Kepler's: The Book Flap

Two Bookstores

2012-01-22T02:24:00.000-08:00

There are three bookstores that have a larger than usual call on my affections.

The first is greatly responsible for my love of books, a place where I spent much of my childhood, and no longer in existence. It is the bookstore of my ideals and imagination. It resides in my memory, all shiny with summer mornings and magical, white-haired women, and all the bookstores I shall ever meet must go stand beside it to be measured.

The second is Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park. The third is the Booksmith in San Francisco. And while neither of these stores are exactly like the bookstore of my childhood, they are fine and important places in their own right, and I am proud to say that I’ve worked for them both.

(What would my childhood self think of this rather more grown-up me who dances and writes and works for—not one, but two!—great bookstores? I think she would be pleased… and somewhat irritatingly smug.)

Kepler’s is venerable. Established in 1955, its history hovers around it. The Grateful Dead played there! Those wild, scruffy Beat luminaries made appearances. Roy Kepler himself campaigned for peace and paperbacks with a fierceness and irreverence that impresses my bookish soul. This is history! The real stuff. And I have no personal claim on it. I’ve only known Kepler’s since 2008 when I, flush with proud excitement, took up my first bookstore job. But one of the greatest pleasures of that job, aside from being surrounded by books and smart, opinionated people who love them, is meeting people for whom that history is part of their lives and Kepler’s is THE BOOKSTORE.

THE BOOKSTORE is: the first place that comes to mind when you utter those words; the place where you discovered that slightly illicit and possibly age-inappropriate book that blew your thoughts to smithereens; the place where your children run to at a stampede-worthy pace so as not to miss a story being read; the place where you get your newspaper and those magazines you can’t do without; the place where a charming, elderly man will tell you about his days as a pilot and his accidental drink with Hemingway (the Hemingway); the place where they remember your name and do their best to fit you to a book the way you imagine luxury department stores once fit their suits.

In 2010, I started working for the Booksmith. Booksmith is kind of magic. On the walls, there is detailed, whimsical art. The book selection is curated to the vicinity of greatness. The people are (once again) smart, opinionated, and madly in love with books. There are (once again) customers for whom Booksmith is THE BOOKSTORE. From what I understand, this current incarnation is still a youthful one. Christin Evans and Praveen Madan bought the Booksmith in 2007, and are transforming it, with stubborn, mad enthusiasm, into a place that is as relevant, vital, and necessary as all of us who love bookstores wish for them to be (and even the staunchest of us bookstore lovers need that kind of encouragement now and then).

At this moment, my bookstore worlds are colliding.

I am incredibly excited about this. Kepler’s, with its history and its people (both staff and customers) who come in, day after day, to make it the bookstore of their hearts is a solid piece of goodness. But I can think of no better people to make it even more exciting, more fresh and wonderful and worthy of survival in this world of change than Praveen and Christin. On New Year’s Eve, they called a meeting to share some of their ideas with the Kepler’s staff. Dear reader, I haven’t been this excited about bookstores in a very long time. This will be something entirely new.

I want to share this excitement because I know the importance of THE BOOKSTORE. It is, quite obviously, more than just a place where you go, pick up your books, and go home again. If it weren’t, why would we bother going? If bookstores were only rooms where we exchanged money for pages, then we could wave them farewell without a blink. But bookstores are treasure maps and memory palaces. They are playgrounds, social hours, retreats from the world and windows onto it. They are places, ideas, and people. And while “change” is a very sharp thing, liable to cut as well as transform, this particular change is (I can feel it in my bones!) going to be a good one. Get ready. The excitement is rolling in.

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Megan Kurashige is a dancer and a writer. She has worked for both Kepler's (since 2008) and the Booksmith (since 2010), and has been, in recent times, the person responsible for this blog. She also edits The Bookflash, a monthly Kepler's e-newsletter, that she urges you to read so that you can enjoy interviews with brilliant authors as well as recommendations from the smart, opinionated, madly book-loving people mentioned above. If you have suggestions, commiserations, diatribes, praise, or questions, you can contact her by email at Megan[at]keplers[dot]com.

Some News

2012-01-10T14:22:00.000-08:00

Clark Kepler announces his retirement in The Almanac (online today, on paper tomorrow). We're sad to be saying goodbye to Clark, but there are some exciting things to look forward to! Please read the article for further details and stay tuned for more as it comes. And, dear readers: never fear, there will be more to come!

Ring in 2012!

2011-12-31T11:43:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you received all the books you wanted over the holidays... But, perhaps you are as greedy we are when it comes to bookish pleasures, and are always game for more. In which case you should come ring in the new year (TWENTY-TWELVE!) with us tomorrow because we will have mimosas and a greed-appeasing storewide sale!

The details:

Kepler's New Year's Sale

11 AM - 5 PM

1010 El Camino Real

Menlo Park, CA 94025

20% off regular price storewide sale

50% off select merchandise (holiday gifts, scarves, boxed cards, calendars, etc.)

Plus, MIMOSAS.

