Memoir Tells Of Life As Filmmaker, Skier

Film cans and ski poles aren’t exactly two things you would expect to find on the same shelf.

But Otto Lang is an exceptional man. The author of “A Bird of Passage,” Lang has spent his life traversing both snow-covered slopes and the hills and valleys of Hollywood success. He worked on such films as “Northside 777” and “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” while running ski schools in Idaho and Vermont.

Lang’s book is a memoir of those years, and it includes anecdotes from both arenas. Also, an Austrian born in Bosnia, Lang even gives a good short explanation of the roots of the current Bosnian war.

Lang will read from his book at 7 p.m. Friday at Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington.

On the shelves

Marcy Houle lives in Portland. But her field of interest, wildlife biology, takes her out into the country.

Her book “The Prairie Keepers” (Addison-Wesley Publishing, 266 pages, $20) examines the Zumwalt Prairie of northeastern Oregon, an area managed by cattle ranchers that is an ecosystem rich in wildlife.

Houle is the author of “Wings for My Flight,” which won the 1991 Oregon Institute of Literary Arts Award for Creative Writing.

“Astride the Winged Horse” (Candlewood Publishers, 156 pages, $12.50 paperback) is a philosophical treatise on life written by James H. Albertson. Now living in North Idaho, Albertson is a retired professor of humanities at the University of Montana at Butte. His book, says the Sandpoint-based publisher, “is a piece of critical thinking, borne up by fiction, subterfuge, social comment and crankiness, structuring designed to emphasize (and then re-emphasize) that man plays a major role in the creation of his own reality.”

Candlewood Publishers is located at 2700 Gold Creek Road, Sandpoint, ID 83864-6718.

The last of Anaconda

This year’s final evening of Anaconda Espresso & Poetry will be tonight at 7 at the Anaconda Grille, Fifth and Freya. Featured will be Sara Monaghan, a graduate student in the creative writing department of Eastern Washington University.

The reader board

Brian DesRoches, author of “Your Boss Is Not Your Mother,” will read from his book at 7 p.m. Thursday at Auntie’s Bookstore.

Dan Wakefield, creator of the television show “James at 15,” will read from his self-help book “Expect a Miracle” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Auntie’s Bookstore.

, DataTimes