Spring has Sprung and all the good things that come with it. Runny noses, itchy watery eyes, filling out the controlled substance form at CVS when trying to buy medicine. Of course, good things come with spring as well. Things like Farmer's markets. Hand-picking fresh fruits and veg that were grown by a farmer that loved and cared for the plants. Someone who raised them from a tiny seedling, nurtured them as they blossomed, trimmed them back where needed to make certain that the best examples of his crop make it to you, the consumer, so you could enjoy them as much as he/she did.

Now, why would I be talking to you about gardening and farming and such?

I have started a new program for the month of May. I have hand-picked a series of new authors to present at our Dupont Circle store and am calling this program Garden Fresh Voices. Much like those hard working growers, authors work their guts out putting together a story, feeding the characters, cutting back where they need to, until they have the best example they can produce. And like those growers, they depend on you to pick up the fruit of their labor, turn it over in your hands and decide if it is something you need. Picking a book is a little harder than picking an apple, so I have come up with a way to help you choose.

Our inaugural speaking engagement is on May 2ND. Jo Barrett will be reading from her first book The Men's Guide to the Women's Bathroom: A Novel. I am reading it now and it is pretty funny. The nice people at Harper Collins were so impressed with the book that they signed Jo to a 3-book deal.

Other notables authors reading for the "Garden Fresh Series" include: Alex Mindt, Annie Choi, Daniel Altman, and Marisha Pessl.

I know you are all busy and I know you are all starved for entertainment, but what could be better than coming out to a neighborhood store, enjoying a Krispy Kreeme Doughnut and hearing an author tell you about their work. The doughnuts are less than a buck (I think) and the talking part is free. Please join us as we kick off this special month of entertaining reads in our Dupont Circle store May 2ND. 7pm.

This week, we are lucky enough to have the lovely and talented Amanda Wertz joining us as Guest Blogger. Ama (as we like to call her) works at our Courthouse store, speaks fourteen languages, hosts her own radio program, has lived in Europe for many years and has a sassy collection of hats. You may have seen her pedaling her way around the District. She is the curly headed one on the bike. Ama has volunteered to say a few words about an upcoming event and who am I to turn her down. Without further introduction...

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Leni Riefenstahl, how do things look, 
from down there below? 
Does the truth loom heroic,
a legendary price in African exile? 
Dreams in tulle trumped, you 
had to know that man, his
secrets and successes, 
but everyone thought to ruin it,
ruin you, poor Junta, 
my beautiful, precocious pet. 
No, the Alpines could not contain you, 
Though they freshened your face 
and rolled cameras, found
Fanck's fancy an inspiring fuel, 
a bone for those Ufa hounds.
You really stuck it to them, Heidi,
especially the Goebbels-gropers
and Balázs-bellyachers: 
The gaul! What nerve!
And in your fury you sought blue light
to credit your legends, for 
der Führer, sieg heil!, the 
Magic Man, angry like a fire ant 
from the window of your glass elevator. 
You and that eagle were cohorts,
privy to tea-time theatrics, but 
apolitical playmates. So began
athletes as objects, art as flesh, 
you uncovered them, Leni,
painted them shiny and new again. 
Don't let the interviews vex
you, Schneewitchen, nor the truth, 
when it comes poised as fruit.
Hold fast to your fictions, or
your film face may unravel 
the myth of man.

Leni Riefenstahl was many things - Hitler's filmmaker, actress, dancer, artiste. Shrewd, unbelievable, cut-throat. Beautiful, conceited, self-centered. But above all, she was unforgettable; bitter irony, as forgetting was exactly she did - selectively. Her ability to (re)construct reality as she saw fit made her truly incredible.

Or is that just what she'd like us to believe? Who exactly was Leni Riefenstahl? Born Helene Amalie Bertha in Berlin, fiercely independent, strong-willed, and ambitious "Leni" was never one to let obstacles - gender, money, reciprocal interest, or political catastrophe - stand in her way. Dancer gave way to actress to filmmaker. Leni created her own opportunities by any means necessary. "I must meet that man" became her catchphrase, and meet them she did: directors Arnold Fanck (The Holy Mountain) and Walter Ruttman (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City), scenarist Carl Mayer (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), film critic and script writer Béla Balázs (The Threepenny Opera), and all the usual Nazi suspects: Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Chief Architect Albert Speer, publisher Julius Streicher (Der Stürmer), and of course, Hitler himself. As Germany found itself in a state of political, cultural, and economic crisis following The Great War, Leni became increasingly resourceful. She had a knack for knowing who might prove beneficial in the future, sleeping her way through a cast that included co-stars, producers, and directors, borrowing legend (The Blue Light) or creating her own (Triumph of the Will) to build the framework for her greatness, her fame. It's no mere coincidence she chose film - by the 1920s, film was already the most influential medium of the century, and Leni seized the opportunity to create the worlds and roles of which she dreamt and in which she would never star.

