When he’s not writing, you can find Doug Geiling in the backcountry, casting a fly rod in a mountain stream in the hopes of catching one of the river’s wiliest fish: trout. 

A lifelong outdoorsman, Doug has channeled his passion and fondness for trout into a new book, titled Crack for Trout Bums. Behind a charming cover designed by his 9th-grade daughter, Addi, readers can expect to find a story that combines elements of travel writing, science, and nature, with a careful re-telling of the history of trout fish. Intermixed with personal anecdotes from Doug’s travels across the American West in search of these picky critters of the creek, the book pays homage to both the fish and the beautiful places they live. 

The book isn’t a how-to guide or an excuse for him to boast about his greatest catches.

Doug Geiling on one of his many fishing trips.

Doug admitted, “I’m a hack, who doesn’t know the fly names. I fish to be out there”. He’s a man who has visited nearly two dozen countries, been to nearly every state in America, and has racked up enough experiences to write about anything. So why focus on Trout?

When I asked him, he summed it up simply, “They live in the most beautiful places. You can’t catch a trout without going somewhere beautiful.” 

He’s not wrong. As a fly fisherman myself, my fishing excursions have taken me to many stunning places that I’d likely never have seen if I were not chasing these elusive fish.

 I’ve caught sharks in Florida, hunted bears in Washington, and grew up gigging frogs in Missouri, yet catching brook trout in Clear Creek or cutthroats in the Flat Tops, out of a stream with no name, are experiences that are in a category of their own.

When you dedicate so much time to chasing beautiful fish in beautiful places and decide to write about it, anything other than a beautiful by-product is hard to imagine. If Doug’s passion for trout is any indication, the book is exactly what it sets out to be: a love letter to one of the world’s most commonly sought-after fish, and the beautiful places they inhabit.

Like journalism like this? Consider becoming a sustaining supporter — and get our print edition delivered to your home each month.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. For 25 years, we’ve told the truth — your support helps us keep doing it for the next four and beyond. Administrations come and go. Our team stays, ready to lead no matter who’s in charge.

The post You Can’t Catch a Trout Without Going Somewhere Beautiful appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Langdon Cage didn’t set out to write a book; he just wanted to educate himself. But at some point in that process, he realized he had stumbled onto a story that demanded to be told. That story, at its center, examines the relationship between the Trump family and a little-understood project called World Liberty Financial (WLFI) — a blockchain-based financial platform that has raised both eyebrows and questions since its launch.

In September, Cage self-published WLFI: We’ve Lost Financial Independence, a work he describes as a “prequel to our current reality.”

Cage, a local Erie author, says the project started with nothing more than curiosity.

“About a year ago, […] I started to learn about Bitcoin,” Cage told Yellow Scene Magazine. “As I was getting into this the Trump family announced this World Liberty Financial project. I said to myself, this sounds like more than just a coin launch, so I kind of wanna pay attention to it and see how they’re gonna twist it.”

That curiosity turned into investigation. What Cage found, through months of combing through public documents, blockchain data, and financial disclosures, was a tangle of transactions and relationships that seemed to point to something larger than a typical cryptocurrency venture.

“The information kept coming in and I was tracking how things were being connected, who was getting paid, and who was doing what,” he said.

Eventually, the scale of what he was uncovering forced a change in how he told the story. “It became too big of a story to follow along in bullet points or headlines,” Cage said. “To make it accessible, and understandable,” he decided to write it in a narrative format.

According to Cage, WLFI is about far more than cryptocurrency. For him, it’s essential, that readers grasp the broader narrative about power and wealth in what he sees as a new kind of digital government.

“I have a theory,” Cage said, “that World Liberty Financial is a central bank to the sort of government that they are unto themselves, which can query favors worldwide.”

To be clear, Cage doesn’t consider himself an investigative journalist in the traditional sense. “I wasn’t hanging around courthouses and didn’t do any interviews for the book,” he said. “I was full on gathering publicly available information but I was piecing things together, making connections, and then doing the math to see how the mechanics worked.”

That math, and what it revealed, is what stunned him most.

“When you finally see the math,” Cage said, “it explains what’s called the liquidity loop […] they are using their own money to fund a company. That counts as a loan which they can earn interest on, which they can use to purchase and print more money […] It is a complete, constant money-making system.”

In other words, Cage argues that WLFI operates like a self-sustaining engine for wealth. He describes the system as a closed circuit where money circulates internally, sometimes with small injections from retail investors that keep the system alive.

WLFI: We’ve Lost Financial Independence, he said, “is the story that sets you up to understand the new government that they have created in which they can benefit financially.”

While the book is finished, Cage’s work continues. He publishes frequent updates and new findings on his Substack, WLFireside, where he keeps tracing what he calls “the receipts.”

“At the very least,” he said, “if you can track the receipts, then at least someday, maybe there’s accountability. Right?”

Cage’s book doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but it asks readers to start paying attention to the questions.

The post Langdon Cage Pulls Back the Curtain on “World Liberty Financial” appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Phil Caragol says his newest book will attempt to bring his two clashing identities together. “This [book] shows a different side of me. And for people who went to CU, they’ll get some real first-hand account of what it was like to go to CU and live in Boulder in the first half of the 1970’s.”

There’s the local celebrity, “Buffalo Phil,” a viking-helmeted CU fanatic. And then there’s Caragol the writer, now stepping into the spotlight with the publication of his memoir-in-vignettes, “The Blunder Years.” Reconciling those two personas wasn’t easy. At times when he looked in the mirror and saw his black and gold beard, his beer koozies, and eye makeup, it was difficult for him to feel like a ‘real’ writer. “I asked myself at one point, is this a good look for a serious author?” he laughed.

The book darts from his childhood on Long Island through Boulder’s hippie heyday to the beginning of his ad-man years in New York City. Written in short, skit-like buzrsts, the style mirrors the “scatterbrained” label teachers once gave him. In it, Caragol recalls the national unity he felt as a child cracking after JFK’s assassination, and how the upheavals of the ’60s echo the uncertainty of today.

His first attempt at writing, a sprawling dystopian thriller, collapsed under its own weight. “I got maybe about a third of the way through and there were so many subplots, so many characters that I just got tangled up in it,” he said. “I stepped back and I said, okay. Mark Twain once said, ‘write what you know’. What do I know? I know what it was like growing up.”  

That decision gave him both purpose and momentum. “Our lives are so serious right now,” he said. “My readers helped me […] to realize that people are remembering how to laugh again when they read this book.”

Caragol has been making people laugh since his ad-agency days in New York and San Francisco. He once launched The San Francisco Comicle, an absurdist annual parody of city life that ran for 15 years and even landed him on the local evening news. After three decades in big cities, he and his wife Susie returned to Boulder, her long-promised reward after his 25-year “urban tour.”

What he found upon his return was a town very different from the “magical” Boulder of the 1970s. “Everybody got along,” he said, “we were accountable. We were responsible. I think it may have been a bubble.” Today, he worries about congestion, sameness, and less room for civil dialogue.

Even with his worries, he still thinks that Boulder County has much to offer, “Culture, check. Creativity, check. Those major careers, check. And work-life balance, check, check, check, check, check.”

Even as Buffalo Phil, he’s kept his independence, politely rejecting CU’s invitations to make him an official mascot. He wants to keep his own schedule and engage with the team on his own terms with a beer in hand. “I’m indie,” he said.

Caragol hopes his October 22 Boulder Bookstore reading can help fuse his twin personas permanently; the crazed buffs fan with a dyed beard and the satirist with the sharp eye and alligator grin.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post “Buffalo Phil” Caragol: From CU Superfan to Memoirist appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

When I first heard “Shakespeare” and “prevent youth violence” in the same sentence, I did a double take. The two aren’t exactly synonymous. Shakespeare’s plays often end in tragedy, so how could they possibly serve as tools for preventing violence?

A few days before her event at the Boulder Bookstore, I called Dr. Amanda Giguere to find out. Over the course of our conversation, she described the origins of her new book, Shakespeare & Violence Prevention: A Practical Handbook for Educators, the years of research behind it, and the personal stakes she feels in the work. Her enthusiasm came through in every sentence.

Giguere holds both an MA and PhD in theatre history and criticism from the University of Colorado Boulder, where she is now Director of Outreach for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF). She works closely with the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV) and its director, Dr. Beverly Kingston, on the festival’s “Shakespeare in the Schools Tour: Shakespeare and Violence Prevention,” launched in 2011.

A CSF Perfomance of Twelfth Night

The tour began during a peak in national attention to bullying. Over time, it has evolved alongside rising concerns about school violence in Colorado. According to Safe2Tell, the number of reports made in April 2025 increased by 15% compared to the previous school year. 

CSF’s research identifies five key themes in violence prevention, all focused on strategies to prevent youth violence:

1. Violence is preventable

2. Explore root causes

3. Address risk and protective factors

4. Build a positive school climate

5. Upstanders make a difference

“Live and deal with others better,” Giguere said, summarizing the program’s mission.

In roleplay activities, students speak directly to Shakespeare’s characters, practicing how to intervene when they witness harm. Research shows that when a peer intervenes, bullying stops within 10 seconds about 57% of the time. Giguere describes the program as “solution-focused and student-generated,” a combination she believes drives its impact. Since 2011, the tour has reached more than 140,000 Colorado students, about 10,000 per year, and now she hopes to share its approach more widely.

The accessibility to Shakespeare’s work in schools was what led her to gear the book toward educators. His plays are already being taught in the classroom, so why not take it a step further and begin a conversation about how violence could have been prevented in his work? 

“It’s about translating research into practice and putting the cutting-edge research about violence prevention into the hands of the people who are going to have the most impact. Those are teachers. They’re working directly with the next generation,” she explained. 

Still, I asked, why Shakespeare specifically?

“In Shakespeare’s plays, we see ups and downs, highs and lows. We see people mistreating one another. We see how harm can escalate and lead to war and violence, and brutality, and it can ultimately lead to dehumanization. I think we can use the plays, and maybe any art form, as tools to understand our own time, our own world, our own place.” 

Giguere continued, “In theatre, transformation is always possible. Just as we see an actor put on a role and become a king in one moment and then change their bodies and costumes and become a commoner in the next, we know that that same kind of change that happens in the theatre is possible in the violence prevention world.”

A few days later, I saw that transformation in action. At the Boulder Bookstore, every chair was filled before Giguere began her first-ever author event. She sat in a black chair at the front of the room, fielding questions with warmth, inviting the audience to use their “Shakespeare voices,” and weaving her deep knowledge of theatre and prevention into each answer. Many in the audience were students, colleagues, or longtime friends but all shared a love for theatre.

