Wednesday, January 4th at 7:30 p.m.
Irene Thomas with guest Jim Houston
Olaf Palm: A Life in Art
(Redwood Springs)
Artist Olaf Palm (1935-2000)
came of age in the Santa Clara valley, evolving artistically along
the Santa Cruz coast, during his European travels, and finally along
the Mendocino Coast, where he lived the life of the quintessential
Northern California artist--living his art, painting his life. He
left a legacy as a painter, a musician, a raconteur, even a political
force: his iconic work Now You See it, Now You Don't became
the symbol of the protest against North Coast oil drilling and Capitola
proclaimed an "Olaf Palm Day" in 1994 to honor his efforts
to preserve the downtown area in the late 60's. A friend of Palm,
author Jim Houston will read from his contribution to the book, "A
Portrait of the Artist." Enjoy a night of local history and art
led by two talented authors.
Thursday, January 5th at 7:30 p.m.
Kirstin Olsen
Cooking with Jane Austen
(Greenwood Press)
Join Ben Lomond author Kirstin
Olsen as she treats us to little tastes from Jane Austen's literary
kitchens. Containing more than 200 recipes for food and beverages
mentioned in Austen's works, modernized renderings to ease the chore,
and snippets of culture, history, illustrations and literary quotes,
Cooking with Jane Austen is a lively and delicious (yes, delicious!)
way for fans of food and literature to enjoy some culinary fun. You
might skip the Liver and Crow, but do not miss the Almond Knots, Bride
Cake and Gooseberry wine. Read and eat with Mr. Darcy this evening!
Monday, January 9th at 6:30 p.m. *
Fiction Writing Group
Join the new Book Café
Fiction Writing Group! This peer critique group will provide a supportive
community environment in which participants can receive feedback on
their fiction projects and improve their writing skills. The group
will be facilitated by James Moran, who has participated in and facilitated
numerous fiction workshops, and will meet every other Monday from
6:30 - 8:30pm.
For questions, please contact James at jsrmoran@yahoo.com.
* Please Note Time
Tuesday, January 10th at 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Santa Cruz
Vijay Seshadri; Nika Cruz
Born in Bangalore, India, Vijay
Seshadri came to America at the age of five. Currently a teacher at
Sarah Lawrence College, this poet's collections include the James
Laughlin Award-winner The Long Meadow and Wild Kingdom.
Nika Cruz hails from Australia and lives part of the year here in
Santa Cruz. She has published poems in several literary journals and
was part of the Queensland women's project group who compiled and
produced The Feeling of Healing, a book of support for survivors
in remote areas.
Wednesday, January 11th at 7:30 p.m.
Sherry Halperin
Rescue Me, He's Wearing a Moose Hat:
And 40 Other Dates After 50
(Seal Press)
You've read about it in Newsweek
("Chick Lit Goes Gray"), seen the author on "The Today
Show", and goodness knows her family in Felton have been there
for every date along the way. Now you can join Sherry Halperin as
she recounts the calamites and the rejuvenating surprises she had
when she reentered the dating scene at age 51 after the loss of her
husband of 26 years. Meet Moose Hat, Turkey Neck, and a few Rich Old
Men and revel in the humor and candidness of an idealist turned realist,
a woman who may just come to terms with being single and who may just
fall in love again.
Thursday, January 12th at 7:30 p.m.
Terri Schneider
The Triathlete's Guide to Mental Training
(VeloPress)
Take two athletes evenly matched
in skill, physical preparation, and equipment. Pitted head to head,
the successful racer will be the one with the best mental preparation.
One of the top female multisport endurance athletes in the world and
a renowned coach and speaker, Santa Cruz's Terri Schneider offers
readers the practical information and skills needed to build mental
muscle. By eliminating the mental challenges inherent to triathlons,
you can create a program to increase confidence, improve motivation,
and heighten performance. Learn from the very best in the field. See
www.terrischneider.net for more inspiration.
Tuesday, January 17th at 7:30 p.m.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the
Contra War
(South End Press)
In this third volume of her memoir,
Dunbar-Ortiz vividly recounts on-the-ground memories of the contra
war in Nicaragua. While her rich political analysis of this history
bears the mark of a trained historian, she also writes from her perspective
as an intrepid activist who spent months at a time throughout the
1980s in the war-torn country where the indigenous Miskitu people
were viciously assailed by CIA-trained contra mercenaries. She makes
painfully clear the connections between what many US Americans only
remember vaguely as the Iran-Contra "affair" and current
US aggression in the Americas, the Middle East, and around the world.
Wednesday, January 18th at 6:30 p.m.
Fiction Book Club
Big If by Mark Costello
(Harvest)
A scary, funny novel—a riff
on recent history and the American obsession with assassination. It's
winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president
is running for president, and his Secret Service people are very,
very tense. Meet Vi Asplund, a young Secret Service agent mourning
her dead father. She goes home to New Hampshire to see her brother
Jens, a computer genius who just might be going mad—and is poised
to make a fortune on Big If, a viciously nihilistic computer game
aimed at teenagers. Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in
her brother, and in her fellow agents, is affluent, anxious, and abuzz
with vague fantasies of violence. Through a gallery of vivid characters—heroic,
ignoble, or desperate—Mark Costello's hilarious novel limns the
strategies, both sound and absurd, that we conjure to survive in daily
life.
Read it and join the discussion!
* Please Note Time
Thursday, January 19th at 7:30 p.m.
Joanne Jacobs
Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two
Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds
(Palgrave Macmillan)
Honest and inspiring, Our
School tells the story of Downtown College Prep, a public charter
high school in San Jose that recruits underachieving students and
promises to prepare them for four-year colleges and universities.
