Archive
Friends,
below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
A READING! A BOOKSWAP!
Find your way to THE NIGHT CIRCUS: Booksmith’s Bookswap Mixes It Up
with ERIN MORGENSTERN and her deliciously magical new book
Friday, September 16
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway -- a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love -- a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.
True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.
Rich, seductive, Morgenstern’s splendid and spell-catching debut novel is a feast for the senses and the heart – and not to be missed.
Erin Morgenstern is a writer and a multimedia artist, who describes all her work as "fairy tales in one way or another." She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two very fluffy cats. It’s our great pleasure to welcome her to our festive celebration party and Bookswap.
6:30 – 7:30 Erin Morgenstern talks, reads, and signs books (no charge; RSVPs requested via Brown Paper Tickets online or 800-838-3006 or in the store; preferred seating with advance purchase of THE NIGHT CIRCUS at The Booksmith)
7:30 – 10:00 The Bookswap commences: eat, drink, talk, and swap (books) with Erin and like-minded booklovers, with cameo appearances by our Literary Clowns (space is limited; tickets required: $25 at Brown Paper Tickets online or 800-838-3006 or in the store)
Never been to a Booksmith Bookswap? Our wildly popular and always sold-out Bookswap evenings are scheduled four times a year or so. Book lovers from all over the Bay Area converge to eat deliciously, drink free-flowing wine happily, and share passionately one book they’re evangelists for…and to take home someone else’s absolute favorite in the bargain (plus there’s a discount coupon for everyone!) Which book to share this evening? Consider bringing something that struck you not only as wonderful, but magical. The interpretation is up to you!
More on The Night Circus:
"Pure pleasure...Erin Morgenstern is a gifted, classic storyteller, a tale-teller, a spinner of the charmed and mesmerizing -- I had many other things I was supposed to be doing, but the book kept drawing me back in and I tore through it. You can be certain this riveting debut will create a group of rêveurs all its own."
-- Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
“The Night Circus is a gorgeously imagined fable poised in the high latitudes of Hans Christian Anderson and Oscar Wilde, with a few degrees toward Hesse’s “Steppenwolf” for dangerous spice. The tale is masterfully written and invites allegorical interpretations even as its leisurely but persistent suspense gives it compelling charm. An enchanting read.”
-- Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love
“A riveting debut. The Night Circus pulls you into a world as dark as it is dazzling, fully-realized but still something out of a dream. You will not want to leave it.”
-- Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger’s Wife
"While there are echoes of Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (a newspaper piece by a Rêveur, or circus aficionado, shares the name), Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love, Morgenstern’s vision remains distinct wholly her own. Great novels of the circus have frequently reveled in the underbelly beneath the daylight calliope, but here the author builds tension by refusing to allow her characters to give in to the dark. Nimbly leaping from one memorable character to another, from one wondrous scene to another worrisome secret, the author conjures a compulsive read carried forward by precise and lovely prose."-- Publishers Weekly
Join us for AN AFTERNOON OF POETRY, WINE, AND NIBBLES:
Sunday, September 18
4:00 PM
KIWAO NOMURA
WITH TRANSLATOR KYOKO YOSHIDA
SPECTACLE & PIGSTY
If you think of haiku when you think of Japanese poetry, Kiwao Nomura’s work will be a huge surprise. His strange and wild poems deal with sex and loss and memory by making unpredictable leaps of association. Imagine Fugazi singing philosophy and you get close. Inspired by shamanism, Kiwao Nomura sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before and like something you want to hear over and over. He is one of the two or three of the most influential living Japanese poets, and his work will be as stunningly original and compelling to contemporary Americans as haiku was to the late Victorians.
Kiwao Nomura was born in 1951 in Saitama Prefecture. He graduated from Waseda University, majoring in Japanese literature. A leading writer of the post-war generation, he is in the forefront of contemporary poetry. At the same time, he is known to be a prolific critic, translator, and essayist on comparative poetics. His work has been translated into many languages and published in magazines abroad, especially in France and the United States. He has performed internationally and released two CDs of collaborations with musicians. He played a leading role in Contemporary Poetry Festival 95, Poetry Goes Out and Contemporary Poetry Festival 97, Dance and Poésie. In 2007, he organized The Festival of International Poetry: Toward the Pacific Rim. From August to November 2005, he was a fellow at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in the United States. In December of the same year, he served as a director of the Japan-European Contemporary Poetry Festival in Tokyo.
Kyoko Yoshida was born and raised in Fukuoka, Japan. She was a participant of the 2005 International Writing Program at University of Iowa. Her stories have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Chelsea, The Cream City Review and The Beloit Fiction Journal, among other places. She is working on a novel about the visit of American Negro League baseball players to Japan in the 1930s. In addition, she translates Japanese contemporary poetry and drama. Recently a Visiting Scholar at Brown University, she teaches English at Keio University and lives in Yokohama.