Her book reflects that connection, with a prologue, interludes, and an epilogue framing examinations of eight plays: three tragedies and five comedies. Each chapter pairs a plot synopsis with an exploration of how violence prevention themes emerge in the text, moving from the overt brutality of Macbeth to the subtler tensions of The Tempest.

“Violence is a spectrum, but in any form, it is preventable,” she emphasized. 

While the included practical roleplay exercises make the book a resource for educators, Giguere hopes it reaches parents, community leaders, and anyone interested in helping to prevent youth violence.

Photo from CU

“As a mom, […] I want my kids to grow up knowing how to speak up for others, knowing how to advocate for themselves, knowing how to understand what’s making their communities tick, and knowing how to care for others.” Giguere shared.

Now that the program’s ideas exist in book form, she believes their reach can extend far beyond the classroom.

“As long as we continue to examine the root causes of violence and the roles that we play in preventing it, we can encourage forward motion in violence prevention.” 

Shakespeare & Violence Prevention: A Practical Handbook for Educators is available in paperback and e-book. More about Amanda Giguere can be found on her website.

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post How Shakespeare Is Helping Educators Prevent Youth Violence appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Brad Feld has been a leading figure in the startup community for over 15 years. After seeing his own share of successes and misses, Feld has a very comprehensive understanding of what makes a good startup ecosystem work.

The Boulder-based Feld is now sharing those insights in his new book Give First: The Power of Mentorship.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” Feld, the co-founder of the venture capital firms Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital, and the business Techstars said.

Feld said “The concept of ‘Give First’ was actually something that first appeared in a book I wrote in 2012 (Startup Communities).”

That construct is centered around how to build “long-term, powerful startup communities by putting energy into a system without defining upfront what you’re going to get back.” Or to put it another way, “it’s the idea of giving before you get. ”

He is quick to point out that the ideas in Give First “are a philosophy, not a religion.” It is not simply pure altruism either. Giving First as a base concept is about taking a situation that has traditionally been very direct and looking at it in a completely different way. 

While Feld has been working over these concepts for almost a decade, he indicated that the current business environment provided a push to codify them in print. “In this moment in time we have a culture, in both business and politically, that is extremely transactional. One where I would suggest that you find a clear winner and a clear loser in even simple scenarios.”

A Selfish System

Entrepreneur Brad Feld

“This book offers a different way to approach systems, it’s very different then what we are seeing modeled day in and day out,” Feld said. 

 He explains the basic concept as “You can’t say if I do A and then B and then C, I’ll get to D. That’s because what happens is you do A and it generates Q and then Q becomes the input into the thing where the output is 27.” When Giving First you worry more about what’s happening in the moment and less about getting to D. This approach also in many ways creates a level playing field for startups. In Giving First, the privileged aren’t working to exclusively connect and mentor the privileged because there is a longer-term outlook to the relationship. Benefits will develop, but they won’t often be immediate. Under this outlook Feld admits that at its core “Give First can be fundamentally selfish.” 

The goal is to use this philosophy to create a “relationship dynamic.” 

“One thing I really wanted to bring out was that in business, particularly in startups, the mentor and mentee can both benefit from the relationship” Feld said. “It should be a positive sum experience.”

The Boulder Thesis

“I believe you should be able to build a startup anywhere in the world and today we’re seeing that happen. Every startup community and geography is defined by the area where it is located,” Feld said. “I didn’t move to Boulder to be in New York City, I moved to Boulder because I wanted to be part of Boulder.”

After being involved in startup communities around the country, Feld began to notice patterns directing why some saw more streamlined success while others were rife with churn. He classified these tenets for success in The Boulder Thesis, named after the thriving startup community in his own backyard.

In the Boulder Thesis, Feld states that a strong startup ecosystem needs  “Founders who will lead. A long-term view of at least 20 years. An inclusive, welcoming environment that includes anyone who wants to participate. Activities and events that foster engagement and collaboration.” And he ties all of this directly into the concepts in Give First. “If you want to get things moving in your startup community, all of the founders have to be willing to put energy into the community without defining upfront what they’re going to get out of it.”

The Give First concept has relevance not just to the world of venture capital, but to other businesses, organizations, and even individual actions as well. “You want to get something out of an interaction,” Feld admits, “but you just never know when, from whom, over what time period or what other considerations may come into play.”

Feld says that it’s important to remember that part of this process, of any process, is failure. “Doing anything new is just a series of experiments. You have a hypothesis, you run an experiment. Most of the time the experiment fails. But the key is to learn something from what happened, change your hypothesis and then run the experiment again.”

It hit hard when, after 31 years, a beloved local publication closed its doors. Independent journalism in Colorado just got a little smaller. And a lot more vulnerable.

In Boulder County, only one locally-owned, independent news platform remains: Yellow Scene Magazine. We don’t answer to a corporate board. We’re not backed by a hedge fund. We answer and report to our readers..

The future isn’t found in selling out or corporate donors. It’s in community.

Help us keep unbought, unbossed journalism alive and delivered to your mailbox.

Become a sustaining supporter for just $8/month:

Democracy needs journalism more than ever. We’ve been telling the truth for 24 years. Your support helps us keep telling it for at least the next four years.

The post ‘Give First’: A Boulder Entrepreneur’s Philosophy for Success appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Megan Walrod, a women’s empowerment coach, seasoned speaker, and self-proclaimed lover of mermaids, recently released her debut novel It’s Always Been Me. It’s an emotional tale that follows Sabina, a woman confronting a crumbling marriage and the slow loss of her grandmother. With the guidance of mythic Selkies, a paintbrush in hand, and grief in her gut, Sabina begins to reclaim her voice—and her life.

I met Walrod on a sunny afternoon at a café tucked into the west end of Pearl Street. She smiled warmly as I joined her. In the spirit of abundance, she paid for one cacao drink but was gifted two. It felt like the universe already knew what kind of conversation we were about to have. We talked about her new book, of course, but also about the deep inner work she believes women must do to reclaim their own narratives, the mystical symbols that have guided her, and how Boulder, with all its beauty and baggage, became both a backdrop and a mirror for her healing.

Walrod’s love of storytelling began in a second-grade creative writing class in her hometown in New York. She never imagined her path would wind its way to Boulder, Colorado let alone lead her through one of the most transformative chapters of her life. After earning her Master’s Degree in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology at Naropa University, she faced what she called an implosion: the collapse of her marriage and the internal reckoning that followed.

“Boulder was this place where I have been the most devastated. Losing my sister was devastating. I was devastated, got to grieve, and got to be supported in the beginning of that journey here.

So when Walrod returned to Boulder recently for a reading at the top floor of Boulder Bookstore, several weeks ago it represented a full circle moment for her. She was stepping back into a space that had been a source of both pain and healing. If the weight of the past still burdened her, Walrod didn’t let it show. The room lit up as she arrived, hugging old friends and greeting new readers. There was something magnetic about her presence: grounded, joyful, inviting. She made a point to personally welcome everyone and fostered an atmosphere of warmth and connection. Then, as the crowd settled, she began to speak, first about the novel, and then about the truth underneath it.

“I lived this story here. This is where my husband came to me and said, ‘I want to explore something with this other woman,” She said.

In many ways, It’s Always Been Me is a retelling of Walrod’s own unraveling and rebirth. Sabina, like Walrod, must decide whether she’ll continue silencing her own needs or finally choose herself. That message about choosing oneself is the foundation of Walrod’s life’s work. For over 16 years, she’s helped women undo what she calls the “good girl programming”, the cultural script that teaches women to shrink themselves, to serve others before daring to dream for themselves. 

Walrod speaks candidly about the emotional toll society’s expectations take on women. The promise of a “happily ever after” often leaves women feeling trapped between expectation and desire and ashamed for wanting more than the role they’ve been handed. According to Walrod, that chronic self-sacrifice wears on the spirit and the body. Research shows that women make up 80% of autoimmune disease cases, and many of those conditions have been linked to suppressed emotions and unmet needs.

“When a woman is basing her choices on this usual archetype, there’s frustration, there’s guilt, there’s always the anxiety of ‘Is this all it is? I should be grateful, but I feel completely desperate, like there’s more for me.’ There’s that constant pull because so many women feel ashamed or guilty, so we don’t talk about it as much.”

Now on a cross-country tour with her book, Walrod is bringing that message to readers in Colorado, California, and New York. Her mission is simple but radical: Help women identify what they genuinely desire and give them permission to begin pursuing it before it’s too late.

“Why are we coping when we could be living?” she asked, smiling again. “That’s my whole thing—authoring your own life. Break free of the freaking narrative and what society says.”

It’s Always Been Me is available in paperback and e-book. More about Megan Walrod and her mission can be found on her website. 

The post Megan Walrod’s Novel Is a Love Letter to Women Who Are Done Shrinking appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

In a country where more and more once unpopulated landscapes are taken over by apartment buildings and skyscrapers, how do we continue to coexist with wildlife? Especially when the wildlife in question is the grizzly. Creatures who were born to roam—and fight. After all, brown bears evolved in fields and open spaces, according to Grizzly Confidential, meaning in order to survive, they had to stand their ground and fight for their food, resources, cubs, and lives. And with both males and females weighing up to 600 and 350 pounds, respectively, with the capability of running up to 40 miles per hour, they’re likely going to win.

But when wildlife and civilization seem to continuously bump into each other, how do we make that work? Coexisting with bears is a modern conundrum with no easy answer. Yet Kevin Grange tackles this issue head-on in his new book Grizzly Confidential: An Astounding Journey into the Secret Life of North America’s Most Fearsome Predator.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Kevin Grange l Jackson Hole, WY (@kevin.m.grange)

Readers will likely find Grange’s starting place of his journey into the life of bears relatable. Like many, Grange found bears fascinating as a child, but that interest took a back seat to life. And as an adult he still had an interest but also a deep fear of bruins. 

The first chapter opens with Grange attending a human-bear conflict relationship conference. It sets the scene for the bear’s situation in North America and gives a sobering look at how even humans with the best of intentions play a role in creating so-called “problem” or “nuisance” bears. (Anyone who used that phrase at the conference, Grange explains, was quickly corrected with a blast of an airhorn). It helps 

From there, the author embarks on a journey, exploring everything from classes on how to best deploy bear spray, teaching children bear safety in the remote Alaskan village of Akhiok, the dark side of for-profit wildlife parks, and even talks with researchers trying to understand what happens to a bears body during hibernation so they can potentially help humans suffering with diabetes, heart disease, and other ailments. Grange eventually makes his way to the remote Alaskan peninsula, where humans can visit but it’s very much clear they are in the bear’s territory, not the other way around.

