Get your Gatsby On! Dancing in the Roaring Twenties

The Library District is giving a series of classes on learning the dances of the 1920s. What a great opportunity! If you've ever wanted to learn to swing dance, this is your chance!

Swing dancing is a lot of fun, and it's not often that you get the opportunity to learn, for free!

Get into the swing (no pun intended!) of the 1920s with these great events. Get your Gatsby On!

Getting a copy of Great Gatsby

The National Endowment for the Arts has provided the Library District with many, many copies of The Great Gatsby to give away. Each of the urban (in Las Vegas) libraries will have fifty copies to give away (along with the CD Audio Guide and the Reader's Guide), starting on April 1, 2008. Be sure to visit your library as early as you can to get your free copy of The Great Gatsby.

If you aren't in time to get a free copy, there are plenty of other copies available that you can check out from the library.

The regular book or paperback version

The Large Print version

The edition in Spanish

The eAudio Book

The Audio CD version

The Audiocassette version

You can even watch the movie!

In DVD with Robert Redford or Toby Stephens as Jay Gatsby

Or on VHS with Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby


There's also a free online eBook version.

We'll be starting the book discussion on Tuesday, April 1, 2008, so request your copy now! (Or plan to visit your library on April 1 to get a free copy!)

Clara Bow - The "It" Girl

The Clark County Library will be showing the 1927 silent film It on Tuesday, 1 April 2008 at 1 pm. This film is how Clara Bow got her nickname of "The It Girl."

Elinor Glyn wrote The Man and the Moment in 1923, coining the phrase "It" to personify appeal and charisma - sexual or otherwise. Glyn personally selected Clara Bow to play The It Girl in the film It in 1927.

Bow later married Rex Bell, and moved to the Walking Box Ranch, just outside Searchlight, Nevada. Her son, Rex Bell Jr., became District Attorney in Las Vegas.

There is a brief (10 minute) YouTube about Clara Bow's film career in the 1920s. The film clips really bring the 1920s to life, and show how silent pictures were very different than today's films, but still enormously entertaining. The Searchlight Library shares a building with the Searchlight Museum, which has mementos of Clara Bow and Rex Bell's careers and life in Searchlight.

As you're starting to read The Great Gatsby, stop by the Clark County Library, watch the film, and see the 1920s in action!

Getting Started in Online Book Discussion

The Big Read discussion of The Great Gatsby will start on Tuesday, April 1st.

That is also the first day to visit your library, sign up for Reading Las Vegas, and get your free book bag, copy of The Great Gatsby, and the super discussion extras - a Discussion Guide and an Audio Guide Introduction to The Great Gatsby, provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. (Supplies are very limited, so sign up at your library early!)

The actual discussion of the book won't start for a couple days into April, so don't be concerned if you haven't started reading yet. The first few days will focus on the setting, the background, the author, etc. That should give you time to get the book and read the first chapter or so.

Book Festival!

The Big Read Book Festival is coming!

If there's anything you've wanted to know about books, this is the place to be.

Are you a hopeful new author? Check out these workshops:

• Be the Next Bestselling Writer: Tips and Tricks for Writers
• Getting Published: True Confessions, Insider Scoops and the Not-So-Great Realities of Publishing
• Marketing YOUR Book to Libraries

Do you have an old book that you're sure is valuable? Get a free appraisal! (Limit 2 books per person.) Do you want an old book that might become valuable? There will be used and specialty booksellers galore!

Like great films? They'll be showing I am Legend and No Country for Old Men.

Plus, there'll be freebies, refreshments, activities for the kids, and the chance to meet with local published authors. You'll be able to talk with the authors, see their books, find out their secrets, and maybe get an autographed copy of their book!

Be sure to visit the Clark County Library on April 5^th for this fun afternoon!

Algonquin Round Table

When we think of the Roaring Twenties, we think a lot about flappers, silent films, and prohibition. We tend to forget that the 1920s was an amazing time in American Literature.