Don't forget to raid our Love List for suggestions... What better way to start off a brand, spanking new year than in the company of good books, good people, a nod to frugality, and a brunch-friendly incarnation of champagne? BE THERE, OR BE SQUARE.

The Love List #12: Megan Kurashige

2011-12-24T13:52:00.000-08:00

And now, it’s finally my turn. For those of you still shopping for holiday gifts, a frenzied desperation has probably set in. For those of you who have already finished (you virtuous ones, you! Bask in the smugness.), you’re probably thinking how nice it might be to sit down in a warm corner and read a book and have no one and nothing bother you for JUST A FEW MINUTES. PLEASE.

In any case, there’s a special stripe of madness in the air at this time of year. The list that follows will, I hope, provide guidance, comfort, relief, or (at the very least) something to scoff at. These are some of my favorite books of the year. I love them ridiculously and attempt to foist them on unsuspecting people at every turn. I’ve organized my selections by the kind of person I imagine might enjoy them, but please feel free to trample my fanciful divisions and dole them out as you please. Or, you know, keep them for yourself.

This is Me.

THE LOVE LIST #12: MEGAN KURASHIGE

FOR YOUR BRILLIANT AND SHARP-AS-KNIVES SISTER:

Bossypants
by: Tina Fey

I’m generally leery of books written by Famous People, particularly when they are about Being Them. But this book is genuinely hilarious. The kind of hilarity that causes you to snort beverages out your nose and shake uncontrollably while sitting in public spaces because, for some reason, you imagine that laughing out loud will be less socially mortifying than looking like you’re having some sort of fit. It’s also warm, intelligent, often self-deprecating humor, written by someone who comes off as being a Good Egg and not a snarky beast. Which is refreshing. For full enjoyment, I recommend the audio version, narrated by Tina Fey herself.

Mr. Fox
by: Helen Oyeyemi

This novel is completely bizarre, completely beautiful, and ridiculously fantastic. A riff on the myth of Bluebeard, it hands you two adoration-worthy characters who then trot off through a sequence of connected short stories, putting on different masks and different voices, but somehow remaining magically recognizable. It’s a violent and surreal love triangle between a writer, his wife, and an imaginary woman. It’s a story of fictional serial murders. There’s something full-blooded and vivid about the book, and I can only compare the experience of reading it to smashing a stained glass window and jumping up and down on the pieces with glee.

FOR YOUR EQUALLY BRILLIANT AND EQUALLY SHARP BROTHER:

The Family Fang
by: Kevin Wilson

Oh my dear heavens, how I ADORE this novel! It hits on all my sweet spots (quirk, but not too much quirk; striking imagery; clear and cutting prose; wit; wobbling right on that edge of magic and reality) and it manages to be both discomfiting and warmly welcoming. I highly, highly recommend it, and since I’ve reviewed it before, I’ll just be lazy and copy some of those words here:

This novel is so lovable, so smart, sharp, and bizarrely funny, that it overcame my long-held prejudices against the brilliantly dysfunctional family saga. The Fang family is odd. In fact, the four characters who make it up--Caleb and Camille (Mr. and Mrs.), Buster and Annie (brother and sister)--are downright weird. Caleb and Camille are performance artists, the kind of people who wreck carefully planned havoc on ordinary life in order to say something, to make the quotidian into an occasion that is probably surreal, embarrassing, and shocking, but, at the very least, unforgettable. They throw their children (child A, child B) into their pieces and, predictably, leave them with scars. Annie becomes a drunken, moderately successful actress. Buster grows up to be a moderately successful journalist who persistently fails to finish his second novel.

But as their story becomes increasingly strange, the family Fang becomes increasingly less so. They grow familiar. They have hearts and warmth to them. They refuse to be limited by quirk, turning into people who you want to spend time with and want to get back to. They put on performances full of flashy, unlikely incident for each other and for themselves, but they are so tenderly written that you feel like you're standing on stage right next to them, watching their faces while they read their lines.

American Gods
by: Neil Gaiman

I know, this book is a decade old. But, this year, Harper put out a special 10th Anniversary edition, so if you haven’t yet read this very sprawling, very enjoyable novel about gods, roadtrips, and America, this is an excellent time to remedy that. The text is a bit different, a bit expanded. Think director’s cut. And the cover is quite handsome and sophisticated in rust and charcoal, so even if your reader is the kind of person who might balk at carrying a fantasy bestseller around, they’ll find nothing cringe-worthy here. Also, Michael Chabon calls it, accurately, “Dark, fun, and nourishing to the soul.” It says so right on the cover, but I just thought I should point that out.

FOR THAT MARVELOUS PERSON YOU CALL (OR WANT TO CALL) YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER:

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day
by: Ben Loory

These short (sometimes very short) stories are like tiny bonbons with a boozy center that somehow explodes on contact with your mind and transforms into something enormous, like a cathedral, or an ocean, or a love affair, or one of those absurdly perfect renditions of outer space that you can only see in planetariums. Seriously. I think they would be fine doled out as a pre-sleep nightcap, as a remedy to boring dreams.

