About David Benioff

You may not have heard of David Benioff, but you’ve probably seen, or at least heard of one of his movies: Troy, The Kite Runner or X-Men Origins: Wolverine. David Benioff is probably best known for his career as a screenwriter, although he has written several critically acclaimed books, novels The 25th Hour and City of Thieves and a collection of short stories, When the Nines Roll Over. Benioff was born in New York City in 1970 and attended Dartmouth College, the University of California Irvine and Trinity College in Dublin. He worked as a high school teacher, a bouncer and a DJ before his writing career took off with the publication of The 25th Hour.

David Benioff spent years working on his latest novel, City Of Thieves. Contrary to what many people think, the book is not a memoir, even though the main character, Lev, is telling the story to his grandson, David, who happens to be a writer. Benioff says that the book is “99.99% fiction” and encourages readers to “take everything between the two covers with a big dose of salt.” That being said, before writing the book, he traveled to St. Petersburg and did extensive research there, visiting many of the sites that are featured in the book, to ensure that the story was historically accurate.

Benioff lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actress Amanda Peet, and their daughter. To learn more about him and his work, check out this interview.

About City of Thieves

The Featured Book of the Month for May is City of Thieves by David Benioff.

Set during the Siege of Leningrad in the winter of 1941, City of Thieves follows the story of Lev Beniov, a seventeen-year old Russian boy whose life changes forever when, driven by desperation, he was caught looting the body of a German paratrooper in the street. Lev is arrested and thrown in a jail cell with Kolya, a young army deserter, and together they wait to face certain death in front of the firing squad.

However, Lev and Kolya are granted a reprieve when an NKVD colonel needs a favor. The colonel’s daughter is getting married in a week and his wife has her heart set on having a wedding cake. The colonel is sure that the young thief and deserter will be able to find the missing ingredient - a dozen eggs. If they succeed, they will win their freedom. If they fail, they will be left to die.

Lev and Kolya set out on the journey to find eggs in a city where the citizens have resorted to cannibalism and eating “library candy”, made of melted glue from book bindings. City of Thieves is the story of their desperate quest, where they are in constant danger from the Germans, their own countrymen and the harsh Russian winter, and it’s also the story of the friendship that Lev and Kolya form along the way. Do they find the eggs and make it back in time for the wedding? Check City of Thieves out at your local branch to find out!

About Marcus Luttrell

Marcus Luttrell always wanted to be a Navy SEAL. He and his twin brother Morgan were born in Huntsville, Texas in 1975, and his parents were hard workers with high expectations of their sons. At the age of 14 Marcus began training for the SEALs with former U.S. Army Special Forces soldier Billy Shelton, who often trained young men aspiring to join the military.

In 1999 Luttrell joined the U.S Navy and began Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training with Class 226 in Coronado, California. In his first round of training he fractured his femur, but returned as soon as his injury healed. After serving in Iraq for two years, he was deployed to Afghanistan, where he and Seal Team 10 would begin Operation Redwing in 2005.

Read this article to learn more about Marcus Luttrell's story, or better yet, see him in person at the Main Library. He will discuss the experiences detailed in his book on Tuesday, May 12th at 7:00 p.m. in the Main Library Reading Garden Lounge. Afterwards Mr. Luttrell will be available for book signings and Lone Survivor will be available for purchase. We hope to see you there!

About Lone Survivor

The Featured Book of the Month for April is Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10 by Marcus Luttrell.

In late June 2005 four U.S. Navy SEALs embark on a reconnaissance mission to gather intelligence on a brutal al Qaeda leader garrisoned by Taliban fighters. Within 24 hours, after navigating the rugged terrain from their base in northern Afghanistan to the Pakistani border, only one of them would remain alive.

This is the story of U.S. Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, the fire team leader and lone survivor of Operation Redwing, and the impossible decision he and his teammates were forced make that ended in a battle which cost the greatest number of lives in Navy SEAL history. For four days, Luttrell, badly wounded and presumed dead, courageously fought off six more al Qaeda assassins and crawled for seven miles through the mountains until he was rescued by a Pashtun tribe.