Some of the noted authors of the decade were:

• F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
• Sinclair Lewis (Main Street)
• Willa Cather (My Ántonia)
• T.S. Eliot (Ezra Pound)
• Edna St. Vincent Millay
• Carl Sandburg
• Eugene O'Neil
• e. e. cummings

One of the most notorious groups of writers congregated at the Algonquin Hotel, in New York City. The group came to be known as the Algonquin Round Table, and was peopled by such noted authors as Dorothy Parker, Robert Sherwood, and George S. Kaufman. The group originated from young editors of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker magazines (the Algonquin was just down the street from their offices). The Round Table developed into a daily group of folk trading barbed whit and invective:

The Round Table's stock in trade was the barb, the blistering insult, delivered coolly to friend and foe alike, and the hero of the moment was the one who provided the last laugh, no matter at whose expense.¹

The Clark County Library is showing a great movie about the Algonquin Round Table at the beginning of April: Mrs. Parker & the Vicious Circle. "Cigarette smoke and laughter. The hollow clink of martini glasses and biting one-liners. This was the famed lunch scene at the Algonquin Hotel's Round Table of the 1920's, home to a circle of mutually supportive artists that defined the heyday of sophistication and a literate era of wit and intellect."

This film would be a great way to get the flavor of the literary scene as it developed in the 20s!

¹ The Editors of Time-Life Books, The Jazz Age - The 20s. Revised. Richmond, VA: Time-Life Books, 1998, page 169.

Live Action Murder Mystery

The year is 1925, and it's Saturday night. You're headed to the heppest hotspot in Chicago - the speakeasy called the Gilded Gardenia. The refreshments are always chilly, and the band is always hot!

When you get there, you find the club's owner, gangster Shifty S. Capades, won't be attending tonight, or any other night. Shifty is down for the count. He's gone to meet his maker, and he definitely got a one-way ticket. It's up to you to solve Shifty S. Capades' murder!

Put on your glad rags and come to a real killer-diller of a party! Be sure to mention the secret password (Tin Lizzy), or you'll be stuck outside. And, remember, they don't take wooden nickels!

Are you ready to be the detective?!! Spring Valley Library is hosting a Roaring 20's murder mystery on Saturday, April 12th from 6:45 pm till 10 pm. Space is definitely limited, so sign up right away! Sign up at the Spring Valley Library to guarantee your role as the next great detective! Just call the Spring Valley Library (507-3821) by April 3rd (so you have time to receive your invitation) and RSVP by April 9th. If you're pushing the deadline, just visit the Spring Valley Library by April 9th to guarantee your reservation!

There'll be prizes, a costume competition, and refreshments, in addition to the mystery!

The Big Read

One of the most exciting trends in libraries all over the country has been Big Reads. A Big Read is where all readers in a city get together to read a single title, and then discuss it. Can you imagine being able to mention the book you're reading with a total stranger, and have a good chance of getting a great discussion out of it?

In the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, The Big Read coincides with Reading Las Vegas, the adult reading program in April. This year the title we're reading in Las Vegas is The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Gatsby is an incredible book that brings to life the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, Flappers, Prohibition, Gangsters (like Al Capone, John Dillinger, and Lucky Luciano), and the free and easy lifestyle between the end of World War I and the Great Depression.

Visit your library starting on April 1st to get your free copy of The Great Gatsby. The National Endowment for the Arts has provided copies that you can take home and keep! Supplies are limited, so visit your library as early in April as you can.

Then, attend some of the great events your library has planned during The Big Read! Want to learn to dance the Lindy Hop? Solve a live-action murder mystery? See any of the amazing authors (John O'Hurley, Chris Bohjalian, and many more!) visiting a library near you in April? Your library has it all!

We'll be talking all about The Great Gatsby and the Roaring 20s right here, starting in April. We're looking forward to seeing you!

Reading Las Vegas

April 2008 is Reading Las Vegas month in the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District. Reading Las Vegas is the adult answer to the kids' Summer Reading Program.

Every summer, when you were growing up, you probably signed up at the library to read books and get prizes? The Library District thinks that children should not have all the fun! So, every April they provide an adult reading program, called Reading Las Vegas. You can read books and get great prizes!

Starting on April 1st, stop by your library and sign up for the program. Your library will give you a fantastic book bag (provided by the Friends of Southern Nevada Libraries.) Quantities are limited, so sign up early! Then, as you read books, fill out an entry form for each title and return it to your library. You'll be entered for prize drawings from your local library, and be eligible for the Grand Prize of two round-trip tickets from Southwest Airlines. The more you read, the better your chances of winning!

There are even more ways to get entries. For example, you could listen to an audio book, attend an adult library event during April, or join one of the Library District's book discussion groups in April.

Don't miss the fun! Stop by your library as early as you can in April, and get started reading!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District's Online Book Discussion Group. Each month we'll read a new and exciting title. We'll learn more about the author, anything special in the book (for example, the setting), and discuss our likes and dislikes about the story.

We're looking forward to hearing your thoughts about these great books!