Browsing Area Boook of the Week, February 27, 2012.

When the Thrill is Gone by Walter Mosley.

Library Call Number: PS3563.O88456W45 2011
          From Publisher’s Weekly: Mosley fills his third thriller featuring New York City PI Leonid McGill (after Known to Evil) with insights even deeper than the mysteries McGill is trying to solve. Chrystal Tyler, a potential new client, tells McGill that she's afraid her billionaire husband is having an affair and may kill her. While McGill realizes the woman is lying, he needs the case and agrees to see what he can do to make her husband back off. Meanwhile, McGill's wife of 24 years, Katrina, is having an affair; his favorite son, Twill, has a new scam working; and longtime boxing mentor Gordo Tallman is living in his apartment, fighting cancer. Then Harris Vartan, a dangerous organized crime figure, asks a favor that will lead McGill on a journey of self-discovery.
          Readers will encounter the full panoply of complex Mosley characters, from deceitful women to ruthless killers, but it's the often surprising bonds of love and family that lift this raw, unsentimental novel.

Library Video of the Week, October 3, 2011.

Annie Hall, Starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Directed by Woody Allen. (Released 1977.) Library Call Number: PN1995.9.C55A55 1998.

        Woody Allen had made several previous, funny, but uneven movies before Annie Hall came along and gave him his groove. Winner of three Academy Awards—for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress—the movie follows Allen’s semiautobiographical character, comedian Alvy Singer, and his relationship with Annie Hall, played by Keaton.  Full of asides, small, interesting vignettes, and awkward but poignant moments, their romance from beginning to end illustrates a point in time in the decade of the 1970’s, New York, and the personae of two people who don’t quite fit the time and place in which they find themselves.  Along with Manhattan, this is one of Allen’s best early films, rated #140 on the IMDB’s list of all-time great movies.

It is often referred to as a film that captured the difficulties of love in the 70’s and apparently did strike a chord worldwide—it won best Foreign Film that year in Germany, Spain and Denmark, and was nominated for best Foreign Film in France.