Grange takes a frank look at the state of bears and human-bear relations in North America. He doesn’t shy away from the myriad of issues facing these important giants. But Grange also gives the reader something I think is missing in a lot of environmental stories: hope.

It may sound cheesy, but think about it. There’s no shortage of books, movies, articles, and podcasts talking about the irreversible destruction of the planet. But if you don’t give readers hope then why even try to make it better? Instead, Grange gives readers a deeper understanding of these creatures through his incredible journey into their lives. And with that newfound knowledge readers are armed with both small and large changes they can make in their own lives to help ensure grizzlies will be a part of our landscapes for generations to come.

The post Book Review: Grizzly Confidential; A Deep Dive into How We Can Learn to Coexist with These Fierce Predators. appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Blurred Words, a new bookstore with a speakeasy bar, opens up in Fort Collins, offering a tranquil spot to sip and read

Welcome to Blurred Words…an introvert’s dream bar where gently used books are your friends and chatting is optional.

The new business, a bookstore coupled with a speakeasy bar, pays homage to the 1920s era, hurling customers back to a time period marked by prohibition, jazz, and “The Great Gatsby.” Located near the Colorado State University’s campus in Fort Collins, Blurred Words opened its doors to customers in late April. While here, visitors can purchase books at a discounted price and sip on vintage throwback cocktails, many gin-based, including Orange Blossom and Pimm’s Cup. 

“There is a need for more late night places like Blurred Words where somebody could come to a bookstore that is open after hours, where you could get a nice cocktail in a quiet, jazzy lounge, not a screaming sports bar,” Liz Sanders, owner of Blurred Words, said. “There’s definitely a need for those kinds of environments, and I’m very glad to be one providing that.” 

As customers walk in, they’re greeted with shelves of secondhand books from a wide range of genres, including a mix of old and modern classics, collected from library sales and donations. Memorabilia from the 1920s such as archived newspaper articles and a Remington player piano decorate the fluorescently lit space.

The bartender serves customers their drinks in teacups, a sneaky technique speakeasies often used to hide their bootlegged alcohol during the 1920s prohibition in case a police raid occurred. Blurred Words also sells non-alcoholic beverages and snacks such as biscotti and cookies.

At Blurred Words, drinks are served in teacups, a method used during the prohibition era to hide illegal imbibing. Photo by
Shen Wu Tan.

Kelci Lutz, a Brighton, Colorado resident who visited Blurred Words for the first time in June, popped in to search for used books. At first, she didn’t realize she could order alcoholic beverages as well.

“I like to donate used books. I like to buy used books,” Lutz said. “I think the fact that there is a speakeasy is just a little bonus. I mean, I can sit around and read books all day long, but add a little alcohol or some coffee, I can do this all day long.”

Another first-time customer, Fort Collins resident Cora Contreras, ventured in around 8 p.m. She wanted to visit a bookstore; however, many of them were already closed. But then she noticed that Blurred Words was still open.

“I think it’s really cool,” Contreras said. “I don’t know of many other speakeasies in Fort Collins, except for the Social. That’s really well known, so it’s barely a speakeasy. And I think we could use some more used bookstores around so I think that’s really neat…. I’ve never seen a combo speakeasy and bookstore before.”

Although Liz mostly remained loyal to the 1920s-era theme, she did deviate from it and indulged herself slightly.

In the back room near the bar’s counter stands a wooden door carved with lion emblems.

What’s behind these doors?

You guessed it: Narnia — or a room that honors the fantasy world birthed from the imagination of British author C.S. Lewis. The door mimics the wardrobe that serves as the entrance to Narnia. Inside the room lies a long table situated in front of a wall adorned with images of vegetation and eroded, ancient stone structures. To the right, a map of Narnia hangs on the wall. To the left sits an old-timey desk with a small metal lion statue perched on top.

Blurred Words has a speakeasy bar toward the back end of the business. Photo by Shen Wu Tan.

The room is suited to host small gatherings of people, part of Liz’s efforts to utilize her business as a way to build community.

Now that the business is open and operating, Liz has hosted a number of events including board game nights and book club talks. The business could possibly host other events such as writing group meetups, live music, and paint and sip evenings in the future.

On the bookstore side of the business, Liz would like to start carrying more published works about Colorado and written by local authors at some point.

“…She started with the idea of ‘I want to open up a bookstore, and I want to add a speakeasy to that because why not?’” Matt Sanders, Liz’s husband, said. “People love reading and cocktails, so [it’s] a good combination. And I couldn’t fault her for that… My wife had a great vision, and I was just glad that I could help her make it come to life.”

“I’ve probably not seen her more excited about doing something than trying to get this business up and running and going,” he added. “This store is kind of her baby.”

Owning a bookstore has been a lifelong desire for Liz, a lover of words who’s surrounded herself with literature over the years working in libraries and bookstores.

“Sometimes, it doesn’t feel real,” Liz said. “It’s like, ‘This is mine?’ Huh. I really can sit here and read my book while I wait for people to come buy stuff, which is the dream by the way.”

The next step for Liz is to ramp up marketing for the new business whether that’s putting out a sidewalk sign or handing out bookmarks to attract more foot traffic and a steadier flow of customers.

Blurred Words is located at 1205 W. Elizabeth St., Unit I in Fort Collins.

The post Booze and… Books? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Tom Shanahan’s book tells a previously neglected story, bringing to light true champions of football integration

In the midst of their locker-room celebration of Iowa State in the 1961 College Football Playoffs, the University of Colorado Boulder Buff’s chose to take a stand.

“We didn’t care if we stayed in Miami Beach, but wherever we stayed, we were staying together and eating together as a team, or we weren’t going at all,” said Joe Romig, 1961 University of Colorado Boulder football team captain. (Shanahan, 2024, pp.77).

They explained to head coach, Sonny Grandelious, and Orange Bowl officials that they would only attend the 1961 Orange Bowl in Miami if treated as a team, not as Blacks and Whites.

Shanahan’s book, “The Right Thing To Do,” gives a detailed account of the Buffs’ stance against segregation in the ‘61 Orange Bowl and brings justice to many historic moments that the media has since failed to cover.

Shanahan covers the history of increasing Black football players, crediting Michigan State head coach Duffy Daughtery for starting a “domino effect” in the mid 1950s while addressing myths about who were the real pioneers of football integration — including debunking the story that Alabama head coach Paul William “Bear” Bryant was a leader in integration.

The book documents how Daughtery ignored quotas for the number of Black players and established a fully integrated team, complete with Black team captains. In doing so, Daughtery created a blueprint that was spread coast to coast by those who learned under his leadership, including trailblazers Sherman Lewis and Jimmy Raye.

Shanahan walks readers through stories of football integration history that previously have gone unrecognized, living only by word of mouth while the media turned a blind eye. 

“I was fortunate to meet Jimmy Raye’s son and I said, ‘you know I don’t think the story of the football Underground Railroad has ever been properly told.’ The main reason I realized this was because the sports media of the 60’s generally avoided writing about race, so these moments went unrecognized,” said Shanahan. 

Shanahan’s detailed accounts of these moments brings justice to stories that have been previously overlooked.

The Boulder Bookstore held a book signing for “The Right Thing to Do” on May 7, 2024, where Shanahan sat alongside College Football Hall of Famer Joe Roemig and former CU Assistant Athletic Director John Meadows — both members of the ‘61 team that threatened to boycott the 1961 Orange Bowl in support of their Black teammates.

Shanahan is dedicated to spreading the story of “the true pioneers of college football integration” and emphasized that this is not just a story about CU Boulder or Duffy Daughtery and his disciples. 

“I want to make the country realize that this is a national story. It was just never properly told,” said Shanahan.

Shanahan’s book is a work of historic importance, giving credit where it is well overdue to the heroic sports figures responsible for the integration of college football in America.

Shanahan’s previous novel, “Raye of Light,” inspired the NFL360 documentary “The Indelible Legacy of Jimmy Raye.” Raye was the first Black quarterback from the South to win a national championship and later went on to be a pioneering coach in college football and the NFL. 

Shanahan is now in the preliminary stages of building a documentary inspired by “The Right Thing to Do” alongside Colorado producer Vohn Regensburger. 

The vision for the film is a 4-part docuseries that maps the historical route of college football integration from 1954 through the voices of the individuals who lived it — and they are up against the clock.

“Testimonials are super important for this story, especially as people age, we want to get these stories before they pass on. I think that is an important part of it. We are trying to tell the stories of multiple colleges to capture how integration spread across the country and changed the face of college football forever,” said Regensburger.

Shanahan and Regensburger voiced that CU Boulder and all of their sources have been supportive in this effort and are helping them collect information to tell the story.

“I read a quote recently that said, ‘We have to tell the stories of living history or they fade away. To restore them, they must be told and retold.’ We are taking on this challenge: telling a story that has never been told and must be retold,” Shanahan emphasized.

To purchase “The Right Thing to Do,” view events and updates, visit Shanahan’s website at https://tomshanahan.report.

The post ‘The Right Thing To Do’ Tells Story of Role ‘61 CU Boulder Team Played in Integrating College Football appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Buffalo Beck shares his latest book, his store, and living with amnesia

“No, no it’s a roadside attraction,” Bruce “”Buffalo” Beck had corrected me when I mistakenly referred to his shop, Buffalo’s Last Stand, off I-36 in Cope, Colorado as an antique store. Beck earned the nickname “Buffalo” from his brother who was inspired by P.E.I. Bonewitz’s book Real Magic. Magic might also have had something to with the publishing of his own book as Beck himself admits was a bit of “a fluke, so to say.”

“Tales of the Metal Fisherman” was released March 7th, 2023. The book follows an unwitting narrator, a proverbial “fish out of water,” is new to town and happens on a bar that has the vibe of watching Cheer’s reruns in modern times. Which is to say, it’s hard to believe that a bar like this ever existed – patrons were so closely bonded they felt like family. The character known as the Captain is what gives the bar a beat, a sense of rhythm and movement that brings life to the story as our narrator’s curiosity is what allows Captain to speak upon his bizarre, yet entertaining, experiences.

According to Beck, the writing process in the creation of this book was like buying ice cream at a shop that let you pick the toppings free of charge. As in, once he got the flavor he wanted, he started adding stuff he thought sounded fun. There was a brainstorming session where he and his cousin came with the concept as they had familiarity with: repo men. Then there was the title, and once that was settled, they began adding elements like the cars and kinds of characters that he wanted to see.

