Amateur Thursdays Calls for Classics

Do you have a favorite classic you can tout it in 30 seconds or less? Amateur Thursdays is inviting bibliophiles to submit video reviews of their preferred tomes, some of which will be featured on AmateurThursdays.com. The deadline for submissions is September 15.

Amateur Thursdays, which takes its name from a reference in T.S. Eliot's play The Cocktail Party, is a weekly webcast set to debut at the Frankfurt Book Fair in early October. "Our show is about the joy of reading," said founder Giovanna Calvino, a professor of Italian and comparative literature at New York University and daughter of the late writer Italo Calvino. Notables from the literary and arts community talk about books in three-minute episodes, each focusing on a specific theme and filmed in a different locale. In a video about the show, Calvino described it as having "the look of a Vogue magazine spread but the substance of the New York Review of Books."

Titles across the board are up for discussion, from fiction and poetry to science and pop culture, including new releases and backlist--reflecting the variety of books that can be found on people's nightstands at any given time. "The goal of Amateur Thursdays is to be insightful and fun, not necessarily topical," explained Calvino. The emphasis of the show is on the reader's perspective, and even guest authors chat about other writers' creations rather than their own. Like novelist Stefan Merrill Block, who--along with his pug, Chachi--is taking part in a conversation at the New York Review of Books about J.R. Ackerley's My Dog Tulip and the animated film adaptation.

The canine-inspired episode is one of three to be screened at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The other two shows feature poets on trapeze discussing Rimbault and soirée attendees on the topic of seduction. The latter episode takes place at the New York City home of Grazia D'Annunzio, a correspondent for Italian Vogue, with author Uzodinma Iweala and others ruminating on Kierkegaard's Diary of a Seducer and The Pickup Artist by Mystery.

The trio of inaugural web casts will be available for viewing on AmateurThursdays.com in mid-October. Before they're made public, early supporters of the venture will receive a preview. A fundraising campaign through the website Kickstarter.com earlier this year garnered more than $9,000 to fund the first three episodes. Upcoming shows are slated to be filmed at the Frankfurt Book Fair and stateside at Manhattan's Strand Book Store.

The call for video reviews is a way to actively engage viewers with Amateur Thursdays and create added excitement for the show's premiere. Among the titles recommended so far are Madame Bovary, On the Origin of Species and Edmund Gosse's Father and Son. "By asking readers to talk on camera about their favorite classic, we get something more than we would by just reading their review," Calvino said. "You can have a crush on someone you see on the subway because of the book they're reading, even though you know nothing else about them."--Shannon McKenna Schmidt

 

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