events.
click a quick link below to get event info or just scroll on down
SEPTEMBER
9.7 kid's story time or crafts
9.9 book signing with Billee Sharp
9.14 kid's story time or crafts
9.16 book signing & talk with Shawna Yang Ryan
9.19 Writing Mamas writing salon
9.21 kid's story time or crafts
9.23 read. book club reads Zeitoun
9.28 kid's story time or crafts
OCTOBER
10.28 read. book club reads The Quickening
NOVEMBER
11.4 book signing & talk with Lisa Braver Moss
links to some of the books & authors we've hosted
Bookstore events are always an interesting proposition.
Will the public react?
Will people come and support authors and the store?
Will the audience have questions and be engaged?
Will the author have some passion and be able to pass that on to the crowd?
Something that has been very consistent in our personal history of over 25 years in bookstores, is that serious authors are, with very few exceptions, pretty interesting people. Meeting these creative folks, up close and personal, often makes for some fascinating conversation, and chances are very high that you will come away from one of these meetings with, maybe a new opinion, and definitely knowing something new. Every event has the potential to be entertaining ... learning ... and/or laughing ... and/or enlightening experience.
All for the price of showing up.
It's a good deal, you should try one out.
SEPTEMBER 7 - Tuesday @ 11am - for ages 3 to 5
It's Children's Time every Tuesday at 11am.
Bring your child for a story time with some favorite kids books or some fun activity designed just for kids.
We bring you a LIVE AUTHOR
Author BILLEE SHARP will be with us to talk about her very interesting book - Fix It, Make It, Grow It, Bake It - The DIY Guide to the Good Life. It is not only a book of tips for homely how-to’s and recipes; it is a whole-living book. Billee Sharp’s outlook comes from generations of wisdom and tradition on how to live sustainably and happily.
SEPTEMBER 14 - Tuesday @ 11am - for ages 3 to 5
It's Children's Time every Tuesday at 11am.
Bring your child for a story time with some favorite kids books or some fun activity designed just for kids.
Shawna Yang Ryan will be with us to give a talk, read some from her book, answer questions, and, of coursem sign your book, Water Ghosts.
A mesmerizing story of a community of Chinese immigrants in a small California town in 1928, Water Ghosts weaves history with mythology around the lives of the townspeople and the ghosts who haunt them. Water Ghosts is a rich tale of human passions and mingling cultures that will appeal to readers of Lisa See, Anchin Min, and Gail Tsukiyama
“Artfully woven, exquisitely modulated, walking a master's line between ancient Chinese myth and the grit of immigrant life in the Sacramento Delta, Water Ghosts tells the unforgettable story of a town brought to its knees by loneliness and longing. Complicated, compassionate, haunting, Shawna Ryan's novel feels more like tapestry than words on paper, her prose less like sentences, and more like song.”
—Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness
“Shawna Ryan's Water Ghosts is a multi-layered marvel of a book. The prose is a delight, the characters fascinating, the story richly imagined and heart-rending. This first novel of grace and substance presages a notable literary career for Shawna Ryan.”
—John Lescroart, author of The Hunt Club
This is potent, deeply felt, magical writing…. Don’t miss this book. —Gary Snyder
Shawna Yang Ryan
Born in Sacramento, California, the child of parents who met during the Vietnam War when her father was stationed in Taiwan, Shawna Yang Ryan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and received an M.A. from the University of California, Davis. In 2002, she was a Fulbright scholar in Taiwan. Water Ghosts (originally published in 2007 as Locke 1928) was a finalist for the 2008 Northern California Book Award. She currently lives in Berkeley, California.
more info at www.shawnayangryan.com
Writers and Moms!
Writing Mamas © Danville
A writing community dedicated to nurturing the mother and the writer.
Are you a mother? Do you write, or want to write?
What would it take to make that possible?
Time away from responsibilities to focus
A quiet and inspiring place
Inspiration
Support and feedback
A glass of wine
Then join us this Sunday, and every 3rd Sunday ongoing.
Your first meeting is Free - and yearly dues are $100
For more information please contact:
Kirsten Branch, Managing Editor Kirsten.E.Branch@gmail.com
more information on Writing Mamas
SEPTEMBER 21 - Tuesday @ 11am - for ages 3 to 5
It's Children's Time every Tuesday at 11am.
Bring your child for a story time with some favorite kids books or some fun activity designed just for kids.
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers is the September book to be discussed at the read. book club meeting.
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four, chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the days after, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. But, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. Eggers's riveting nonfiction book, three years in the making, explores Zeitoun's roots in Syria, his marriage to Kathy—an American who converted to Islam—and their children, and the surreal atmosphere (in New Orleans and the United States generally) in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun became possible. Like What Is the What, Zeitoun was written in close collaboration with its subjects and involved vast research—in this case, in the U.S., Spain, and Syria.