Moonwalking With Einstein
by: Joshua Foer

I loved this book so hard that I campaigned enthusiastically to get everyone I know to read it as well, just so I could talk about it with them. My friends shook their heads at my crazy, shiny eyes, but after reading it themselves, they were generally converted. It’s one of those non-fiction books that manage to make you feel like being a human being is just the biggest stroke of luck you could possibly have. Joshua Foer explores the science and culture of memory by committing the journalistic stunt of training for and competing in the U. S. Memory Championship. He digs up all kinds of delicious, delightful tidbits about memory and presents them in a way that makes you feel like you’re walking through the most extraordinary museum in the world, looking at things that you’ve both never seen before and been familiar with your entire life.

FOR YOUR BELOVED PARENTS:

Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London’s Ottolenghi
by: Yottam Ottolenghi

As a general rule, one wants one’s parents to be as healthy and happy as possible. It makes life better for everyone involved. This is the “healthy” cookbook that I’m most excited about this year (I gave into my lust and bought a copy for myself while I was supposed to be shopping for other people). I love vegetables, but the recipes in this book make me want to wallow in vegetables and stuff my face with them, to the obscene degree that is probably more expected from something like chocolate. The photography is drool-inducing and the recipes are both straightforward and unapologetically exact.

Evolution
by: Jean-Baptiste De Panafieu

This book is so beautiful. Completely classy in black and white, it collects an astonishing series of photographs of animal skeletons. But, unlike many coffee table worthy books, it also has a satisfying and well-written text to accompany its visual indulgences. Jean Baptiste De Panafieu, who wrote the text, is a serious scientist (hello, doctor of biological oceanography!) and Patrick Gries is an accomplished photographer whose work with the Paris Museum of Natural History is both unusual and completely brilliant.

FOR YOUNG-ISH PEOPLE OF YOUR ACQUAINTANCE:

The Fault in Our Stars
by: John Green

I have not read this yet. Also, it is not out yet. But, I am so utterly certain of its brilliance and so excited by the fact that John Green is doing an event with Kepler’s at the lovely Fox Theater in January that I am putting it on this list because tickets would make an excellent present. You can pre-order tickets HERE, and it’s a wise thing to do because they will absolutely sell out. John Green’s books have reliably made me both laugh like a fool and cry uncontrollably in public spaces. They’re like emotional joy rides that make you feel better and think harder about being a human being. The few people I’ve known who’ve gotten their hands on the ULTRA-SECRET advance manuscript of this new novel have told me it’s the best one yet. So, pre-order away.

White Cat and Red Glove
by: Holly Black

I love fictional cons, heists, and capers. This series (well, trilogy, of which only the first two are out so far) is one of the few that I read for utter and guilt-free pleasure. The characters are so well-drawn and enjoyable that you are crushed when you come to the end of each book because you want to spend more time with them. The stories are full of a mafia-type magical community, lies, double-crosses, and young people having kind of terrifying adventures.

The Freedom Maze
by: Delia Sherman

If you’ve read any E. Nesbit or Edward Eager, the feel of this novel will be familiar. But the daring way in which it takes some of the trappings of an old-school story of magical transport and lays into them with the American South, slavery, and some of the most engaging and complex (yet not irritatingly or boringly so) characters I’ve read about this year, is breathtaking. I’m a latecomer to Delia Sherman’s work, but this novel has made me an extreme and vocal convert. Come on, now, everyone should read it! If it gets the attention it deserves, I think this one deserves a nomination for the Newbery.

Wildwood
by: Colin Meloy

Everyone and their mother is recommending this book. And I have to jump on the bandwagon because it’s absolutely beautiful. The novel itself is a fun romp through a magical forest with talking animals and strife between different factions. But the delicate, funny, detailed illustrations lift the entire thing to prime read-aloud, let’s-share-the-experience-and-make-heartwarming-memories level. The first full-color plate that I came across made me smile in such a goofball-ish way that the man sitting across from me at the café asked me if he had cappuccino foam on his face.

Right. That’s my list. Not comprehensive at all. I’ve certainly forgotten many books I loved. But, seeing as this has just reached the fifth page on my word processor, I think I should leave you now. Go forth, my beauties! Buy books! Read books! Wrap your gifts and wish you were reading books! I wish you the happiest of holidays and the very best for the new year.

The Love List #11: Sumbul Ali-Karamali

2011-12-23T12:05:00.000-08:00

Sumbul Ali-Karamali is the author of The Muslim Next Door: The Qu'ran, the Media, and That Veil Thing, a book that opens a window onto Islam, and the experience of being an American Muslim woman in particular, in a warm, sensitive, sometimes funny, and very, very smart way. Her book is frequently picked by local book clubs for a non-fiction title, and readers often come into the store after reading it wanting to tell us about all the things they learned and how much they enjoyed learning them.

