Wednesday, June 6th at 7:30pm
Jeffrey J. Kripal
Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion
(University of Chicago)
The institute of Esalen has long been famous for its hot springs and as a world leader in alternative education, attracting such luminaries as Joseph Campbell, Aldous Huxley, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Hunter S. Thompson. Set against the heady backdrop of 1960s California, Esalen recounts how two maverick thinkers, Michael Murphy and Richard Price, sought to fuse the spiritual revelations of the East with the scientific revolutions of the West, combining Zen Buddhism, Western alchemy, and Indian yoga into a decidedly utopian vision that rejected the dogmas of conventional religion. Kripal (Kali’s Child) explores the development of this religion of no religion, drawing Darwin, Tantric sex, cold war physics, psychedelic drugs, golf, and, of course, religion into a book that can only be described as monumental.
Thursday, June 7th at 7:30pm
Alan Snitow, Deborah Kaufmen & Michael Fox
Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water
(Jossey-Bass)
Out of sight of most Americans, global corporations are rapidly buying up our local water sources and taking control of public water services. In their drive to privatize and commodify water, they have clinched backroom deals and subverted the democratic process by trying to deny citizens a voice in fundamental decisions about our most essential public resource. The PBS documentary Thirst showed how communities around the world are resisting this gross violation of rights, health, and principle. Thirst, the book, further reveals the emergence of controversial new water wars in the United States and shows how communities here are fighting this battle. Joining us will be members of Felton FLOW and the Water For All Campaign to bring us up to date on our own local battle and what we can do to help
Saturday, June 9 at 7:30pm
SECOND SATURDAY SALE
Celebrate all the new happenings at Capitola Book Café
AND SAVE!
20% OFF ALL HARDCOVERS*
10% OFF ALL PAPERBACKS*
*Inventory items only. Not valid with any other offer
Second Saturday Sales run through August 2007.
Next sale: July 14
Sunday, June 10th at 7:30pm
The Welcome Back Tour:
Three fiction writers return for their second book
Ann Cummins, Yellowcake (Houghton Mifflin)
M. Allen Cunningham, Lost Son (Unbridled Books)
Tess Uriza Holthe, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes (Crown)
Ann Cummins’s father was a uranium mill worker and she spent much of her childhood on an Indian reservation, experiences she poured into Yellowcake’s two fictional families—one Navajo, one Anglo—who spent years in the radioactive dust of the American Southwest. When damages are sought for their dangerous work, the effort is divisive. These characters that cut across cultures and generations collide, and the past and present are reconnected in unexpected new ways. Bursting with heartache and hilarity, this new novel by the author of Red Ant House is a moving story of how everyday people sort their way through life, with all its hidden hazards.
In her stories, Tess Uriza Holthe (When Elephants Dance) peers deeply into the inner lives of women and men who are connected in unexpected ways by the 5:45 to Cannes, the train that links northern Italy with the French Riviera. She evokes the richness of the land and culture they share: the pulse of life at the festival in Rapallo, in the bullrings of Pamplona, and on the streets of Cannes when the movie people have gone. Sad and lovely, often at the same time, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannestakes us to places where we are happy to linger, in the world and in the human heart.
Spanning western Europe from 1875 to 1917, M. Allen Cunningham (The Green Age of Asher Witherow) and his novel Lost Son brings a brooding atmosphere and human complexity to an intimate portrait of one of the most uniquely sensitive artists of his time: Rainer Maria Rilke, generally considered the German language's greatest 20th century poet. Presented with grace and imagination, Rilke’s odd childhood and difficult early life will both fascinate and help explain his determination to stay true to his artistic vision at almost any cost. Here is Rainer Maria Rilke in the grip of his greatest artistic struggle: life itself.
Wednesday, June 13th at 7:30pm
Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
(Harcourt)
Why do people dodge responsibility? Why can we see hypocrisy in others but not in ourselves? Do we really believe the stories we tell? UCSC Professor Emeritus Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris, both renowned social psychologists, take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, our feelings of self-worth are jarred, so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right—a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong. Delivered in lively prose, this work offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception.
Postponed until July 17th
Monday, June 18th at 7:30pm
David Dodd
The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics
(Free Press)
With the careful scrutiny of a scholar and the passion of a fan, David Dodd gives all devout Deadheads the words to every original song from the band’s repertoire, complete with annotations that offer literary, historical and cultural references. Lyricists Robert Hunter and John Barlow contribute essays to this volume that includes 200 illustrations by artist Jim Carpenter and greatly entertaining illuminations, like the influence of Shakespeare’s Richard III on the song “Black Muddy River.” Dodd is currently City Librarian for San Rafael and was formerly the Aptos librarian and a UCSC “honorary” scholar with a fabulously entertaining emphasis.
