other in corporate and not for profit categories. It's only for one week: June 2-8th. You can even carpool.

For inspiration, read Urban Camping, one family's book about getting around Calgary without a vehicle.

Here's how to register for this fun event...Go to www.commuterchallenge.ca to register and to see a whole lot, including tips on biking to work and benefits of non-car commuting.

We at Louise Riley Library are lucky to be within walking, biking, and transit distance to many parts of Calgary. Try to beat our results! (If you work for Calgary Public Library, register as an individual first even if you have in past years, and choose your branch from the drop down menu. All branches are entered and we are entered as a workplace already.) You get to see how far you've travelled, how much fuel saved, and how many calories burned!

Greetings from Hungary

On Friday night in our Around the World in 80 Days trip we landed in Budapest. We learned that Buda and Pest were two cities that grew on opposite sides of the Danube River, and merged into the capital of Hungary. Our first thought – let’s eat! (Food does seem to play a rather large part in our interest to travel the world in our imaginations.) We crossed the Danube (as represented by its “stand in” the Bow River) and found Jonas Hungarian Restaurant at the south end of downtown Calgary.

I had signed out The Hungarian Cookbook by Susan Derecksey from the library, and so we knew the names of the main dishes, and how many of them include the spice paprika. We ordered the small plates of a whole bunch of dishes and dug in. There was Hungarian goulash (naturally), a delicious cabbage slaw, pork schnitzel, cabbage on noodles, chicken paprikash, beef stew with egg drop noodles, and deep fried cheese. The food is rich and tasty, and we decided the Hungarians gave the French a run for their money for creamy sauces. To finish off, there was a crepe with chocolate and ground walnut sauce and a delightful pear aperitif. By finish off, I mean a happy, waistband unbuttoning push away from the table for a restorative stroll along the Danube.

The Hungarian Cookbook was printed in 1972. We looked up the recipes when we got home, I mean back to our hotel. It was interesting to look at a 40 year old cookbook, with its small type, and lack of concern for design or photos. There was a card catalogue glued in the front, and a donation plate for the mother of someone I knew. It was like a little window back in time.

Rick Steves is an amiable traveler host, so we watched him stroll through Hungary in a travel DVD Eastern Europe 2000-2012. Many of the sites in Budapest were built during its 1000 year anniversary of the arrival of the Magyars in 1896. Then we finished our visit to Budapest by listening to some classical music. Hungarian composers are as plentiful as paprika. The library has lots of CDs by Bela Bartok, Franz Liszt, and Zoltan Kodaly.

Today we’re heading down the Danube south to the Mediterranean Sea and across to Egypt. It’s time to put a hold on the classic Agatha Christie DVD Death on the Nile.

Pastries, philosophers, and of course, films! Another rich resource for our Around the World in 80 Days stop in France is the French DVD collection. There’s nothing better than practising your rusty high school French by watching a classic.

My best job ever was selling popcorn at the Plaza Movie Theatre during its repertory days when there were 2 different movies every night. Once the snack bar was restocked we could sneak in and watch the movie, so I’ve seen ¾ of many films! I loved the smell of popcorn and drinking the cranberry juice. One staff member was a starving student, and his diet consisted almost entirely of what he ate at work. Luckily we had nuts, baked goods and coffee to supplement the popcorn.

I also loved seeing the regulars, and the sense of community among staff and customers. Working at the Riley Library has a similar neighbourhood feel.

All this nostalgia is making me feel like Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris, as it’s about romanticizing a past time. It’s stirring up memories of all the French films I’ve watched. Not the serious stuff like the Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard movies I puzzled over in film class. I’m thinking of the romanticized dreams of a better life in Paris with Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve. These are the ones that women like on rainy days, with beautiful clothing, refined sensibilities, and complicated men. One watches them and thinks if only I were French!

