So You Think You Can Howl

Day 242 of the "What are you reading, and why?' project, and so many people came into Babbitt's today that I could not keep track of all the books!  The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen went out, numerous children's books, some history, and a gigantic Shakespeare...to China!

Plus, Ron will soon be reading Rilke's Book of Hours!

But I know people are reading Howl, the long poem by Allen Ginsberg, or the book that contains it, or the Collected Poems, if not that original book, thanks to the movie now out about Ginsberg and the obscenity trial involving the book.

For instance, Courtney Crowder, editing assistant at Chicago Tribune Books, might be reading it now, having seen the film before she knew much about the poet, and tells us about 5 biographies of Ginsberg in this article.

The film Howl showed in my town last night as part of the Normal LGBT Film Festival, but I didn't get to see it, as I was watching volleyball.  But tonight I got to see Leading Ladies, a marvelous dance movie!  It's really sweet and funny, and one of the writers and three of the producers were there to talk about it.  It was fun to learn from the writer that she wanted to write a PG-13 movie with strong gay characters because there weren't any when some teens wanted to have an event a few years back.  The other co-writer kept imagining Benji Schwimmer--a winner of So You Think You Can Dance--in the role of Cedric, and it happened.  I like this kind of thinking: imagine it, and it comes true.

It's just like what Jiminy Cricket sings in "When You Wish Upon a Star."

And speaking of songs, a book I handled today was Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, with a preface by Richard Rodgers.  Just the lyrics, to many songs from musicals.  I fell in love with that book, wrote down the lines I always forget from "Out of My Dreams" from Oklahoma, and now I will be singing that to warm up for the last weekend of the cemetery walk tomorrow.....