You are hereFrom Animal House to Our House - Signing and presentation with Ron Tanner

From Animal House to Our House - Signing and presentation with Ron Tanner

Start: 07/08/2012 2:00 pm

Description

About the Author

Ron Tanner teaches writing at Loyola University in Baltimore and
directs the Marshall Islands Story Project (mistories.org). He is the
author of two books: Kiss Me, Stranger and Bed of Nails,
which won both the G.S. Sharat Chandra Award and the Towson Prize for
Literature. He has won many other literary prizes as well, including a
Faulkner Society gold medal, a Jack Dyer Fiction Prize, and a Pushcart
Prize. Tanner lives in the big Baltimore brownstone featured in this
memoir with his wife, Jill, and their many pets. Their website,
Houselove.org, is dedicated to the love and care of old houses.

Praise for From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story…

I fell for the house, I fell for the girl (and, predictably, her
dowager of a basset hound), but most of all, I fell for Ron Tanner, one
very fine storyteller. I'm still a bit stunned that I could become so
entranced by a tale involving rehab nerds, real-estate shysters,
frat-house vandals, Dumpsters, rats, and a whole lot of tools, but I'm
enough of a writer to know this: when someone of great heart meets the
most deeply personal challenge of a lifetime -- especially when it seems
strange or insane to just about everyone else -- that's the place where
the best and most moving stories begin. For Ron Tanner, it began with a
woman wrapping glasses in an antique shop . . . and a small sign in a
Baltimore window. How little he knew of what was to come, and how glad
you'll be that he never backed down.

- Julia Glass, author of Three Junes and The Widower's Tale

When
I was a few pages into From Animal House to Our House, I wanted to
shout, "Go back! Go back!" But Tanner and his girlfriend persisted with
their daunting home-renovation project, and ended up with (spoiler
alert) a beautiful house, a marriage that survived beyond the last page,
and an excellent book. And the man is a talented illustrator as well:
he draws a mean perforated PVC drainpipe. This is the perfect read for
anyone who has ever wandered the aisles at Home Depot in a blissful
daze.

- David Owen, staff writer for The New Yorker, author of Green Metropolis

FROM
ANIMAL HOUSE TO OUR HOUSE: A LOVE STORY, will sweep you off your feet
the way traditional love stories do, but with one difference: you'll
also fall in love with the house. In this truly compelling story, love
and a nail gun conquer everything.

- Jessica Anya Blau, author of Drinking Closer to Home and The Summer of Naked Swim Parties

Ron
Tanner’s life is a testament to the power of hard work, a big heart,
blind romance, and even outright idiocy. What does he have to show for
it? Only a beautiful house, a loving marriage, and now this inspiration
of a book. Pass me my hammer!

- Chris Jones, writer-at-large for Esquire

In
addition to being a love story, a how-to guide, an urban adventure, and
even a coming-of-age memoir, From Animal House to Our House is a
classic American tale, a portrait of an artist compelled to replace
destruction with dignity, to consecrate the past, and to create via
hope and sweat a life of beauty and meaning. It’s rare for a book to
appeal to poets and plumbers, but Ron Tanner’s experiences are intensely
human; this book is for anyone who’s ever been seduced by a dream and
yearned for the deepest sort of restoration.

- Lia Purpura, author of On Looking and Rough Likeness

I
might seem the worst possible person to comment on Ron Tanner's memoir
as I am totally uninterested in old houses and home renovation.
Actually, this makes me the perfect person. Can you imagine how good a
book it would have to be for me to like it? For me, the introspection,
the humor, the incredible wisdom about bugs, the love story and the
charming illustrations had to carry the book. They certainly do. Tanner
is a master of small, sharp, hilarious insights, such as "There was no
middle ground for mom. Either our lives were pitiful or miraculous." I
love that.

- Marion Winik, author of Glen Rock Book of the Dead

Product Details
ISBN-10: 0897336240
ISBN-13: 9780897336246
Published: Academy Chicago Publishers
Pages: 287
Language: English
Ingram Discount Code: REG

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