Thursday, March 2nd at 7:30 p.m.
Ayelet Waldman
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (Doubleday)
and
Julie Orringer
How to Breathe Underwater
(Vintage)
Life for Waldman's protagonist
Emilia flips from comedy to sorrow. She inherited the outspoken know-it-all
toddler William with her marriage, and when her own newborn dies,
William's incessant questions have her at a total loss. Doesn't anyone
understand that self-pity is a full-time job? Susan Straight writes,
"[Love and Other Impossible Pursuits is] wickedly funny
in the minute details of contemporary life and love and parenting,
but it's sly the way Waldman makes the reader laugh at the spectacle
of a mother trying to manufacture love for one child, while making
the reader tearful about the loss of another child."
Nine spellbinding stories make up Orringer's award-winning debut.
"Intelligent, heartfelt stories that tell a whole new set of
truths about growing up American. Julie Orringer writes with virtuosity
and depth about the fears, cruelties, and humiliations of childhood,
but then does that rarest, and more difficult, thing: writes equally
beautifully about the moments of victory and transcendence."
-George Saunders (Pastoralia)
Monday March 6th at 6:30 p.m. *
Fiction Writing Group
This on-going critique group
is CLOSED. To leave your name on the waiting list or for more information,
email James: jsrmoran@yahoo.com.
Tuesday, March 7th at 7:30 p.m.
Robyn Boyd
RawSome Recipes
(Essential Science)
Santa Cruz's tireless and talented
raw foods pioneer, Robyn Boyd has expanded her sensational tasting
and über-healthy recipes with this new edition of her popular
cookbook. Join us for delicious samples and learn her simple and sane
approach to preparing food that combines raw, cooked, organic and
conventionally grown food to enhance your immune system, better your
overall health, and celebrate the bounty of nature.
Thursday, March 9th at 7:30 p.m.
Gail Caldwell
A Strong West Wind
(Random House)
A Strong West Wind begins in the 1950s with a
girl who took refuge from the flat, windy horizons of the Texas Panhandle
by retreating into books. What she found there, from renegade women
to men who lit out for the territory, turned out to offer a blueprint
for her own future. Caldwell became a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer,
but first she would have to fall in love with a man who was every
mother's nightmare, live through the anguish of the Vietnam years,
and defy the father she adored. A memoir of culture and history, fathers
and daughters, the passionate rebellions of the sixties, and the power
of place and literature, A Strong West Wind is destined to
become an American classic.
Sunday, March 12th at 7:30 p.m.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search
for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
(Viking)
When a nasty divorce eradicated
all she loved and all she thought she was supposed to be, Elizabeth
Gilbert (Last American Man) undertook a world journey alone.
She set out to visit three places where she could examine one aspect
of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally
done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure;
in India, spiritual devotion; in Bali, the balance between worldly
enjoyment and divine transcendence. An intensely articulate and moving
memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can
happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and
stop trying to live in imitation of society's ideals.
Tuesday, March 14th at 7:30 p.m.
Ken Foster
The Dogs Who Found Me: What I've Learned
From Pets Who Were Left Behind
(Lyons)
In this memoir-cum-guidebook,
disaster-prone writer and reluctant dog rescuer Ken Foster (Dog
Culture, The Kind I'm Likely to Get) describes the dogs
who found him, from a beagle abandoned in a New York City dog run
to a pit bull in a Mississippi truck stop. Their circumstances offer
a grounding counterpoint to his own misfortunes: the shock of New
York City after 9/11, the deaths of two close friends (authors Lucy
Grealy and Amanda Davis), and the evacuation of New Orleans during
Hurricane Katrina. He writes eloquently about the world of animal
shelters, the nature of compassion, and the powerful effect of rescue.
To help the right dog find you, an Adoptable Dog Show, arranged by
No Voice Unheard, will kick off the reading.
Wednesday, March 15th at 6:30 p.m. *
Book Club
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by
ALexandra Fuller
This month's selection is Don't Let's Go
to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller.
In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra
Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity.
Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place,
it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter,
even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental
and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious
prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love
at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time. Read
it and join us.
* Please Note Time
Thursday, March 16th at 7:30 p.m.
Edward Rutherfurd
The Rebels of Ireland
(Doubleday)
The reigning master of grand
historical fiction returns with the conclusion to his epic about love
and battle, family life and political intrigue in Ireland over the
course of eleven centuries. In this Dublin Saga (The Princes of
Ireland), Rutherfurd brings history to life, spinning the saga
of Ireland's path to independence through the stories of people from
all strata of society--Protestant and Catholic, rich and poor, conniving
and heroic. This author of Sarum and London brilliantly
weaves impeccable historical research with mesmerizing storytelling.
Monday, March 20th at 6:30 p.m.
Fiction Writing Group
This on-going critique group is
CLOSED. To leave your name on the waiting list or for more information,
email James: jsrmoran@yahoo.com.
Monday, March 20th at 7:30 p.m.