Sumbul very kindly sent me a list of SEVENTEEN books that she loves. They are a mix of older and newer, fiction and non-fiction, pure fun and more serious, topical titles. While quite a few of them aren't currently on our shelves (though you can always place a special order, and the books will usually get to you in 2-5 days), many are available as Google eBooks. So, if you happen to be giving (or, perhaps, receiving!) a smartphone or tablet or other electronic goody in the next few days, you might want to give one of these titles a try. *the e-book edition is listed under "related editions" on the Kepler's site.*

This is Sumbul Ali-Karamali.

THE LOVE LIST #11: SUMBUL ALI-KARAMALI

As I get older, I appreciate the authors who can make me laugh. I need laughter after listening to the news every day! Here are some of my favorites:

The Princess Bride

by: William Goldman

So much funnier than the movie.

Good Omens

by: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Simultaneously dark and hilarious.

Going Postal

by: Terry Pratchett (or anything else by Terry Pratchett)

Funny in Farsi

by: Firoozeh Dumas

Laugh-aloud vignettes of the immigrant experience.

Mike and Psmith

by: PG Wodehouse

I read a lot of nonfiction, and much of it naturally relates to the field I’m in (Islamic studies). Here are a few of the books I’ve come across for lay readers – they’re enlightening and informative, but quite engaging:

Lost History

by: Michael Hamilton Morgan

If only more people understood the information in this book…

Al-America

by: Jonathan Curiel

Fun-to-read examination of how the U.S. has been influenced by Islam and Islamic culture for centuries (and – surprise! – we’re still a democracy!).

The Future of Islam

by: John Esposito

Readable overview of some of the evolving debates, discussions, and discourses in Muslim communities worldwide. Stuff you never hear in our media.

Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters

by: Omid Safi

In the U.S., the prophet of Islam is the least understood of all major religious figures. Professor Safi reflects sadly that there’s no book called “Chicken Soup for the Muslim Soul” and offers an academically sound biography and a discussion of Muhammad’s teachings.

But I also love nonfiction that has nothing to do with religion:

The Code Book

by: Simon Singh

A history of the science of code-breaking. A page-turner, believe it or not!

Fermat’s Enigma

by: Simon Singh

A wonderful story even if you don’t like math.

Eats Shoots and Leaves

by: Lynne Truss

This book about grammar could also go in the section on books that make me laugh.

This Is Your Brain on Music

by: Daniel J. Levitin

Fascinating for the trained musician as well as the casual listener.

And finally, historical fiction with a twist:

The House of Silk

by: Anthony Horowitz

In the grand tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle.

Possession

by: A. S. Byatt

One of the best novels I’ve ever read.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

by: Susanna Clarke

Beautifully written, drily witty fantasy for grownups.

The Eyre Affair

by: Jasper Fforde

What happens when literature and reality merge? Find out in this first book of the Tuesday Next series.

The Love List #10: Keith Raffel

2011-12-21T11:00:00.000-08:00

Keith Raffel is one of our most enthusiastic local authors. He is a familiar sight at Kepler's, and can sometimes be found taking the time to introduce himself to readers in the mystery section. His novels Smasher and Dot Dead are both set in Silicon Valley, and readers get a thrill out of meeting a guy who injected some local color into the world of crime fiction. They get even more excited when they discover that Keith is actually a resident of Palo Alto, a veteran of the local tech world, and a roaring fan of crime novels. They often leave the Kepler's with both of his novels clutched tight in their hands.

Keith was kind enough to send us a very detailed list of ten crime novels that he enjoyed this year. He also included a brief introduction that reminded me how perfect stories of fictional murder and mayhem can be at this time of year. There's something peculiarly comforting and refreshing about sitting down with a good mystery novel in the middle of some holiday whirlwind.

This is Keith Raffel.

THE LOVE LIST #10: KEITH RAFFEL

What To Give for Christmas and Chanukah? Why Not Crime?

Back when Agatha Christie was the bestselling author in the world, she used to advise her fans to give “A Christie for Christmas.” Receiving a book filled with deceit, darkness, and death has become a very much accepted and appreciated part of the holiday season. My brother and sister subscribed to this approach – on my living room bookshelves squat a decade’s worth of Dick Francis horseracing mysteries.

What is it that makes murder mix so mellifluously with the merriment? Maybe it’s the contrast in flavor as with the hot pepper-flavored chocolate I’m so fond of. The season would just be too saccharine without the piquancy of a good crime novel. If someone had just sent Scrooge a gift-wrapped copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, I’ll bet the phrase “Bah, Humbug” would have never entered the holiday lexicon.

Now, I’m a huge fan of crime fiction. Not only do I write it, I read it. So then, I’ve compiled a list of mysteries and thrillers for holiday giving. All are hard covers published this year – I figured they would make the best gifts. I have distinctive tastes, but I’ll try to give you an idea of what to expect in each. Here are 10 books listed in alphabetical order by author. I loved them all.

