March Madness-Events Fri-Sat-3/27-3/28

Friday, March 27th (600 PM)
Emmanuel Jal

Emmanuel Jal has won worldwide acclaim for his unique style of hip hop with its message of peace and reconciliation born out of his experiences as a child soldier in Sudan. His music can be heard alongside Coldplay, Gorillaz, and Radiohead on the fund raising ‘Warchild - Help a Day in the Life' album, as well as in three ER episodes, the National Geographic documentary God Grew Tired of Us, and more recently in the feature film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He also featured on John Lennon's ‘Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur' amongst the likes of U2, REM and Lenny Kravitz.
Emmanuel Jal was born in war-torn Sudan, and while he doesn't know exactly when, he believes it was in the early 1980s. He was taken from his family home in 1987 when he was six or seven years old, and sent to fight with the rebel army in Sudan's bloody civil war. For nearly five years, he was a "child warrior," put into battle carrying an AK-47 that was taller than he was.
By the time he was 13, he was a veteran of two civil wars and had seen hundreds of his fellow child soldiers reduced to taking unspeakable measures as they struggled to survive on the killing fields of Southern Sudan. After a series of harrowing events, he was rescued by a British aid worker (Emma McCune) who smuggled him into Nairobi to raise him as her own.
To help ease the pain of what he had experienced, Emmanuel started singing. In 2005, he released his first album, Gua ("peace" in his native Nuer tongue), with the title track broadcast across Africa over the BBC and becoming a number one hit in Kenya. Gua also earned him a spot on Bob Geldof's "Live 8″ concert in the UK.
Jal performed at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday celebrations in Hyde Park, London, June 08, he shared a stage with Alicia Keys, Annie Lennox, Damien Marley and Stephen Marley at the Black Ball in London in July 08 and also addressed delegates at the UN in New York in the same month. Jal has also performed with Razorlight, Supergrass, and Faithless in Europe.
Last October Emmanuel toured the United States as part of the National Geographic All Roads Film Festival, in which he performed in New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and New Orleans. Jal also performed with Moby and Five for Fighting in the 2007 live concert film, The Concert To End Slavery (www.concerttoendslavery.com/trailer).
Jal has a full-length documentary on his life and times which has been touring the film festival circuit. It premiered at the Berlinale festival this year, and won the Cadillac audience choice award at the Tribeca film festival. His autobiography has been sold to St. Martin's Press with anticipated release of spring 2009. His new album ‘Warchild' was released on 12th May 2008 on the Sonic360 label (distribution by ADA Global) with additional production and mix by Neal Pogue, (Outkast, Talib Kweli, Pharohae Monch).
www.myspace.com/emmanueljal
http://www.sonic360.com/
http://www.warchildmovie.com/
Facebook Fan Page
NY Times book review of War Child
Time Magazine Book Review
Washington Post Book Review
Rolling Stone Interview

Saturday, March 28th (400 PM)
Mystery Weekend
***
Joan Del Monte, Hannah Dennison, Melinda Wells

Joan Del Monte was a featured author at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. in September 2007. She is also a multi-faceted woman, and has owned an antique shop, a real estate agency, and art gallery in Venice. She taught courses in antiques at UCLA extension and the California State College system; lectured on antiques on radio and wrote a bibliography of small antiques for the Los Angeles Public Library.
"Mud Blood - Murder in the Sacramento Delta" was awarded Editor's Choice by iUniverse.
A criminal lawyer, FULTON YEE, disappears, and the search for him is no place for a lady, But unconventional mystery writer VERA MOONACHIE has to find him, because he is churning his files of nasty crimes for her plot and he has the solution to her current mystery.
From the moment she starts her search, Vera is confronted with a hornets nest of fragile egos, including Fulton's trio of feuding ex-lovers. We meet Nancy Branscomb, an editor Fulton met years before when he visited her family's cabin in the Sacramento Delta. We meet Florence Loring, a real estate agent with a past so colorful that she met Fulton when he was defending her in court. And we meet Emma Sawtooth, a haystack-shaped earth mother who runs a writer's group. Vera encounters an authorship dispute based on a notebook. And when Vera picks up that notebook, she picks up the deadliest kind of enemies--people with something to hide.
Hannah Dennison is the author of the Vicky Hill mystery series. Aspiring investigative journalist Vicky Hill faces two challenges. The first is to escape the stultifying boredom of funeral reporting for the Gipping Gazette by making a career-enhancing front-page splash. The second is to lose her virginity-a heavy burden for a woman of twenty-three. Vicky's chance for a scoop comes with the discovery of three grisly chicken corpses, which are bizarrely connected to the unusual death of elderly Sir Hugh, the local hedge-jumping enthusiast. As Vicky delves deeper into village affairs, she is thrilled to find the sleepy English market town harbors more than its fair share of secrets. The new installment in Vicky's adventures is entitled Scoop.

