Archive
Friends,
below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
SPECIAL BOOKSWAP EDITION!
Thursday, March 15
4:00 – 6:00 PM
AFTER SCHOOL BOOKSWAP FOR KIDS & THEIR PARENTS!
Bookswap is branching out!
Sondra Hall of Take My Word For It joins us for this junior version of our popular after-dark Bookswap for budding literati and the parents who've nurtured their book habit.
REQUIREMENTS:
Be a kid, aged 8-12.
Be a parent of a kid aged 8-12.
Bring a book. You too, parents.
Eat some delicious snacks.
Swap your book.
Make new friends, together!In addition to the swap, Sondra will lead a writing activity for kids and parents to do together!
It's good to share.
$15 Parent & Kid pair
$5 per additional kid (or parent)
Includes food and beverages, and a special discount coupon.
This event is intended to be for kids with their parents - parents must be in attendance
Tickets in the store or at Brown Paper Tickets online or 800-838-3006
Friends Don’t Let Friends Write Novels Alone!
Thursday, March 15
7:30 PM
MEREDITH MARAN
In celebration of her first novel
A THEORY OF SMALL EARTHQUAKES
talks about writing, as only friends can, with MICHELLE RICHMOND
In her ten previous nonfiction books, Meredith Maran has trained her journalistic eye on the subtle dance between the political and the personal. Now Maran brings her provocative gaze to her debut novel -- a very Berkeley family story spanning two decades, set against the social, political, and geological upheavals of the Bay Area.
Eager to escape her damaging past and chart her own future, Alison Rose is powerfully drawn to Zoe, a free-spirited artist who offers emotional stability
and a love outside the norm. After many happy years together, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake deepens fissures in the two women’s relationship, and Alison leaves Zoe for a new, “normal” life with a man. Alison’s son is the outcome of both of these complicated relationships, and the three parents strive to create a life together that will test the boundaries of love and family in changing times.“A smart, sexy, funny, wrenching, delicious story of lust and trust and love and family." -- Anne Lamott
“A Theory Of Small Earthquakes teaches us something new about love and sex, jealousy and loyalty, and also, and perhaps most importantly, motherhood. Meredith Maran’s first novel is a powerful debut that left me waiting impatiently for her second.” -- Ayelet Waldman
"Funny, lively, political, personal, nostalgic, touching, A Theory of Small Earthquakes deftly chronicles love and its various meanings. I enjoyed it greatly." -- Meg Wolitzer,
“In this groundbreaking novel, Meredith Maran has told a story few writers, if any, have explored: of a woman drawn to two lovers and two distinct worlds, and of the unlikely family she creates, with two extraordinarily different partners, each of whom speaks to a different aspect of her desire. With rare honesty and courage, Maran asks us to consider whether sexuality can be defined by preference for one gender or the other, or if it is shifting and sometimes stormy as the tides.”
-- Joyce Maynard
Joining Meredith in conversation this evening is Michelle Richmond, friend, and the author of the award-winning story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, the novels Dream of the Blue Room and No One You Know, and the international sensation The Year of Fog. Richard was a James Michener Fellow at the University of Miami, has taught in the MFA programs in Creative Writing at USF, California College of the Arts, St. Mary’s College, and Bowling Green State University. She serves on the executive council of The Authors Guild and holds the Sister Catharine Julie Cunningham Chair at Notre Dame de Namur University.
Monday, March 19
7:30 PM
DICK EVANS and BEN FONG-TORRES
SAN FRANCISCO AND THE BAY AREA: THE HAIGHT-ASHBURY EDITION
It’s high time to celebrate the arrival of a gorgeous new photographic contemporary look of our neighborhood and its place in the Bay Area.
There’s no lack of historical books about the Haight-Ashbury, but this is the first to portray the modern Haight…with its rich mix of 60s tie-dyes, 80s Deadheads and 00s murals recalling the past…a neighborhood with history and culture intertwined with the City and with the greater Bay Area that surrounds it.
Dick Evans worked with his long-time photo editor, Yasemin Kant, with the resulting 200+ photographs marvelous in full color. Ben Fong-Torres added a Foreword and section introductions. And local guide and historian Stannous Flouride provided background research. It’s a terrific mix that culminates in a book you’ll want to give to friends and family far away.
Join us to cheer all the hard work and to celebrate the ‘hood!
Dick Evans was born and raised on a cattle ranch in Oregon, and could easily have stayed home and become a cowboy. Instead, he studied engineering and evolved into a globe-trotting CEO. Along the way, he’s lived in North America, Africa, and Europe; travelled in China, Japan, Brazil, Australia, Iceland, and India; and, while fly fishing on a stream in northern Quebec, he rediscovered his passion for photography.
LAUNCH PARTY!
Tuesday, March 20
7:30 PM
JENNIFER duBOIS
A PARTIAL HISTORY OF LOST CAUSES
“Hilarious and heartbreaking and a triumph of the imagination. Jennifer duBois is too young to be this talented. I wish I were her.” -- Gary Shteyngart
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, thirty-year-old English lecturer Irina Ellison has witnessed her father -- a brilliant, multi-lingual professor of music -- succumb to Huntington’s. After a genetic test reveals that not only is she likely to get the cruel brain-atrophying disease, but that it will arrive within two years, Irina finds herself seeking the most appropriate way to make her exit and wondering if she has actually made any mark on the world. After her father’s funeral, Irina finds a copy of an unanswered letter he wrote to Soviet chess prodigy Aleksandr Bezetov asking the profound question: How does one proceed in a lost cause? She believes her father—already aware he was entering his final declension—reached out to Bezetov because the young hero, like himself, was “a person who knew the value of his own intelligence, and the shortness of its reign.” Looking for a graceful departure from her Cambridge life and a last adventure, Irina travels to Russia to find both Bezetov and the answer to her father’s question.
In St. Petersburg, Russia, former world chess champion Bezetov is haunted by memories of a woman he loved in his youth who married a Party official and a close friend who was murdered by the KGB. Weighed down with guilt for his lack of action in those moments, Bezetov launches a dissident political movement. He decides to run for president against Vladimir Putin—a campaign he knows he will not win and that may get him killed—but his conviction to make the current regime uncomfortable drives him.
"By what exquisite strategy did duBois settle on this championship permutation of literary moves? Her debut is a chess mystery with political, historical, philosophical and emotional heft, a paean to the game and the humans who play it. DuBois probes questions of identity, death, art and love with a piercing intelligence and a questing heart." -- Heidi Julavits
Spanning two continents and the dramatic sweep of history, Jennifer duBois has crafted a beautiful novel about many things: the power of memory, the stubbornness and splendor of the human will, the endurance of love, but above all, how one proceeds in a lost cause. The result is clearly going to be one of the most notable debuts of 2012.
"An amazing achievement—a braiding of historical, political, and personal, each strand illuminating the other. Wonderful characters, glimpses of elusive wisdom, and a gripping story that accelerates to just the right ending." -- Arthur Phillips
Jennifer duBois was born in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1983. She earned a B.A. in political science and philosophy from Tufts University and an M.F.A. in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow. She recently completed her Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, where she now teaches. Jennifer's short fiction has appeared in Playboy, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, The Northwest Review, The South Carolina Review and The Florida Review.