The Trinity 6
by: Charles Cumming
I admit to a streak of anglophilia. I confess that LeCarré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (a new movie version is just out) is my favorite spy thriller of all time. You can put Trinity Six on the shelf next to it without being embarrassed. The book has a terrific premise. Sam Gaddis, a divorced academic down on his luck, stumbles on a sixth member of the notorious Cambridge spy ring that included Philby, Maclean, Burgess, Blunt, and Cairncross. As he starts chasing the story of a lifetime, people start dying. And then he starts running.

Love You More
by: Lisa Gardner
This one grew on me. A state trooper kills her husband. The main character in Gardner’s series, Detective D.D. Warren, is assigned to the case. I thought I had this one pegged by page 10. Wrong! Gardner twisted the end of the kaleidoscope inch by inch and showed me how the pieces came together far differently than I expected.

Gone
by: Mo Hayder
When I took a creative writing course years ago, the instructor asked us to write down what we were most afraid of. Maybe Hayder’s teacher did the same. Gone, set in England’s West Country, is about child abduction. And it terrorized me. There must be a pattern in the kids who are snatched, but what is it? With compelling characters, a narrative driven by urgency, insight into how police think, and a hard-to-solve mystery, Gone might be the best police procedural of 2011.

Bloodmoney
by: David Ignatius
Ignatius writes for The Washington Post where he’s covered the CIA and Middle East politics for years. What he does just about better than anyone writing today is bring a sense of verisimilitude to his novels. In this one, Sophie Marx is assigned the job of figuring who’s betraying members of a new CIA unit in Pakistan. The action ping-pongs between the CIA bureaucracy and the hard facts on the ground in the Middle East. Maybe we Americans just aren’t that good at this spy business.

Among the Missing
by: Morag Joss
An Englishwoman marries because she’s lonely. The marriage is sterile in every meaning of the word. A bridge collapses and she’s assumed to have been washed away. She takes the opportunity to walk away from her old life into a new one. Now as you’ll see in the other books on this list, I love fast-moving mysteries and thrillers. If you do, too, I’m not sure this one is for you. Joss takes us inside the souls of her characters to make us understand the effects of loneliness and the thirst for human connections that is universal.

The Devil She Knows
by: Bill Loehfelm
At 29, Maureen Coughlin’s hard-living is taking a toll on her youth and looks, her two meal tickets. A barmaid, Maureen discovers she has a sense of justice when her boss is killed. I love foreign settings and the working class neighborhood of Staten Island where Maureen lives is as far from Silicon Valley as Islamabad or Oslo. This book is gritty, dark, and compelling. I had never read anything by Loehfelm before, but he has a big fan now.

The Snowman
by: Jo Nesbø
What with the phenomenon of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Scandinavian noir is all the rage. I had not read anything by Nesbo before The Snowman, and I was entering his Harry Hole (what kind of name is that for a Norwegian?) series in the seventh book. On top of that, I am no fan of serial killer novels. None of that mattered. I could not put this one down. Why are snowmen showing up just outside people’s windows? Does that make them a target for the killer? Like the best of Ross Macdonald, the answer is shrouded in past sins.

The Strange Death of Father Candy
by: Les Roberts
I pulled this one out of a briefcase while on a flight back home from Boston. My hopes were not high. The title kind of stinks and the cover is worse. But I read a page and then another and then another. I finished before the plane crossed the Mississippi. The set-up is pretty ordinary. A beloved priest, commits suicide in Youngstown, Ohio in 1985. His younger brother comes back home for the funeral. But the insights into family relations, lost love, corruption, and a dying town along with the writing makes this one special.

On Borrowed Time
by: David Rosenfelt
Richard Kilmer and his fiancée crash on the way home from her parents. When he wakes up, she’s gone. Okay. But her parents say they have never seen him before. And his best friends back in New York City say they have never met her. What the heck is going on? The pace is frenetic and I do love fast-moving page-turners. Even my friends who didn’t like the book quite as much as I did admitted they read it in one sitting.

The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes
by: Marcus Sakey
Marcus is a pal of mine, but I decided his questionable taste in friends should not disqualify this remarkable book from being listed. What Marcus does best is show what happens to ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. And this one opens right smack dab in the middle of something extraordinary. A man, barely alive, is washed up on a Maine seashore with no idea who he is or how he got there. Bad news for him -- when he figures out who he is, he also discovers that he’s wanted for murder. Compared to most thrillers, Two Deaths is Secretariat racing against a plow horse.

The Love List #9: Bo Caldwell

2011-12-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

Bo Caldwell’s novels, The Distant Land of My Father and City of Tranquil Light, transport readers to China during two different periods in history. Their perceptive portraits of history and place, fine writing, and emotionally resonant storylines have made them familiar fixtures on “best of” lists and the kind of books that spend only a brief amount of time on our shelves because they are constantly getting picked up by eager readers.

We are delighted that Bo is a local author and someone we can claim (just a bit!) as one of our own. And also delighted that she has sent us a list of the titles that she’s besotted with right now accompanied by some seriously tempting descriptions. Also! Do take note: YET ANOTHER RECOMMENDATION OF THE CAT'S TABLE!

