Archive
Friends,
below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
Wednesday, January 19
7:30 PM
AMY CHUA
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs.
This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones.
But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old. —Amy Chua
“A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it.” Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is bestselling author Amy Chua’s witty, awe-inspiring, and provocative memoir of extreme parenting, revealing the awards—and the costs— of raising her children the Chinese way.
When Amy, a first generation Chinese-American, married Jed they agreed that their children would be raised Jewish, like Jed, but would speak Mandarin Chinese. Amy also decided that she would hew closely to the Chinese tradition of child-rearing. Unlike your typical Western parents, who stress individuality and strive to create a nurturing environment, the Chinese believe you must prepare your children for the future by arming them with skills, strong work habits, and inner confidence. As Amy puts it: “the Chinese mother believes that 1) schoolwork always comes first; 2) an A-minus is a bad grade; 3) your children must be two years ahead of their classmates in math; 4) you must never compliment your children in public; 5) if your child ever disagrees with a teacher or coach, you must always take the side of the teacher or coach; 6) the only activities your children should be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually win a medal; and 7) that medal must be gold.”
With remarkable honesty and a great sense of humor, Amy chronicles her and her daughters’ experiences: the constant drills, the endless piano and violin practice, the successes (hello, Carnegie Hall) and the challenges—including a rebellion that upends all of Amy’s carefully laid plans. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is an eye-opening exploration of the differences in Eastern and Western parenting that is sure to spark a national conversation about what it means to be a good parent.
"Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is the book we've all been waiting for – a candid, provocative, poignant and vicarious journey through the Chinese-American family culture. It will leave you breathless with its bluntness and emotion. Amy Chua is a Tiger Mother, a greatly gifted law professor and, ultimately, an honest, loving woman with a lot to say." –Tom Brokaw
Amy Chua is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, who arrived in the U.S. as graduate students in 1960. Along with her three younger sisters, Amy grew up in the Midwest under conditions of extremely strict but also extremely loving “Chinese parenting.” She attended El Cerrito High School in California and went on to graduate from Harvard College (1984) and Harvard Law School (1987).
After law school, Amy practiced on Wall Street for a few years, and then taught at Duke, Stanford, and NYU. In 2001 she joined the faculty of the Yale Law School, where she teaches in the areas of contracts, law and development, international business transactions, and law and globalization. She is a recipient of the Yale Law School’s “Best Teaching” award.
Amy’s first book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, was a New York Times bestseller. Her second book, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance – and Why They Fall, was a critically acclaimed Foreign Affairs bestseller.
Thursday, January 20
7:30 PM
PITCHAPALOOZA! Calling All Writers!
The Book Doctors, aka David Henry Sterry, and ex-agent/current wife Arielle Eckstut, authors of the The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, will make a house call in San Francisco, and they want YOU to PITCH your BOOK at their Pitchapalooza.
It’s like American Idol for books, only without the Simon. Writers get one minute to pitch their book ideas to a once-in-a-lifetime All-Star cast of publishing experts. Plus: every writer who buys a book at The Booksmith will receive a free consultation withThe Book Doctors, a $100 value!
Arielle has been a literary agent for 18 years, and David is the best-selling author of more than a dozen books, the last of which appeared on the cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. They’ve helped dozens and dozens of talented amateurs become professionally published authors. They’ve appeared on NPR many times, and taught publishing at Stanford University. Joining them this evening are Elise Cannon, VP & Director of Field Sales at Publisher’s Group West, and others to be announced.
“A must-have for every aspiring writer.” – Khaled Hosseini, New York Times bestselling author of The Kite Runner
“Refreshingly honest, knowledgeable and detailed. . . . An invaluable resource”—Jamie Raab, publisher, Grand Central Publishing
The world is still filled with countless aspiring authors who want to write books and get them read. As the rise of e-readers suggests, the book—in whatever form—certainly isn’t going anywhere!
So the question becomes: How can authors use this new digital landscape to get their books into the hands of readers?
Throughout The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How to Write It, Sell It, and Market It…Successfully! Eckstut and Sterry demystify every step of the publishing process, explaining how to :
come up with a search-engine-friendly, blockbuster title,
create a selling proposal,
find the right agent,
develop marketing and publicity savvy,
determine whether self-publishing is right for you,
put together a great event,
produce an effective video book trailer,
understand electronic publishing, e-book pricing and royalties, and much more.
