Robert Gray

Denver Arts & Venues has announced the public reopening of the McNichols Civic Center Building with three new summer art exhibitions in conjunction with Major League Baseball All-Star Week.

The question pops up often, in variations on this theme: 'Which three writers, dead or alive, would you invite to a literary dinner party?' My answer has long been the same: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau at Emerson's house in Concord, Mass. I'd never get a word in edgewise. That would be fine.

One of my favorite summer reads this year has been Slow Art, which was born from Reed's personal response, over the course of eight years, to Edouard Manet's painting Young Lady in 1866.

All in. Maybe the gambling theme initially drew me to Swimming with Bridgeport Girls by Anthony Tambakis (recently published by Simon & Schuster), which Jonathan Tropper called 'a sad, smart, funny-as-hell novel with a broken heart that beats powerfully between the lines of every page....' But I stayed because it's irresistible, the perfect bookend (exacta?) to pair with another recent favorite, Jonathan Lethem's A Gambler's Anatomy.  

I'm not adept at taking advice, good or otherwise. And I've sat through a few too many achingly bad commencement speeches. In fact, the previous two sentences could serve as the start of yet another earnest trip down the rabbit hole of 'as you go forth into the world on this auspicious day....'

If you are reading this piece, you probably know that Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day, a 'national party that takes place at indie bookstores across the country.... Every store is unique and independent, and every party is different.'

The NCAA college basketball tournament, aka March Madness, has traditionally been my marker of Spring. Starting this week, the 'Road to the Final Four' prompts an intensive focus on bracketology, a field of study even the book world can't escape (see Tournament of Books).

The Adelphi Orchestra, celebrating its 62nd season of 'Music for All'  presents a Grand Mother's Day concert Sunday May 8th in New Jersey. 'Wagner Masterworks: Tristan und Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod and Die Walkure : Act 1.' The Wagner Masterworks Mother's Day concert will be the first of two performances, held on consecutive weekends, the second performance to take place in NYC at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music.  The Adelphi Orchestra's special  Mother's Day performance of Wagner Masterworks is free and open to the public -  the first 50 individuals to reserve their seats through Eventbrite will receive a complimentary long stem rose at the concert for their Mother.

Mercer County Community College's (MCCC's) Academic Theatre Company will present an original adaptation of Shakespeare's classic A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at Kelsey Theatre. Dates and show times are Todays, April 1 and 8 at 8 p.m.; Saturdays, April 2 and 9 at 8 p.m.; and Sundays, April 3 and 10 at 2 p.m. Kelsey Theatre is located on the college's West Windsor Campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast onstage below!

Mercer County Community College's (MCCC's) Academic Theatre Company will present an original adaptation of Shakespeare's classic A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at Kelsey Theatre. Dates and show times are Fridays, April 1 and 8 at 8 p.m.; Saturdays, April 2 and 9 at 8 p.m.; and Sundays, April 3 and 10 at 2 p.m. Kelsey Theatre is located on the college's West Windsor Campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast onstage below!

Each year when Veterans Day approaches, I think again of my father, who landed at Utah Beach two months after D-Day with the 243rd Field Artillery Battalion and died in 1971, taking his memories with him. He wasn't much of a reader, but there is one book that connects me to that hardworking kid from a small Vermont town who shipped out for England when he was 23. 

I'm not big on guilt reads ('You mean you've neverread...?!'), but I do love being surprised by the occasional revelation that an extraordinary writer has been there all along and just escaped my attention. This happened recently as I was being captivated by an advance copy of the just published Latest Readings (Yale University Press) by Clive James, who is still writing brilliantly in the midst of his battle with terminal leukemia. 'If you don't know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do,' he observes. 

As the 2016 presidential campaign gains momentum, one thing you can count on during the ceremonial browbeating and breast-beating competition will be a concurrent surge in 'rant lit' books. They're the ones that aren't simply published, but seem to be hurled ferociously across the political divide in a high stakes game of biblio-dodgeball. 

Start with the last two books I've read. They might seem to have little in common beyond certain obvious traits--author, cover, numbered pages, blurbs, etc. At no point while reading the books, one fiction and the other nonfiction, did I see a connection. I simply followed usage directions from my lifelong prescription: Pick a book, read it, pick another. Repeat as needed. 

I will never know enough about music, but I'm not inclined to read books devoted exclusively to the subject. Instead, I rely upon personal guides, writers who explore music in context with other aspects of our world like art and literature, philosophy and history. 

As a big fan of Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, I'm eagerly anticipating this Sunday's premiere of the BBC adaptation on PBS Masterpiece.

Blend Shakespeare's grandest romantic tragedy with Prokofiev's gorgeous ballet and it's time to experience a whole new "Romeo and Juliet." The Theatre and Dance Program at Mercer County Community College (MCCC) presents an original adaptation of the Shakespeare classic at Kelsey Theatre. Dates and show times are Fridays, April 10 and 17 at 8 p.m.; Saturdays, April 11 and 18 at 8 p.m.; and Sundays, April 12 and 19 at 2 p.m. Kelsey Theatre is located on the college's West Windsor Campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road.

Although red carpet interviewers never ask the question we really want answered (Who are you reading?), the Academy Awards do remind us of the important role books play in the film business. This year, five of the eight best picture Oscar nominees were based on books or were book-related. Birdmanturned out to be the big winner, but several bookish films garnered a share of the golden statue spoils. Movies (and books) honored included:

High on my list of 1,000 things I'll never do before I die is rock climbing, but I was absolutely mesmerized last month during the 19-day quest by Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson to conquer the summit of El Capitan's Dawn Wall in Yosemite Park.

Is that a soundtrack I hear? My reading life this winter has somehow become a ticket to a film-ish book festival. I'm not talking book-to-film adaptations, but works in which movies and Hollywood play a prominent role.