As the wicked never rest, so goes Beck working on his second book. However, this time he’s shifting genres. He wants his second book to be CNF, creative nonfiction, whereas “Tales,” while mostly inspired actual stories, was a work of fiction. This second book one might refer to as a herculean undertaking as it aims to cover Beck’s bout with amnesia. As such, he is taking the very first book that he had attempted to write, working title Abracadabra, and adding to it the way coders update code in patches. “The words stay the same,” he said when I asked about the connection between writing and amnesia.

According to Beck, writing helps with his own amnesia both literally and figuratively. The words staying the same means that they tell the same story, and as long as that story is documented, that moment came to be re-remembered and stitched back together.

The second function that writing has in battling amnesia is reminding Beck how the act of writing itself makes him feel, reminding him of the value that it has to him. Beck is still working towards the publication of his next book.

Until then, he awaits customers at his shop, Buffalo’s Last Stand. Which if you’d have him tell it, may just be the most interesting sight to see in Cope, Colorado. “It’s forty-five minutes from nowhere,” he said of his store’s location. He went on to paint his section of Cope with minimal brush strokes, “There’s a phone booth, a park, a post office, and me.”

Beck urges those who follow their curiosities along the path less traveled to come around and see his shop. You’ll recognize the store, not only by the name, but also by the advertisement in the right front window, “Men’s Crisis Center.” The sign is meant to encourage others to come in and talk, which is a “much needed” service from what I’ve been told.

Among the most notable trinkets is the small art gallery that depicts prints and paintings by the likes of Picasso, Dali, and Dr. Seuss. He is also in possession of hand-painted cells used in classic Looney Tunes animations; in addition, he has several buffalo themed wine bottles, postcards and baseball caps, and, for any retro gamers, there are two pinball machines for sale.

If you are interested in getting a copy of “The Metal Fisherman,” you can find it on nantucketebooks.com, or by
calling (720) 459-8761, and, of course, by visiting Beck at Buffalo’s Last Stand.

The post Don’t Call it a Roadside Attraction appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

By Melayna Alicea

“It’s almost like you are in a theater piece where you are both on a stage, watching it, and in the wings simultaneously.” This is how Nina Shope, author of Asylum, described the experience of reading her novel, and I could not agree more.

Winner of the Dzanc Prize for Fiction, Asylum is a historical fiction novel that depicts the dysfunctional relationship between the distinguished neurologist J.M. Charcot and his favored hysteric patient, Augustine. Told with a fragmented, shifting narration, the reader experiences the internal alteration of Augustine, Charcot, and their relationship. 

Asylum is Shope’s first full-length novel, but it is far from her first published piece of literature. Shope has short pieces published in several journals in addition to her first larger work, Hangings, which is a collection of three novellas. 

The inspiration behind Asylum came from Shope’s undergraduate education where she briefly read about Charcot and Augustine. Shocked to discover that there was very little literature written about this topic, Shope decided to research and bring these stories into a new light. 

Focusing on Charcot and Augustine, Asylum immerses the reader into the chaotic experience of a hysteric in an asylum. The story hones in on the experiences of these two particular characters to emphasize the feelings of chaos and isolation. “In the novel, I decided to make the isolation literal,” Shope explained, “I was trying to get at the feeling of isolation.”

The novel begins with Augustine viewing Charcot as a nearly immortal character who holds immense power. She desires him and his attention. This all changes with the introduction of a mysterious lover, M.

M allows Augustine to recognize her abilities and independence. With the help of M, Augustine begins to break free from the physical and emotional hold that Charcot has on her.

Charcot sees Augustine as the answer to his mission of finding the truth behind the disease of hysteria, but with the onset of M, Charcot begins to question his life’s work and crave the attention he once received from Augustine. 

Set in nineteenth-century France, much of Asylum is derived from the historical accounts of the real Augustine, Charcot, and M. However, Shope did not intend to create a completely accurate retelling of the lives of these infamous characters. “One of the reasons I wanted to avoid it (the biography) is I think it has a tendency to deflate everything. Readers have a tendency to look for causation which is what the doctors themselves were doing,” Shope explained. 

Shope desired to bring these characters to life, to give personhood to the woman, Augustine, who has historically been seen as a depiction of disease. Shope takes an objective stance, presenting a 360 view of Charcot, his experiments, and his patient through her fragmented narration and presentation of the internal conflicts of her characters. 

Much of the dialogue within Asylum is directly quoted from the biographical accounts of the real people; however, Shope takes an artistic twist to bring each character to life. One such twist is the characterization of M. Shope decided to make M a shifting, ambiguous character. “I think of M as a shifting identity.” M is neither male nor female and at times represents different aspects of Charcot and Augustine. 

“For people who want to read about the biography they can,” Shope told me. “A lot of the case study parts that talk about who people were are in French and haven’t been translated as far as I know, but the information is out there. I didn’t want to go that route. I wanted to put people in the mystery of this intense experience at the asylum that had all these layers and questions around it and have all those things be real at the same time.”

Shope strategically immerses the reader into the intensity of the experience of a hysteric in the asylum. While reading the novel, I got a sense of obscurity. Reality, imagination, and character identity are blurred throughout. If you like thrillers, mysteries, or books that cause contemplation and reflection, you will enjoy Asylum.

Shope enlightened me on hysteria, the disease that Augustine was diagnosed with. Even though hysteria is no longer a diagnosable condition, many of the common symptoms are still around today. Shope informed me that Conversion Disorder is one of the mental health disorders that include some of the common symptoms of hysteria including paralysis and unexplainable fits. Many of the emotional sides of what was once called hysteria can be found in such conditions as PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder. Because hysteria was such an obscure diagnosis, Shope wanted to avoid placing any specific symptoms onto Augustine outside of what has been recorded from historical sources. “I wanted to give the reader the experience of this kind of jolting emotional spectrum with the disease which goes from over intense agency to disassociation to objectification,” she explained. 

Shope’s own experience with anxiety and panic disorders allowed her to enter into the mind of Augustine, helping the reader to empathize with Augustine and enter into her experiences. “If you’re having something going on in your body that you don’t understand, even if it’s anxiety, whatever’s causing it, you don’t know what it is. The most terrifying experience is being alone in your body, and if you’re surrounded by doctors, it’s people who might really be able to help you if you’re dying, which is what you think at the time.” 

Asylum is an enjoyable, intellectual read that immerses the reader into the chaotic experience of a hysteric in an asylum. Shope does an incredible job of taking the historical records and objectively examining the worldview. She takes the accounts of Augustine and grants an objectified woman dignity, showcasing her individuality and independence and giving voice to a historically silenced woman.

The post Asylum: A Book By Nina Shope That Gives the Hysteric a Voice appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Colorado wordsmiths let loose a barrage of new Colorado-based books.

Complicit
Amy Rivers

“Complicit” follows the life of Kate Medina, a forensic psychologist that moves back to her hometown after she becomes the victim of an attack. In an attempt to find a safe job, she becomes a high school psychologist, but when a student disappears, Kate finds herself in the midst of a homicide investigation. With the killer still at large, Kate is in a dangerous position, with twists and turns along the way. “Complicit” is an exciting thriller to spice up the summer.

Revolution and Renaissance
Daniel Forbes Hauser

Published just before the start of the pandemic and the protests of 2020, Hauser’s book is a historical understanding of today’s age and why we’re ripe for cultural upheaval. Although he explains that protests produce less change on their own, he points towards our country’s innate ability to respond accordingly during times of crisis. Certainly a very pertinent book for the times, as we as a country continue to make our way through a year of drastic changes and communal demands for change.

The Smoking Inn: (With A Special Welcome to Lesbians, Trans Folk, and All the Little Creatures) (The Chronicles of Diana Attestesso)
Bethany A. Beeler

Beeler’s follow-up novel for “The Fire Golem,” “The Smoking Inn” takes us along a wild ride amongst fantastic and unique characters as Diana Atestesso and her lost love Finn build Sacred Hearts, a bar that becomes a ‘freak’ oasis, featuring a gonzo journalist, a drag queen, and Selene, who is experiencing her first same-sex marriage. Diana quickly faces the villainous wrath of a religious power broker and a fanatic zealot, who try to bring her and Sacred Hearts down. A sure battle to keep you yearning for the next page.

But I’m Too Little
Kimberly Spencer

Born in St. Louis and relocated to Denver, Spencer began her Colorado journey with a cupcake business, called Graffiti Cupcakes. She has now written her first children’s book, “But I’m Too Little,” which is the story of Kai, who is met with positive reinforcement by her parents when she struggles to overcome obstacles due to her size and age. A story of overcoming challenges and appreciating the uniqueness of each individual.

Lord of the Butterflies (Button Poetry)
Andrea Gibson

Boulder County local (they live in Niwot) and arguably one of the best slam poets in the nation, Gibson has brought us Lord of the Butterflies, a showcase collection beautifully articulating with wonderful artistic ingenuity topics such as gender, romance, loss, and family. You’ll sink with their sorrow only to be lifted to new heights of poetic wonder and contemplation.

Finding Motherland: Essays about Family, Food, and Migration
Helen Thorpe

Colorado resident, author, freelance journalist, and former First Lady of Colorado, Thorpe brings us seven essays on family, food, and migration. She tells us the story of how her family immigrated to the U.S., how becoming a mother is a lot like moving to a new country, and the hardship and complexities of the life of an undocumented mother. Balancing the stories of past immigrants and those of today, Thorpe shares the similarities between the two, that immigration isn’t a new phenomena, but one rather has been occurring since the beginning of time.

The Last Train Robber: The Life and Times of Willis Newton
W.C. Jameson

W.C. Jameson is back with the infamous tale of Willis Newton, the greatest bank robber that ever plundered the West. Having stolen more money than Frank and Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, the Daltons, and the Doolins combined, Jameson takes us on a wild ride alongside the Newton gang has they take on their greatest heist, only to be arrested and sentenced. Using interviews from the 1970’s and newspaper reports to detail the extensive history of the Newton Gang, Jameson brings to life, “The Last Train Robber.”

The Only Good Indians: A Novel
Stephen Graham Jones

CU Boulder English Professor Stephen Graham Jones’ book is part horror and part commentary on the identity politics of the American Indian experience. Following the lives of American Indian men and their families after a deadly event from their youth, they are confronted by the culture they left behind so long ago. A story of revenge, cultural identity, and the price some pay when they break tradition.