Linda Palmer is the author of 7 published novels, and a non-fiction book on screenwriting titled How To Write It, How To Sell It: Everything A Screenwriter Needs To Know About Hollywood. She is also a produced screenwriter, and was a production vice president of Tri-Star Pictures.
Beginning in 2004 her mystery novels have been coming out once a year. Love IsMurder (2004), Love Her to Death (2005), Love You Madly (2006), and Kiss of Death (2007) were written under the name Linda Palmer. In her new series of mysteries - culinary mysteries (that's murder with recipes in the back of the book) she is using the pen name Melinda Wells. The latest installment in the series is Death Takes The Cake.

Saturday, March 28th (600 PM)
The Book Club will meet after the Mystery Book event

Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

March 21st. 4:00 pm Dr. Kathleen Hood

Join us as we welcome Dr. Kathleen Hood to discuss her nonfiction work, "Music in Druze Life"
Metropolis Books-Sat. March 21st. 4:00 pm.

Dr. Kathleen Hood provides an encompassing and richly documented study of Druze musical culture. Basing her work on first-hand experience in the field and approaching her subject matter with remarkable sensitivity and respect, Dr. Hood introduces the music not as a cultural relic fixed in place and time, but rather as a vibrant expression that plays a key role in people’s lives. Thus, she relates the current musical practice to the community’s history, social outlooks and cultural institutions. Furthermore, she treats the musical culture as a creative arena in which people define their own position in today’s complex world. All this is achieved through direct personal observations and careful analyses of traditional performance events without losing sight of the recent processes of modernization and urbanization. Music in Druze Life: Ritual, Values, and Performance Practice is more than a specialized monograph. Given its extensive coverage and theoretical implications, Hood’s work is also a primary source for understanding the expressive culture of the broader East-Mediterranean Arab world. - from the introduction by A. J. Racy

Art Walk March 12th. 7:00 pm-Jack Nadelle

Photography Exhibition
For more than a decade, Investigator Photographer Jack Nadelle's photographic and video work has helped LADA prosecutors tell crime stories in the courtroom. But the photographic art he creates in his spare time tells stories of vibrant people and places in downtown Los Angeles' historic core district.

During the month of March, Nadelle's photo exhibit titled "Los Angeles, A View to a City" is on display at Metropolis Books Los Angeles, 440 S. Main St., which is open Tuesdays - Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is no charge for admission. Nadelle's exhibit also will be a featured stop on the Downtown Art Walk on Thursday, March 12, from 6-10 p.m. The art tour, which provides a free shuttle bus, will include stops at the Museum of Contemporary Art and many downtown galleries.

Nadelle, who joined LADA 10 ½ years ago after a successful career in commercial freelance photography, said he is passionate about capturing "the urban landscape" in both its grit and grandeur. "I'm not just interested in the architecture. I am interested in how it is used, the sociological aspect," Nadelle said, noting that many of his photos depict people as well as buildings.

Born and raised in Los Angeles County, Nadelle spent much of his youth exploring downtown where his father owned a retail jewelry store on Broadway during the 1950s.

"I have a long relationship to Los Angeles. I would sometimes spend weekends downtown exploring the shops and streets. I have vivid memories of hot Spanish peanuts from the street vendors and lunch at Clifton's," said Nadelle, who took up photography in his mid-20s. His former freelance work included architectural, advertising and magazine photography.

Nadelle's current exhibit includes nine black and white photos of urban scenes. "As photographic subjects, downtown, and Los Angeles in general, are so interesting. I love the ʽadaptive reuse' of the classic buildings - tacos and pizzas where once were the offices of the ʽWall Street of the West,' " Nadelle said. "I have nostalgia for what has been - a past that continues to be erased."

My Review for Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy

While much of the East Coast is snowed in, we in Los Angeles are looking forward to spring. We asked booksellers from all over what book they're recommending to readers this year, and we begin with Metropolis Books, located in the heart of the arts district in downtown Los Angeles. Owner Julie Anne Swayze writes:

The book that I am recommending is Jedediah Berry’s "The Manual of Detection." It’s a story within a story that has a Kafkaesque feel to it. Berry’s narrative follows a humble but curious corporate clerk who works for a large detective agency. The clerk is mysteriously promoted to the position of detective in this large and strangely impersonal agency.
All of the chapter titles reflect an aspect of the craft of detection. The story within the story will peek the reader’s interest and capture their imagination until the end. I highly recommend this book, and for fans of Colson Whitehead’s "The Intuitionist," an urban Gothic novel published some years ago, readers will see a similarity in Berry’s unusual and sometimes quirky narrative.