Diane and her Book Club read Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See–which won the Pulitzer Prize–and loved it. So when Diane learned that the Just Buffalo Literary Center’s BABEL series was bringing Anthony Doerr to Buffalo to talk about his work we quickly called and bought a couple tickets.
Diane and her Book Club buddy, Cindy, heard Anthony Doerr speak at a New York City book event in March 2017. Diane was impressed by Doerr’s speaking style and his message on climate change. To prepare for Anthony Doerr’s Buffalo appearance, Diane read Doerr’s latest novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land–600+ pages!–which involves five characters from the Past to the Future.
Hundreds of Anthony Doerr fans showed up on March 30, 2023 at Kleinhans Music Hall (home of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra) for Doerr’s appearance. Doerr uses a Power Point presentation to illustrate his points as he spoke about writing his novels and his concern for environmental issues. The evening ended with a Q&A session where Doerr demonstrated a lot of humor with his witty answers. When asked how he decompresses after writing all day, Doerr answered: “Mario Cart.”
Diane and I did not stay for Doerr’s book signing, but dozens did. I came away with a better idea of the Creative Process and the amount of research needed to produce a First Rate novel. Are you an Anthony Doerr fan? GRADE: A
I have read ALL THE LIGHT and some of the stories in THE SHELL COLLECTOR and enjoyed them. The length of the newest book puts me off. I like short books best.
Patti, Diane enjoyed CLOUD CUCKOO LAND and told me the book has a lot of white space separating the five characters and the different time periods which makes it go faster.
No. I tried to read the first one but couldn’t get into it. Will try the short stories, maybe. Glad you got to see him, especially Diane.
Jeff, I was impressed with Anthony Doerr’s intelligence and work-ethic. Diane loved the two Doerr novels she’s read. Patti seems to like Doerr’s short stories.
I never heard of him but the wiki on “All the light …” describes a time that I’ve often been thinking about.
I might have told the following story already:
My parents went though this – they survived but of course many innocent people in Europe died in WW2.
My parents also told me some stories, many horrible, only a few uplifting.
My father met my mother in 1939 and already knew that a bigger war would come so he asked her to marry him – but no children!
But in 1942 on holiday I was conceived (kind of souvenir for my mother …) because he was almost sure he wouldn’t return from Russia.He didn’t talk much about the war but how crazy it was. When he was a guard for AH’s headquarter (in the outer ring, the inner was SS) he saw the Nazi honchos watching Hollywood movies, drinking whiskey and champagne and some of them even listening to jazz. Btw the communist leaders in East Germany after the war were similar – they even had a city where “normal people” could not enter and there you could get all the things from the capitalist West that regular people had no access to.
Even though he became an officer and got the Knight’s Cross in 1943 he wasn’t a Nazi, not even a party member.
The most important point for me was that after WW2 the French authorities (grew up in the French occupied zone) declared my father an “also ran”, the lowest level of complicity.
Wolf, right now Netflix is getting ready to offer a series based on ALL THE LIGHT YOU CANNOT SEE. The title refers to the impact of radio on World War II.
Yes, I’ve read several stories of people in France communicating and exchanging info with people in Great Britain or North Africa.
And of course the war efforts on the Allied side were helped by the deciphering of the German Enigma machine.
Maybe you’ve read about it:
Much secret war info from the Germans became known to the Allies.