Talking has nothing to do with conversation.
GERTRUDE STEIN

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Tuesday, September 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Robert Schoen
What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew about Judaism
(Loyola)

Composer and musician, optometrist and humorist, speaker and author, Robert Schoen will educate and entertain. In a Starred Review, Publishers Weekly says, "Written in a breezy, conversational style and laced with humor...what is truly remarkable about this compendium is its thoroughness and lucidity." Heard throughout is Schoen's plea for an interfaith dialogue that will "make our limited time on Earth one of sharing, understanding, tolerance, compassion and community."

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Wednesday, September 8 at 7:30 p.m.
Irene Kai
Golden Mountain: Beyond the American Dream
(Silver Light)

Irene Kai was born in Hong Kong to a family that insisted women accept their "fate" and she struggled between the roles of dutiful Chinese daughter and modern American woman. Defying expectations brought her freedoms and success, but only through intense meditation could she forgive her family and fill her own destiny with passion and vision.

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Thursday, September 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Penelope Duckworth
Mary: The Imagination of Her Heart
(Cowley)

This poet, playwright, and Episcopalian priest who served at Santa Cruz's Calvary Church looks at devotion to Mary as prophet, matriarch, and paradigm to the faithful. Discussing visual art, poetry and history, Mary is compelling to readers of the humanities and religions. Pulitzer-winning poet Mary Oliver writes this "gave me, as even a few sentences in the New Testament could not, an understanding of Mary's influences throughout history, and...a vibrant tenderness for her experience, her life. This book is pure gift."

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Friday, September 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Jennifer Leo & Candid Contributors
Whose Panties Are These? More Misadventures from Funny Women on the Road
(Traveler's Tales)

Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures won thousands of fans with its outrageous tales of women's travels, true happenings that weren't so funny when they happened but made for side-spitting laughter afterwards. From having hemorrhoids on honeymoon in Holland to surviving the torture of Paraguayan ants in your pants and discovering the sex appeal of a big butt in Senegal, this new collection is loaded with stories from women who have gone to the ends of the earth only to hear the sniggering of the cosmos.

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Tuesday, September 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Chellie Kew
African Journal: A Child's Continent
(qfund4aids)

There are more than 34 million orphans in sub-Sahara Africa due to the devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic. Through the charitable organization she founded and her vivid journalistic exploration of the lives of these children, Chellie Kew is successfully raising funds to build schools in Africa. Visit her website (qfund4aids.org), share her photographs, and support her work by joining her at the Book Cafe.

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Wednesday, September 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Stephen Ducat
The Wimp Factor
(Beacon)

What is the link between the macho strutting of politicians, voting gender gaps, and holy wars? Psychologist Ducat argues it is man's femiphobia -- the fear of seeming feminine -- and thus his tendency to embrace right-wing politics. This powerful, if subterranean, force is part of Western political history, from ancient Greek campaigns to Bush's Iraq War, the demonization of Hilary Clinton, and the "gendering" of issues like environmental protection, welfare reform, and gay rights. From Freudian slips to campaign ads, imperiled manhood and popular political culture get analyzed like never before.

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Thursday, September 16 at 7:30 p.m.
Victoria Dickerson
Who Cares What You're Supposed to Do
(Perigree)

As a nationally acclaimed and widely published clinical psychologist, this SCU professor specializes in working with young women, and whether they're from the US, New Zealand or Europe, she encourages them all not to conform. Decide what you -- rather than society, family or friends -- really want out of life, and forget about what you're "supposed to do." Options and opportunities are out there.

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Tuesday, September 21 at 7:30 p.m.
Robert Olen Butler
Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards
(Grove/Atlantic)

Inspired by notes scribbled on early 20th century postcards, the "little bits of captured souls," this Pulitzer-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain has crafted dazzling tales that speak to the universal human condition. Booklist writes, "Scintillating, soulful, and surprising, Butler's virtuoso stories are deeply satisfying." This collection is also the culmination of the ingenious "Inside Creative Writing" project in which he shared his creative process word-by-word on fsu.edu, to inspire and teach new writers.

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Wednesday, September 22 at 7:30 p.m.
Mark Spragg
An Unfinished Life
(Random House)

This beloved author of Where Rivers Change Directions returns for a tale of a homecoming, rich in character, landscape and compassion. Bruised by bad men and fearful for her daughter, Jean returns home to Ishawooa, Wyoming, where her loved ones are dead and her father-in-law wishes she were dead too. Knowing none of this, young Griff encounters a grandfather she'd never heard about, a black cowboy confined to the bunkhouse, and a wrathful loss she combats with great spunk and love. A Miramax film based on An Unfinished Life and starring Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez, and Morgan Freeman is set for release on December 24, 2004.