Of Curses and Kisses (Rosetta Academy Book 1)
Sandhya Menon

Princess Jaya Rao is out for revenge when the Emerson Clan reignites a centuries-old feud against her sister. But when she attends the same boarding school as Grey Emerson, who was cursed into misanthropy by a member of Jaya’s family, she attempts to make him fall in love with her just to break his heart. When that doesn’t work and she begins to fall for him, she wonders if sworn enemies could ever be happy together. Together they fight the odds, and write their very own ending.

Intercepted
Alexa Martin

Book one of the Playbook Series, “Intercepted” has won numerous awards and has been dubbed one of the best romance novels of 2018. Marlee Harper is a great girlfriend and has been dating her NFL boyfriend for over a decade. When he cheats on her, she leaves him and to the relief of the other NFL wives, Marlee proclaims she’ll never date an athlete again. But when Gavin Pope, the new quarterback convinces Marlee he’s nothing like her ex, Marlee becomes the center of gossip making her worry about much more than what the others think of her.

The post Top 10 Books by Colorado Authors | Summer Books appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Systemic Racism, Politics, 

Pandemic, and the Climate.

Summer is here and not the way any of us imagined it! As 2020 continues to pummel us with ever growing awareness of how we as a society have failed and neglected our health, our communities, our environment, and ourselves, it’s up to us to do something. If you’re having a hard time grasping the incredibly vast complexity of any one of the numerous issues that we are facing today, have no fear for you are not alone; even just acknowledging that means you’re on the right track. Luckily for us and our never ending thirst for self-betterment there’s people out there writing books for us to educate ourselves. So use this beautiful weather, the excusable stay at home attitude, and this list of books to play the role everyone is expecting you to play to the best of your abilities and means. 10 books, 4 categories: Systemic Racism, Politics, Pandemic, and Climate Change. 

Raising White Kids
Jennifer Harvey
Sorry Boulder, with 88% of the population being white this struck me as mandatory. In one of the most racially diverse countries in the world (USA), racial tensions are high, and everyone has a responsibility to do something about it. How should we raise children to see race? How should the conversation of white privilege be incorporated in their education? How do we give children the tools they need to further progress our society towards actual equality?

We keep us safe: Building Secure, Just, and Inclusive Communities
Zach Norris
How do we build safe communities. Zach Norris emphasis that Us vs. Them isn;t the answer. With mass incarceration and aggressive policing harming and perpetuating systemic racism in America’s most marginalized communities, we need to design a system that moves away from fear and punishment and create one that focuses on growth and support.

Ghost Boys
Jewell Parker Rhodes
The fictional story of Jerome who is shot and killed by a police officer at age 12. Jerome continues to see the aftermath of his death as a ghost and soon meets Emmett Till, another ghost who was killed in a different time period. Emmett helps Jerome process what has happened and the history of systemic racism that has led to his death. They also meet Sarah, the daughter of the police officer that killed Jermone.
~Politics~

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy | Jenny Odell
This is not a self-help book. Busting through the confines of simplistic anti-technological manifestos and back to nature dictations, How to Do Nothing is a wonderful rationale for stepping out of our capitalistic obsessions to progress and rather place our most important asset, our attention, elsewhere

The End of White
Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide
Zerlina Maxwell
In a clear and well deserved dissection of the left’s failures, Maxwell places power in the lane of identity politics. The left, be it the Bernie Bro’s, Hashtag Activists, or liberal billionaires, has long forgotten to cater to a crucial part of the U.S. population, continuing to largely benefit middle class white men. In an attempt to acknowledge the left’s failures and reconcile through examples and ideas, Maxwell provides a future for the party and cure for it’s blatant divide.

The Hardhat Riot
David Kuhn
In May of 1970, construction workers chased and beat students through downtown Manhattan. It was the first clear sign that Nixon had managed to infiltrate the liberal leaning working class. The left was at war with itself and it hasn’t stop since. A wonderful depiction to further our understanding of how the left ended up where it is today.

~Climate~ 2030 | Mauro Guillen
2030 is the tipping point. As we approach the fall of liberal regimes, the global economy will be for the first time powered by non-western consumers, there will be more currencies than countries, more robots than workers, more computers than human brains, and there will be more wealth owned by women than men. Rather than focusing on a single issue, the climate, Guillen focuses on the inter-play of all the different forces that drive humanity.

Our House is on Fire
Jeanette Winter
A picture book depicting the story of Greta Thurnberg and her determination to make the world realize that our house is on fire. Sharing the power that all kids have, Winter gives a power tool to educate toddlers on the importance of the environment and our roles to protect it.

Lockdown | Peter May
An uncanny depiction of a virus stricken London that has entered lockdown and martial law. Originally written fifteen years ago and cast off as unrealistic, the book has stunned readers by it’s relatability to our current pandemic. A fantastic read mixing the nightmares of a pandemic with the horrors of murder and conspiracy.

Which Country has the Best Healthcare System
Ezekiel Emmanuel
The U.S. spends 4 trillion on healthcare, and we’re nowhere close to being the best. In an assessment of the worlds best healthcare systems, Emmanuel explains what it means to have great healthcare, where some of us know what bothers us, what do we really want? What do we really need? What can the U.S. do to improve such a vital component of our society?

The post Summer Books 2020 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Whether by transporting us in time and space or showing us the world through another’s eyes, books hold the potential to broach new ideas, broaden perspectives, and even change lives. Chosen for their unique stories—some familiar, others not—the 16 titles below represent the transformative power of literature, and will stick with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

Enjoy our reading list!

Let us know what you think by emailing us reviews at editorial@yellowscene.com.

Sing, Unburied, Sing

by Jesmyn Ward

$17.00 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,
20% off at Barbed Wire Books

Sing follows 13-year-old Jojo, his drug-addicted mother Leonie, and the ghosts that visit them as they set out on a road trip to retrieve Jojo’s white father from prison. Ward’s lyrical prose weaves an intricate tapestry of inter-generational trauma, strained relationships, and growing up black in a society marred by racial tensions—yet despite all this, there is sweetness, too. One part road novel, one part ghost story, and altogether stunning, Ward’s portrait of a Southern family fractured by grief and injustice will leave you feeling haunted.

The Fifth Season

by N.K. Jemison

$15.99 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,
20% off at Barbed
Wire Books

The first installment in Jemison’s Hugo Award-winning Broken Earth trilogy takes place in a world wracked by apocalyptic geological disasters called Seasons. Only orogenes (magic users) can control the tremblings in the ground, but they are shunned, hated, and feared for their power. After a massive eruption sets off the worst Season in memory, three such orogenes—Essun, a mother; Damaya, a child; and Syenite, a young woman—tell their stories. Jemison’s tale of oppression, ecological catastrophe, and resilience turns the fantasy genre on its head, daring us to question: Does the world deserve to be saved?

Kindred

by Octavia Butler

$16.00 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,
20% off at Barbed Wire Books, used at 2nd & Charles

In this sci-fi classic, 26-year-old Dana is wrenched from her life in 1976 Los Angeles and transported to a Maryland plantation in 1815, where her skin color unquestionably marks her as a slave. The story unfolds as Dana travels back and forth between time periods, called repeatedly by the pull of her ancestor: Rufus, the white son of the plantation owner. Dana’s 20th-century sensibilities make her narrative that much more relatable as she attempts to influence and protect the boy who will become her great-great-grandfather. Butler’s most beloved work is poignant and relevant, with issues of power, gender, and race at its core.

Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro

$16.00 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,
used at Barbed Wire Books

Framed as a memoir, Never Let Me Go relates the lives of Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth, students at Hailsham school in the idyllic English countryside. Hailsham students have a special purpose, and within the walls and grounds of their boarding school, the children are well cared for and educated in art and literature—though they are insulated from the outside world. Through Kathy, Ishiguro slowly reveals a chilling alternate future reminiscent of those imagined by the likes of Atwood and Huxley, crafting a subtle yet incisive narrative about the human condition and the inevitable fate that awaits us all.

Hunger A Memoir of My Body

by Roxane Gay

$16.99 – Available at
Boulder Book Store

From the author of Bad Feminist comes a powerful, vulnerable account of what it’s like to be fat, black, and female in America. With unflinching candor, Gay explores her complicated relationship with food and her body, describing how both trauma and cultural attitudes inform her experiences. Hunger begins with the admonition that it is not meant to be motivational, but many will find empowerment in Gay’s rejection of society’s contempt for overweight people, and her admission that she struggles with maintaining a positive self-image anyway. Readers of all shapes and sizes will discover wisdom within the pages of Gay’s bold memoir.

Just Mercy

by Bryan Stevenson

$16.00 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,

20% off at Barbed
Wire Books

As a young lawyer, Stevenson made history when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice created to defend the most marginalized members of the Montgomery, Alabama community. One such individual was Walter McMillian, a young black man who had been sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit. Stevenson’s compelling memoir tells how, like a real-life Atticus Finch, he sought true justice for McMillian and others. This eye-opening read exposes a criminal justice system that is often anything but just, yet offers hope that it can be reformed.

Man’s Search for Meaning

by Viktor Frankl

$13.00 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,

20% off at Barbed Wire Books

This psychiatrist’s gripping account of life in the Nazi death camps during World War II has inspired readers for generations with its message that while suffering is inevitable, we can choose how we cope with it. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl recounts how he endured the extreme suffering of the Holocaust by searching for purpose in the face of unspeakable horror. He shares his theory of logotherapy, which hinges on the idea that the pursuit of meaning, not pleasure, is what makes life worth living, and that by finding meaning in even the most dire circumstances, we can survive anything.

Written on the Body

edited by Lexie Bean

$19.95 – Call to order,
or available online

A collection of letters by trans and non-binary survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, Written on the Body will break your heart and mend it more than once. Each letter is written to a body part, blending narratives of identity, gender, trauma, and healing. Bean’s stirring anthology showcases the courage of its contributors—members of a community so often silenced—as they speak their truth through various literary forms. At once both horrifying and hopeful, this intimate glimpse into the experiences of trans and non-binary survivors is a gift like no other.

The Complete Persepolis

by Marjane Satrapi

$25.95 – Available at Barnes & Noble,

used at 2nd & Charles

Persepolis is a graphic autobiography that begins with Satrapi’s childhood in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution. Interwoven with the universal struggle of growing up are the challenges and contradictions unique to Satrapi’s life: coming of age in a time of political upheaval, her feelings of isolation while studying abroad in Austria, and her difficulties reintegrating into Iranian society after her return home. Sometimes sad, often funny, always honest, Persepolis provides a window into the realities of life as an Iranian woman at the time of a major cultural shift.