Dave Eggers is the author of six previous books, including his most recent, Zeitoun, a nonfiction account a Syrian-American immigrant and his extraordinary experience during Hurricane Katrina and What Is the What, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award. That book, about Valentino Achak Deng, a survivor of the civil war in southern Sudan, gave birth to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, run by Mr. Deng and dedicated to building secondary schools in southern Sudan. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house based in San Francisco that produces a quarterly journal, a monthly magazine (The Believer), and Wholphin, a quarterly DVD of short films and documentaries. In 2002, with NÃnive Calegari he co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth in the Mission District of San Francisco. Local communities have since opened sister 826 centers in Chicago, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Ann Arbor, Seattle, and Boston. In 2004, Eggers taught at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and there, with Dr. Lola Vollen, he co-founded Voice of Witness, a series of books using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. A native of Chicago, Eggers graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in journalism. He now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.
find out more about the zeitounfoundation.org
SEPTEMBER 28 - Tuesday @ 11am - for ages 3 to 5
It's Children's Time every Tuesday at 11am.
Bring your child for a story time with some favorite kids books or some fun activity designed just for kids.
For October, the read. book club is reading and discussing the Michelle Hoover novel, The Quickening.
quick blurb on the book -
In the upper Midwest of the early 1900s, two women struggle to make a living on neighboring farms. For one, their hardscrabble life comes easily, while the other longs for the excitement of the city. Though they depend on one another for survival and companionship, their friendship proves as rugged as the land they farm. While the Great Depression looms, the delicate balance of their relationship tips, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and exposing the dark secrets they hide. In The Quickening, Michelle Hoover explores the polarization of the human soul in times of hardship and the instinctual drive for self-preservation by whatever needs necessary. A novel of lyrical precision and historical consequence, this debut reflects the resilience and sacrifices required even now in our modern troubled times.
read a staff review
more about the author & book www.michellehoover.net
November 4 - Thursday @ 7pm
Lisa Braver Moss will be at the bookstore to talk about her brand new book The Measure of His Grief.
In The Measure of His Grief, a Berkeley Jewish physician denounces the practice of infant circumcision—and becomes more deeply committed to Judaism in the process. Dr. Sandor (“Sandy”) Waldman, perceptive but nutty, self-absorbed but a visionary, fails to grasp the extent to which he’s risking his marriage and career as he lives and breathes the circumcision controversy.
As the story opens, Sandy’s father, a Holocaust survivor, has died, and during the ritual mourning prayers, Sandy experiences an intense groin pain for which he can find no explanation. So begins a chain of events that will find Sandy engaging in provocative dialogue with everyone from self-congratulatory Bay Area forward-thinkers to hard-line religious and medical traditionalists.
Told from alternating viewpoints, the story also follows Sandy’s wife, Ruth, an innovative nutritionist and cookbook author, and their adopted daughter, Amy, feisty yet not quite sure-footed at nineteen. Ruth feels shut out by Sandy’s newfound avoidance of sex and inability to face his grief. She secretly indulges the attentions of a surprising admirer, and initiates a marital separation. Amy, while annoyed by Sandy’s clueless attempts to guide and protect her, appreciates his radicalism. But she must separate from both her parents—and grapple with a bid for contact from her incarcerated birth father—in order to move forward with her life.
Meanwhile, Sandy delves into Jewish study, seeking to reconcile his iconoclasm within Judaism. He studies for the bar mitzvah he never had as a child. Certain he has the moral high ground about circumcision and everything else, he jeopardizes his status as the heir-apparent for Chief of Medicine at his HMO, and feeds into undercurrents of anti-Semitism around him.
Sandy is appalled—yet intrigued—by a curious online discovery: a local support group for men “restoring” their foreskins. Could this be Sandy’s ticket to redemption—his way to win back Ruth, regain his equilibrium, come to terms with his heritage?
"Finally--an intelligent questioning of Jewish circumcision, in a terrific, entertaining and very original story you won't forget. A must-read!"
- Dr. Dean Edell, Emmy award-winning medical journalist and host of America's most popular radio show on health.
"You don't have to be Jewish to be concerned about circumcision, and you don't have to be Jewish to appreciate The Measure of His Grief--a thoughtful, nuanced, and wryly funny portrait of Berkeley and the foibles of its denizens."
- Liza Dalby, author of Hidden Buddhas and Geisha
here are a few links for some of the authors we've hosted since opening in November of 2009
Karen Benke with Rip the Page Adventures in Creative Writing on 7/31/10
www.karenbenke.com
Cindy Bailey with The Fertile Kitchen Cookbook on 7/25/10
www.fertilekitchen.com
Elaine Schmitz with Recipes and Recollections of My Greek American Family on 6/10/10
www.elaineschmitz-writer.com
Kristine Carlson with Heartbroken Open on 4/25/10
www.kristinecarlson.com
Marcia Gagliardi with The Tablehopper’s Guide to Dining and Drinking in San Francisco on 4/17/10
www.tablehopper.com
Suzanne Woods Fisher with Amish Peace & The Choice on 4/18/10
www.suzannewoodsfisher.com
Richard Friar with The Keepers - World War III and Tribulation on 3/28/10
www.thekeepersww3.com
Zoe Fitzgerald Carter with Imperfect Ending on 3/18/10
www.zoefitzgeraldcarter.com
Randall Grahm with Been Doon So Long: A Randall Grahm Vinthology on 3/9/10
www.beendoonsolong.com
Linda Hawes Clever with The Fatigue Prescription on 2/20/10
www.thefatigueprescription.com
Eric Simons with Darwin Slept Here on 2/4/10
www.darwinslepthere.com
Mahbad Seraji with Rooftops of Tehran on 1/10
www.rooftopsoftehran.com
