OCTOBER 2001

 

Monday, October 1 at 7:30 pm
Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections (FSG)

We're proud to host Mr. Franzen for what will surely be the biggest novel of the season. The pre-publication reviews have been marvelous; eager booksellers are praising Mr. Franzen left and right. Publisher's Weekly calls The Corrections "a masterpiece" while Kirkus Reviews believes it is "one of the most impressive American novels of recent years." Like bookends of the past half-century, the two generations of the Lambert family represent two very different aspects of America. Alfred, the patriarch, is a distant, puritanical company man; he is also slipping into Parkinson's-induced dimentia. His wife, Enid, is a model Midwestern housewife, at once deferential and controlling. Their three children, Gary, Chip and Denise, have little time for their parents. But when Enid calls for one last Christmas at the family home, the trajectories of five American lifetimes converge.

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Tuesday, October 2 at 7:30 pm
Elizabeth Rosner
The Speed of Light (Ballantine)

Elizabeth Rosner's debut is a moving story about sorrow and loss, woven around the sad histories of war torn Central America and the Holocaust. For most of their lives, Julian Perel and his sister Paula lived in a house cast in silence, witnesses to a father struggling with a secret so devastating that he took it to the grave. As adults, Julian now lives an ordered life of seclusion as a scientist governed by numbers and logic. In contrast, Paula, an aspiring opera singer, is always smiling, always buoyant with song. Before embarking on a European tour, Paula asks her housekeeper, Sola, to watch over Julian. Soon revelations surface which help all three learn how to both surrender and revere the shadows that have followed them for so long. This small masterpiece will stay will its readers for years to come.

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Thursday, October 4 at 7:30 pm
Victor Villaseñor
The Thirteen Senses (Rayo)

Continuing the exhilarating family saga that began in the widely acclaimed bestseller Rain of Gold, Victor Villaseñor delivers the stunning true story of his Mexican immigrant family, his parents' deep and tumultuous marriage, and the forgotten mystical senses that their love reveals to all of us. Come join us for this bilingual event of love, adversity, history, and great literature.

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Friday, October 5 at 7:30 pm
Kenn Kaufman
Kaufman's Guide to Birds of North America (Houghton Mifflin)

The author of Kingbird Highway, and The Peterson's Field Guide to Advanced Birding, and numerous articles for every major birding magazine, has his own story tell, and, of course, birds are on his mind. At seventeen, Kenn Kaufman dropped out of high school and hit the road to set the record for how many birds could be seen in a year, and the game developed into a deeper appreciation of the natural world, and we are all better for his great illustrations and helpful birding guides.

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Saturday, October 6 at 10:45 am
Bilingual Storytime with Billie Harris and Brett Taylor

We invite children and adults alike to join us for a grand time. Billie Harris and Brett Taylor---both of KUSP fame--- join us to read some delightful new tales in English and Spanish.

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Tuesday, October 9 at * 7:00 pm
Fall Literary Night for Children's Books
And
Catherine Dee for Girl's Book of Friendship (Little Brown)

This date is very important to the Book Café. It is our yearly chance to discuss the finest new children's books of the season with the people who know them best. Representatives from major publishers will give presentations, share reading guides, and give away freebies. Author Catherine Dee also joins this lively educational discussion to talk about, Girl's Book of Friendship.
*Note Early Time

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Wednesday, October 10 at 7:30 pm
Sandro Meallet
Edgewater Angels (Doubleday)

Authentic voices from the poor are very rare. A child of the San Pedro projects who attended UCSC on a basketball scholarship, Sandro Meallet is a survivor of that sometimes volatile and violent, sometimes fortifying and compassionate world of street gangs, gunshots, and impoverished, troubled communities. Stephen Dixon, author of 30: Pieces of a Novel, writes, "It is a smashing literary debut of one boy's unusual life in an era and area touched upon by many writers but never with such honesty and vitality, and rarely with such skill."

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Friday, October 12 at 7:30 pm
Jennifer Lauck
Still Waters (Pocket)

Blackbird was a critically acclaimed, runaway hit. Now Jennifer Lauck returns us to her true story of growing up as an abandoned, abused child and now into an adult in search of answers. As moving and stunning as her first memoir, Still Waters shares Lauck's fears and victories from the moment she, as a young woman, steps off a bus in Reno through to her own marriage and motherhood. Jenny discovers that the past cannot be locked away forever -- even when unraveling one's own anger and pain seems an impossible feat. Life, once merely a matter of survival, then becomes rich with the joys of truly living.

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Monday, October 15 at 7:30 pm
Joseph Kanon
The Good German (Henry Holt)

Author of the best-selling Los Alamos and The Prodigal Spy is back with a brilliant thriller set in Germany in 1945 about the end of one war and the beginning of another. Jake Geismar, CBS war correspondent, is covering the American occupation of postwar Berlin, a city physically and morally devastated. While searching for his own lost German love and investigating the murder of an American soldier, Jake unearths a story of corruption and intrigue reaching deep into this haunted landscape of wars past. A historical thriller of the first rank.

