Archive
Friends,
below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
CATHERINE BRADY
Reading and book signing for The Mechanics of Falling and Other Stories
Monday, April 6 at 7:30 p.m.Catherine Brady's latest crop of short stories, set largely in San Francisco, are about what happens when the seemingly fixed coordinates of our lives abruptly give way. The characters - a college student waitressing in a remote resort in the Sierras, a devout Christian man who works in a homeless shelter, a faded Berkeley radical, a privileged young woman who canít figure out whom to blame for her discontent - share a fundamental predicament, the struggle to name and embrace some faith that can break their fall.
Catherine Brady's short stories have appeared in prominent literary journals and have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories. Her first collection, The End of the Class War, was a finalist for the 1999 Western States Book Award for Fiction, and her second, Curled in the Bed of Love, was co-winner of the 2002 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. She teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco.
LISA LUTZ
Reading and book signing for Revenge of the Spellmans
Wednesday, April 8 at 6:30 p.m.Isabel Spellman, the offbeat and irrepressible private eye who has been called "the love child of Dirty Harry and Harriet the Spy," is back for a third hilarious adventure in Revenge of the Spellmans. This latest installment in the bestselling series by "smart-mouthed writer" Lisa Lutz finds Izzy once again breaking the rules as she juggles court-ordered therapy, unemployment, a rather spare case load, and the usual antics of her charmingly dysfunctional family.
Lisa Lutz grew up in Southern California. She attended UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, University of Leeds in England, and San Francisco State University, although she still does not have a bachelor's degree. She spent much of the 1990s hopping from a string of low-paying jobs while writing and rewriting the screenplay, "Plan B", after which she vowed she would never write another screenplay. She is calling California her home, for now.
KRIS SAKNUSSEMM
Reading, multimedia performance and book signing for Private Midnight
Friday, April 10 at 7:30 p.m.Private Midnight is a psycho-erotic noir thriller set in a gritty underworld of jazz, junkies and shadows, where shadows play tricks and secrets betray. Kirkus has said that “by the end, the word "freakish" doesn't even begin to describe the events” of Saknussemm’s novel.
This will not be your typical author reading; Saknussemm’s theatrics will be accompanied by music from the book’s eerie soundtrack. The author will transport his audience to the moody and surreal world of the novel described by PW as “James Ellroy meets David Lynch in this addictive mix of noir and supernatural horror.”
Kris Saknussemm is a cult novelist and multimedia artist. Born and educated in America, he has lived most of his life abroad, primarily in Australia and the Pacific Islands. His science fiction themed novel Zanesville was hailed by critics as a revolutionary work of surreal black comedy.
AMBER GUETEBIER AND BRENDA KNIGHT
with Bucky Sinister, Phil Cousineau, Ruth Weiss and others TBA
Reading, divination and book signing for The Poetry Oracle: Ask and Question and Find Your Fate
Monday, April 13 at 7:30 p.m.Just in time to celebrate National Poetry Month comes this book of classical poetry with instruction on how to use the book’s contents for divination. Poets featured in the book with read their work and then the audience will be invited to "ask the oracle" questions. All in all, a one-of-a-kind psychic poetry slam!
Amber Guetebier is a poet and a short story writer. Brenda Knight is a poet and the author of several books, including "Women of the Beat Generation," which won an American Book Award in 1997. They are both self-described "Haight girls."
ALVA NOE
Reading and book signing for Out of Our Heads
Wednesday, April 15 at 7:30 p.m.Our culture is obsessed with the brain—how it perceives; how it remembers; how it determines our intelligence, our morality, our likes and our dislikes. It’s widely believed that consciousness itself, that Holy Grail of science and philosophy, will soon be given a neural explanation. And yet, after decades of research, only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious—how it gives rise to sensation, feeling, and subjectivity—has emerged unchallenged: We don’t have a clue.
In this inventive work, Noë suggests that rather than being something that happens inside us, consciousness is something we do. Debunking an outmoded philosophy that holds the scientific study of consciousness captive, Out of Our Heads is a fresh attempt at understanding our minds and how we interact with the world around us.
Alva Noë is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also a member of the Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences. His previous book, Action in Perception, was published in 2004.
JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN
Reading and book signing for Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible!
Friday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m.Sure, it’s the foundation for much of Western morality and the cornerstone of world literature, but let’s face it: the Bible always needed punching up—a little more fire with that brimstone. In Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible!, This American Life regular contributor Jonathan Goldstein re-imagines and recasts the Bible’s greatest stories and heroes with the depth, wit, and snappy dialogue that they’ve always needed.
Jonathan Goldstein -- the "Canadian Ira Glass" -- is the award-winning author of Lenny Bruce Is Dead. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, ReadyMade, and The New York Times. He’s a contributing editor to PRI’s This American Life, where his work is regularly featured, and he lives in Montreal and hosts his own CBC program, Wiretap.
RUSSELL HOWZE
Reading, slidshow & book signing for Stencil Nation
Tuesday, April 21 at 7:30 p.m.Without a doubt, stencils are the fastest, easiest, and cheapest method for painting an image on a wall, a sidewalk, or almost any object anywhere. Stencil Nation focuses on the unexpected mix of this lively, accessible medium to reveal engaging aspects of an intentionally secretive international creative community. With dynamically illustrated perspectives from diverse niches of the art form, hundreds of photographs and numerous essays have been curated by StencilArchive.org’s founder, Russell Howze.
Russell Howze saw his first stencil in 1990 in Clemson, SC. When he landed in San Francisco in 1997, he found dozens on the sidewalks of the Mission and Haight neighborhoods. He's never stopped photographing the sometimes temporary, always intriguing art form. He currently lives in San Francisco's Mission District, and is usually seen on his bike with his camera slung around his shoulder.
SHAWNA YANG RYAN
Reading & book signing for Water Ghosts
Wednesday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m.A dreamlike haze shimmers over Ryan's debut, Water Ghosts, the tale of a real-life immigrants' enclave in early 20th-century California. In a mining town outside Sacramento, Richard Fong's Lucky Fortune casino and Poppy See's brothel provide the only entertainment for Chinese workers sending their wages back to the families they can't bring into the country. For Chloe, a white prostitute who is Richard's favorite, it's also a place to hide from her family just a few towns over.
Born in Sacramento, California, the child of parents who met during the Vietnam War when her father was stationed in Taiwan, Shawna Yang Ryan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and received an M.A. from the University of California, Davis. In 2002, she was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan. Water Ghosts (originally published in 2007 as Locke 1928) was a finalist for the 2008 Northern California Book Award. She currently lives in Berkeley, California.
FOUND IN TRANSLATION
Reading group for Tokyo Fiancee by Amelie Nothomb
Thursday, April 23 at 7:30 p.m.Found in Translation, the Booksmith’s reading group, continues with a roster of exciting award-winning titles. Each one a contemporary work of translated fiction, the books discussed by the group will be available at a 15% discount.
Nothomb's autobiographical novel, Tokyo Fiancee, takes place in the Japanese metropolis of Tokyo in the late 80’s. Amelie is a 22-year-old Belgian woman who spent her early childhood in Japan and has returned to master the language and join the Japanese workforce. To earn some extra cash, she gives French lessons to a young man named Rinri, and the couple ends up embarking on an affair that takes them on a journey throughout the countryside of Japan.