1475 41st Avenue Capitola, CA 95010
Open 7 days a week -- 8am to 10pm
831-462-4415
Talking
has nothing to do with conversation.
GERTRUDE STEIN
May 2004 Author Events
Please let us know at least 7 days in advance if you would like an autographed copy. This will allow us sufficient time to have enough copies of the book in stock. Thank You.
Tuesday, May 4th at 7:30 p.m.
Randall Sullivan
The Miracle Detective
(Atlantic Monthly)
An Oregon woman's 1994 vision of the Virgin Mary on the walls of her dilapidated trailer sent investigative reporter, contributing editor to Rolling Stone, and author (Labyrinth), Richard Sullivan on an eight year journey into the world of skepticism and belief. With this modern day sighting of the divine placed "under investigation", he wanted to know how exactly one might conduct an official inquiry, and so set off after the "miracle detectives" - historians, theologians, and postulators charged by the Vatican with testing the miraculous. From Rome and Scottsdale to a tiny village in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sullivan "takes readers on a journey into the labyrinthine world of religious apparitions and miracle investigations...Well-told and expertly researched, Sullivan's book should appeal to skeptics and believers alike." (Publisher's Weekly)
Thursday, May 6th at 7:30 p.m.
Mylene Dressler
The Floodmakers
(Penguin)
Mylene Dressler's previous novel, The Deadwood Beetle, was heralded as "haunting, demanding, and perfect" by The Christian Science Monitor, and as "splendid" by The New York Times. Now, with that same sense of poetry and precision, The Floodmakers delivers a unique, almost theatrical narrative---yet never once sacrifices the humor or humanity of its characters. Reminiscent of the plays of Tennessee Williams, The Floodmakers is the penetrating observation of a family struggling for survival in close quarters, and of the dizzying tensions that boil beneath the surface.
Sunday, May 9th at 2:30 p.m. *
Karen Joy Fowler
The Jane Austen Book Club
In California's Central Valley, five women and one man join together to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months that they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her finely sighted eye for the frailties of human behavior and her finely tuned ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Pen/Faulkner finalist Fowler has written a witty, complex, and devious dance of modern love that sublimely echoes the voice of Austen - another great writer of brilliant social commentary.
* Please Note Time
Tuesday, May 11th at 7:30 p.m.
Jodi Picoult
My Sister's Keeper
(Atria)
Jodi Picoult has never been afraid to tackle controversial issues in her award winning fiction. She has examined euthanasia in Mercy; teen suicide in The Pact; stigmata and the existence of God in Keeping Faith; the Amish system of justice in Plain Truth; and sterilization laws in Second Glance. Now Picoult looks at genetic planning and the prospect of creating babies for health purposes and the ethical, moral, and emotional fallout that ensues. Young Kate has leukemia and her younger sister Anna was conceived to be the donor that will save her life. At age 13, Anna learns that her own kidney has been planned for Kate since before she was born, and, though deeply loyal to her ailing sister, Anna sues her parents for the rights to her own body. Telling this riveting and controversial story from different viewpoints within the family, Picoult vividly evokes the emotional and physical toll that a sick child can have on a family. There are no easy outcomes and the ending of this novel is sure to shock.
Wednesday, May 12th at 7:30 p.m.
Niall Ferguson
Colossus
(The Penguin Press)
As a Herzog Professor of Financial History at New York University and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University, Ferguson gained acclaim with previous books The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, The Cash Nexus and Empire. Ferguson is a respected voice both here and aboard, but his arguments in Colossus go against the norm. He argues that in both military and economic terms the United States is the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. He demonstrates that America, like the British Empire a century ago, aspires to globalize free markets, the rule of law, and representative government. Yet, Ferguson asserts America is an empire in denial--a hyper power that refuses to admit the scale of its global responsibilities. The negative consequences of this denial are ever alarming and ultimately reveal that more than just the feet of the American colossus is made of clay.
Tuesday, May 18th at 7:30 p.m.
Fred Reiss
Surf.com
(Santa Cruz'n Press)
It's 1999 and the Dot-Comers of Silicon Valley are downloading Santa Cruz, raising property values, butting out locals, and crowding surf spots. The techno-geeks think they can but their way into a soulful California lifestyle, and the only force left to set them right is a surfer, a dog, and a van. But when the surfer falls for a Dot-Com gal, things get gnarly. Fred Reiss is the author of Insult and Live and Gidget Must Die and has the resume of a true Santa Cruz local, including wine-tasting supervisor, journalist, stand-up comic and surf shop employee. His tale of surfer and dog taking on the digital world is accompanied by whimsical black and white drawings by John Severson, founder of Surfer Magazine.
Wednesday, May 19th at 6:30 p.m.
Book Club
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
Here is the “riotous and disorganized reality” of Mountstuart’s eighty-five years in all their extraordinary, tragic and humorous aspects. The journals begin with his boyhood in Montevideo, Uruguay; then move to Oxford in the 1920s and the publication of his first book; then on to Paris (where he meets Joyce, Picasso, Hemingway, et al.) and to Spain where he covers the civil war. During World War II, we see him as an agent for Naval Intelligence, becoming embroiled in a murder scandal that involves the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The postwar years bring him to New York as an art dealer in the world of 1950s abstract expressionism, then on to West Africa, to London (where he has a run-in with the Baader-Meinhof Gang) and, finally, to France where, in his old age, he acquires a measure of hard-won serenity.