Fun Home

by Alison Bechdel

$16.99 – Available
at Boulder Book Store, used at 2nd & Charles,

used at Barbed Wire Books

Bechdel’s graphic memoir details her life growing up in rural Pennsylvania, where her father ran a funeral home before his untimely death. Through non-linear storytelling replete with enough literary devices to make an English teacher blush, Bechdel chronicles the story of her family, specifically the complicated relationship with her father, Bruce, as well as her journey of coming out as a lesbian. Fun Home is darkly witty and deeply moving, and a landmark achievement in graphic literature.

Rising Out of Hatred

by Eli Saslow

$26.95 – Available
at Barnes & Noble

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eli Saslow tells the true story of Derek Black, describing his upbringing in a radically far-right family and his eventual renouncement of white nationalism. Black, whose father founded the largest white nationalist community on the Internet and whose godfather was a KKK Grand Wizard, was committed to his racist beliefs until he attended a liberal college, where he had a change of heart. Saslow renders Black’s transformation with thoughtful empathy, and his book could not be more timely during this difficult period in the United States, our country riven by a vast ideological divide.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

by Sherman Alexie

$15.99 – Available at Boulder Book Store,

20% off at Barbed Wire Books

Junior, an aspiring cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation, decides to leave his poverty-stricken school on the reservation for a farm town high school 22 miles away instead. The problem is, he’s the only Native American there—besides the school mascot. Unwavering in its depiction of sexuality, alcoholism, and other difficult topics, The Absolutely True Diary is as raw as it is funny. Alexie’s personal experiences inform this coming-of-age tale about a boy who takes his future into his own hands, despite the challenges it brings.

The Book Thief

by Markus Zusak

$14.99 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,

20% off at Barbed Wire Books

Narrated by Death himself, The Book Thief is the story of a girl named Liesel growing up in Nazi Germany with her foster parents. She steals her first book when she picks it up out of the snow next to her brother’s grave. Soon, Liesel steals books from wherever she can find them, even from Nazi book-burnings. When her foster family hides a Jew named Max in their basement, Liesel befriends him, and her world is changed forever. Zusak’s gorgeous prose brings every page to life in this enduring tale of love, friendship, and the power of books.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel García Márquez

$16.99 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,

used at Barbed Wire Books

García Márquez’s captivating novel chronicles the rise and fall of the fictional town of Macondo, Colombia through its ties to seven generations of the Buendía family and the many misfortunes that befall them. Founded by José Arcadio Buendía, Macondo becomes the epicenter of frequent strange and miraculous events. Ultimately a story about love, family, fate, and the cyclical nature of time, this seminal piece of magical realist fiction weaves myth, magic, and history into one profoundly beautiful work.

Annihilation

by Jeff VanderMeer

$14.00 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,

20% off at Barbed Wire Books

The mysterious biome known as Area X has been abandoned for decades, and nature has reclaimed all evidence of civilization within. Yet 11 expeditions sent to survey Area X have failed—some committed suicide, some turned on each other, some returned traumatized, and some simply disappeared. Annihilation, the first book in the Southern Reach trilogy, follows the women of the 12th expedition: a biologist, a surveyor, an anthropologist, and a psychologist. With a creeping, existential horror that can only be described as Lovecraftian, VanderMeer’s novel explores epistemology and the human urge to know the un-knowable.

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle

by Haruki Murakami

$17.00 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,

20% off at Barbed Wire Books

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is perhaps one of Murakami’s most acclaimed novels, with his telltale blend of gorgeous prose and surreal storytelling. What begins as a search for a missing cat develops into the exploration of Tokyo’s grim netherworld as Toru Okada, recently unemployed, unravels a philosophically-driven mystery unlike any other. Surrounded by a strange cast of allies and enemies, including a psychic prostitute, a morbid 16-year-old girl, and a grizzled veteran, Murakami’s unlikely anti-hero embarks on an adventure as profound as it is bizarre.

House of Leaves

by Mark Z. Danielewski

$22.00 – Available at Boulder Book Store,
20% off at Barbed Wire Books, used at 2nd & Charles

How to describe that which defies description? Structurally, House of Leaves is a story within a story: On one level, the chilling account of award-winning photojournalist Will Navidson, whose family moves into a house that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside; on another, the dissertation-like manuscript of Zampanò, discovered and annotated by the increasingly paranoid Johnny Truant after his death. Thematically, House of Leaves is rather like if The Blair Witch Project had been a book instead of a movie. Terrifying and ambitious, this book is not for the faint of heart.

The Only Harmless Great Thing

by Brooke Bolander

$10.99 – Call to order,
or available online

What is the cost of progress? Bolander’s heartbreaking alternate history asks this question as she imagines a connection between the Radium Girls, female factory workers who died of radiation poisoning in the early years of the 20th century, and Topsy, an elephant put to death by electrocution during the same time. In Bolander’s retelling, the dying workers train an enslaved race of sentient elephants to replace them, but one woman  and her elephant friend devise a way to fight back.

The Sun and Her Flowers

by Rupi Kaur

$16.99 – Available
at Boulder Book Store,

used at Barbed Wire Books

The second collection of art and poetry by the acclaimed author of Milk and Honey brings us on a healing journey of growth and self-love, using the life cycle of a plant as a conceit throughout. Reading Kaur’s work is no less intimate an experience than in her first book, as she describes the pain of love lost (wilting), the darkness of sexual violence and depression (falling), the importance of origins and family (rooting), the joy of new love (rising), and the celebration of becoming at home in one’s skin (blooming).

American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

by Terrance Hayes

$18.00 – Available
at Boulder Book Store

In his resonant collection of 70 poems with the same title, Hayes explores what it means to be a black American in a country fraught with racial injustice. His sonnets are scathing, tender, hilarious, personal, and political, and his wordplay is simply unparalleled as he imbues the form with the frenetic energy of a man possessed. Heavy with its themes of hatred and hope, binaries and contradictions, American Sonnets firmly anchors itself in the heart of our time, a painfully raw portrayal of the contemporary American experience. 

The post Books That Change Lives appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

.

We Rise Up is a brand new film, born in Colorado with a mission to change the world. Asking important questions like, what do you stand for, what is your model of success, what is the future going to be, and more, We Rise Up is a film, a movement, a question for all of us to answer as we search for a world and a future for all of us. Check out We Rise up at Weriseup.com or come out to Arise Festival for the screening. Tickets are still available for that event at arisefestival.com. We talked with Executive Producer Kate Maloney and you’ll want to hear what she has to say. 

Yellow Scene: Hi Let’s start here: Who are you and what are you doing?

Kate Maloney: I’m Kate Maloney and I am the producer and executive producer of “We Rise Up” the movie and movement. The film is a social impact documentary that we have been working with all kind of remarkable influencers that are looking at what is the future of humanity and what is the definition of success that’s gonna drive us into a future that’s a thriving planet.

YS: What is the movement part of it?

KM: The movie is 90 minutes that introduces a conversation. The conversation isn’t a film that provides answers, it’s a film that asks the questions. The questions lead us back to ourselves, which is: what inspires us, how are we called to rise up, what is it that’s ours to do?

When we talk about the movement, it’s not “the We Rise Up Movement” that we created. In fact, it’s the movie and the movement is pointing to what’s emerging in culture. That there is this pull that’s happening. What’s available and what’s possible as we come together and as we rise up to give our unique gifts and to not look outside ourselves or towards our leadership, but this call for a level of how are we inspired inside of our own personal responsibility and inside of our collective responsibility?

YS: How did you come up with this idea? Who are the people, how did you select them, and what are they giving us to chew on?

KM: My background is not as a filmmaker, my background is as an entrepreneur. Over the last decade as an entrepreneur, I’ve always had the experience and believed that business is one of the biggest transformational agents on the planet and that there’s something that’s available when we come together to both impact each other, impact the world.

I was fortunate enough to become friends with and work with John Mackey, who is the CEO and founder of Whole Foods Market, along with a number of great conscious business leaders. After I exited and sold a number of my companies I ended up joining the board of directors of a nonprofit which focused on what are some of the most challenging problems of our day and how are we thinking about these problems and how are we conceptualizing and problem solving around them?

It was from that that we got inspired to bring together some of the top leaders into a four-day summit where we were all in dialogue and explored the question of ‘what is the new model of success?’ There was an extraordinary group of people that came together and went into this inquiry. Well it was during that time that the conversation exploded and broke open and that as a group we all became connected as well.

That was about four years ago and, since then, we’ve also worked closely with people like the United Nations and Tony Robbins to working with the Dalai Lama and his team, Dwight Howard who is an NBA all-star, etc. We also talk to people who you’ve never heard about, and people who are just kind of global citizens.

YS: When did this project get started and why is it important that it’s happening now?

KM: We started this project about four and a half years ago, and why it’s important now…

[One] thing that’s unique about this film is that this film was an inquiry in and of itself. The film came about not so much knowing what we wanted to say but having conversations and an exploration of what was emerging for individuals as they are doing their work in the world.

It’s a timely message because culturally, we’re at a time that is a unique tipping point in culture. Here in the United States, and around the world, there’s a lot of systemic shifts that are happening. One of the issues that we see most recently is the issue of polarization and this creating of an us and a them. One of the things that’s often missing in this polarized narrative is our common humanity and is our common commitment and how do we truly celebrate our differences and our diversities and how do we look at that as a strength and come together, being able to see and understand and appreciate multiple perspectives and become more from that as opposed to polarized and having that deteriorate us.

YS: Where do people access the film, how do they access the film, where is it being shown?

KM: We are on our film festival circuit, and we are doing select private events. One of the screenings that will be coming up is at the Arise Festival, which we are excited to be having that screening here in our hometown backyard.

You can watch for it in this upcoming winter, where it will be released in all of the places; it’s on Netflix and Itunes and everywhere else. There will [also] be local screenings. One of the other ways you can engage is by bringing We Rise Up into your local schools; we have a whole school and educational program. We’ve been released in over 60 schools and have been engaged in our local educational communities all over the country.

During Climate Week we’re going to be being screened across the country, sponsored by Patagonia, celebrating how is it that we come together during Climate Week and take action in the world.

YS: Kate, we’re excited that this project that was born in Colorado. Thank you for the work that you’re doing and thank you for reaching out to us and sharing this with us.

The post Summer Film | We Rise Up: Q&A with Producer Kate Maloney appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Heidi Ganahl

Empower: To promote the self-actualization or influence of (Merriam-Webster). In more colloquial terms, empowerment can be defined as gaining strength and autonomy, especially by self-determined direction of one’s life and by claiming one’s rights. 