The book includes interviews with hundreds of publishing insiders and authors, including Seth Godin, Neil Gaiman, Amy Bloom, Margaret Atwood, Larry Kirshbaum, and Leonard Lopate, plus agents, publicists, editors, booksellers, web wizards, and social networking gurus; sidebars featuring real-life publishing success stories, sample proposals, query letters, and a feature-rich website and community for authors.
Arielle Eckstut, cofounder of LittleMissMatched, an iconic brand with stores in Disneyland and Grand Central Station, is a writer, entrepreneur, and agent-at-large for the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. She is the author of Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen
David Henry Sterry is the coeditor of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys (front page review, The New York Times Book Review) and author of Master of Ceremonies, Chicken, Satchel Sez, and most recently, The Glorious World Cup. He is also an actor, media coach, book doctor, Huffington Post regular, and activist. The authors are married and live in Montclair, New Jersey, with their daughter.
Check out a few previous Pitchapalooza here and here.
Sunday, January 23
4:00 PM
Young Writers Project Student Reading
50,000 young writers around the globe wrote novels this past November! They were participants in National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo), a fun, seat-of-your-pants writing adventure where the challenge is to pen an entire novel in one month. About 30 Bay Area classrooms took part this year, and we’ll be presenting a selection of budding novelists at the fourth annual Young Writers Program Thank Goodness It’s Over Reading and Celebration. With revised manuscripts fresh off the presses, these authors—aged elementary through high school—are excited to share their work. Book lovers of all ages are invited to attend this reading and, we hope, be inspired to write their own novels next year!
Thursday, January 27
7:30 PM
JANE McGONIGAL
Reality is Broken:
Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
Reality is Broken reveals the hidden connections among three hot-button topics in the world of business, psychology and technology. These three topics by themselves have been the subject of a number of bestselling books, but Reality is Broken brings them together for the first time to tell a much larger story: The story of how computer and video games can produce real happiness and help us collaborate in ways that change the world.
But Jane McGonigal would argue the time has come to move beyond these kinds of books, beyond present debates over the value of games and game culture, because the reality is the gap between gamers and non-gamers is disappearing: Game-playing, in all its various applications, is already as integrated into our lives as work, school and play. Reality is Broken: will completely reorient how you think about games and the people who play them.
She begins with a simple observation: In today’s society, games are fulfilling real human needs in ways that reality is not. Hundred of millions of people globally—174 million in the United States alone—regularly inhabit game worlds because they provide the rewards, stimulating challenges and victories that so often are lacking in the real world. In fact, compared to games, reality just doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t motivate us as effectively; it isn’t engineered to maximize our potential, and wasn’t designed from the bottom up to make us happy. In other words, reality is broken, and we need to start making games to fix it.
What if the right kind of games could actually change a player’s habits for the better (eat less, exercise more, conserve electricity, stop smoking)? What if in participating in the game, real world problems are worked on and inspire real-world change (stopping war, ending poverty, curing cancer)? Isn’t imaging a better future the first step in actually creating one?
McGonigal’s argument might sound counterintuitive, but she makes her case with extensive research and real-world examples of how games—what she calls “good games”—already are improving the quality of our daily lives, fighting social problems like depression and obesity, and addressing vital 21st century challenges. McGonigal persuasively argues that those who continue to dismiss games as escapist entertainment will be at a major disadvantage in the coming years, unable to leverage the collaborative and motivational power of games in their own lives, their businesses, and around the world. Reality is Broken offers everyone a framework for making decisions about “good gaming.”
World-renowned game designer and futurist Jane McGonigal, PhD. takes play seriously. McGonigal is the Director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, where she earned Harvard Business Reviewhonors for "Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas of 2008" for her work on the future of games. Her work has been featured in The Economist, Wired, and The New York Times; and on MTV, CNN, BBC, and NPR. In 2009, BusinessWeek called her one of the 10 most important innovators to watch, and Fast Company hailed her as one of the 100 most creative people in business. She has given keynote addresses at TED, South by Southwest Interactive, the Game Developers Conference, ETech, and the Web 2.0 Summit, and has been a featured speaker at The New Yorker Conference. Born in Philadelphia in 1977 and raised in New York, Jane now lives in San Francisco with her husband.
Visit www.realityisbroken.org for more information about the book and Jane McGonigal.
Want to play a “good game”? Here are some suggestions: EVOKE, Fold It!, The Epic Win App, Flower, Code of Everand, SuperBetter, The MP Expenses Game,Budgetball, the Pokéwalker, Quest to Learn, Little Big Planet: Gamechangers, World Without Oil, Seek ‘n Spell, Goal Mafia,and Conspiracy for Good