Book Markers: 10.25.12

One Eye on the Voting Booth

    Maryann Calendrille and Kathryn Szoka, the proprietors of that funkiest of South Fork institutions, Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, have been tapped for a different kind of speaking engagement — bookish yet political, money-minded yet charitable. On Monday, as Election Day looms, they’ll give a talk titled “East End Writers: Past and Present” at a fund-raising lunch for the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons. It starts at 12:30 p.m. at Muse in the Harbor on Main Street in Sag Harbor.

    Of pertinence: The two came out with “Sag Harbor Is: A Literary Celebration” in 2006, and their talk will make particular note of writers who lived in the village. The book will be available for purchase.

    The cost at the door is $55. The league is a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that promotes participation in government by an informed citizenry. It operates from Westhampton to Montauk.

Mulvihill Novel Optioned

    Speaking of Sag Harbor, word has come that the rights to “Serengeti,” a novel by the late William Mulvihill of that village, have been acquired by two movie industry players in California, Alan Abrams of Santa Monica and Glenn Zoller of Los Angeles. The book, originally published by New American Library in 1960 with the title “The Mantrackers,” is set in East Africa before World War I and involves a native tracker and an elephant hunter out to stop a one-man slaughter of wildlife.

    A translation onto celluloid wouldn’t be a first for Mulvihill. His novel “The Sands of Kalahari” became a Paramount movie in 1965. He was a World War II veteran, early environmentalist, and student of African history. Locally, his book “South Fork Place Names,” from the 1990s, was revised and reissued a couple of years ago.