Tracking the innovative program, award-winning journalist Jacobs (San
Jose Mercury News, The New York Times, Christian Science
Monitor) follows the dedicated teachers who inspire teens to break
free from failure, the immigrant parents who fight to protect their
children from gangs, and the students who overcome tremendous odds.
This gritty yet hopeful book provides a new understanding of what
makes a school work and how desire, pride, and community can put students
on track for success in life. See www.joannejacobs.com for her popular
blog on education.
Monday, January 23rd at 6:30 p.m. *
Fiction Writing Group
This peer critique group is currently
full. To place your name on a waiting list please email James: jsrmoran@yahoo.com.
* Please Note Time
Monday, January 23rd at 7:30 p.m.
John Harrington
Challenge to Power: Money, Investing
and Democracy
(Chelsea Green)
Making money and supporting social
justice are not mutually exclusive. A life-long advocate for responsible
corporate practices that benefit society, Harrington argues that a
coordinated shareholder action is needed to challenge corporations
to adopt human, labor, and environmental codes of conduct in order
to eliminate years of egregious and abusive practices. "The
Challenge to Power identifies tactics that progressives . . .
can use to initiate action against corporations, forcing them to act
more responsibly across the globe." -Medea Benjamin, Cofounder,
Global Exchange.
This event was arranged with the help of the forward
thinkers at Resource Center for Non Violence.
Wednesday, January 25th at 7:30 p.m.
James McManus
Physical: An American Checkup
(FSG)
Physical is the surprisingly
honest and often hilarious portrait of the looming mortality of a
privileged generation, of one man's negotiation of the labyrinth of
our health care system, and a call for sanity in the stem cell research
wars. After his three-day "executive check-up" at the Mayo
Clinic, the author of Positively Fifth Street and poker columnist
for The New York Times, McManus comes to realize he must survive
his own cardiovascular system long enough to see his young children
into adulthood. But does he have the willpower to follow the doctor's
advice? Additionally, the president's opposition to stem-cell research
and his daughter's need for it to combat her juvenile diabetes makes
him feel like he "might have to do something rash." Throw
in a deep concern about a vasectomy and Viagra, and this powerful,
personal tale is a truly American check-up.
Thursday, January 26th at 7:00 p.m. *
World Affairs Book Club
The Monster at Our Door: The Global
Threat of Avian Flu by Mike Davis
(Shoemaker & Hoard)
This month's selection is The
Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu. In this urgent
book, Mike Davis reconstructs the scientific and political history
of a viral apocalypse in the making, exposing the central roles of
agribusiness and the fast-food industries, abetted by corrupt governments,
in creating the ecological conditions for the emergence of this new
plague. For more information you may email Jenn Ramage at jenn_ramage@yahoo.com
or call the store at 462-4415.
* Please Note Time
AND COMING IN EARLY FEBRUARY 2006…
Wednesday, February 1st at 7:30 p.m.
Heather Rogers
Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage
(New Press)
Where does our garbage go? With
just 5% of the global population, Americans generate 30% of the world's
trash. In Gone Tomorrow journalist and filmmaker Rogers guides
us through the grisly, oddly fascinating underworld of trash. From
the garbage-grazing urban hogs of 1800's to today's prolific disposable
packaging industry and the high-tech garbage corporations that profit
from it, Rogers investigates the roots of our waste-addicted culture.
Read Gone Tomorrow and you'll never think of garbage the same
way again.
Thursday, February 2nd at 7:30 p.m.
Ross King
The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary
Decade that Gave the World Impressionism
(Walker & Co.)
From the author of Brunelleschi's
Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling comes a saga
of artistic rivalry and cultural upheaval in the decade leading to
the birth of Impressionism. In 1864, the currently obscure Ernest
Meissonier was considered the greatest French artist alive, and Edouard
Manet, today beloved as the "Father of Impressionism", was
derided for his messy paintings of ordinary people. Out of the fascinating
story of their parallel careers, King creates a lens through which
to view the political tensions that dogged Louis-Napoleon during the
Second Empire and his ignominious downfall. As well, King paints a
vivid portrait of life in an era of radical social change and casts
new light on the birth of Impressionism and the modern French identity.
*************** SPECIAL
EVENT ***************
Sunday, February 5th at 7:30 p.m.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
American Vertigo: Traveling America
in the Footsteps of Tocqueville
(Random House)
For the past year celebrated
philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy (Who Killed
Daniel Pearl?) has been traveling in the tracks of another Frenchman,
Alexis de Tocqueville, who in 1831 wrote what remains the most influential
book about America: Democracy in America. The result is American
Vertigo, a fascinating new look at a country we sometimes only
think we know. Lévy investigates issues at the heart of our
democracy: the special nature of American patriotism; the coexistence
of freedom and religion (including the religion of baseball); our
sense of the law; immigration, the "return of ideology,"
and much more. He revisits Tocqueville's most important ideas, like
"the tyranny of the majority," explores what Europe and
America have to learn from each other, and interprets what he sees
with a novelist's eye and a philosopher's depth. Above all, Lévy
is a sympathetic foreign observer, arriving at a time when Americans
are anxious about how the world perceives them.
Bernard-Henri Lévy is France's leading writer, a philosopher,
journalist, and activist and has earned the status of an intellectual
rock star. He was hailed by Vanity Fair magazine as "Superman
and prophet: we have no equivalent in the United States." He
writes for the Atlantic Monthly, and his thirty books include,
most recently, Who Killed Daniel Pearl? which was an international
bestseller. He is the co-founder of Action Internationale Contre la
Faim and the anti-racist group SOS Racism, and he has served on diplomatic
missions for the French government.