I first became fascinated with Leni in college while pursing my degree in German studies. Sure, I knew my WWII history backwards and forwards, had read Goethe, Kant, and Schiller, and could even recommend a handful of good German hip-hop music. But film? I knew next to nothing about the media tradition (some will still argue!) which first really took off in Germany. My professor and mentor, Dr. Margit Sinka, knew how to show-and-tell a tale, giving us bits and pieces of Leni's cinematic masterpiece, Olympia. But what really struck me came later in the semester, following a very brief showing of a film considered one of the worst of the Nazi era, The Eternal Jew. The film seemed steeped in legend, apparently the cinematic precursor to the Holocaust. Dr. Sinka posed the question: which director was found most guilty of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials? Which director would be permanently banned from ever working again in Germany? The answer came almost as a shock, but not the justification: Leni's films, however often she would deny it in the post-war era, went above propaganda and persuasion. By only "being an artist" and "documenting history," Leni forever stamped the image of Hitler as heroic myth in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of Germans. She shaped the cult which would pave the way for total compliance and mass murder. She would later film in Africa in exile, but always with the same theme: physical beauty, humanity as art object.

What I love is a great story, one that has me reading in disbelief. What better choice than Leni? Nearly everything she ever said (publicly or otherwise) couldn't be believed, was either too fantastic or historically erroneous. Stephen Bach gives us a new version of the story, one coming from Leni herself and those closest to her in his newest biography, Leni: the Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl. His goes beyond mere fact to give us the characters, the situations, the startling chain-of-events that snowballed into the Myth of the Third Reich, and the woman who brought it all singing and dancing, marching and shouting to our theaters, our classrooms, our homes. Ever-elusive, Leni's real motivations remain slippery half-truths. Why wait for Harry Potter? Leni Riefenstahl is pure fiction.

Editor's Note:
Steven bach will be reading from his book "Leni" at our Lansburgh Store (418 7th St NW) on Tuesday April 24Th at 7 pm. If you happen to attend (and you should because it is going to be great) you might see a curly haired fraulein in the audience. She writes a mean blog, has crazy taste in music, and makes a lovely chocolate cake. Thanks again to Ama for pinch hitting this week.

Have you ever had one of those days? One of those days where you are the bug and not the windshield? Where it seems like everything that comes your way smacks you dead in the face and causes a little bit of your little buggy insides to move from their correct location inside your little bug body, to outside your little bug body. This is all metaphorical, because a series of phone calls and emails are not enough to smash your carapace open and spill your squishy bits out, it just feels that way.

Do you ever think that when you are having morning like that (like mine was this morning) that maybe you did something wrong at some point and that thing you did wrong was coming back to bite you in the behind? I think that concept is referred to as karma. I looked karma up in the dictionary, and found this:

1. Hinduism, Buddhism. action, seen as bringing upon oneself inevitable results, good or bad, either in this life or in a reincarnation: in Hinduism one of the means of reaching Brahman. Compare bhakti (def. 1), jnana.

2. Theosophy. the cosmic principle according to which each person is rewarded or punished in one incarnation according to that person's deeds in the previous incarnation.

3. fate; destiny.

4. the good or bad emanations felt to be generated by someone or something.

I like the idea that by being a good person today, I can get slightly better treatment one or two lifetimes from now. That amount of patience is something more Americans should embrace. In our world of instant pudding, instant tea, instant gratification, instant democracy for Iraq, instant everything, I think we could use a little patience. I also think Axl Rose said that first.

Speaking of Karma. We are hosting a book event on the 19th of April in our Dupont Circle store. The book is called "Karma and Other Stories" by Rishi Reddi. "Karma" (as we will refer to the book from now on) is a collection of stories revolving around members of the Indian-American community trying to keep in touch with tradition while incorporating the ideals of this great western world. Not just a book about culture clash, the concepts discussed in the stories are things that will plague each of us at some point in our lives. Maybe they wont all apply to everyone, but I would bet they hit some of you some of the time.

Personally, I am a big fan of collected short stories. Maybe because I am an impatient American longing for a less time consuming way to unwind at the end of the day. Maybe because--No. I am sure it is due to a lack of patience. Short stories are like television shows over movies. Sometimes you want to hear the message, you just can't wait for two hours and twenty seven minutes for someone to get to the point.

