Archive
Friends,
below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
Wednesday, September 5
7:30 PM
TATJANA SOLI
THE FORGETTING TREE
in a conversation about writing with Josie Brown
When Claire Nagy marries Forster Baumsarg, the only son of prominent California citrus ranchers, she knows she's consenting to a life of hard work, long days, and worry-fraught nights. But her love for Forster is so strong, she turns away from her literary education and embraces the life of the ranch, succumbing to its intoxicating rhythms and bounty until her love of the land becomes a part of her. Not even the tragic, senseless death of her son at kidnappers' hands, her alienation from her two daughters, or the dissolution of her once-devoted marriage can pull her from the ranch she's devoted her life to preserving.But despite having survived the most terrible of tragedies, Claire is about to face her greatest struggle: An illness that threatens not only to rip her from her land but take her very life. And she's chosen a caregiver, the enigmatic Caribbean-born Minna, who may just be the darkest force of all.
Haunting, tough, triumphant, and profound, THE FORGETTING TREE explores the intimate ties we have to one another, the deepest fears we keep to ourselves, and the calling of the land that ties every one of us together.
"Will captivate readers... with this twisting, intriguing tale of a grieving California woman. Beautiful prose and striking detail."
-- Publishers Weekly
Tatjana Soli is a novelist and short story writer. Her bestselling debut novel, The Lotus Eaters, winner of the James Tait Black Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book, and finalist for the LA Times Book Award, among other honors. Her stories have appeared inBoulevard, The Sun, StoryQuarterly, Confrontation, Gulf Coast, Other Voices, Third Coast, Sonora Review and North Dakota Quarterly. Her work has been twice listed in the 100 Distinguished Stories in Best American Short Stories. She lives with her husband in Southern California.
Joining her this evening is Josie Brown, the author of Totlandia, The Baby Planner, and Secret Lives’ of Husbands and Wives (soon to be a dramatic series on NBC!)
Friday, September 7
6:30 – 9:30 PM
BOOKSMITH BOOKSWAP: Short Story Edition!
For September's Bookswap, you'll have to make it quick.
Novels get all the attention; they're totally the Marcia of books. But let's face it: it's summer, we're busy, and sometimes, we need a little Jan. Short stories are the Jans of the literary world. Their attention spans are brief, they can be super awkward (when done right), and, like George Glass most certainly did, you can hit 'em and quit 'em. So let's show the middle child some love for once.
Bring your favorite Short Story (or essay! or anthology!) collection. You'll have quick, Speed-Dating-style rounds to describe it, so perfect your pitch. At the end, we'll have a rowdy white-elephant swap. As always, open bar, great food, tons of swag, and other book nerds like you. Amy Stephenson hosts.
Tickets $25 available in the store, or at Brown Paper Tickets online or 800-838-3006.
Monday, September 10
7:30 PM
SETH ROSENFELD
SUBVERSIVES:
The FBI’s War on Student Radicals and Reagan’s Rise to Power
in conversation with Oscar Villalon
Seth Rosenfeld traces the FBI’s secret involvement with three iconic figures at Berkeley during the 1960s: the ambitious neophyte politician Ronald Reagan, the fierce but fragile radical Mario Savio, and the liberal university president Clark Kerr. Through these converging narratives, the award-winning investigative reporter tells a dramatic and disturbing story of FBI surveillance, illegal break-ins, infiltration, planted news stories, poison-pen letters, and secret detention lists. He reveals how the FBI’s covert operations -- led by Reagan’s friend J. Edgar Hoover -- helped ignite an era of protest, undermine the Democrats, and benefit Reagan personally and politically. At the same time, he vividly evokes the life of Berkeley in the early sixties -- and shows how the university community, a site of the forward-looking idealism of the period, became a battleground in an epic struggle between the government and free citizens.
The FBI spent more than $1 million trying to block the release of the secret files on which SUBVERSIVES is based, but Rosenfeld compelled the bureau to release more than 250,000 pages, providing an extraordinary view of what the government was up to during a turning point in our nation’s history.
Part history, part biography, and part police procedural, Subversives reads like a true-crime mystery as it provides a fresh look at the legacy of the sixties, sheds new light on one of America’s most popular presidents, and tells a cautionary tale about the dangers of secrecy and unchecked power.
Seth Rosenfeld was for many years an investigative reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, where his article about the free speech movement won seven national awards. He lives in San Francisco.
Oscar Villalon is managing editor of ZYZZYVA. His reviews and essays have appeared in VQR, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR.org. He is former book editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Tuesday, September 11
7:30 PM
JEFFERSON GRAHAM
VIDEO NATION:
A DIY Guide to Planning, Shooting and Sharing Great Video
Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY tech columnist and host/producer of the “Talking Tech” video show, arrives to talk about his new book -- and to demonstrate how to dramatically improve your videos.Graham, who has produced over 300 episodes of “Tech,” will demonstrate how to take advantage of video features on smartphones and point and shoots to produce professional looking video on a DIY budget.
Whether you’re a small business owner, blogger or web show host, or if you’re simply doing some marketing for your company or yourself, right now you may be all on your own in learning how to put that video together, make it look good and get it to go viral.
