Archive
Friends,
below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
Friday, March 2
6:30 - 9:30 PM
BOOKSMITH BOOKSWAP: MURDER MYSTERY EDITION!
Calling all crime buffs: March means murder at the Booksmith.
Bring a Thriller - Eat Great Food
Drink Unlimited Wine - Leave With Swag
Meet Local Authors - Make New Friends
Parlor Games - Noir - Prizes
We invite you to come get a clue and a drink at our first-ever Murder Mystery Bookswap! Bring your favorite page-turner, and get ready to mingle with other voracious crime enthusiasts. And our special guests, Michelle Gagnon, the author of Kidnap & Ransom, and other super mysteries/thrillers, and Cara Black, creator of the Aimee Leduc Parisian mysteries!
Trenchcoat not required.
Now in its third year, Bookswap is the most fun you'll ever have in a Bookstore. Quoth the believers:
The Examiner: "The Bookswap embodies the spirit both of innovation and community and is proof that there is a strong desire for "and much to be learned from" independent bookstores in the 21st century."
Author Holly Payne: Bookswap is "The most unique book event I’ve ever participated in."
Litquake: "...rowdy and always entertaining. Think cocktail party, with a bookish twist."
Conversational Reading calls Bookswap, "An idea every Independent Bookstore should steal."
Tickets $25 in the store, or at Brown Paper Tickets (800-838-3006)
Monday, March 5
7:30 PM
JOSHUA FOER
MOONWALKING WITH EINSTEIN:
The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
In Moonwalking with Einstein, now available in paperback, Joshua Foer. explores – with humor and irresistible curiosity -- the fascinating ways in which our brains are wired to remember, or forget, the vast array of information and experiences that make up life. “Captivating” (The New York Times) and “entertaining” (Wall Street Journal), Foer’s work charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory.
Moonwalking with Einstein draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of memory, and venerable tricks of the mentalist’s trade to transform our understanding of human remembering. Under the tutelage of top “mental athletes,” Foer immerses himself obsessively in the fascinating subculture of competitive memorizers and learns to apply techniques that call on imagination as much as determination. Using methods that have been largely forgotten, he discovers that we can all dramatically improve our memories.
Foer also takes his inquiry well beyond the arena of competitive memorization—across the country and deep into his own mind. In San Diego, he meets an affable old man with one of the most severe cases of amnesia on record, where he learns that memory is at once more elusive and more reliable than we might think. In Salt Lake City, he swaps secrets with a savant who claims to have memorized more than nine thousand books. At a high school in the South Bronx, he finds a history teacher using twenty-five-hundred-year old memory techniques to give his students an edge in the state Regents exam.
This vastly intriguing book tells the unlikely story of how Foer eventually became the United States Memory Champion, but it also marks the debut of an abundantly talented storyteller; it is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.
Joshua Foer was born in Washington, DC in 1982 and lives in New Haven, CT with his wife Dinah. His writing has appeared in National Geographic, Esquire, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, and other publications. He is the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura, an online guide to the world’s wonders and curiosities, and the co-founder of the architectural design competition, Sukkah City.
Tuesday, March 6
7:30 PM
TERRY BISSON
ANY DAY NOW
“An unsettling, funny, freaky reimagining of America, impeccably written, by one of our most consistently interesting transgressors of literary boundaries” —Michael Chabon
From award-winning author Terry Bisson, hailed by Publishers Weekly as "a wonder of seemingly effortless control and precision," comes a new novel, Any Day Now -- a literary tour de force, transcending the fundamental coming of age story to become a social commentary on the history and politics of a post Vietnam War society.
Growing up in the 1950s, a small town boy from Middle America makes his way to New York City amid the radicalized culture of the 1960s where he is torn between the antiwar movement and the hippie counterculture. When tragedy strikes, he flees to a utopian commune in the Southwest as a disputed presidential election brings the U.S. to the brink of a second world war.
Any Day Now is a reimaging of America, an alternate history to the unfolding of our society and culture, as we know it today. Testing the boundaries of fact and fiction in literature, Terry Bisson describes his debut literary novel as "not exactly science fiction, but not exactly not." The resulting story has been called “the masterpiece” by Jonathan Lethem.
Traveling from Kentucky to New York City to the Southwest, Bisson brings this road movie of a novel to life with an original, captivating voice and vivid prose, providing a transcendent commentary on America’s civil liberties and on the perils of growing up—then and now.
"In this version of the Sixties we don't know what's going to happen next. Little changes quickly add up to big surprises, which is exactly how it felt at the time, and so by paradox Bisson makes that most dramatic era pop to life in a most startling way. This is the great novel of the Sixties."
--Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Mars
Terry Bisson is an award-winning writer and the author of seven novels. His short fiction has appeared in Playboy and Harper’s, among other magazines. He previously worked as an auto mechanic and as a magazine and book editor.
Bisson lives in Oakland.
Wednesday, March 7
7:30 PM
MATT RUFF
THE MIRAGE
11/9/2001: Christian fundamentalists hijack four jetliners. They fly two into the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh. The fourth plane, believed to be bound for Mecca, is brought down by its passengers.
The United Arab States declares a War on Terror. Arabian and Persian troops invade the Eastern Seaboard and establish a Green Zone in Washington, D.C.
Summer, 2009: Arab Homeland Security agent Mustafa al Baghdadi interrogates a captured suicide bomber. The prisoner claims that the world they are living in is a mirage—in the real world, America is a superpower, and the Arab states are just a collection of "backward third-world countries." A search of the bomber's apartment turns up a copy of The New York Times, dated September 12, 2001, that appears to support his claim. Other captured terrorists have been telling the same story. The president wants answers, but Mustafa soon discovers he's not the only interested party.
The gangster Saddam Hussein is conducting his own investigation. And the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee—a war hero named Osama bin Laden—will stop at nothing to hide the truth. As Mustafa and his colleagues venture deeper into the unsettling world of terrorism, politics, and espionage, they are confronted with questions without any rational answers, and the terrifying possibility that their world is not what it seems.
Acclaimed novelist Matt Ruff has created a shadow world that is eerily recognizable but, at the same time, almost unimaginable. Gripping, subversive, and unexpectedly moving, The Mirage probes our deepest convictions and most arresting fears. It’s the most original 9/11 tale that we have yet seen, a unique and mesmerizing literary entertainment.
Booklist writes, “Cult favorite Ruff's past novels… are all wildly, thrillingly different, but they do share one recurring characteristic: they are total brain-twisters but in a good way…Like Robert Ferrigno in his Assassin trilogy, Ruff enthusiastically upends world history, offering provocative commentary while grounding his story with a highly appealing Muslim cast.”
Matt Ruff is the author of the award-winning novels Bad Monkeys and Set This House in Order, as well as the cult classics Fool on the Hill and Sewer, Gas & Electric: The Public Works Trilogy. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Lisa Gold.