Anyway, do yourself a favor in the this lifetime and the next, come out to Dupont on the 19th to see Rishi Reddi and hear her read. Her book is lovely and she has traveled all the way from Boston to visit us. If you come out to the store I can guarantee you and extra day of being the windshield and one less day of being the bug. Feel free to collect from me in 2087. I should be about 24 by then and just starting to find a real job out of university. Unless I am a child prodigy musician/performer. Then I will be on tour and you will have to talk to my publicist. See you all then.

...And in this corner ...wearing gray jeans and blue denim shirt, from our Penn Quarter/Lansburgh store, where he is assistant book manager, voracious reader and tremendous fan of many authors, Ladies and Gentlemen, Robert Starner...!

---Crowd Cheers---

Laura Lippman Returns to Olsson's Lansburgh/Penn Quarter

With the publication of her third stand-alone novel away from the critically acclaimed Tess Monahan series, Laura Lippman once again takes readers into the world of her Baltimore from the past and the present with a tremendously satisfying, un-put-down-able read with a resolution that holds the suspense right to the very end. The disappearance of two sisters nearly 32 years ago from a crowded shopping mall has remained a cold case until a car accident on the Beltway, as a woman involved in the accident blurts out that she is one of the Bethany girls. With an array of intriguing and complex characters, including lead detective Kevin Infante, a Long Islander, who has now become a long time Baltimorean, social worker Kay Sullivan, and attorney Gloria Bustamante, Lippman interweaves the present with the past lives of the Bethany family as it slowly unravels after this sad tragedy. Miriam Bethany is one of the most interesting characters I've read in quite some time. Lippman is at the top of her game, demonstrating her remarkable storytelling skills and ability to create complex characterizations in What the Dead Know.

I hope you'll join us for our event with Laura Lippman on Tuesday, April 10, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. at our Lansburgh/Penn Quarter location, located at 418 7th Street, NW, Washington, DC. She has become one of favorite authors to see in person, and I'm so glad she's returning to Olsson's for this new book.

I've also become a great fan of Laura Lippman's short stories that have been appearing in several anthologies over the past year or so, including a few the very popular and entertaining series of Noir mystery anthologies from Akashic Books. "A.R.M. and the Woman" in D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos, brings us one of the most desperate housewives ever as divorcee Sally Holt devises a plan to help keep her upper-Northwest home over the heads of herself and her two children, enlisting the aid of an unsuspecting accomplice. Lippman presents a wry, subtle sense of humor with a twist of the devious and diabolical. I couldn't help but laugh a little as this plot slyly unfolded.

In Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger vs. The Ugly American, edited by Ken Bruen, Laura Lippman is one of the contributors who bring an American's perspective to how Dublin appears to outsiders. In Lippman's story, "The Honor Bar," Bliss Dewitt, after being unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend Barry while drinking at a Dublin pub, liberates his American Express card as a sort of severance package, books herself into a high end hotel room and unwinds a little - okay, a lot (and quite the sexy little romp, it is too) - with her latest beau, the charming Dubliner Rory Malone. But what goes around comes around - has Bliss's bliss backfired?

In her introduction to Baltimore Noir, which she edited, Laura Lippman paints great images of Charm City and lists the numerous authors who have resided in Baltimore at one time or another, including Edgar Allen Poe, H.L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Taylor Branch, Stephen Dixon, and Sujata Massey. Her love for Baltimore exudes from this brief introduction, as well as from her story in this collection, "Easy as A-B-C" in which a contractor finds himself reconstructing and restoring his own grandmother's house for one of the newly rich in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Locust Point. The contractor exacts an intriguing revenge on the house's new owner, the unsuspecting slightly snobbish Diedre. This story lives with a vibrant nostalgia for the way things used to be in an earlier Baltimore.

One other great story I stumbled across is Laura's contribution to Vintage's Bloodlines: A Horse Racing Anthology edited by Maggie Estep and Jason Starr, entitled "Black-Eyed Susan". Lippman's sets her story on Preakness Day at the Pimlico Raceway, in Laurel, Maryland, one of the outer suburbs of Baltimore and Washington, DC. (Opening Day at Pimlico, by the way is April 19.) Dontay Melville and his extended family earn as much money as possible, at premium prices, from the sports fans herding to the racetrack on the big day, from providing six prime parking spaces on the front lawn to hauling coolers and what-not by grocery carts to the racetrack for the visitors. It's not until the next day, Clean Up Day at the track, that Dontay learns what, Susan, one of his customers hauled into the track in three coolers.

Each of these anthologies is filled with stories or essays by many tremendously gifted writers, but in each case Laura Lippman's story is a stand out, knock out gift to read.

Laura Lippman will appear at Olsson's Books & Records - The Lansburgh/Penn Quarter, 418 7th St., NW, (202) 638-7610 on Tuesday, April 10, 2007, at 7:00 p.m. for her new book, What the Dead Know.