This is Bo Caldwell.

THE LOVE LIST #9: BO CALDWELL

Two novels, two art books, and a nice fat poetry anthology – who could ask for anything more? Not I. Here are five books I fell in love with this year.

Untouchable
by: Scott O’Connor

The Kid (almost no one calls him by his real name) is eleven years old and hasn’t spoken since his mother’s death nearly a year before this amazing novel opens. His dad is a trauma-site cleanup technician – he cleans up the mess after people die, and to say that this father and son are struggling is putting it mildly; they’re barely staying afloat. I loved them and desperately wanted for them to be okay. This is an emotional page-turner, and a story of redemption and healing. It’s also a very smart book, without, as far as I’m concerned, one false step.

The Cat’s Table
by: Michael Ondaatje

The story of another eleven-year-old boy on an entirely different sort of journey, The Cat’s Table chronicles the narrator’s ocean voyage as he travels from his home in Sri Lanka to be reunited with his mother in England. Two of his former schoolmates are also on the ship, and they become our hero’s co-conspirators at first, and then his friends. The story of this journey would be plenty, but the book is just as much about the journey from childhood to adulthood, and from innocence to knowledge. We learn about what becomes of the travelers aboard the Oronsay in a narrative that is as natural and complicated as life itself. And Ondaatje’s writing, as always, is stunning at every turn.

Vincent Van Gogh
by: Isabel Kuhl

This book on Van Gogh includes three chapters on the artist, his work, and his life, but it was the pictures of his work that drew me in. With more than forty full-page reproductions of his paintings, the book is a treasure. The first leisurely thirty pages include fifteen of those reproductions, set opposite quotes from the artist’s letters. (“I mean painting is a home. . .”) These pages alone made the book worthwhile.

Les trente-six vues de la Tour Eiffel
by: Henri Riviere

In this recreation of a book published in 1902, you won’t find three dozen paintings of this landmark per se; instead, all of the paintings include the Eiffel Tower somewhere, but in a variety of different guises. Some are painted from atop the Tower; in others the Tower is in the distance and you have to search for it, and in others it’s just being built, so you don’t recognize it right away. Riviere’s style is a mixture of Art Nouveau and Japonisme, which gives the paintings a clean, simple look. The book opens with the original prologue, in French, with an English translation and afterward at the end.

Good Poems, American Places
selected and introduced by: Garrison Keillor

I’m a big fan of Keillor’s two previous anthologies (Good Poems and Good Poems for Hard Times) so when I heard about this latest volume, I didn’t think twice about buying it – and I haven’t since. It’s a hefty collection – 263 poems, if I counted correctly – and Keillor is a master not only at gathering the poems, but at introducing and arranging them. The sections guide you through this rich country of ours in a way that feels both surprising and logical. I read Keillor’s previous anthologies like novels, cover to cover, and I did the same here, going from Manhattan’s Algonquin to L.A.’s Pershing Square and everywhere in between, and relishing every page.

The Love List #8: Meg Waite Clayton

2011-12-19T23:35:00.000-08:00

Meg Waite Clayton is the author of The Wednesday Sisters and The Four Ms. Bradwells, both novels that are beloved by the readers who frequent the Kepler’s stacks. They are also novels that have been given the stamp of approval by Nancy Salmon, one of our most venerable Keplerites, whose uncanny ability to pluck new books from the crowd before they zoom off to bestsellerdom is quite awe-inducing.

Meg lives in Palo Alto and is one of our staunchest supporters. When she’s not busy writing her warm and insightful novels, she stops by frequently and sometimes attends our monthly Fiction Book Club. She was the first author who I contacted about contributing to our Love List, and her speedy and enthusiastic response tipped me over the edge from thinking about the idea to actually making it happen. So, thank you, Meg! You can keep up with even more of Meg's recommendations by visiting her blog.

This is Meg Waite Clayton.

THE LOVE LIST #8: MEG WAITE CLAYTON

In the spirit of thinking local and shopping at stores like Kepler’s, I’ve been reading quite a few local authors this year—and have found some terrific books. You might even find inscribed copies on Kepler’s shelves. If there is one thing better than a great book for a gift, it’s a great book that has been signed by the author.

My most fun read of the year was French Lessons by Ellen Sussman. This story of three Americans on a single day in Paris, each with a French tutor of his or her own, is a great gift for the cosmopolitan reader or the armchair traveler on your list, or for anyone who enjoys a good, sexy read.

My non-fiction fave this year was Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings and America's First Imperial Adventure by Julia Flynn Siler. Julia’s first book, House of Mondavi, was a bestseller and a finalist for the James Beard award, and this just-released new one is even better. It’s a fabulous tale of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s rise and fall, centered on Lili‘uokalani, the last queen—with plenty of sugar barons, missionaries and rogues to keep you turning pages all night.

One of the richest and most evocative novels I read this year was Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum. This one covers the kind of turf I love to read again and again: family secrets. Meldrum’s poetic writing makes it a great gift for the most discriminating readers.

