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Friends,

below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)

Michael Thomas Ford - JANE BITES BACK
Wednesday, January 20  - 7:30 PM

The fiction of Jane Austen is timeless and has endured the centuries -- and now in Michael Thomas Ford’s JANE BITES BACK she herself will truly never die.

Ford’s clever, campy, and genre-bending tale opens in upstate New York, where Jane is alive and well working in a local bookstore. It’s tough to be surrounded by books while harboring your true bestselling identity, but Jane has learned how to cope after hundreds of years. The one thing that really bothers her is not getting royalty checks on the multitude of spin-offs of her work including The Jane Austen Cookbook and Austen action figures: if she was dead, she’d turn over in her grave. But Jane’s luck is about to change when she lands a new book deal --after 200 years and 116 rejection letters -- that promises to launch her career anew..

JANE BITES BACK is a contemporary comedy of manners, a witty spoof of popular culture, and just a lot of laugh-out-loud fun -- in the immortal words of Jane herself, “If a book is well written, I always find it too short.”

Join us in raising a glass of red, red wine to subject and author this evening!

“It’s impossible not to love Ford’s sharp-witted, sharp-fanged Jane Austen (and I’m not just saying that because she spares my life in Chapter Six).” --Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Michael Thomas Ford is the author of numerous books, including the novels What We Remember, Suicide Notes, Changing Tides, Full Circle, Looking for It, and Last Summer.

LAUNCH PARTY!
Ethan Watters - CRAZY LIKE US: The Globalization of the American Psyche
Thursday, January 21  - 7:30 PM 

American culture is homogenizing the way the world goes mad.  Our exportation of everything from movies to junk food is a well-documented phenomenon.  But neither our golden arches nor our bomb craters represent our most troubling impact on the world: the bulldozing of the human mind itself.  In CRAZY LIKE US, leading trend-spotter and science writer Ethan Watters shows that we are  not only changing the way the world treats and understands mental illness, we are actually changing the symptoms and prevalence of the diseases themselves.

In CRAZY LIKE US, Watters reveals how:

·        American versions of depression, post traumatic stress disorder and eating disorders are spreading around the world like contagions -- and we are the ones spreading them.

·        Western trauma counselors rush to far off countries to save the day without taking into account that the psychological reactions to trauma vary dramatically from culture to culture. (What would we have thought if New Guinea shamans arrived in New Orleans to counsel Katrina survivors)?

·        Anorexia rose in Hong Kong over the last two decades not only because of western fashion and diet crazes but because we exported the idea of the illness itself!

·        Our Western biomedical conception of mental illness has been show to increase the social stigma placed on the mentally ill around the world.

·        America believes it has a rightful place as the therapist to the world.  Given the state of mental health in our culture, Watters argues it is time to rethink our generosity.

Watters travels the world to illustrate the ways in which Western influences have changed mental illness.  In Hong Kong, he meets teenagers who have learned from American culture that anorexia is the modern way to express distress, and who began refusing food after a wave of Western celebrities and researchers began raising awareness.  In Zanzibar, he witnesses a much milder and more bearable form of schizophrenia than what we have in the States.  In Sri Lanka, he sees western crisis counselors bungle the treatment of Tsunami victims and actually cause the community more distress. And in Japan, he tells the story of the drug companies selling depression itself to create a market for a new drug. 

Ethan Watters is the author of Urban Tribes, an examination of the mores of affluent “never marrieds” and the coauthor of Making Monsters, a groundbreaking indictment of the recovered memory movement.  A frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Discover, Men’s Journal, Details, Wired, and NPR, he has appeared on such national media as Good Morning America, Talk of the Nation, and CNN.

Booksmith @ the SFJCC:
Start-Up Nation: What We Can Learn From Israel's Meteoric Economic Success
with Dan Senor, Council on Foreign Relations
Thursday, January 21 - 8 PM at the SFJCC
Information and tickets: http://www.jccsf.org/content_main.aspx?catid=539#3345

Chris Farrell - THE NEW FRUGALITY: How to Consume Less, Save More, and Live Better
Friday, January 22 - 7:30 PM

According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, The Great Recession may technically be over. But what’s clear is that, no matter what the GDP may be, people are hurting financially. In The New Frugality, Chris Farrell, personal finance expert for American Public Media’s Marketplace Money and contributing economics editor for BusinessWeek, presents a new paradigm for surviving the greatest economic crisis in a generation.

 The embrace of what Farrell calls the New Frugality signals that half a century of people spending with abandon and borrowing as much as possible is done. Profligacy is out. Frugality is in. Also, The Great Recession comes at a time of another great crisis related to our over consumption: global climate change. This convergence of crises creates opportunities and new ways to be frugal. In everyday money decisions, it turns out that being frugal and being green are synonymous.