Luttrell's description of the merciless training he endured to become a SEAL, followed by the harrowing account of the battle in Afghanistan that almost cost him his life, make Lone Survivor an excellent read. Check it out at your local branch, and be on the lookout for more information about Marcus Luttrell's upcoming visit to the Library.

About The Geography of Bliss

The author, Eric Weiner, calls The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World, "a travelogue of ideas" and a "philosophical self-help humorous travel memoir." Weiner, a former NPR foreign correspondent, searches the world for the unheralded happy places, such as Iceland, Bhutan, Switzerland, India, and Thailand to name a few. All told, he looks at more than three-dozen countries assessing their happiness potential in a lighthearted survey that includes profiles of such locales as the American shores, glacial Iceland, and the Bhutan jungles.

In general, the Dutch are happy, the Romanians aren't, and we here in the good ole US are somewhere in between. Thailand, in fact, has a Gross Domestic Happiness Index that the government established to ensure fun is had by all. On the other end of the happy spectrum are the wealthy Qatar citizens who lead unhappy lives in a "gilded sandbox."

Weiner becomes involved with the citizens of these happy/not-so-happy countries. He eats rotten shark meat in Iceland, visits strip clubs in Bangkok, and smokes Moroccan hashish in Rotterdam, all in hopes of making the reader happier.

From The Geography of Bliss:

"With our words, we subconsciously conflate geography and happiness. We speak of searching for happiness, of finding contentment, as if these were locations in an atlas, actual places that we could visit if only we had the proper map and the right navigational skills. Anyone who has taken a vacation to, say, some Caribbean island and had flash through their mind the uninvited thought 'I could be happy here' knows what I mean."

So, where is the happiest place in the world? You'll just have to read the book to find out.

About Eric Weiner

Eric Weiner always wanted to be a foreign correspondent, getting his wish in 1993 when he became NPR's first full-time correspondent in India. Over the course of his career, he has reported from more than 30 countries, "most of them profoundly unhappy," he says. He spent time in Iraq during the Saddam Hussein era, and in Afghanistan in 2001 when the Taliban fell. As a journalist he reported on war and its results (refugees, war orphans, etc.), and in general sought out the unhappy.

He has worked as a correspondent for NPR in New York, Miami and Washington, D.C. as well. In addition to his time with NPR, he was a reporter for the New York Times and was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He was also part of an NPR team of reporters that won the 1994 Peabody award for their investigation into the tobacco industry. He now lives in the Washington area with his wife and daughter.

He was a self-proclaimed grump (see subtitle) before writing The Geography of Bliss, but his outlook changed afterwards by accepting the simple Thai notion of "mai pen lai" which basically means, just let it go.

If you'd like to learn more about Eric Warner, check out his website.

Related Reading for The Soloist

If The Soloist piqued your interest in finding similar books, you'll find plenty of possibilities in the On the Same Page website. Here's a selection of nonfiction titles:

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness by Elyn R. Saks. Saks describes her battle with schizophrenia.

Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff. A journalist’s account of his teen son’s meth addiction.

The Outsider: A Journey into My Father’s Struggle with Madness by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer. Lachenmeyer was nine when his father was struck by schizophrenia; after his father’s death, the son retraced the father’s life during the years of their estrangement.

Joe Gould’s Secret by Joseph Mitchell. In the early twentieth century, Gould left his wealthy family to live on the streets of New York City.

And here are some fiction titles:

The Caveman’s Valentine by George Dawes Green
Romulus Ledbetter, a Juilliard graduate and former mental patient who lives in a cave in Manhattan’s Inwood Park, discovers the frozen body of a homeless man.

The Bird of Night by Susan Hill
Octogenarian Harvey Lawson looks back on his relationship with his friend Francis Croft, a poet and genius afflicted with mental illness. A Costa (Whitbread) Award—winning novel.

In the Half Light by Anthony Lawrence
Australian poet James Molloy learns to deal with his schizophrenia while he relates to three different women in his life.