Speaking of rights, we are in a pocket of unprecedented legislative regression for American women. Combined with statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau – such as more women than men now earn advanced degrees, and social support for womens’ revelations of injustice continuously grows – and you have a time unlike any other. It’s a pressure cooker for personal and social reform. With #MeToo ablaze, child marriage still legal in 48 states, Kavanaugh seated, and reproductive rights for women in multiple states under siege, one thing is clear: it is not, nor has it ever been, a time to trifle with female empowerment, women’s rights, or human rights, personally or collectively.

The concept of women’s empowerment is the compelling centerpiece of Heidi Ganahl’s 200-page book, SheFactor. You may also know Heidi Ganahl (nee Heidi Flemming) as the accomplished female founder of the $100 million canine daycare and boarding franchise, Camp Bow Wow. Heidi actively participates in several other leadership and community initiatives. She leads her social entrepreneurship incubator, the Fight Back Foundation, and was recently elected to the Board of Regents at the University of Colorado. She has earned a remarkable paragraph-worth of awards and recognitions. If empowerment involves the span of influence, then there’s no question Heidi Ganahl has wings.

At the same time, like a wheel out of balance on an otherwise fabulous ferrari, I pause to note one disorienting peculiarity. To speak to the concept – and reality – of women’s equality, one significant misalignment cannot be ignored. Heidi supported Trump in his 2016 bid for President of the United States, and remains a long-standing member of a political party with a legacy of legislation fueling the war on women; a party and president with a penchant for measures that serve to smother the fiery feminine which SheFactor aims to ignite.

How can a message of women having power and choice be reconciled with affiliation to a party that denies a woman’s right to choose? What is SheFactor really about? Our interview with Heidi Ganahl at Boulder Book Store provided a chance to find out.

SheFactor, released on February 10, 2019, is available in hardcover, Kindle, audiobook, and as an app. Heidi’s daughter, Tori, inspired her to create the book. After college, Tori found that the “plan” set for her life wasn’t what she expected, or wanted. Heidi created SheFactor to assist her and other women seeking their true path.

But what is SheFactor? Without a chance to read it, I wondered if a new emblem of pop-culture iconography had been achieved. A kind of X factor-esque essence freshly extracted, perhaps a radiance from the core of a female’s personal power. But my ruminations led me astray.

The SheFactor is, in short, a number generated by taking an average of inputs. Said inputs are gathered by self-assessed and self-entered measures in nine areas of life (e.g. faith and freedom). The user determines and sets her unique goals and tracks them herself. A type of gamified goal-setting geared towards real-life results. The design helps you enjoy achieving what you want, while also learning work-life balance and organizational skills and learning about yourself. It offers practical tools to help organize and shape your life.

SheFactor invites users to engage with fellow users, online and off. One of the more uncommon aspects of the book, especially in our digital era, is the encouragement to form offline community with other users; to physically get out in the world and get together for support and camaraderie, with a dash of friendly competition.

When asked about how to reconcile SheFactor‘s female empowerment message with her alignment to a party that can’t be said to support that aim, Ganahl’s response was that we can “agree to disagree.” She says she focuses more on the free market aspects of her party affiliation. Given that some define the feminist and women’s empowerment movements by a woman’s right to choose (not solely regarding bodies, but everything), this left more questions than answers. Is it woman empowering or fiercely feminist to overlook the right to choose in favor of free market ideology? Doesn’t overlooking the physical rights of women in favor of fiscal concerns maintain a certain status quo? She also acknowledged that there are issues in her party, as well as with the Democratic Party, which is fair.

SheFactor is available in
at the following locations:

– Boulder Book Store (Boulder)

– Book Bar (Denver)

– Old Firehouse Bookstore (Fort Collins)

The next stop of Heidi’s nationwide book tour is in Fort Collins on June 15th, followed by Tucson, Arizona on June 20th. Tentative plans include New York, California, and Oregon. The Tucson leg includes a Happy Hour – a unique offering making the author all the more accessible to attendees. The book tour develops continuously. Further updates can be found on SheFactor’s “Events” page.

Let’s return to the definition with which we began. If empowerment is about self-directed determination and claiming one’s rights, and SheFactor is designed to help achieve your true goals, certainly this book helps with self-direction. Career success and work-life balance are key for women. But so are decisions about her own body and the right to make that choice. After all, if a woman can do anything, that should include choices about her physical self. I believe we need advocacy for the whole woman, not only parts. SheFactor has much to offer to many. And, as we move towards the equality of women in America, we will need many factors in the form of each of us stepping up and defining and claiming our rights.

In conclusion, here’s a list of dope books on women’s empowerment for your summer reading list. Compiled by the author. Enjoy!

The post Summer Books: SheFactor and the Politics of Empowerment appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

.

.

Local author Keele Burgin’s memoir centers around her experience growing up in some kind of Evangelical cult on the East Coast. Her dad, one of the cult’s magnanimous leaders comes off as in control, charming and virtuous, but as the old adage goes – there is often more beneath the surface, in this case his abuse toward his daughter, Kathleen (Burgin). 

Burgin’s writing reads as if it’s written by the adolescent Kathleen. I’m not sure if it’s the intentional voice of the story, or inexperienced writing.  The memoir places a lot of emphasis on Kathleen’s appearence – of clothes she has on and how she combs her hair. Those details are strategically placed – a girl so obsessed about appearances because she’s hiding her family’s secrets, her dad’s abuse and her own insecurities. It’s a representation of her status, even if it’s a faulty representation. 

While the book has heavy themes – abuse, rape, and familial trauma, Burgin barely manages not to let the heaviness weigh the book down. She places moments of lighthearted humanness at the right moments, not letting the desire to cast her dad as a villain consume her, instead relying on human complexities to paint the portrait of her confusion and uncertainty. As an adolescent we are finding our place in the world, one that continues to chastise Kathleen for her free spirit, and sends her down that inevitable path for a ‘problem child’ faced with trauma – escapism, drugs and relationships that fuel feelings of worthlessness. 

The structure of the book feels very disjointed after the first part, each given a phase of her life or process, the first of which she labels as break (these dividing chapters change as she works through her phases of life). As she finally gets the reader into her world through her upbringing, she then quickly transitions to college, where she quickly drops out, becomes addicted to drugs and then exiles herself to a religious safe house in Canada. Understandably the book can’t cover all of her 25 years, but the disjointed nature leaves some holes I wanted filled.

Burgin’s story, her life, ends with a kind of self-acceptance we spend a lot of our lives searching for, but she’s quick to remind the reader that it’s a continual process of loss, humility, struggle, and endurance. We are all damaged in our own ways, and coming back from and coming to terms with our traumas is what connects us as humans. 

The post Keele Burgin’s Wholly Unraveled works through trauma and acceptance | Book review appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

.

.

The Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Michael Rezendes will be in conversation with KGNU on Thursday, June 13, to raise funds for the annual ZEE Jaipur Literary Festival. Michael Rezendes, you may be aware, is a Pulitzer Prize ­winning investigative reporter with the Global Investigations Desk of the Associate Press. Formerly with the The Boston Globe Spotlight Team, he was played by Mark Ruffalo in the Oscar­ winning movie, Spotlight. He is also a co­author of two books Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church, and Sin Against the Innocents: Sexual Abuse by Priests and the Role of the Catholic Church

Speaking with Maeve Conran of KGNU, Rezendes plans to share new developments from the investigation as they have unfolded over the last few years and talk indepth about the challenges and risks of reporters working internationally in present times, as well as touch on the overall crisis in the news business and how to nurture it into the future. 

“This event offers people in Colorado a chance to hear first hand from one of the country’s preeminent investigative journalists and is an example of the caliber of speakers that JLF brings to Boulder,” Maeve Conran said in a press release. 

The ZEE Jaipur Literary Festival brings together a diverse mix of some of the world’s greatest writers, thinkers, humanitarians, politicians, business leaders and entertainers to Colorado to engage in thoughtful debate and dialogue. Now in its fifth year, the festival is looking to raise $100,000 to continue to bring diverse authors and global conversation to Boulder. 

Tickets for the event are now on sale for $100 per person or $120 the day of the event. The evening will also include poetry readings, a paddle raise and catered Indian Feast at the historic home of local author Keele Burgin. 

The post Journalist Michael Rezendes of Spotlight to speak to KGNU | ZEE Jaipur Literary Festival appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Credit: Book Cellar

Don’t-miss titles, book club inspirations and where to kick back with a paperback

Summer ushers in a number of classic warm-weather activities such as camping, pool parties, family vacations — and for book lovers, reading opportunities. The warm months usher in new releases by favorite authors, engaging events at local bookstores and longer days to binge read in the great outdoors.

Sami Boylan, assistant manager at The Book Cellar in Louisville, admits summer can be a busy time for many people, leaving little time to check off titles on your book list. She suggests setting a summer reading goal.“I try to set a goal each summer, and this year my goal is to read something that’s out of my comfort zone.  For example, if you love war stories, try a fantasy novel. Just give it a try and dip a toe into the water. For kids especially, it’s really fun to see where that takes them,” she said.

Peter Jones, manager at Boulder’s Trident Booksellers and Cafe, said he likes to keep a variety of books going at the same time. “Usually I’ll have a novel, nonfiction title and something eclectic.”

If your reading list grew stale over the winter, local bookstores can help readers discover some fresh new options. The Book Cellar keeps a display of Colorado-focused books for all ages. Trident and the Boulder bookstores also offer a large selection of books by Boulder County authors, and most bookstores and librarians are happy to help recommend a new author or title.

“We’re not your average bookstore, we don’t carry your typical top sellers. I’d say we also specialize in the outdoor genre,” said Jones of Trident.

Where to read
Boulder County summers provide a picturesque backdrop for getting absorbed in a new book. Cafes, bookshops and your local library are buzzing, along with their respective patios or decks.

Bookstores like Trident and Denver’s Tattered Cover offer plenty of nooks, plush armchairs and corners to curl up with a book. You might even end up sitting next to one of your favorite local authors. “A lot of authors come and work here in the bookstore,” said Jones of Trident Cafe. “We have an outdoor spot out back where there are always people reading as well. It’s a relaxed atmosphere modeled after the traditional European bookstore and cafe.”

Recent renovation to the Louisville Public Library created a delightful environment for kids. The large children’s section includes quiet spots to sit, a playroom and even a puppet theater.