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Wednesday, September 22 at 6:00 p.m. *
Book Club
Autograph Man
by Zadie Smith

The Autograph Man is a deeply funny, existential tour around the hollow things of modernity -- celebrity, cinema, and the ugly triumph of symbol over experience. Through London and then New York, Alex is sent on a paper trail, searching for the only autograph that ever mattered to him, resisting the mystical lure of kabbalah and Zen and avoiding all collectors, con men, interfering rabbis, and bonsai dealers who would put themselves in his path. Pushing against the tide of his generation, Alex-Li is on his way to finding enlightenment, otherwise known as some part of himself that cannot be signed, celebrated, or sold . . .

* Please Note Time

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Thursday, September 23 at 7:30 p.m.
Faith Adiele
Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun
(Norton)

Burned out as an undergraduate at Harvard, this Nigerian-Nordic-American from Washington impulsively traveled to Thailand. At first she only solicited the stories of Buddhist nuns, then reluctantly left behind Pop Tarts and pop culture to battle flying rats, hissing cobras, and the rigors of finding faith. Through this colorful personal narrative, this "unlikely, bedraggled nun" suggests we each hold the key to overcoming anger and fear and to using our power to re-create community in today's world.

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Saturday, September 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Lawrence Weschler
Vermeer in Bosnia: Cultural Comedies and Political Tragedies
(Pantheon)

This UCSC grad and New Yorker writer is a collector of wonders who has great dexterity in exploring unexpected convergences. Within in these 20 pieces crafted over 20 years is a report on the Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal and Johannes Vermeer who painted serenity while war raged. There are sketches of artists and their inspirations -- David Hockney, Robert Irwin -- and Polish WWII survivors -- Roman Polanski and Art Spiegelman's father.

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Monday, September 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Caroline Myss
Invisible Acts of Power
(Free Press)

The author of Sacred Contracts and Anatomy of the Spirit, Caroline Myss now examines the power of not so random acts of kindness and how the "small miracles" we create for others can have an immense impact on other people -- and ourselves. An inspiring testament to the innate goodness of humanity, this book looks at a wide range of spiritual texts and redefines the power within our lives.

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Wednesday, September 29 at 7:30 p.m.
Courtney Angela Brkic
The Stone Fields: An Epitaph for the Living
(FSG)

Courtney Brkic joined a forensic team working in Bosnia-Herzegovina excavating bodies from the 1995 massacre of Srebrenica, the worst act of genocide in Europe since WWII. Where some only saw nameless victims, she discerned individual histories. Weaving together her lyrical elegy and her own Croatian family's story, Brkic explores the lingering devastation of war and what it takes to prevent it.

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Thursday, September 30 at 7:30 p.m.
Saul Landau
The Business of America: How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens and How We Can Reverse the Trend
(Routledge)

Written by one of the most witty and insightful critics of American commercialism, this book probes the forces that have transformed citizens into blind consumers, eager to take as much as they can from the planet. Landau decodes the subtle ways in which the media trains us to correct our inadequacies by owning more things, and he urges us to strip away the plastic overlay of consumerism and reclaim our civic integrity.

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Thursday, September 30 at 7:00 p.m. *
World Affairs Book Club
Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe by Martin Meredith
(Public Affairs)

Our Votes, Our Guns details how Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980 after a long civil war in Rhodesia. Upon the resignation of the defiant white Prime Minister, Mugabe was elected president. Hopes were high that the new black leader could help repair the damage done by colonialism and bitter civil war, but Mugabe became increasingly autocratic and violent. For more information email Jenn Ramage at jenn_ramage@yahoo.com or call 462-4415.

* Please Note Time

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Friday, October 1 at 7:30 p.m.
Martha Witt
Broken as Things Are (Henry Holt)
and
Ron Rash
Saints at the River (Henry Holt)

Two poetic, Southern voices share the literary stage. Praising the intense, private worlds within Broken as Things Are, E. L. Doctorow writes, "A sensitive Southern tale of weirdly imagined children and hapless adults. Ms. Witt has staked out a territory somewhere between Harper Lee and Flannery O' Connor." Award-winner Ron Rash lyrically explores the love of the land and the hold of the dead on the living when a town divides over the recovery a girl's body and the environmental impact on the river that took her life.

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Monday, October 4 at 7:30 p.m.
Francisco Goldman
The Divine Husband
(Grove)

Translated into nine languages, The Long Night of the White Chickens and Ordinary Seaman established this author as an American voice of importance. This joyfully inventive new novel is a tale about the soul of the Americas and the birth of the modern spirit, of great love, tragedy, and human comedy, set in the convents, ballrooms, and coffee plantations of Central America, and the docks, rooming houses, and stately Fifth Avenue addresses of New York.