Talking has nothing to do with conversation.
GERTRUDE STEIN

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Tuesday, August 3rd at 7:30 p.m.
Susie Bright
Three the Hard Way
(Touchstone)

From our hometown literary sex goddess and nationally arousing lecturer on sexuality and feminism comes three tales from three handpicked rising stars -- stories sure to captivate and titillate. As the author of Mommy's Little Girl and editor of the Best American Erotica series, Susie Bright has an eye keen on noticing that one sexual moment can change a person forever. This truth is celebrated by William Harrison, Greg Boyd, and Tsaurah Litzky in their sensual, funny, and profound tales discovered by America's most trusted name in erotica.

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Wednesday, August 4th at 7:30 p.m.
Lars Clausen
One Wheel -- Many Spokes: USA by Unicycle
(Soulscapers)

All 50 states. 2 Guinness World Records. 9, 1336 miles. 5,118,000 pedals. That is the tally for Lars Clausen and his unicycle -- and everyday it grows. With a deep love of the land and its people and a peculiar method of transportation, Lars Clausen has completed a unicycle excursion that took him from the West Coast to the Statue of Liberty and back again, one-wheeling it from the Inupiat Eskimo's homeland in Alaska to Native American lands from coast to coast. He now interrupts his ride between Canada and Mexico for a stop at the Book Cafe. Join him for photographs and a unicycle show while sharing the story of One Wheel - Many Spokes.

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Monday, August 9th at 7:30 p.m.
Ed Brodow
Beating the Success Trap
(Harper Collins)

Our society has bought into a fraudulent lifestyle. Celebrities with millions in the bank shoplift, wealthy CEOs cook the books, and we are hardwired to seek all the material trappings of success. Perhaps we even acquire success without ever feeling successful. Where is the path that follows our true desires and how can we ever get the courage and savvy to follow it? Ed Brodow once jumped from his successful but unfulfilling job as a computer salesman into acting, then jumped again into his true passion as a motivational speaker and the negotiation guru on PBS's The Business Channel. He has guided many back to judging success by relationships, work, and goals that are personally meaningful and reminds us how breaking rules really can bring you freedom you desire. Negotiate against the system for the career and lifestyle of your dreams!

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Thursday, August 12th at 7:30 p.m.
Marilee Geyer & Diane Leigh
One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter
(No Voice Unheard)

Jeffrey Mousaieff Mason (When Elephants Weep, The Pig Who Sang to the Moon) writes, "A book...utterly dedicated to telling the truth about shelters which turns out to be a deeper truth about how we, the public, care or do not care, for dogs and cats. Because it is written from the heart, it is an easy book to read, even if it made me cry, like listening to a sad but beautiful song. This book has the potential to save millions of lives..." In honor of Homeless Animal Day, a day of recognition begun in Santa Cruz, and with a deep respect for the 10 million animals who enter shelters each year, join Marilee Geyer and Diane Leigh for a night of truth and possibility. With compelling photos and moving vignettes, One at a Time chronicles a week in an animal shelter and reawakens our connection with the animals that bring us joy - if only they could find their way home. The night will begin with a brief but utterly endearing Adoptable Dog Show!

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Thursday, August 18 at 6:30 p.m. *
Book Club
Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver's license.records my first name simply as Cal." So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.

* Please Note Time

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Wednesday, August 18th at 7:30 p.m.
Michael Collins
Lost Souls
(Viking)

"Lost Souls is a haunting, searing, and elegiac treatise on the masks we wear. It is a totally absorbing and beautiful book." -- Michael Connelly

"No writer alive is hunting bigger game - and doing better than Michael Collins" -- Anthony Bourdain.

When a child's body is discovered on Halloween, sinister story unfolds, sparking the political and social unraveling of an Indiana town. With his Irishman's brilliant perspective as an outsider to small-town America, Collins compassionately explores the struggle of characters as they wrestle meaning out of lives that didn't turnout as they'd expected. Lost Souls confirms award winning Michael Collins (The Keepers of the Truth) as a master of the fast-paced and psychologically intense literary thriller. And, since he is currently training for the extreme North Pole Marathon and the climb up Mt. Everest (without oxygen), you had better come see him now!

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Thursday, August 19th at 7:30 p.m.
Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke
America Alone
(Cambridge)

Used wisely, America's immense military power can preserve freedom; used unwisely, it can fracture global stability. These respected policymakers and authors argue that as long as neoconservative radicals dominate the national security process, fracture is more likely. Identifying the factions and agendas involved, America Alone advocates an alternative approach based on the return to mainstream principles that have successfully guided American diplomacy for half a century.

"Fairminded...fascinating...full of valuable guidance for the next phase in U.S. foreign policy. Its analysis is the more trenchant for coming from two bona fide Conservatives." -- James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly

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Friday, August 20th at 7:30 p.m.
Jeremy Rifkin
The European Dream
(Tarcher / Penguin)

Recently seen in the documentary The Corporation, Jeremy Rifkin can now be heard at the Book Cafe. The author of The Hydrogen Economy and The End of Work and the president of the Foundation of Economic Trends, Rifkin looks towards the European way of life that is eclipsing the American Dream. While Americans are increasingly overworked, underpaid, and unsure of the future, Europeans are thriving in their sustainable way of life. Surveying the history and the present of the continent across the sea, Rifkin points to a flexible model of society and business that make their lifestyle the most prosperous in the 21st century.

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Thursday, August 26th at 7:00 p.m. *
World Affairs Book Club

This group meets every month to discuss a book relevant to current event(s) around the world. To date, we have examined books focusing on a variety of events in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe. This month's selection is Emma's War: A True Story by Deborah Scroggins. It is both the tale of one woman's journey from the life of a respected British relief worker to the wife of a rebel warlord and a look at the volatile politics and religious differences in Sudan, differences that we see erupting in violent conflict on the front pages of today's papers. In The New York Times Book Review George Packer writes, "Scroggins brings Sudan's agony to vivid life; at the same time, she gives us a lyrical, suspenseful, psychologically acute study in idealism and self-delusion; " and William Shawcross claims Emma's War is "...a wonderful, challenging book....One of the best that I have ever read on the difficult relationship between the developed world and the Third World."

For more information you may email Jenn Ramage at jenn_ramage@yahoo.com or call the store at 462-4415. Many thanks to Graham Parsons for all his work and talent spent on this vibrant group of thinkers.

*Please Note Time