Don’t forget about the classic reading destination, the local coffee shop. For a peaceful environment conducive to reading and good coffee, we recommend The Cup in Boulder, Vic’s Espresso in downtown Louisville, Cristo’s Coffee in Erie, and Ziggy’s Coffee House in Longmont.

Boylan, of the Book Cellar, admits one of her favorite reading spots is at the bar during the day.

“I like books and I like good beer, so it makes sense to me, but everyone always looks at me like I’m crazy,” she laughed.

And don’t forget Colorado’s main attraction — the outdoors. With sunny skies and warm temperatures, who says that reading is an indoor activity? Renee Thompson, circulation specialist at the Boulder Public Library, said her favorite reading spot is her back deck. She also recommends sitting in any of the area’s public parks or by a creek.

Trident manager Peter Jones suggested several reading spots with a view, including Chautauqua Park and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), both in Boulder. “NCAR has a lot of really nice spots with some sandstone retaining walls. You can drive all the way up and sit and read with a fabulous view. Of course, anywhere in the mountains is also great,” he said.  

Don’t forget to pack a book when you head out on a camping trip. For that occasion, Jones said he prefers truly unplugging by bringing a paperback instead of an e-reader. “E-readers have a glow, plus they can run out of batteries,” he said. “There’s nothing like a paperback in the wilderness. That way I can get lost in both worlds.”

Join the party

Besides new releases, summer also brings a packed calendar of literary events. Check your local library for reading groups and summer reading programs aimed at young children and teens. The Boulder Public Library even offers book-club-ready Books in a Bag. Librarians have curated a number of very popular book club titles, and each bag contains eight copies of the book, background material and discussion questions.

Websites like goodreads.com allow you to set reading goals for the year, and helps track books on your to-read list.

When summer comes to an end, celebrate literature at Jaipur Literature Festival in Boulder, a three-day festival of author conversations, readings and special speakers from all over the world. The event, which runs from Sept. 23-25, is free and open to the public. The Boulder Public Library, local bookstores and Naropa University are all partners for the festival and will hold associated events and readings throughout the weekend.

Not your typical summer reading list

We’re not in grade school anymore, so summer doesn’t come with a required reading list. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a list of books to tackle. We asked some Boulder County reading buffs for some of their favorite summer reads and compiled their recommendations. Happy reading!

From the Book Cellar in Louisville

“The Water Knife” by Paolo Bacigalupi

This sci-fi read is set partially in Colorado, combining elements of environmental awareness, prophetic narrative and a compelling storyline that explores how water might affect our lives in the near future.

“Big Little Lies” by Liane Moriarity

By the bestselling author of “The Husband’s Secret,” “Big Little Lies” is Moriarty’s latest about three women whose lives are at a crossroads. Assistant Manager Eric Roth describes Moriarity’s writing as an “escape,” and “like a lighter version of ‘Gone Girl,’ but with the compelling story and thriller feel.”

From the Boulder Public Library

“Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice for Love and Life by Sugar” by Cheryl Strayed

By the author of “Wild,” this book compiles some of Strayed’s online columns under the pseudonym Sugar. Renee Thompson of the Boulder Public Library calls it an entertaining travel read.

“Dear Mr. You” by Mary-Louise Parker

In this unconventional read, each chapter is a letter to a man who impacted actress Mary-Louise Parker’s life, from her grandfather to ex-lovers.

“Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande
On a more serious note, physician and eloquent writer Gawande thoughtfully tackles the subject of death and what it means to have a good end. This is a shorter read, full of both research and great storytelling.

From Trident Booksellers and Cafe in Boulder

“Red Doc” by Anne Carson

This unconventional story by poet Anne Carson is a bizarre and interesting read that connects characters from her earlier works.

“Where the Heart Beats” by Kay Larson

This biography tells the story of composer John Cage, his awakening through Zen Buddhism and his relationship with choreographer Merce Cunningham.  

A classic.

Manager Peter Jones suggests trying to read at least one classic each summer. Start with something by Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut or Margaret Atwood.

For young readers:

“Dog Man” series by Dave Pilkey
The author of the very popular Captain Underpants series has a new series debuting this summer. “Dog Man” books promise to offer the same silly humor and comic-book style storytelling.

“El Deafo” by Cece Bell
In this comic-book-style book, a young rabbit starts school with a cochlear implant. She’s self-conscious at first, but realizes her implant allows her to hear everything in the school. Through the eyes of her young protagonist, Bell helps young readers explore self-confidence, the struggles of fitting in and being your own self.

“American Gods” by Neil Gaiman

This fantasy novel is a modern take on the idea of gods from different cultures. Gaiman explores the modern American landscape, weaving in mythology and master storytelling. Gaiman’s books, categorized as adult literature, are a great choice for young adult readers who love fantasy and sci-fi literature.

The Merlin Saga by T.A. Barron

This Colorado author artfully tells the story of young Merlin in this popular young adult series.  

Editor’s Picks

“The Girls” by Emma Cline

This is likely the book of the summer, which a movie is already in the works. The plot centers around the end of 60s with a cult killing in Northern California, but where it resonates are with the identity and desires of its female characters before and since those events. This is more literary than the past few summer reads with a “Girl” in the title, and looks like the start of fine writing career.

“Improbable Fortunes” by Jeffrey Price

Set in a fictional mining town in southwestern Colorado, which like the book’s characters, have seen boom-and-bust years. An established screenwriter, Price uses the cliche of a small-town sheriff looking into one last murder as a jumping off point to play with much broader themes in this novel. BoCo readers will find the book’s changing town vaguely familiar, and its modern take on (and disruption of) old cowboy culture refreshing.

The post Hot summer reads appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The Orbit Magazine Anthology
Rob St. Mary
Wayne State University Press/Painted Turtle

If you’ve never lived in Michigan, as surely most Coloradans haven’t, then you likely have never heard of Orbit or its creator Jerry Vile. If you have, kudos. It means that you have your finger on the pulse of what is subversive and artistically, obnoxiously (we use that word as a glorious compliment) important, outside of your own immediate area.I

Jerry Vile is a former member of Detroit punks the Boners, an artist, and the creator of the publications White Noise, Fun, and Essential Detroit. He was a co-founder of the Real Detroitalt weekly and, notably here, he created Orbit. He also started the Dirty Show – the biggest erotic art show in North America. The man is a bastion of bad influence, and we love him for it.

Rob St. Mary has done a stellar job here of detailing the sordid history of Orbit, from the White Noise beginnings, through Fun. Both of those proved that Vile wasn’t going to let something as simple as a lack of funding stop him putting out a quality mag.

em>Orbit itself ran throughout the 1990s, and so it was there for the garage rock explosion led by the White Stripes – it was there to lampoon (if tenderly) the street level rock stars. There was so much going on in the Motor City at this time, and Orbit was there to commentate in its own unique way. Before long, people outside of Detroit were taking notice. UK and LA versions launched, while Quentin Tarantino wore an Orbit shirt in the Pulp Fiction movie.

Orbit was the alt-alt-weekly, offering serious competition to the Metro Times (this writer’s former employer). In fact, just as an example of what it was about, Orbit ran a piece called “The biggest pimps in town,” calling Metro Times out for the blatant prostitution ads in the back (a norm in the alt-weeklies). Vile loved, and still loves, to ruffle feathers. Frankly, there’s nobody better at it. Again, look him up.

This book covers all of the book in beautiful detail. It looks incredible – the art (most old, some new) is laid out to stunning effect, while St. Mary spoke to all of the right people. This is a great story of a publication, and indeed a man, that has proved that if success is based on the work alone, Orbit and Vile are kings. Of course, money had to have it’s dirty say and that’s why it’s no longer pressing. Thanks to this book, it won’t be forgotten in a hurry.

The post Book review: The Orbit Magazine Anthology appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Dark Days: A Memoir
by D. Randall Blythe
Da Capo Press

Let’s kick off with a little empathy here. Or at least, let’s try. Imagine you’re traveling through Europe with your band, flying into one city after another, playing a gig and flying on to the next destination. You land in Prague, in the Czech Republic, and are unceremoniously whisked away from your crew by the local police and kept in a holding cell for killing a young man two years earlier, an event you have no recollection of. A date for the trial is set and, despite bail being paid (twice), you’re thrown in a filthy prison cell – not speaking the language, no knowledge of the Czech legal system and its weird intricacies, and still no memories of the crime in question.

Terrifying, huh? But that’s exactly what Randy Blythe, frontman with metal band lamb of god (lower case formatting deliberate, as dictated by Blythe), went through a couple of years ago. A 19-year-old fan, Daniel Nosek, died following injuries sustained at a lamb of god show. Witnesses said that Nosek had jumped onto the stage, and Blythe had pushed him off with unnecessary force. Nosek banged his head, fell into a coma and, later, died. It’s a tragedy – Nosek did what metal fans have been doing at shows for decades, and he died for it.

Blythe remembers none of this. He remembers a show with next-to-no security, despite the band spelling out what is required in their contracts with venues. Ditto barriers. He remembers wrestling with an over-zealous fan, but that guy turned out to be somebody else entirely, somebody very much alive. More importantly, the various witnesses all offered conflicting testimony so, tragically, we still don’t truly, accurately know what happened to Daniel.

What we do know is that musicians shouldn’t have to act as their own security when they’re in the middle of performing. If Blythe did push that young man from the stage, he did it out of a sense of responsibility for those on stage, as well as for self-preservation. As he points out, metal guitarist Dimebag Darrell of the bands Pantera and DamagePlan was shot and killed while performing on stage by a crazy fan just a few years prior. That changed the mindset of many musicians.

So Dark Days is Blythe’s memoir, his retelling of the whole Godawful experience from his arrest through to his eventual release, and finally his relief when the prosecution’s appeals were thrown out of court. Blythe is, as it turns out, a gifted writer. We’ll never know what it was really like in Pankrác, but Blythe offers some seriously deep insight into the surroundings and his own state of mind. We can all relate to his very natural fears of being violently assaulted, although nothing like that ever happened. He vivid description of showering with a very sick man, colostomy bag included, is brutally frank – sights and smells. His rollercoaster ride of emotions is all detailed and, by the end, we don’t feel like we were in the cell with him but we do at least get an honest flavor of it all. Through everything, Blythe never tries to turn his back on any responsibility that might be his, and that’s most impressive of all.

Blythe’s experiences are so unique for someone in his position that Dark Days is unlike any rock memoir previously published. It’s a fascinating, unsettling and ultimately satisfying read, and one that people who have no interest in metal music can enjoy as much as the more hardcore fans of lamb of god. Recommended.

The post Book Review: Dark Days appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.