Rita Mae Brown
Sour Puss
(Bantam)
This national bestselling author
and her feline friend Sneaky Pie prove their unique writing partnership
is one of the most successful in the history of mystery! Brown is
an Emmy-nominated screenwriter and author of now 13 Mrs. Murphy and
Sneaky Pie mysteries. Love is in the air as spring comes to Crozet,
Virginia, but no sooner has "Harry" Haristeen happily remarried
than she is rudely interrupted by a murder. Of course, the crime-solving
critters quickly sink their claws into the case.
Tuesday, March 21st at 7:30 p.m.
Danielle Trussoni
Falling Through the Earth
(Henry Holt)
From her beloved father, young
Danielle learned about rock-&- roll, how to avoid the cops, and
never to shy away from a fight, but she soon learned that the violence
within him was sparked by the horrors he suffered as a Vietnam tunnel
rat, risking his life searching underground for American POWs. Eventually
her mom gave up on him and left, taking all the kids except one: Danielle.
Defiant, funny, and heartbreaking, this memoir by an Iowa Writer's
Workshop award winner is a love story filled with anger, stubbornness,
outrageous behavior, and battle scars that never completely heal
Wednesday, March 22nd at 7:30 p.m.
Lisa See
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
(Random House)
In nineteenth-century China,
Snow Flower introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which
she's painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women
created in order to communicate away from the influence of men. They
send secret messages by embroidery and paint on fans and on handkerchiefs,
reaching out of their isolation, until a misunderstanding wrenches
them apart. From the celebrated author of Flower Net and On
Gold Mountain, this haunting, magical tale is one impossible to
forget.
Thursday, March 23rd at 7:00 p.m. *
World Affairs Book Club
The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in
Central Asia by Lutz Kleveman's
(Grove Press)
This month's selection is Lutz
Kleveman's The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia,
a savvy and incisive analysis of the power struggle for the world's
remaining energy resources. This urgent concern has been recently
highlighted by the dispute between Russia and the Ukraine and the
heating shortage in the EU. Kirkus Review writes, "A well-argued,
well-observed journey into a little-known area likely to be of much
importance in days to come." For more information you may email
Jenn Ramage at jenn_ramage@yahoo.com or call the store at 462-4415.
* Please Note Time
Thursday, March 23rd at 7:30 p.m.
Christopher Moore
A Dirty Job
(William Morrow)
From the author of Bloodsucking
Fiends, Lamb and The Stupidest Angel comes the tale
of Charlie Asher, beta male: neurotic and seriously fearful of changes.
But Charlie's safe life is about to take a really weird detour: on
the day his daughter is born, people begin to drop dead around him.
Then come the giant ravens, hounds from hell, a mysterious date book
with a list of "appointments," including a stubborn old
lady who refuses to accept the inevitable. Never miss the unmatchable
Chris Moore in person!
Monday, March 27th at 7:30 p.m.
Verlyn Klinkenborg
Timothy; or, Notes
of an Abject Reptile
(Knopf)
Klinkenborg, a member of the
editorial board of the The New York Times and author of The
Rural Life, explores the natural history of the tortoise by adopting
the animal's own sensibility. Based on the notes of English curate
Gilbert White, author of The Natural History of Selborne, Timothy
gives the tortoise an unforgettable voice and powers of observation
as keen as those of any bipedal naturalist. Wry and wise, Timothy
will surprise and delight readers of all ages. "Verlyn Klinkenborg
has written a natural history of empathy. Through the mind of a tortoise,
boundaries between species dissolve and anthropocentric assumptions
shatter, as we are led to examine and explore our cruelty, compassion
and curiosity as human beings."-Terry Tempest Williams, (Refuge)
Tuesday, March 28th at 7:30 p.m.
David Henry Anthony III
Max Yergan: Race Man, Internationalist,
Cold Warrior
(New York University)
"[From] mentor of a key African National Congress
leader to enthusiastic backer of apartheid, from friend of Paul Robeson
and target of FBI surveillance to someone eulogized in the National
Review. Max Yergan's odyssey through the twentieth century is
a prism through which to view an era's dreams and conflicts on four
continents."--Adam Hochschild. Drawing on personal interviews
and extensive research, UCSC professor Anthony explores not only the
life of the enigmatic Max Yergan but also the political and institutional
movements that have shaped the history of the black world from the
United States to South Africa.
Thursday, March 30th at 7:30 p.m.
Dan Bessie
Reeling Through Hollywood: How I Spend
40 Fabulous Years in Film and Never Made a Nickel
(Blue Lupin Press)
and
Jeanne Johnson
Starlings in the Park: Stories of Hardship
and Hope (Blue Lupin Press)
Husband and wife authors take
the stage tonight. "Dan Bessie's book should be obligatory for
anyone considering a creative life...it is a cautionary tale to the
vain and an inspiration to those who honestly desire to craft a self-directed
life in the arts... rich in detail, funny, and honest. "- Peter
Coyote. An award-winning filmmaker, a screenplay coach, and a creative
writing teacher in California prisons, author Dan Bessie shares the
heartbreak, joys and endless quirks behind success and failure in
the movie business.
Jeanne Johnson's extraordinary tales, arising from her background
as a teacher, counselor and Quaker prison chaplain, give voice to
lonely and neglected children and adults struggling to overcome their
individual hardships. As best selling author Lucia Capacchione says,
"You will want to read it more than once... you will want to
share it with others."
