AP Photo
President Barack Obama waves to a gathered crowd as he leaves the Bunch of Grapes book store in Vineyard Haven, Mass. , Friday, Aug. 2010, where the first family is vacationing.
Posted on 08/20/2010 11:33:46 AM PDT by maggief
President Barack Obama and his daughters Malia and Sasha started the first day of their Martha's Vineyard vacation this morning with a visit to a bookstore frequented by another Democratic president.
They spent about 20 minutes inside the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven as a crowd of about 100 people gathered outside behind yellow security tape waiting for them to come out.
In an interview with the Times, bookstore owner Dawn Braasch said the trio were primarily looking for books for the daughters and bought Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" and John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony."
Obama also signed copies of his book "Dreams From My Father" for the bookstore staff. He also purchased an advanced copy of the book "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen after Obama asked about its availability, said Braasch.
(Excerpt) Read more at capecodonline.com ...
AP Photo
President Barack Obama waves to a gathered crowd as he leaves the Bunch of Grapes book store in Vineyard Haven, Mass. , Friday, Aug. 2010, where the first family is vacationing.
GAG!!!
http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Novel-Jonathan-Franzen/dp/0374158460/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Nine years after winning the National Book Award, Franzen’s The Corrections consistently appears on “Best of the Decade” lists and continues to enjoy a popularity that borders on the epochal, so much so that the first question facing Franzen’s feverishly awaited follow-up is whether it can find its own voice in its predecessor’s shadow. In short: yes, it does, and in a big way. Readers will recognize the strains of suburban tragedy afflicting St. Paul, Minn.’s Walter and Patty Berglund, once-gleaming gentrifiers now marred in the eyes of the community by Patty’s increasingly erratic war on the right-wing neighbors with whom her eerily independent and sexually precocious teenage son, Joey, is besot, and, later, “greener than Greenpeace” Walter’s well-publicized dealings with the coal industry’s efforts to demolish a West Virginia mountaintop. The surprise is that the Berglunds’ fall is outlined almost entirely in the novel’s first 30 pages, freeing Franzen to delve into Patty’s affluent East Coast girlhood, her sexual assault at the hands of a well-connected senior, doomed career as a college basketball star, and the long-running love triangle between Patty, Walter, and Walter’s best friend, the budding rock star Richard Katz. By 2004, these combustible elements give rise to a host of modern predicaments: Richard, after a brief peak, is now washed up, living in Jersey City, laboring as a deck builder for Tribeca yuppies, and still eyeing Patty. The ever-scheming Joey gets in over his head with psychotically dedicated high school sweetheart and as a sub-subcontractor in the re-building of postinvasion Iraq. Walter’s many moral compromises, which have grown to include shady dealings with Bush-Cheney cronies (not to mention the carnal intentions of his assistant, Lalitha), are taxing him to the breaking point. Patty, meanwhile, has descended into a morass of depression and self-loathing, and is considering breast augmentation when not working on her therapist-recommended autobiography. Franzen pits his excavation of the cracks in the nuclear family’s facade against a backdrop of all-American faults and fissures, but where the book stands apart is that, no longer content merely to record the breakdown, Franzen tries to account for his often stridently unlikable characters and find where they (and we) went wrong, arriving at—incredibly—genuine hope.
...And the week after that
...And the week after that
...And the week after that
...And the week after that
...And the week after that
...And the week after that
...And the week after that
Is it wrong for me to mentally picture one of those cream-pie throwing people entering the frame?
Thanks for the summary. I thought for a split second that maybe Obama really was going to educate himself about freedom.
Some store owner should give Obama and his daughters each a free George Bush ‘Miss Me Yet?’ t-shirt.
I thought Pearl Buck wrote “The Red Pony.”
What? No picture of them stuffing their faces with icecream again?
... who immediately moved them from the remaindered shelf to the damaged book clearance table.
So, this is the dork’s idea of a good read. Is this what he’s fantasizing about during his WH meetings? That would explain a lot...
He must be next to the Vinyard Haven Dept of Employment Assistance Office.
Steinbeck, of course.
Uplifting, inspiring, heartwarming stories for his 12 year old. Heaven forbid.
I love how he wears his trusty White Sox hat.
He couldn’t name one player on the current roster if his life depended on it.
Readers will recognize the strains of suburban tragedy afflicting St. Paul, Minn.'s Walter and Patty Berglund, once-gleaming gentrifiers now marred in the eyes of the community by Patty's increasingly erratic war on the right-wing neighbors with whom her eerily independent and sexually precocious teenage son, Joey, is besot, and, later, "greener than Greenpeace" Walter's well-publicized dealings with the coal industry's efforts to demolish a West Virginia mountaintop. The surprise is that the Berglunds' fall is outlined almost entirely in the novel's first 30 pages, freeing Franzen to delve into Patty's affluent East Coast girlhood, her sexual assault at the hands of a well-connected senior, doomed career as a college basketball star, and the long-running love triangle between Patty, Walter, and Walter's best friend, the budding rock star Richard Katz. By 2004, these combustible elements give rise to a host of modern predicaments: Richard, after a brief peak, is now washed up, living in Jersey City, laboring as a deck builder for Tribeca yuppies, and still eyeing Patty. The ever-scheming Joey gets in over his head with psychotically dedicated high school sweetheart and as a sub-subcontractor in the re-building of postinvasion Iraq. Walter's many moral compromises, which have grown to include shady dealings with Bush-Cheney cronies (not to mention the carnal intentions of his assistant, Lalitha), are taxing him to the breaking point. Patty, meanwhile, has descended into a morass of depression and self-loathing, and is considering breast augmentation when not working on her therapist-recommended autobiography.
Look! It's a story about Liberals and how despicable they are! It's their self-loathing that makes them holy, you know.
Look at the kenyan sandals with the socks and the ironed jeans with the crease. Faggity a$$ dweeb. I’ll bet those bags of goody’s are paid for by the tax payer.
White sox hat and muzzie footwear.
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