I know that the election is interfering with my reading. The drama of the primary is consuming my energy and time.

I watch television about 1000% more than I normally do. It’s not enough to see Mark Shields and David Brooks and Washington Week in Review once a week. I have to watch Chris Matthews, and Keith Olbermann and John King’s magic map. I regret to say that I often even listen to the endless discussion.

Oh, and it’s not just television that is consuming my reading time. I read blogs praising and condemning and emails with up-to-date commentary. And I even view the videos on My Space and send them to all of my friends. read more...

If you missed the Jhumpa Lahiri event on April 23, or if you’re interested in hearing the talk again, you can listen to an audio podcast on npr.org. Each week, P&P and NPR.org feature an author event for BookTour. Take a look at the archives while you’re there, and check back in the future. You can always link to the BookTour page from the P&P website.

click here to download an MP3 of the Lahiri talk from NPR

The next meeting of the Politics and Prose Climate Action Project will be at the store Saturday, May 10, at 10:30 a.m. The group will review the latest revision of the DC Clean and Affordable Energy Act, the single most important global warming-related action that our group has been involved in. Also on the agenda are updates on ongoing initiatives including the PEPCO decoupling case, the proposed PEPCO energy efficiency promotion program, and the DC Energy Office's plans for communication and outreach.

People’s History of American Empire: A Graphic Adaptation (Signed by the Authors)
Howard Zinn and Mike Konopacki
Paperback, first edition.
Shifting from world-shattering events to one family's small revolutions, the story of America in the world is now told in vibrant comics form. This version opens with the events of 9/11 and then jumps back to explore the cycles of U.S. expansionism. ...More

BOOK OF THE WEEK

(20% off through 5/14)

Amanda is so mixed up. At home, her mother has asked her father to leave. At school, she is writing a fictional Civil War diary of a girl whose brothers are fighting on opposite sides. In each situation, who’s right and who’s wrong? And how does the one African American boy in the class feel about all this discussion of slavery? Since she can’t talk about things at home, through her TOTALLY MADE-UP CIVIL WAR DIARY OF AMANDA MACLEISH (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16), by Claudia Mills, Amanda tries to work out the complexities of domestic and national divisions. Ages 9-12. • Dara LaPorte

Markdown books, or “remainders,” can be found in lower level of the store. These books are often onlyavailable for a short time, so come in soon to find what you want.

• Ted Sorensen, Special Counsel to JFK, had an insider’s perspective on Kennedy the President and Kennedy the man. His biography, KENNEDY, was first published in 1965 and detailed the 11 years the two men knew and worked with each other. Sorensen will be speaking at the store on May 14 for his new book, Counselor. In the meantime, we have this classic account. Available in hardcover, $14.98.
  
  
• The ancients attributed creativity to the Muses, others have credited dreams, luck, intoxicants. For Twyla Tharp, the renowned choreographer, creativity comes from hard work and persistence. THE CREATIVE HABIT: Learn it and Use it for Life, is described as “a practical guide,” and that’s just what it is. Tharp offers suggestions about organizing time and ideas to help you make creativity a part of everyday life, whether you’re creating a work of art, a meal, a family. Available in hardcover, $6.98.
  
  
• Annie Dillard, novelist, memoirist, and nature writer, has undeniably lived a creative life.
  AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD, written with the verve and passion of her unforgettable Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, is her story of growing up in 1950s Pittsburgh. She accomplishes the narrative feat of combining a child’s wonder at the world with an adult’s realism. Available in paperback, $5.98.
  
  
• Doris Lessing has lived a very different kind of life. WALKING IN THE SHADE: 1949 to 1962, is the second volume of her memoirs, and starts with her arrival in London. It covers the years of her enchantment and disillusion with Communism, her first novels, her experience as a single mother. Readers familiar with Lessing’s Four-Gated City and The Golden Notebook will notice many parallels between the fiction and the life. Available in paperback, $5.98.
  
  
• Finally, we have THE PIANO LESSON, the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama from the late playwright, August Wilson. Wilson achieved the prodigious feat of writing a play for each decade of the 20th century, and The Piano Lesson is set in 1936. When a brother and sister inherit a piano that has been in the family since a white master traded it for the siblings’ ancestors, they have to decide whether to keep or sell it—and how to deal with the past it represents. Available in paperback, $4.98.

•Laurie Greer

Special Ticket Offer and Drawing: John Adams’s EL NIÑO

• On Sunday, May 18, at 7:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, the Choral Arts Society will present the D.C. premier performance of John Adams’s passionate and glorious oratorio, EL NIÑO, with soloists, chorus, and full orchestra. With a stunning libretto featuring Spanish, Latin, and English texts, the score is enhanced by a film created by renowned theater director (and long-time Adams collaborator) Peter Sellars.
  Special Offer for Politics and Prose customers: get $10 off prime orchestra seats (regularly $40). Use ticket code “POLITICS” at www.choralarts.org or call 202.244.3669 (M-F,10-6) and mention this offer. (Not valid on previously purchased tickets, no exchanges or refunds, offer expires 5/15/08)
  
  
• The Choral Arts Society is also offering P&P customers a chance to win two pairs of tickets. To enter to win, please email agoldinger@politics-prose.com .
  There is also a great recording of EL NIÑO (Nonesuch, 2 CDs, $28.98), featuring a dream cast of Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and Willard White.

Staff Pick

GREY GARDENS, The Musical (PS Classics, $17.98)
Music by Scott Frankel, lyrics by Michael Korie, libretto by Doug Wright

Musicals simply do not get any better than this! The music and lyrics of Grey Gardens are among the most haunting, funny, and heart-wrenching that I have ever heard. Based on the Maysles Brothers’ documentary of the same title, it tells the story of wealthy socialite matron Edith Bouvier Beale, and her daughter Edie and their Long Island home, Grey Gardens. The first act takes place in 1941, the day of Edie’s engagement party (her fiancé was Joseph Kennedy, Jr.). As the act progresses, the cracks in the prominent family’s façade begin to show and Edith’s jealousy threatens to ruin Edie’s happiness. The second act is set in the 1970s, after Grey Gardens has fallen into ruin, and mother and daughter have turned into eccentric recluses. In an appropriate contrast to the lilting 1940s pastiche of the first act, the songs are now more quirkily reminiscent of Sondheim. Christine Ebersole gives a performance of dazzling vocal variety and nuance as she portrays Edith in the first act, and grown up Edie in the second act. Other actors are similarly double-cast—all are impressive. •Alex Claudio

[Studio Theatre will present Grey Gardens, starting this November.]

New

Elvis Costello & the Imposters, MOMOFUKU (Lost Highway, $14.98)

Neil Diamond, HOME BEFORE DARK (Sony, $17.98)

Concerts

LINN BARNES & ALLISON HAMPTON, Saturday, May 10, St. Columba’s Church, 4201 Albemarle St., NW.—Linn and Allison play Celtic and Renaissance music on lute, guitar, and Celtic harp.

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