Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie

Luka's father, the legendary storyteller Rashid Khalifa, has fallen asleep and no one can wake him.  The longer he sleeps, the less likely he is to ever wake up.  Luka must journey to the Magical World and steal the Fire of Life, the only thing that can save his father.  The only problem is that stealing the Fire of Life is impossible.  Luka knows he has to try though.  There isn't any other choice.

I was disappointed by this.  It's Salman Rushdie.  I was expecting something amazing.  And I was feeling kind of guilty that I wasn't enjoying it.  But now I've decided that no, I don't HAVE to like it, just because it's written by Salman Rushdie and he is awesome.  It doesn't mean that EVERYTHING he writes will be awesome.

Rushdie Cont.

During the Q&A, someone asked what category Salman wants to be. His position, "as many places as possible." His view is that literature is becoming so global, that it is difficult to categorize a book with a single call number. Gotta go, Gail Gibbons and Karen Cushman call.

Salman Rushdie

So things have been very busy; we've seen different authors (Mo Willems, Kadir Nelson, Jerry Pinkney, Laurie Halse Anderson), gotten some awesome ARCs (YAY Clockwork Angels!), Arianna went and saw Sue Monk Kidd, and now we're listening to Salman Rushdie!

He is surprisingly funny, we appreciated that his joke, "I am losing my librarian viriginity today (he has not lectured to librarians before), I cannot think of nicer people to lose it to." He seems to like to dispell myths about famous authors: J.M. Barry and Lewis Carroll. His overarching theme is writing books about children but not necessarily for children. He wants his new book Luka and the Fire of Life, his kind of sequel to Haround and the Sea of Stories, to be an equal to its predecessor. He doesn't want them to follow the same fate as Lewis Carroll's books. Both books share the same theme - that the main characters are saving their families, and its a revisiting to the world of Haround, but Luka is not a sequential sequel but rather a stand-alone story that uses a familar universe. He reads a selection and it is filled with humor, active words, and vivid imagery.

"Children like to be scared, but they don't like to be disturbed. George Lucas has taught them that."

I am getting very distracted between listening and blogging, so I'm going to stop for a while and see if Jamie or Arianna can take over for a bit...