And for the short story reader, Ann Packer’s Swim Back to Me is just lovely stuff, as Packer always is.

For cookbooks, my longtime favorite bread cookbook has just been re-released: The Italian Baker, Revised: The Classic Tastes of the Italian Countryside--Its Breads, Pizza, Focaccia, Cakes, Pastries, and Cookies by Carol Field. You don’t have to trust me on this one; it has found its way onto the New York Times best of the year list. But when you make the walnut bread, try stirring in a cup of dried cherries. My friends have taken to calling the result “Meg bread,” and it disappears amazingly fast.

Happy Holidays!

Meg Waite Clayton

The Love List #7: Barry Eisler

2011-12-15T11:00:00.000-08:00

The first time I saw Barry Eisler, someone pointed him out to me and said, "That man used to work for the CIA." Having recently gone through a period when I was enamored with every spy movie and television show that I could lay my eyeballs on, I whirled around in a very unsubtle manner and said, "Really?" My friend then administered the kicker: "And he writes books."

"REALLY?" I trotted over, examined the shelf of slick novels, and was appropriately impressed.

Barry Eisler is the author of seven novels about a half-Japanese, half-American assassin named John Rain, as well as two novels about a black ops soldier named Ben Treven. He has worked for the CIA, been a technology lawyer, and was an executive at a Silicon Valley technology startup. Impressive, right? He also maintains a fascinating blog. You can find his books here. To start you out, the first book in the John Rain series is Rain Fall. The first Ben Treven book is Fault Line. Barry has said that while each novel can be read as a standalone story, you'll get to see the full arc of things if you read them in order.

Oh, and you can see Kepler's making a cameo appearance in Requiem for an Assassin here.

This is Barry Eisler.

THE LOVE LIST #7: BARRY EISLER

The Most Dangerous Thing
by: Laura Lippman

Mystic River meets Empire Falls
I've been hearing great things about Laura Lippman for years, and now I know why. I picked up this book on audio and was immediately engrossed. There's a great mystery at the center of the story, and as the layers get peeled back you get progressively more eager to know what really happened on the night of the hurricane. But what really drove the book for me were the characters. These people, with all their hopes and confusion and disappointments and secrets and resentments, felt completely real to me, and more than once I was struck by how wise the writer must be to know them (and present them) so well.

On the mystery level, I found it reminiscent of Mystic River -- a childhood event that warps relationships and plays itself out through the characters' lives and across generations. But on the character level, it reminded me of Empire Falls, with its collection of fascinating, totally believable people and their convoluted relationships. And yet it wasn't at all derivative of anything I've ever read -- just a great, original story.

With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful
by: Glenn Greenwald

A Damning Indictment of the Betrayal of American Ideals
This superb book is a powerful indictment of America's two-tiered system of "justice" and the perversion of American ideals by the American establishment (better understood as an oligarchy). It could serve as a manifesto of the Occupy movement, which, contrary to variously naive and opportunistic mischaracterizations, has no problem with people winning, and is opposed instead to systemic, institutionalized cheating.

If you think certain classes of people should be above the law, or that the law (including the Constitution) should be treated more as a kind of guideline, suggestion, or recommendation than as a binding authority equally applicable to all, you won't agree with the book's clear argument and you'll find a way to ignore its overwhelming evidence. But if you recognize that, as Thomas Paine said, in America it is the law that is king, you'll be grateful that Greenwald has written such a cogent appeal for Americans to live up to our ideals.

I also loved, loved, loved The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. And The Trinity Six, a superb thriller by Charles Cummings. And Griftopia, A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History, by Matt Taibbi.

The Love List #6: Angela Mann

2011-12-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

Angela Mann is passionate about books. I know, I know, we throw that adjective around with incautious abandon... But, every time I see Angela, she is practically bursting with enthusiasm for a book she has just read and is besotted with. She organizes the youth events at Kepler's and maintains the BookBind, which is the Kepler's blog about teen literature. If you are ever at a loss for what book to bring home for your young person, particularly if they have a taste for paranormal romance or SF/F, you should keep an eye out for Angela.

(And, please, do not scoff at the thought of paranormal romance or science fiction and fantasy... There are some serious heavy hitters here! Love, magic, and futuristic possibility will always have a place in young hearts. And while we may turn up our noses at certain, unnamed specimens--ahem... am possibly hinting at my own bookish snobberies--there will always be those stunners that make us shut up and read with abashed hunger.)

So, please take a look at Angela's list below. Imagine her coming up to you with them stacked high under her chin and giving you the run-down on why, exactly, you might love them. While they are not all "officially" books for young people, all of these titles will likely be enjoyed by both teens and adults.

This is Angela Mann.