* Please Note Time
Wednesday, May 19th at 7:30 p.m.
William Langewiesche
The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime
(FSG)
Author of American Ground and correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, Langewiesche now trains his formidable talent on the open sea: spreading across three-fourths of the globe, it remains the last bastion of freedom and lawlessness. Exploring this ocean world and the enterprises that flourish in the privacy afforded by its horizons, The Outlaw Sea tails the 43,000 gargantuan ships that carry the raw materials on which our lives are built, many of the ships possessing no assured allegiance, changing identity and nationality at will. Here is free enterprise at its freest, opportunity taken to extremes. But its efficiencies are accompanied by global problems - shipwrecks and pollution, the hard lives and deaths of the crews, and the growth of two perfectly adapted pathogens: a modern strain of piracy and its close cousin, a maritime form of the new stateless terrorism.
Thursday, May 20th at 7:30 p.m.
Robert Jensen
Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Reclaim our Humanity
(City Lights)
In post 9/11-America, as the government pursues its "war against terror," U.S. Progressives are faced with the challenge of how to confront our unresponsive and apparently untouchable power structures. With millions of anti-war demonstrators glibly dismissed as a "focus group", and with the collapse political and intellectual dialogue into slogans and sound-bites, many people feel cynical and hopeless about possibilities for resistance and change. In this passionate exploration of what it means to be a citizen of the world's most militarized nation, professor of media law, ethics, and politics and author of Writing Dissent, Robert Jensen offers a potent antidote to despair over the future of democracy. Writes Edward Herman (The Real Terror Network), "Robert Jensen supplies a much needed citizens' manual that explains well the evasion of moral principles that underlie appeals to patriotism, and the differences between nominal and real free speeach and a vibrant versus an empty and managed democracy."
Monday, May 24th at 7:30 p.m.
David Bain
The Old Iron Road: An Epic of Rails, Road and the Urge to go West
(Viking)
In his new book, Bain, author of Empire Express, traces the personal journey he and his family took in the summer of 2000 as they followed the route of the first transcontinental railroad from Omaha to San Francisco. Of Bain's newest book, historian Douglas Brinkley writes, " What a terrific read! The Old Iron Road is an elegant combination of riveting storytelling, modern travelogue and impeccable history. By taking his family across America retracing the route of the first transcontinental railroad, award-winning prose stylist David Bain rediscovered the glory days of the railroad. Ghosts abound, including John Fremont, Butch Cassidy, and Ulysses S. Grant. When literary awards are handed out at years' end, The Old Iron Road deserves a few."
CANCELED
Tuesday, May 25th at 7:30 pm
Robert Reich
Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America
(Random House)
From Robert B. Reich, passionate believer in American democracy, and public servant in both Democratic and Republican administrations, comes this urgent call to liberals to reclaim their political clout. Reason is a guide to confronting and derailing what Reich sees as the mounting threat to American liberty, prosperity, and security posed by radical conservatives currently dominating public discourse. With clean prose, passionate arguments and thoughtful analysis, Reich, author of The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, and The Future of Success, offers a bold plan for reinstating the traditional American politics of reason. Al Franken says, "We've got Reason, they've got Treason. We've got Reich, they've got Coulter. We win. A brilliant and passionately argued book. Read it." Robert B. Reich is currently a University Professor at Brandeis University and a Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis's Heller Graduate School. He is co-founder of The American Prospect which began in 1990 as an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics.
Please Note: The event will be off-site and ticketed. With every purchase of Reason at Book Café, you will receive two tickets to the event. If you prefer, you may purchase individual tickets for $10.00 each. Seating is limited, so reserve your copies now. This event will be held at the Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA, 95062. For more information call 831/462-4415. Tickets go on sale Saturday, May 1, 2004.
CANCELED
Thursday, May 27th at 7:00 p.m.
World Affairs Book Club
Silence on the Mountain by Daniel Wilkinson
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 Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala by Daniel Wilkinson. Decades of terror-inspired fear have led Guatemalans to adopt a survival strategy of silence so complete it verges on collective amnesia. Wilkinson's great triumph is that he finds a way for people to tell their stories, and it is through these stories -- dramatic, intimate, heartbreaking -- that we come to see the anatomy of a thwarted revolution that is relevant not only to Guatemala but to any country where terror has been used as a political tool. As always, we welcome people from all backgrounds and affiliations to participate. For more information you may email Graham Parsons at parsons402@yahoo.com or call the store at 462-4415.
* Please Note Time
When Eleanor Vincent's 19-year-old daughter Maya was killed in a horse riding accident, she thought she would never get over her loss, yet Maya became an organ donor and it was this act of radical generosity that ultimately helped Vincent heal. Swimming with Maya recounts the amazing relationship she formed with the recipient of her daughter's heart, his wife, and his two children and tells how her gift of life transformed the lives of others by allowing her daughter to become a vital part of their lives. Believing that closure is a dangerous myth and that the real secret to recovery lies in finding creative ways to incorporate lost loved ones into our lives, Vincent is a national spokesperson on grief recovery and organ donation. She is joined by Ellen Bass, lauded poet of the collection Mules of Love, UCSC professor, and instructor of creative writing for three decades. Ellen Bass is co-author of The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, which has sold more than one million copies and has been translated into ten languages. Mules of Love is winner of the 2002 Lambda Literary Award in Poetry.
Thursday,
May 27th at 7:30 p.m.
