Blog: Month: February 2015

Stealing Rembrandts: An Evening with Art Crime Expert Anthony Amore RESCHEDULED TO FEB. 24

Join us on Tuesday, February 24, at 7 p.m. at the Malden Public Library for a rare look at the world of high-profile art heists with art crime expert Anthony Amore. Anthony Amore is the Director of Security of the Isabella Stewart Art Museum in Boston and author of “Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists.” The fascinating stories Amore reveals span the globe from Stockholm to Boston and include a cast of exciting, diverse characters, from the robbers who steal priceless paintings, to international criminal masterminds, to security experts who track them down.

As Director of Security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Mr. Amore has for more than eight years served as the museum’s chief investigator into the 1990 theft of 13 priceless works of art from that institution. Prior to joining the Gardner Museum, he served as an Assistant Federal Security Director working to rebuild security at Logan International Airport after the attacks of 9/11. His next book, “The Art of the Con” will be published in 2015 by St. Martin’s Press. The discussion will be followed by a brief tour of the Converse Memorial Building art galleries.

Malden Reads Movie Night: Wed., March 4th: 6:00-8:30pm

Join us on Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 6:00-8:30pm in the Maccario Room for the Malden Public Library’s first Malden Reads film screening. We will be showing a movie which explores some of the themes in Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore—the power of books, technology, and knowledge, new and old.

Set in the near future, an ex-jewel thief receives a gift from his son–a robot butler programmed to look after him. Robot & Frank become a pair of unlikely friends in this “tender sci-fi comedy-drama” starring Frank Langella, Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler, and James Marsden. The Los Angeles Times calls the film, “charming, playful and sly….” Additionally, Rotten Tomatoes, states, “Led by a brilliant performance from…Langella, [the movie] works both as a quirky indie drama and as a smart, thoughtful meditation on aging.”

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation honored the film for “raising profound questions about the role of technology in our collective future.”

A discussion of this year’s Malden Reads book selection, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore will follow the movie. This film is free and open to the public and is accessible. Please call us at 781-324-0218 for more information.

Book Discussion Groups

Hear what others think about a book, and then share your own ideas. You don’t have to create a book club to do it, because The Malden Public Library already hosts two discussion groups:

THE BOOKER PRIZE DISCUSSION GROUP meets at 7:00 p.m. in the library on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Since 1969, the “Booker Prize” has been awarded to the best full-length novel written in English by a citizen of the UK, the Commonwealth, Eire, Pakistan, or South Africa. As of September 2013, selection for the “longlist” has been opened to American authors.
Upcoming Books:

• Feb. 25, 2015 – When we were orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
Summary:
Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents’ alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past.

• Mar. 25, 2015 – The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi
• Apr. 22, 2015 – The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert
• May 27, 2015 – The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor

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THE FIRST MONDAY BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP meets at 7:00 p.m. in the library on the first Monday of each month to discuss titles selected by members of the group.
Upcoming Books:

• Mar. 2, 2015 – People of the Book by Gwendolyn Brooks
Summary:
This ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding–an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair–only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.

• Apr. 6, 2015 – Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
• May 4, 2015 – State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Just pick a group that’s convenient! New members are always welcome! Copies of books for discussion are available at the information desk.

Movie Night: Wednesday, Feb. 25th: 6:00-8:30pm

Join us for Movie Night at the Malden Public Library on Wednesday, February 25, 2015, from 6:00-8:30pm. We will be showing a recent biographical film about legendary singer and creative genius, James Brown. The movie, produced by Mick Jagger, stars Chadwick Boseman, Viola Davis, Dan Aykroyd, Jill Scott, and Octavia Spencer. The film includes the song, “Get On Up.”

Born into extreme poverty in Barnwell, South Carolina in 1933, James Brown struggled with a tough childhood and emerged as “The Godfather of Soul.” Brown was instrumental and influential in creating the soul, funk, and R&B music which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. His dynamic life is shown through historic recreations of his early concerts where he once upstaged The Rolling Stones, and then later concerts in Vietnam, the Apollo, and a particularly poignant recreation of Brown’s concert at The Boston Garden in 1968 on the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

The Guardian says “It’s one of the year’s truly outstanding performances….” Also, The Chicago Tribune says the movie “is better than inspirational…in finding the truthful emotional extremes inside a difficult American life, suffused with music.”

This film is free and open to the public and is accessible. Movie times are approximate. Please call the Malden Public Library at 781-324-0218 for more information. Rated PG-13 (139 min.)