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Tuesday, October 16 at 7:30 pm
J.D. Landis
Longing (Ballantine)

Robert Schumann shocked audiences with music that heralded the beginning of the modern era while he drove his mind, his body, and the people who loved him to their limits. Clara Wieck was the most celebrated woman pianist of her age, while at home she braved the volcano that was her lover. The couple's emotional landscape included the musical giants of Liszt, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and in time, Brahms, the man with whom both Clara and Robert were in love. The author of Lying in Bed, J. D. Landis now explores the nature of passion and genius. Join him for an evening concert of music and literature.

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Thursday, October 18 from 6:30 - 8:00 pm
Writing Group

Every third Thursday of the month, join Book Café's Wendy Mayer as she leads our writer's group. Due to the limited amount of time, the group will focus on short exercises rather than group critique.

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Thursday, October 18 at 7:30 pm
Robert Philipson
The Identity Question: Blacks and Jews in Europe and America (Mississippi)

Robert Philipson's impressive book explores the strikingly similar effects of diaspora upon the black and Jewish consciousness. Central to its in-depth look into exile then and now are four key biographies, two from 1700 and two from modern day, including a fascinating look at Richard Wright (Uncle Tom's Cabin, Native Son) and Alfred Kazin (On Native Grounds, A Walker in the City). All four expressed belief in the Enlightenment promise. All were ostracized by the majority but made arduous journeys towards respect and acceptance in the cosmopolitan centers of the world.

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Sunday, October 21 at *2:30 pm
Tracy Chevalier
Falling Angels (Dutton)

The author of the lyrical bestseller Girl with Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier is celebrating her new novel with the Book Café. Set against a gas-lit backdrop of social and political history, Falling Angels explores the prejudices and flaws of a changing time in a novel that is at once elegant, daring, original, and compelling. In a fashionable London cemetery on the day after Queen Victoria's death in 1901, two young girls from dramatically different social classes find friendship with each other and with the muddy gravedigger's son. As the new king changes social customs and as a forward-thinking era takes wing, the lives and fortunes of the two families become more and more closely intertwined.
*Note Time

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Tuesday, October 23 at 7:30 pm
Leif Enger
Peace Like A River (Atlantic Monthly)

Frank McCourt praises Peace Like a River as "written in prose tart and crisp as a Minnesota morning...seductive and deliciously American." Rick Bass says, "Not since Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain or Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain have I been so engrossed in the reading of a book, and in a story told so beautifully." Celebrated authors and critics agree that Leif Enger's rhapsodic novel about a father raising his three children in 1960's Minnesota is a breathtaking celebration of family, faith, and America's pioneering spirit. Through the voice of eleven-year-old Reuben, an asthmatic boy obsessed with cowboy movies, Peace Like a River tells of the family's cross-country search for Rueben's outlaw brother who has been controversially charged with murder. A memorable piece of stunning fiction.

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Wednesday, October 24 at 7:30 pm
Allan Gurganus
The Practical Heart: Four Novellas (Vintage)

Following in the tradition of The Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All, Allan Gurganus's voice -- by turn bawdy and serene, folkloric and profane -- deepens as it soars into this quiet masterwork. Four new fables rich in event, comedy, and experience -- surge with the force of history's headlines versus side-street human fortitude. Improbable heroes and heroines spiral outward from Gurganus's familiar Carolina terrain, including a pillar of the community who becomes, over the course of one cartoon matinee, its pariah, and a beloved, homely father who shows his village and his only son a decency stronger than race, humiliation, or even death itself. Come and enjoy with us "a storyteller in the grand tradition" (The New York Times).

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Thursday, October 25 at 7:30 pm
Diane Ackerman
Cultivating Delight (Harper Collins)

In the mode of her best-selling A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman's new book celebrates the sensory pleasures to be found in her garden as well as the thrill of discovery that marks her forays into the natural world. Whether she is deadheading flowers, studying slugs, or relishing in the profusion of roses, Ackerman welcomes that unexpected drama and extravagance as well as the sanctuary her garden provides. The Washington Post claims she, "writes a swiftly moving and sensuous prose that is extremely accessible but also reflects the encyclopedic knowledge and attention to the minutiae of a laboratory scientist....She is a master of the startling, substantial, and fascinating digression."

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Tuesday, October 30 at 7:30 pm
John Ross
The War Against Oblivion (Common Courage Press)

We're pleased to welcome back John Ross, a journalist Blanche Petrich calls, "the new John Reed covering a new Mexican Revolution". The acclaimed author of Rebellion in the Roots: Indian Uprising in Chiapas now chronicles the Zapatistas and their fight from 1994 to 2000. This new collection is full of terrific reporting, surprising observations, and keen insight. Join us for a lively, insightful discussion with one of Mexico's finest reporters.