Archive
Friends,
below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
OLIVER CHIN
reading & booksigning for Welcome to Monster Isle
Sunday, November 9 at 1:00 pmA family's vacation goes bananas when a perfect storm tosses their skipper's tiny boat off course. Now seven castaways are stranded on an uncharted desert island! Whimsical, fantastic and lushly illustrated, Welcome to Monster Isle related the adventures of Finnegan, his sister, parents, and dog Howl as they venture into the wild and encounter a menagerie of colorful monsters. Can these hardy survivors befriend beasts straight from their wildest imaginations?
Oliver Chin is the author of popular children's books such as the Tales from the Chinese Zodiac series, Julie Black Belt, Timmy and Tammy's Train of Thought, and The Adventures of WonderBaby.
ALISON BECHDEL
talk, slideshow & booksigning for The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For
Monday, November 10 at 7:30 pmThe Essential Dykes to Watch Out For is the collection Alison Bechdel fans have been waiting for! Gathering material from 11 earlier books, as well as 60 new strips never before published in book form, this new book from the author of the celebrated Fun Home chronicles the lives, loves, and politics of Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice, and others. Don't miss this special event - an author talk and slideshow with the one-and-only Alison Bechdel.
Alison Bechdel is the author of numerous collections of commix, including the national bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Fun Home (named Time Magazine's #1 Book of the Year). Since 1983 she has been chronicling the lives of various characters in the fictionalized "Dykes to Watch Out For" strip, "one of the preeminent oeuvres in the comics genre" (Ms.). The strip is syndicated in 50 alternative newspapers, translated into multiple languages, and collected into a book series with a quarter of a million copies in print.
THERESE POLETTI
talk, slideshow & booksigning for Art Deco San Francisco
Thursday, November 13 at 7:30 pmThe Castro Theatre, the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Headquarters, 450 Sutter Medical-Dental Building - these masterpieces of San Francisco architecture are the work of one man: Timothy Pflueger. While his contemporaries looked to beaux arts traditions, Pflueger brought exotic and art deco forms to buildings ranging from simple cocktail lounges to the city's first skyscrapers. Therese Poletti tells his fascinating story in Art Deco San Francisco: The Architecture of Timothy Pflueger.
Therese Poletti has been a journalist for nearly twenty years. She has written for the San Jose Mercury News, and currently works for MarketWatch as a technology columnist. She lives in San Francisco.
WRITERS CORP
reading & booksigning for Tell the World
Friday, November 14 at 7:30 pmThrough poetry we tell the world who we are, where we're from, what we love, what we think, how we feel, and why we hope. Tell the World is a new collection of poems by teens that have taken part in workshops run by WritersCorps, a national alliance of literary arts programs for youth. Join us for a reading by local teen poets published in this new book - their words represent the thoughts, hopes, and dreams of teens everywhere.
Writers Corps was founded in 1994 in three American urban centers - San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and the Bronx - with a mission to transform lives through the written word. Since its inception, the organization has helped forty thousand children and teenagers improve their writing skills and express their ideas and experiences.
KARAN MAHAJAN
reading & booksigning for Family Planning
Monday, November 17 at 7:30 pmKaran Mahajan's Family Planning is a hilarious debut novel set in India about a family of thirteen children that is bursting at the seems. "Mahajan is a natural - a masterful storyteller, an assured stylist, and a gentle satirist whose unblinking vision is ultimately tempered by compassion. Family Planning is an incredibly assured debut. More than a fine first novel, it's one of the best comic novels I've read in years." - Jay McInerney
Karan Mahajan is twenty-four years old and grew up in New Delhi. He holds a bachelor's degree from Stanford University, and is the recipient of the 2006 Joseph Henry Jackson Award for Fiction.
SYLVIA BROWNRIGG
talk & booksigning for The Delivery Room
Tuesday, November 18 at 7:30 pmThe Delivery Room is the new novel by Sylvia Brownrigg. Compelling, complex, and deeply human, it is both an engaging examination of the incomplete understandings that course between therapist and patient and a set of variations on the theme of motherhood - as well as a timely meditation on the meanings of wars fought from a distance when ordinary citizens have to measure their personal grief's against the outrages experienced by those under attack.
Sylvia Brownrigg grew up in Los Altos, California, and Oxford, England, was educated at Yale and Johns Hopkins Universities, and lived for many years in London. She is married to San Francisco radio host Sedge Thomson and lives in Berkeley, California.
LESLIE ROBERTS
talk & booksigning for The Entire Earth and Sky: Views on Antarctica
Wednesday, November 19 at 7:30 pmMore than a distant continent, Antarctica is a land of the imagination, shaping and shaped by explorers, adventurers, scientists, and dreamers. In The Entire Earth and Sky, San Francisco writer Leslie Roberts conjures all these ideas and interweaves them with the experience and history of Antarctica, balancing the reality of a frigid outpost populated by a ragtag alliance of international researchers against the crystalline dreamscape of a continent at the bottom of the world.
Leslie Carol Roberts, a Fulbright Fellow at Gateway Antarctica New Zealand, teaches in the MFA programs in writing and graduate design at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. She has written hundreds of articles and essays for magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, including the Christian Science Monitor and the Sydney Morning Herald.
RACHEL RESNICK
talk & booksigning for Love Junkie: A Memoir
Thursday, November 20 at 7:30 pmRachel Resnick, the celebrated L.A. writer and author of Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick, returns to The Booksmith to read from her just published memoir, Love Junkie. Written with raw humor and unflinching honesty, this new book charts the author's harrowing emotional journey. This unique memoir also sheds light on one of the more elusive and pervasive modern-day compulsions - as it holds a mirror up to each of us.
Rachel Resnick is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick. She has published articles, essays, and celebrity profile cover stories nationally in the Los Angeles Times, and is a contributing editor at Tin House magazine.