Here’s a list of some girls’ French movies you can watch from Calgary Public Library:

Chocolat- Juliet Binoche and Johnny Depp in a romantic confection

A Christmas Tale- Catherine Deneuve reeking sophistication as the head of a family during Christmas

Camille Claudel- take that Rodin! You weren’t the star after all

Amelie- Audrey Tatou as the gamine Amelie, with her unique take on the world

A Very Long Engagement- another camera lovefest with Audrey Tatou again, this time as a devoted girlfriend searching for her lost boyfriend after WWI

Paris Je T’Aime- a montage of short stories

Coco Avant Chanel- about fashion designer Coco Chanel

La Vie en Rose- Marion Cotillard plays Edith Piaf

Jean de Florette/ Manon des Sources- a historical drama with Gerard Depardieu

Rue Montaigne- a waitress meets interesting customers at a cafe

A Trip to the Moon- Georges Melies made this 1902 fantasy about a flight to the moon. Martin Scorsese honoured the director in the film Hugo. This is in a complilation at Calgary Public Library called Georges Melies: First Wizard of Cinema

C’est bon!

RILEY LIBRARY CHILDREN'S

Book of the Month

Harry the Dirty Dog, by Gene Zion illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham

Harry is back in black, white and colour too!
And he's going to make a whole new generation
of kids fall in love with him!

Riley staff seem to have Star Wars on their brains:

Oh I've been a lazy blogger, as well as a lazy reader! I'm still searching for those great happy book club choices...

For those that love a crackling plot, look no further than Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. A mystery told alternately by a battling husband and wife, this convoluted plot is full of red herrings and twists. It is almost impossible to put down once you start. Lots of interesting topics to discuss at book club about the relations between the sexes!

For some nonfiction, try Quiet by Susan Cain. It's about the motivations of introverts, and what they bring to the world. Then the book club can check in with their introverted members to get their take on the subject! Another non fiction choice is Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott. In this wise and honest book she interweaves stories and practical advice.

If you love bookstores, you may go crazy over Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloane. This is The Da Vinci Code for book nerds! I enjoyed thinking about the evolution of searching for information, and the changing publishing world. I also loved how just like in a fairy tale, the hero Clay succeeds in his quest not because he is strongest or smartest, but because he is a good friend who can assemble a team for a quest.

The book whose language and characters have stayed in my head the most is Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues. I can hear the narrator Sid Griffiths speaking in his slang about his jazz band in World War II Europe. The language can be a little daunting, so I checked out a bookcd. That way the words flowed into my brain, and I didn't get hung up on a meaning of a particular word. Just like listening to Shakespeare, I relaxed, and the meaning flowed in.

These books aren't "funny haha", and in fact Half Blood Blues and Gone Girl are sad. Paired with some good friends, wine and conversation, however, I promise that you will have a happy ending to your reading.

If you missed our last artist Kristen Powell, please check out her website

“Look a Little Closer”

she can also be contacted by email at lookalittlecloserart@gmail.com

Kristen's “In memory of a Book” instillation is being displayed at Southwood Library next, pop over if you didn’t get a chance to see it here!

Visit Louise Riley during May to view paintings by our newest artist Angie Pickering.

What will happen in this empty lot by the Sunnyside C-train station? Amazing things if ContainR have their way!

Greetings from the South of France. We have stopped in Aix en Provence on our Around the World in 80 Days tour of the Imagination. Priority number 1: practice our French words mille-feuille, pain au chocolat, and beignets as we search for pastry. Pictured: a selection. Unfortunately pastries were harmed in collecting this photo.

Enjoying my perfect lemon tart, I’m reminded of Renee, a character in one of my favourite novels The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. You will need both a dictionary and kleenex to finish this translation of a French bestseller.

Hedgehog tells two stories. Paloma is an intelligent, wealthy, and depressed twelve year considering suicide. Renee is the reclusive landlady in Paloma's Parisian apartment. Renee pretends to be stupid to preserve her solitude, but spends her days consuming art, literature, philosophy, music and fine chocolate. The story alternates between the two interesting characters as they ponder the meaning of their lives and become friends. There is loss in this story to be sure, but the theme is that art, friendship, and French pastries make it all worthwhile.

Calgary Public Library has an excellent audio version of the story with two fine actresses reading the alternating parts. Using the Overdrive service, you can download the story onto your iPod. A perfect past time as you stroll along in the Camargue, walking off the pastries.