Five Recently-Arrived Titles from the Fiction Section:
Please be sure to contact our stores for an exact stock check!
May 21, 2013
May 18, 2013
Special Store Hours this weekend
Amsterdam:
Sunday, May 19th (Whit Sunday): 12 – 18
Monday, May 20th (Whit Monday): 12 – 20
The Hague:
Sunday, May 19th (Whit Sunday): closed
Monday, May 20th (Whit Monday): 12 – 18
May 17, 2013
Magic the Gathering tournament at ABC Treehouse on May 26th!
ABC is hosting another official Magic the Gathering tournament on May 26th: The Two-Headed Giant sealed deck battle!
You’ll be playing with the three sets from the Retun to Ravnica Block: Dragon’s Maze, Gatecrash and Return To Ravnica.
Players sign up in pairs of two. Every 2-headed team receives 8 boosters so you are able to make two decks of 40 cards. Your team will play against a different two-headed team every round. You’ll be playing four rounds.
Per team we’ll enter 4 boosters in a prize pot. We’ll have some goodies to give away as well.
The ABC Treehouse opens at 11.30. The Tournament will start at 12.00.
- Date: Sunday, May 26th
- Place: ABC Treehouse, Amsterdam
- Time: 12 – 18.30 hrs
- Cost: € 35,- per team
- Special Note: Please reserve your team spot by making a reservation (here, top of the page, right) and please include your DCI number if you have one in the extra info section.
- Contact info: Jitse Verwer, jitse@abc.nl 020-6255537
It will be fun, so join us for another Sunday full of Magic!
To read more on the Two Headed Giant format, click here.
May 16, 2013
Receive an ABC discount at Rialto!
Rialto filmtheater in Amsterdam presents Cracking the Frame, a monthly program featuring an international selection of critically acclaimed art related documentaries and artists’ films.
On May 21st the program showcases Paul Bowles: The Cage Door is Always Open.
ABC pass holders get discount for this screening: € 7 instead of € 9!
Cracking the Frame
The Cracking the Frame series focuses on the creative intersection between art and film through experimental documentaries and cinematic portraits of the life and work of established contemporary artists, filmmakers, writers and global thinkers.
Each film is theatrically unreleased in The Netherlands and will be screened in English or with English subtitles.
Paul Bowles: The Cage Door is Always Open
Directed by Daniel Young; Switzerland, 2012, 93 min.
Among the most mysterious and charismatic counter-cultural icons of the past century, American writer and musician Paul Bowles was also one of the most influential.
Following the publication and immediate success of his first novel, “The Sheltering Sky”, Bowles moved to Tangier in 1949, refusing fame and disappearing from public life.
Tangier in the 40s and 50s was an exotic sanctuary for artists, writers and the wealthy to do as they pleased without fear of prosecution.
Openly homosexual, Paul Bowles was married to the lesbian writer Jane Bowles. A circle of heretic intellectuals began forming around them: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, William Burroughs, the Beats and finally the Hippies all searched him out, lured by the mysterious and magical world he depicted in his books.
Using conversations with Bowles, interviews with numerous fellow companions, rare archive footage and original animations, Paul Bowles: The Cage Door is Always Open captures the daring and visionary life of a man and the extraordinary role he had in fuelling the imagination of generations of writers and liberal thinkers.
The screening is on Tuesday May 21st, 19.30 hrs at Rialto Amsterdam.
May 15, 2013
You Review: The Missing File by D. A. Mishani
Reviewed by Marianne van der Wel
When a crime is committed in suburban Tel Aviv there is little need for a complex investigation. Police detective Avraham Avraham knows that, usually, the explanation is the simplest one. But when a sixteen-year-old boy vanishes without a trace, this theory is tested. The detective’s best lead seems to be the boy’s neighbour and tutor, Ze’ev Avni. He has information that does not only shed new light on the case, but could also make him a very likely suspect.
The Missing File is not a usual ‘whodunit’. The story isn’t really about the solution, it deals mostly with the relationships that develop during the course of an investigation and how there is no objective way of looking at the clues.
For this to work the author had to create human beings. They cannot be the standard all-knowing hero and quirky side-kick. With the minor characters D. A. Mishani did a good job, but when it came to the more complex main characters I think he just missed the mark. The detective’s mood swings faster than a pendulum and by the end of the book you still don’t know what kind of person he is. The teacher was slightly better crafted. It seemed like the author had given him more thought and knew what he wanted from him.
I don’t mind it too much when characters are not yet fully ‘developed’, personally, I can read past this. The thing that I couldn’t read past, and which kept throwing me off, was the way the story was told. First, the story is told in dual perspectives. This is not the problem. It keeps the reader on his toes and involved. But on top of these dual perspectives, parts of the story are told in flashbacks, that just seem to pop up whenever they feel like it. This disrupted the flow of the story somewhat and several times I had to reread a page to figure out when I was reading about.
Having said all of this, I do have to add that I did like the book. Because it is not a conventional ‘whodunit’, it reads very differently from other detective stories. It’s a bit like a ‘behind the scenes’ novel. The storytelling was a bit flawed, but this is the author’s first book. It did intrigue me and I look forward to the follow-up.
You Review: The latest releases, reviewed by ABC customers.