On his “Tech” video shows, Graham has interviewed everyone from the founders of Pandora, Zynga and Twitter to celebrities like James Taylor, Judge Judy, Selena Gomez, Arsenio Hall, Mike Tyson and even Kermit the Frog, in weekly chats about the role of technology in our lives.
Jefferson Graham is a long-time technology columnist for USA TODAY and host, producer and editor of its "Talking Tech" and "Talking Your Tech" video shows, which feature interviews with tech newsmakers and celebrities, and reviews of the latest gadgets. All the shows are produced on the same DIY budgets described in VIDEO NATION. Graham is the author of nine books and also an accomplished Manhattan Beach-based portrait photographer, videographer and jazz guitarist.
Wednesday, September 12
7:30 PM
SYLVIE SIMMONS
I’M YOUR MAN:
The Life of Leonard Cohen
“There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” –Leonard Cohen
Singer. Songwriter. Poet. Icon. Leonard Cohen is undoubtedly one of the most influential music figures of the 20th century. The legend behind songs such as "Suzanne", "Bird on the Wire" and "Hallelujah" and groundbreaking literary works such as Beautiful Losers andBook of Mercy, Cohen is one of the most important and influential artists of our era, a man of powerful emotion and intelligence whose work has explored the definitive issues of human life -- sex, religion, power, meaning, love.
Even before he began recording music, Cohen was already an accomplished novelist and poet. There are few popular music artists who can truly be called poets -- that exclusive company includes Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and Joni Mitchell. Cohen’s academic training in literature and pursuit of writing before his music career set him apart from his pop contemporaries when it came to setting lyrics to music. His dual careers in music and literature have transformed one another -- his songs revealing a rich, rare literary quality, and his poetry and prose informed by a rich musicality. He is truly an unmatched artist.
I’M YOUR MAN, by acclaimed music journalist Sylvie Simmons, is based on a wealth of research, including exclusive interviews with Cohen himself. This is the definitive work on Cohen’s life and career. Simmons also spoke to over a hundred key figures in Cohen’s life -- among them Cohen’s main muses, the women in his life, close childhood friends, producers and artists who have worked on his albums, and contemporary artists that have worked with Cohen or have been influenced by his work (such as David Crosby, Philip Glass, Judy Collins, Rufus Wainwright, Jackson Browne and many more).
Starting in Montreal, Cohen's birthplace, and where he first found fame as a poet in the fifties, I'M YOUR MAN follows his trail, via London and the Greek island of Hydra, to New York in the sixties, where Cohen launched his career in music. From there it traces the arc of his prodigious achievements to his remarkable retreat, when in the mid-nineties, on the cusp of marriage to a beautiful actress and enjoying the success of his best-selling album to date, he entered a monastery on a rocky mountaintop -- returning to find his bank accounts bled dry and forced back onto the road, at age seventy-three, for a wildly successful three-year world tour.
Whether navigating Cohen's journeys through the backstreets of Mumbai or his countless hotel rooms along the way, Simmons explores with equal focus every complex, contradictory strand of Cohen's life -- from the halls of academia to the arenas of rock 'n roll, she presents a deeply insightful portrait of both the artist and the man whose vision, spirit, depth and talent continue to move people like no one else.
Sylvie Simmons is one of the foremost journalists chronicling rock ’n’ roll. A winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for her liner notes to Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight 1970, she is the author of the biographies Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes andNeil Young: Reflections in Broken Glass, and the short story collection Too Weird for Ziggy. She was born and raised in London and currently lives in San Francisco.
Thursday, September 13
7:30 PM
T. GERONIMO JOHNSON
HOLD IT ‘TIL IT HURTS
“The magnificence of Hold It ‘Til It Hurts is not only in the prose and the story
But also in the book's great big beating heart. These complex and compelling
characters and the wizardry of Johnson’s storytelling will dazzle and move
you from first page to last. Novels don’t teach us how to live but
Hold It l It Hurts will make you hush and wonder.”
-- Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead
When Achilles and his brother Troy return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, their white mother presents them with the key to their past: envelopes containing details about their respective birth parents. After Troy disappears, Achilles -- always his brother’s keeper -- embarks on a harrowing journey in search of his brother, an experience that will change him forever.
Heartbreaking, intimate, and, at times, disturbing, HOLD IT ‘TIL IT HURTS is a modern day odyssey through war, adventure, disaster, and love and explores how people who do not define themselves by race make sense of a world that does.
T. Geronimo Johnson was born in New Orleans. He has an MFA from the Writers’ Workshop and has taught writing and held fellowships -- including a Stegner Fellowship and an Iowa Arts Fellowship -- at ASU, Iowa, Berkeley, Stanford and San Quentin. His writing has appeared in Best New American Voices, Indiana Review, LA Review, and Illuminations, among others. He has worked on, at, or in brokerages, kitchens, construction sites, phone rooms, education non-profits, writing centers, summer camps, lady’s shoe stores, nightclubs, law firms, and offset print shops. Johnson currently teaches
writing at the UC Berkeley.