Tag archives: Tecolote Book Shop

“We sold the book to Leonardo DiCaprio a long time ago,” Michael Armour says. He’s told the story so many times – lived with it for long enough – the episode’s clearly been stripped of its power; except for the power to make Armour’s stomach sink. “He and the director held onto the book for […]

Longevity is less a sprint toward the finish line and more a quiet devotion to how we spend our ordinary days. Petra Beumer openly describes herself as a recovering “Type A high achiever,” shaped by a culture of rigor and accomplishment. Over time, she began to notice the toll that constant striving takes: burnout masked […]

Before we left for Southern Patagonia, our South American travel agent insisted, “The most important thing to remember is you must go with a driver and a guide. The roads are terrible, and each hotel is isolated. There are no gas stations between hotels, and no place to stay if you cannot reach the next […]

On Saturday, Jan. 17, from 3-4 pm, Montecito’s storied Tecolote Bookshop, now entering its 101st year of operation, will host a book launch and reading by local author Fran Davis of her historical fiction novel Red Summer. A tale of love, betrayal, and revenge in the McCarthy era, the novel portrays a small California town […]

Once upon a time, an English lad named John Holman was sojourning in Australia some 10,000 miles away from his home village of West Grinstead in the U.K. Searching for himself, really, John had incautiously entered a passageway provided by his family’s wartime past.  At Tecolote Book Shop this coming Saturday, November 8, from 3 […]

Tecolote Bookshop? Our flagstone-wrapped salon in the Upper Village? This year the place turned 100. Yeah, as in “years old.” This means [holds fingers aloft like a savant and moves them algebraically] … Tecolote Bookshop opened in 1925. There’s more.  “My mother would drop me off at Cold Spring Elementary School every morning and I […]

Yes, there are people in the area you are more likely to have heard of than to have actually met. Jeff Bridges. Carol Burnett. Beloved local mononyms Ellen, Oprah, and Harry. Steven Gilbar is in this category, but with a caveat. The name rings a deafening bell, but where the hell have you heard it? […]

Artist Symeon Shimin’s name may not be a household word, but his most famous work might be one of the better-known images in American history: the original poster for Gone with the Wind. But Shimin, who died in 1984, not only painted such promotional images for Hollywood films but was also an award-winning illustrator of […]

The veteran experience is also a jumping off point for The Hardest Year: A Love Story in Letters During the Vietnam War, a just-published memoir by author-poet Carole Wagener and her husband, William Wagener, that has been called a personal snapshot of the turbulent ‘60s as framed through the hearts of two souls divided by […]

A bevy of bibliophiles descended on Tecolote, the upper village literary gem, when retired corporate attorney David Gersh hosted a launch bash for his latest art mystery, All’s Fair, featuring Jonathan Benjamin Franklin. It is one of eight books that Montecito resident David, a Harvard Law School graduate, has written. His last tome, published in […]

On a sultry August evening in 2018, Linda Goldbloom was struck in the head by a line drive foul ball at Dodger Stadium. She died four days later. Seated next to her husband Erwin in the loge section of the storied ball field some 200 feet behind and above home plate, she never saw it […]

Local literature lover and attorney Steven Gilbar was busy promoting his latest work, The Little Book of Montecito Actors at Tecolote in the upper village. The 207-page book spotlights the stars of stage and screen who have lived in our rarefied enclave over the years, including Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell to more […]

Steven Gilbar – attorney, artist, litterateur, gadfly – is Montecito’s answer to the Gutenberg press. This lone figure’s prolific authorship is surely responsible for our community’s overweening literacy – the screamfests about Dickens over breakfast, the fisticuffs over the provenance of the term “Chicken à la King.” Gilbar, once and future member of the California […]

1/9 Debris Flow survivor Kim Cantin’s new memoir, Where Yellow Flowers Bloom, is a testament of a mother’s love and a wife’s devotion in the midst of sudden loss and trauma, with an enlightened perspective on mortality. Cantin will be signing the book at Tecolote Book Shop in the upper village on Saturday, April 29 […]

Life may imitate art but for many of the artists I know, the two are pretty melded and hardly an imitation – they are their art, and the art is them – and this seems true for Susan Read Cronin and her collective body of work as well, including her newest book of poetry, What’s […]

You might need your own cloning technology, or at least a fast car, to make it to the two most intriguing author events this week, as they share a Saturday afternoon time slot on December 3. Montecito artist and general contractor William “Bill” Dalziel will read from his second children’s book, Charlie’s Dream, a sequel […]

Shaun Tomson, rated the number one surfer in the world in 1977, has lived in Montecito for the better part of 30 years, and has teamed up with Santa Barbara-based author-speaker-philosopher Noah benShea; the two have published The Surfer and the Sage, A Guide to Survive & Ride Life’s Waves. It’s a small, handsomely produced […]

A boffo bunch of bibliophiles descended on Tecolote in the Upper Village to mark the publication of Steven Gilbar’s Little Book of Montecito Writers, a 160-page paperback including more than 60 authors, which derived from a talk he gave at the village library last summer. The book signing, which benefitted the Montecito Library, also featured […]

Prolific local literature lover Steven Gilbar, who probably spends as much time involved in books, research, and writing as he does practicing law, has just added another new title to his two dozen-strong published collection, this one sharpening the local angle to focus on writers who call Montecito home. Titled The Little Book of Montecito […]

If you recently moved into the neighborhood and you want to fit right in, these few tips should assist in the transition from city slicker to Montecitan.  Despite almost a half-century of living here under my belt – and summer forays in my youth with my best friend whose grandparents had a second home in […]