 Farrell suggests we should focus not only on what’s affordable in the short term, but also on what’s sustainable in the long term. If you’re thinking about getting rid of your car and buying a bike to save money, there’s no reason you should buy a two-wheeled clunker from Craigslist that needs a trip to the bike shop every other day. As Farrell demonstrates, there’s a difference between being frugal and being cheap.  We’ll still need places to live (do we buy or rent?), to save for college, and every now and then go into a little debt. How we make these choices will be as important as the choices themselves. The New Frugality offers smart, sustainable, and ultimately more fulfilling ways to approach our personal finances and get more out of spending less.

Young Writers Project Group Reading 
Sunday, January 24 - 4:00 – 6:00 PM

Come hear from some of the youngest, and most talented, budding young novelists from the Bay Area at *National Novel Writing Month's third-annual Thank Goodness It's Over Young Writers Program Reading and Celebration*. National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants writing adventure where the challenge is to pen an entire novel in the 30 days of November. Over 40 local classrooms participated in NaNoWriMo this year, and the Young Writers Program will be featuring authors from six of them.. Students from 1st grade through 12th grade will be reading from their newly-written manuscripts. Word lovers of all ages are invited to come enjoy this reading. Warning: this event might be overwhelmingly inspirational! After seeing a 4th-grade student read from the 20,000-word novel that she wrote in 30 days, you may need to write a novel next November yourself! - www.nanowrimo.org

Jeremy Adam Smith - THE COMPASSIONATE INSTINCT: The Science of Human Goodness
Monday, January 25 - 7:30 PM 

In these pages you will hear from Steven Pinker, who asks, "Why is there peace?"; Robert Sapolsky, who examines violence among primates; Paul Ekman, who talks with the Dalai Lama about global compassion; Daniel Goleman, who proposes "constructive anger"; and many others. Led by renowned psychologist Dacher Keltner, the Greater Good Science Center, based at the University of California in Berkeley, has been at the forefront of the positive psychology movement, making discoveries about how and why people do good. Four times a year the center publishes its findings with essays on forgiveness, moral inspiration, and everyday ethics in Greater Good magazine. The best of these writings are collected here for the first time. A collection of personal stories and empirical research, The Compassionate Instinct will make you think not only about what it means to be happy and fulfilled but also about what it means to lead an ethical and compassionate life.

Jeremy Smith is the editor of Greater Good magazine and the author of The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family, and he will talk a bit about this work as well this evening.

Co-sponsored by the UCSF Center for Gender Equity.

Found in Translation - Book Group Meeting
Tuesday, January 26 - 7:00 PM

After a short hiatus, Booksmith’s literature-in-translation book group is ready to rock and roll again. This is an open discussion group, and, yes, you may simply show up – we’d love to see you! You’ll find descriptive flyers about the group and forthcoming books and dates in the store.

With the recent publication of Roberto Bolano: The Last Interview and Bolano's newest novel-in-translation, Monsieur Pain, the time is ripe to talk about this superstar. Join us at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, January 26, to discuss The Skating Rink, published last August. Called a "masterpiece" by The New York Times, the book centers around the murder of a beautiful ice skater in Spain. We'll get into why critics have called this detective story a forerunner of Bolano's mega-successful novel The Savage Detectives. For those new to Bolano, this makes a great starting point, and for dedicated Bolano-maniacs this book will be another great read from an author they love. Join us on Tuesday, January 26 at 7:00 for a rousing discussion and a chance to meet new readers.

Copies of The Skating Rink, like all other Found in Translation featured titles, are available at a 15% discount.

The Booksmith is so happy to welcome Scott Esposito and Annie Janusch as group discussion leaders. Scott and Annie's work with both the Quarterly Conversation and the Center for the Art of Translation keeps them apprised on a day-to-day basis of what's new in world lit, and they're excited to act as your "interpreters" through these uncharted literary landscapes.

Booksmith Book Swap
Friday, January 29 - 6:30 to 9:30 PM

The first Book Swap in 2010 might just be the most fun you've had at a bookstore, ever -- so don't miss it.  Join special author guests Stephen Elliott and Kevin Smokler, along with other smart, creative lit-minded souls of the city. Enjoy good company, swell atmosphere, delicious Reverie food, free-flowing wine, wise discourse and hilarious anecdotes.  Bring a book -- one you loved but can part with -- and we'll cook up some good, smart fun. You'll also receive a 20% off discount card!

Author Holly Payne says the Book Swap is "The most unique book event I’ve ever participated in."

Space is very limited -- these events sell out, so we urge you to get your tickets well in advance! As always, tickets must be purchased in advance, in the store, or at Brown Paper Tickets.


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