Nomura’s publisher, Omnidawn, is based in the Bay Area, and has been publishing innovative writing since 2001, including poetry, poetics, translations, and fabulist fiction. Our books are distributed nationally by Independent Publishers Group (IPG), have been reviewed widely, and have received awards, including a PEN USA Award in Poetry and two PEN USA Awards in Translation.
Monday, September 19
7:30 PM
WILL BOAST
POWER BALLADS
JOSH ROLNICK
PULP AND PAPER
Josh Rolnick’s Pulp and Paper captures lightning in a bottle, excavating the smallest steps people take to move beyond grief, heartbreak, and failure -- conjuring the subtle, fragile moments when people are not yet whole, but no longer quite as broken.
“Josh Rolnick is a wonderful observer and a beautiful storyteller. Each story in Pulp and Paper is a path to the hearts of Rolnick’s characters, who, like you and me, strive to be their true, honest selves despite follies and weaknesses. A truly compassionate collection.” -- Yiyun Li
Josh Rolnick’s short stories have won the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editor’s Choice Prize. They have also been published in Harvard Review, Western Humanities Review, Bellingham Review, and Gulf Coast, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices. A reporter, editor, and journal publisher, he grew up in New Jersey, spent summers camping his way through Upstate New York, and has lived in Jerusalem, London, Philadelphia, Iowa City, Washington, D.C., and Menlo Park. He lives with his wife and three sons in Akron, Ohio.
“…I was unprepared for the powerful, cumulative effect of these related stories. There’s a barebones believability, increased in every direction by the author’s ability to permeate veneers and to find moments of harmony…heard very unexpectedly. Underneath the calm surface runs an undercurrent of loss and pain, a subtext never sentimentalized or easily summarized. He can really write. What an impressive book.” – Ann Beattie
Will Boast’s linked stories in Power Ballads are devoted to the unheard virtuoso: the working musician.
From the wings of sold-out arena to hip-hop studios to polka bars, these stories are born out of a nocturnal world where music is often simply work, but also where it can, in rare moments, become a source of grace and transcendence. A skilled but snobby jazz drummer joins a costumed heavy metal band to pay his rent. A Country singer tries to turn her brutal past into a successful career. A vengeful rock critic reenters the life of an emerging singer-songwriter, beset on wreaking havoc. Boast’s characters need music to survive, yet find themselves lost when the last note is played, the lights go up, and it’s time to return to regular life. Both melancholy and hilarious, Power Ballads is an exploration of the secret music that plays inside us all.
Will Boast was born in England and grew up in Ireland and Wisconsin. His story collection, Power Ballads, won the 2011 Iowa Short Fiction Award. His fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices 2009, Narrative, Glimmer Train, The Southern Review, and The American Scholar, among other publications. From 2008-2010, he was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He lives in San Francisco and moonlights as a musician around the Bay Area.
Wednesday, September 21
7:30 PM
ALEX SHAKAR
LUMINARIUM
Do you feel...Your life is without purpose? Your days are without meaning? There's something about existence you're just not getting?
Fred Brounian and his twin brother, George, were once co-CEOs of a New York City software company devoted to the creation of utopian virtual worlds. Now, in 2006, as two wars rage and the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, George is in a coma, control of the company has been wrenched away by a military contracting conglomerate, and Fred is broke. Near despair, he’s led by an attractive woman, Mira, to a neurological study promising “peak” experiences and a newfound spiritual outlook on life. As the study progresses, lines between subject and experimenter blur, and reality becomes increasingly porous. Meanwhile, Fred finds himself caught up in what seems at first a cruel prank: a series of bizarre emails and texts that purport to be from his comatose brother.Moving between the research hospitals of Manhattan, the streets of a meticulously planned Florida city, the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the uncanny, immersive worlds of urban disaster simulation; threading through military listserv geek-speak, Hindu cosmology, the maxims of outmoded self-help books and the latest neuro-scientific breakthroughs, LUMINARIUM is a brilliant exploration of the way we live now, a novel that’s as much about the role technology and spirituality play in shaping our reality as it is about the undying bond between brothers, and the redemptive possibilities of love.
Alex Shakar's first novel, The Savage Girl, a New York Times Notable Book, has been translated into six foreign languages. His story collection, City in Love, won the FC2 National Fiction Competition. A native of Brooklyn, NY, he now lives in Chicago with his wife, the composer Olivia Block.
"Luminarium is dizzyingly smart and provocative, exploring as it does the state of the present, of technology, of what is real and what is ephemeral. But the thing that separates Luminarium from other books that discuss avatars, virtual reality and the like is that Alex Shakar is committed throughout with trying, relentlessly, to flat-out explain the meaning of life. This book is funny, and soulful, and very sad, but so intellectually invigorating that you'll want to read it twice." – Dave Eggers
“Shakar's prose is sharp and hilarious, engendering the reader's faith in the novel's philosophical ambitions. Part Philip K. Dick, part Jonathan Franzen, this radiant work leads you from the unreal to the real so convincingly that you begin to let go of the distinction.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)