MSI Press Blog

  Excerpt from  A Movie Lover's Search for Romance  - HENRY, OR PATHETIC CRUSH #2 Just as my crush on Adrien Brody began to wane, I began crushing on Henry. Henry, as in Henry Cooper, direct descendent of James Fennimore Cooper, who wrote the well-known classic, The Last of the Mohicans. Henry Cooper, of the Coopers of Cooperstown. Until I met Henry, I’d never actually heard anyone who sounded like George Plimpton. I thought that high, guttural, WASP accent was an anachronism, like hula-hoops and the Ed Sullivan Show. If Henry was not the highest of high WASP, he would be a parody of rich Americans. But Henry is the real deal. He has piles of the Social Register stacked casually around his living room, along with old copies of The New Yorker , for which he once wrote. Henry is my father’s friend. They went to Andover together in the late ’40s and early ’50s. My father is not high WASP. Dad is the product of four Eastern European Jewish grandparents, each of whom travele...

    Excerpt from  A Movie Lover's Search for Romance  - ADRIEN: LOSING MY MIND Early this spring my friend Candace called to tell me she had recorded the previous night’s episode of Saturday Night Live for me. She explained that the object of my “crush” and winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Actor, Adrien Brody, had hosted the show. Not wanting to be unkind, I thanked her for the thoughtfulness but felt compelled to correct her. “I think we need to call this by its proper name: my pathetic, middle-aged, divorcée’s crush.” Candace, knowing the truth when she heard it, didn’t argue the point. How did I, at the age of forty-three, find myself with a serious crush on this particular young actor? I ask myself this often. I’ve been in love with movies for thirty years. I easily passed for eighteen by the time I started high school, and I could gain entry into any film I wanted to see without an adult escort. During my adolescence, I planned all my free time aroun...

  Excerpt from A Mo vie Lover's Search for Romance - INTRODUCTION  This book recalls my search for love in my forties and fifties. For several years after my divorce at forty-one, my love life was slim to none. I focused on my career, buying my first home, and settling into it. I dated sporadically, but none of the men I went out with were particularly memorable. I didn’t care. My love life wasn’t my priority. I went to work and to the movies, and I was fine. Then, I saw The Pianist in late 2002, and the performance of Adrian Brody as the main character awakened something in me. My crazy post-divorce, romantic life began with that film. Movies and men became the focus of my wild middle-age dating life. Initially, I fell sway to three ridiculous crushes: first, Adrien Brody; next, my father’s friend, twenty-five years my senior; and finally, my Adonis-like washing machine repairman. As I pondered these crushes, they reminded me of scenes and characters from the thousands of mo...

  Joanna Charnas recently won the Pinnacle Books Achievement Awards' memoir category for her book, A Movie Lover's Search for Romance . A Movie Lover's Search for Romance  has also received the following awards: Hollywood Book Festival Honorable Mention Book Excellence Award finalist For more posts about Joanna and her books, click HERE . For more posts about Pinnacle Book Achievement Award winners, click HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter  here  or on our  home page . Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book? Contact editor@msipress.com. Want an  author-signed copy  of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and c...

  From Joanna Charnas, the author of A Movie Lover's Search for Romance   I found everything about Henry Cooper completely charming. Erudite and cultured, he’d written about the space program for the New Yorker Magazine. I’d encountered my father’s old high school friend when I was forty-four, during a visit to New York City for a family event, when Dad was staying with him. A few months after the trip, I confessed my thing for Henry to Dad, who was surprisingly supportive. To amuse myself, I later wrote a short essay about my crush, and read it to Dad. His response: “You should get that published.” Dad was the most intellectual person I’ve ever met. Hyper educated at Andover, Harvard, and Harvard Law, he read books on architectural theory and the collected letters of Mozart for fun. Based on my father’s enthusiasm, and trusting his judgement, I continued to write about dating and all things romantic post-divorce. These essays turned into A Movie’s Lover’s Search for Romance. ...

  As a Chanukah gift to our readers, we are offering a 40% discount on A Movie Lover's Search for Romance . Use coupon code ad40 at our  webstore  to get the discount. For more information about  A Movie Lover's Search for Romance , including posts by and about the author and all her books, click HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book? Contact editor@msipress.com. Want an  author-signed copy  of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com. 

  Excerpt from A Movie Lover's Search for Romance (Joanna Charnas) THE NEW GUY   You don’t always know when you’re experiencing burnout until you’re hip deep in its muck. You also don’t comprehend how completely addicting Internet dating is until you’re hooked. So if you find yourself burned out from Internet dating, as I did, the prudent thing is to give it a rest. Although I planned to take a break from Internet dating, I’d become too addicted to stop. It didn’t matter that I was emotionally exhausted from too many blind dates. Which is when Simon entered my life.  I met Simon on an Internet dating site. When we first spoke on the phone, he asked if I’d meet him that evening at a party given in honor of a couple of his friends. Simon explained that his schedule was booked for the rest of the week, but he wanted to meet me right away. The party started in mid-afternoon, and assuming I wouldn’t be enslaved and forced into the sex trade, I agreed to rendezvous at his frie...