Tuesday, August 1st at 7:30 p.m.
Ted Orland
The View from the Studio Door: How Artists
Find Their Way In An Uncertain World
(Image Continuum)
Celebrated photographer, a former
assistant to Ansel Adams and a Cabrillo College instructor, Ted Orland
examined the obstacles that artists encounter each time they stand
before a blank canvas in his book Art & Fear. Now, in The
View from the Studio Door, Orland turns his attention to broader
issues that stand to either side of that artistic moment of truth.
With grace and humor, Orland argues that when it comes to art making,
theory and practice are always intertwined. There are timeless philosophical
questions (How do we make sense of the world?) that address the very
nature of art making, as well as gritty real-world questions (Is there
art after graduation?). This is a book of practical philosophy and
encouragement for all who face the challenge of making art in an uncertain
world.
Thursday, August 3rd at 7:30 p.m.
Barbara Traub
Desert to Dream: A Decade of Burning
Man Photography
(Immedium)
"This is the place where
some of the most innovative, fearless sorts gather to put up art installations,
perform, party and pretty much express themselves anyway they see
fit. Call it the lunatic fringe of the art world, call it an alternative
experience, call it freaky-just don't call it boring." -Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
Attended by 20 people on a San Francisco beach in 1986, the "Burning
Man" festival has mushroomed into a desert pilgrimage for 40,000
people annually and is the twenty-first century's ultimate celebration
of the human imagination. For one week, Burning Man qualifies as Nevada's
fifth-largest city, and climaxes on Labor Day weekend with the burning
of four-story tall wooden "man." Desert to Dream is
an unprecedented photographic record of the evolution of this creative
chaos, from its infancy as a performance art exhibit to its explosion
as a pop culture destination. Celebrated photographer and multimedia
artist Barbara Traub captures the sacred and profane, from inspired
costumes to otherworldly artifacts that defy convention. Accompanying
her work are contributions from filmmaker Les Blank, Burning Man founder
Larry Harvey, and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Monday, August 7th at 7:30 p.m.
Terry Healey
At Face Value: My Triumph Over a Disfiguring
Cancer
(White Cloud Press)
Twenty years old and a junior
at Berkeley, Terry Healey was a confident man leading a full life.
Then, a lump behind his nostril was diagnosed as a voracious form
of cancer. Its devastation and the surgeries and radiation treatments
needed to save his life and to reconstruct his face left Terry with
another great challenge to make peace with-disfigurement. Now a professional
speaker, Terry has written a courageous memoir that explores the physical,
mental, emotional, and spiritual challenges forced upon him as a young
man, and thus it is a story about tragedy, obstacles, and ultimately,
triumph.
"As a physician I found Healey's story remarkable-not just because
he survived his cancer but because he redefined himself as a person.
He is a model for how we should embrace each day."-- Nancy Snyderman,
MD (Necessary Journeys)
Wednesday, August 9th at 7:30 p.m.
Joe Quirk
Sperm Are from Men, Eggs Are from Women:
The Real Reason Men and Women are Different
(Running Press)
Sperm and Eggs
is funny, funny, funny - Joe Quirk must be the bastard love-child
of Stephen Jay Gould and Steve Martin. But it's not just science leavened
with humor to make it go down better. The humor springs from Quirk's
perspective on life, which is both absurdist and loving."-Mike
Chorost (Rebuilt)
Finally, the answer to why, when it comes to romance, women are coy
and men are just clueless-explained from the micro standpoint. Who
would have guessed that all of our sexual and social behavior, and
even our physical appearance, could be attributed to what our tiny
unseen reproductive cells are doing? But that's Quirk's thesis in
this highly entertaining book from an Average Guy that's a fun read
full of a-ha! moments for scientists and civilians alike. Learn facts
about cheating you'll never learn from "Jerry Springer."
Discover why most sperm couldn't care less if they never saw an egg,
what makes men yell "woo!" in a feminine falsetto-very similar
to the mating cry of the Siamang gibbon-and most important, the surprising
answer on what to wear to attract that alpha mate.
Thursday, August 10th at 7:30 p.m.
John Sumser
A Land Without Time: A Peace Corps Volunteer
in Afghanistan
(Academy Chicago Publishers)
When John Sumser was a Peace
Corp volunteer in late 1970s Afghanistan, adapting to the mysterious
customs and exotic food of this culturally rich land seemed an enlightening
though challenging goal. Then suddenly his daily challenge dramatically
changed to survival when, during the communist coup of 1979, he was
jailed as an American spy and beaten in an effort to make him reveal
secrets he did not have. He witnessed firsthand the new communist
regime as it solidified its hold on the country that would later become
a safe harbor for Al Qaeda, the history that led to the 9/11 attacks
and the "global war on terror." Only a handful of foreigners
lived in Afghanistan when this great destabilization began, and now
Sumser lends his humane, firsthand insight to documenting the country's
transition from its centuries-old status-quo to a factory for global
insurgency.
Tuesday, August 15th at 7:30 p.m.
Book Café Writing Group Extravaganza!
Come celebrate the imagination
and hard work of future bestselling authors! Capitola Book Café's
Writing Group has been meeting since January under the leadership
of James Moran, and tonight members will share short selections of
their new writings. Reading alluring literary snippets ranging from
mystery to modern fairy tales will be Vinnie Hansen, Bryn Kanar, Pat
Ihrig, Edie Fischer and Rick Parfitt. Join them and support your up-and-coming
community authors.
Wednesday, August 23rd at 6:30 p.m. *
Book Club
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
(Random House)
This month's selection is Prep
by Curtis Sittenfeld. Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel, Prep,
is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a
brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent
angst and ambition. Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old
when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious
Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate
family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding
school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front
of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely
mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel. As Lee soon
learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers
who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand.
Ultimately, Lee’s experiences–complicated relationships
with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming
preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more
than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly
distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling
adolescence universal to us all.
Read the book and join the discussion!
*Please Note Time.
COMING IN FALL 2006
Wednesday, September 13th: Lynne Cox (Swimming to Antarctica)
for Grayson, a crisp and lyrical memoir for adult and youth
readers about her long distance ocean swim at age 17 and the orphaned
gray whale that followed her for miles.
Thursday, September 14th: Brian Copeland, the magnetic star of the
longest running one-man show in San Francisco history (and now appearing
Off Broadway), for his humorous, poignant memoir about place and race-specifically
San Leandro of the 1970s and the Copeland family's move into "one
of the most racist suburbs in America"-Not A Genuine Black Man.
Thursday, September 28th: Former US Diplomat John Brady Keisling
who resigned in 2003 in protest of the US's policy on Iraq with a
strongly-worded, eloquent and well-publicized letter to Colin Powell,
for Diplomacy Lessons.
Sunday, October 22nd: Kate Atkinson, the brilliant and darkly humorous
author who blurred literary and crime fiction with Case Histories,
for One Good Turn, featuring the reluctant detective Jackson
Brodie.
Wednesday, October 25th: Marisa Acocella Marchetto, cartoonist for
The New Yorker and Glamour, for her funny, taboo-breaking
graphic memoir, Cancer Vixen, that pits her glamorous self
against the very real cancer that tried to kill her and her spirits-and
lost!
Thursday, October 26th: The unmatched historian Simon Winchester
for the paperback edition of A Crack at the Edge of the World:
America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906.
Wednesday, November 1: Carly Fiorina, for her honest memoir, Tough
Choices, that explores her controversial days and decisions at
Hewlett-Packard as well as leadership, creativity, sexism and shattering
the glass ceiling.