Tuesday, June 19th at 7:30pm
Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns
(Riverhead)
The author of the sensational bestseller The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini returns with a haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of two women, born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, who are brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and moved to the United States in 1980. In 2006 he received the Humanitarian Award from the United Nations Refugee Agency and was named a U.S. goodwill envoy to that agency.
- This is a ticketed event. For $30.00, patrons receive one copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns, an entrance ticket, and the option of purchasing a second, single entrance ticket for $10.00.
- Tickets must be presented to enter the store and to proceed through the signing line.
- Only copies of A Thousand Splendid Suns purchased at Capitola Book Café will be signed by the author. Copies of The Kite Runner bought at Capitola Book Café and those that are personal copies may be signed, time permittin
Wednesday, June 20th at 6:30pm *
Book Club
Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres
(Counterpoint)
Sinners go to: HELL. Rightchuss go to: HEAVEN. The end is neer: REPENT.
This here is: JESUS LAND.
Julia Scheeres stumbles across these signs along the side of a cornfield while out biking with her adopted brother David. It's the mid-1980s, they're sixteen years old, and have just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees and trailer parks--and a racism neither of them is prepared for. While Julia is white, her close relationship with David, who's black, makes them both outcasts. At home, a distant mother--more involved with her church's missionaries than with her own children--and a violent father only compound their problems. When the day comes that high-school hormones, racist brutality, and a deep-seated restlessness prove too much to bear, their parents' solution is reform school--in the Dominican Republic.
Read the book and join the discussion.
* Please Note Time
Thursday, June 21st at 7:00pm *
World Affairs Book Club
A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya by Anna Politkovskaya
(University of Chicago Press)
This month’s selection is A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya by Anna Politkovskaya, a longtime critic of the Russian government whose recent murder is grim evidence of the danger faced by journalists passionately committed to writing the truth about wars and politics. A Small Corner of Hell focuses on the everyday horrors of living in the midst of war, examines how the Chechen war has damaged Russian society, and takes a hard look at the ways people on both sides profited from it. Further, this bookensures that Politkovskaya's words will not be erased. For more information, email Jenn at Jenn_Ramage@yahoo.com or call the store at 462-4415.
* Please Note Time
Monday, June 25th at 7:30pm
Noah Levine
Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries
(Harper San Francisco)
Buddha was a revolutionary. His practice was subversive; his message, seditious. His teachings changed the world, and now they can change you too. Presenting the basics of Buddhism, Levine, who wrote about how meditation saved him from a life of crime, drugs, and alienation in his memoir Dharma Punx, guides the reader along a spiritual path that has led to freedom from suffering for 2,500 years. A son of the Buddhist teacher and author Stephen Levine, Levine has studied with Thich Nhat Hanh, Ram Das, and the Dalai Lama and has brought the message of Buddhism to new, young audiences worldwide.
Thursday, June 28th at 7:30pm
Trevor Corson
The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket
(Harper Collins)
In this richly reported story, former lobsterman, journalist, and author (The Secret Life of Lobsters) Corson shadows several American sushi novices and a master Japanese chef as the students strive to master the elusive art of cooking without cooking while handling knives like swords and instructors like samurais. With drama and humor he delves into the biology and natural history of the creatures of the sea. He illuminates sushi's beginnings as an Indo-Chinese meal akin to cheese, and tells the story of the pioneers who brought it to America. He also shows how this unlikely meal is now exploding into the American heartland just as the long-term future of sushi may be unraveling.
Friday, June 29th at 7:30pm
Julia Glass
Whole World Over
(Vintage)
From the author of the National Book Award-winning novel Three Junes comes a commanding story about the accidents, both grand and small, that determine our choices in love and marriage. An impulse to become the chef for New Mexico’s governor takes openhearted yet stubborn Greenie away from Manhattan, her depressed husband, and broken-hearted gay-friend Walter—a decision that will change the course of several lives within and beyond Greenie’s orbit. We watch as folly, chance, and determination pull at all of these lives. Julia Glass is at her best here, weaving a glorious tapestry of lives and lifetimes, of places and people, revealing the subtle mechanisms behind our most important, and often most fragile, connections to others.