THE LOVE LIST #6: ANGELA MANN

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
by: Ransom Riggs

Jacob grew up with his grandfather’s stories of monsters and an orphanage that saved him. But when his grandfather dies, Jacob thinks he sees a monster in the woods. With his dying breath, Jacob's grandfather tells him to find the bird, in the loop, get to the island, tell them what happened, and there he will be safe. It turns out a bomb hit the orphanage in 1940 and all that remains is a shell. So how did his grandfather have a letter from them sent 15 years ago? Jacob, of course, has to know, as will you. This is a haunting, thoroughly disturbing read that is also achingly beautiful. And the unforgettable vintage photos work with the text, making this book stand out in a sea of look-alikes.

The House of Silk
by: Anthony Horowitz

A mystery too disturbing to tell preys on Watson’s mind, a mystery he writes, then seals up for a hundred years. A man appears at 221B Baker Street and asks for help. And the game is again afoot. There is a robbery and a murder that lead us into the underworld of opium dens, dastardly deeds, and a creepy conspiracy. Horowitz hits all the right notes--foggy London streets, Hansom cabs, dodgy criminals, corrupt officials, brilliant deductions, Lestrade, Moriarty, and the Baker Street Irregulars. The adventure’s a little more modern, a little darker, with a little more social commentary as befits an older Watson writing from a retirement home. The voice seems authentically Watson’s, with maybe a hint of pathos, and the twists are unforeseen. May it be the first of many.

The Magician King
by: Lev Grossman

Quentin, Julia, Elliot, and Janet are now the kings and queens of Fillory, but Quentin is listless--he wants more than the perfect, but dull, royal life. He wants an adventure, the chance to be a hero, a quest. Thus a search for a hare leads to him sailing to an island at the edge of the world with Julia, and ultimately trying to stop magic from disappearing. I loved Julia's story the most--how she learned magic, and the people, like her, who want to learn magic but don't get into Brakebills. It's a dark, twisted account and she takes center stage: angry, brilliant, bitter. The Magician King is smart, funny, dark, terrifying, and provocative--a tale of the making of a hero and of magic itself that should not be missed.

Anna Dressed in Blood
by: Kendare Blake

Cassio Lowood hunts and kills the dead, as his father did before him. Anna should have been no different, and has viciously killed anyone who has tried to step inside her house--except Cas. Why did she spare him? Will he be able to kill her? I could not put this book down. At times downright scary, this is a tale full of haunting images, witches and curses, and voodoo (oh my!). This is a story to savor--but with the lights on!

Daughter of Smoke and Bone
by: Laini Taylor

Karou is a blue-haired art student in Prague who fills notebooks with drawings of fantastical creatures. She can pass through hidden doorways to an office where these creatures not only exist, but also brought her up. But after Karou sneaks through a door she shouldn’t have touched and meets a seraph in Marrakesh, handprints appear etched in the doorways. The doors burn down and Karou no longer has a way through. Once in a while, you read a book that stands out, that is different, and that you can’t stop thinking about. I loved this book. I couldn’t put it down. It is dark and edgy, powerful and imaginative, unsettling and different. Full of mystery and sizzle, this vivid, beautiful book should not be missed.

Luka and the Fire of Life
by: Salman Rushdie

When Luka’s father falls into a sleep so deep no one can save him, an insubstantial version of his father, Nobodaddy, tells him he must steal the Fire of Life, something that has never been done before, to save him. With his dog named Bear and his bear named Dog, he doesn’t hesitate, making allies along the way and ultimately living through his father’s stories. Hard to compare, this is an adventure, an ode to inter-generational love, a place where the magical and the real worlds collide. It includes mythological creatures from almost every culture. It touches on truth and freedom, talks of the power of storytelling, the importance of the imagination and of family, the nature of time, and, as you’d expect, it is beautifully written.

The Love List #5: Beth Lisick

2011-12-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

Beth Lisick is one of those writers who seems to have more energy, verve, wit, and humor than most of us could manage to contain without falling prey to spontaneous combustion. Her memoir, Everybody Into the Pool, galloped onto the New York Times bestseller list and garnered infinitely quotable praise like: "The tales veer from razor sharp to hilarious, and it's a voice--both offbeat and upbeat, wised-up yet curiously wholesome--that you're going to want to hear a lot more of." (Entertainment Weekly) Maybe it's lazy of me to use a well-worn blurb to describe her work to you, but it's the one that made me pick up her second book, Helping Me Help Myself, despite the fact that it sports three words that would normally send me running on its cover. (If you're curious, those three words are "self-help gurus.") It made me laugh. A lot.

Beth is ALSO a filmmaker, a spoken word performer, and one of the organizers of Porchlight, a very, very cool series of storytelling events in San Francisco (if you haven't been, GO!). She probably has any number of other extraordinary projects on the go at this very moment. She was kind enough to send me a really great list of titles (all of which I had NEVER heard of before, shame on me) with tempting descriptions of each book. To be tempted, please read on.

This is Beth Lisick

THE LOVE LIST #5: BETH LISICK

Zazen
by: Vanessa Veselka (Red Lemonade)

Reading Zazen is an eerie experience because you feel like the author not only presaged the whole Occupy movement, but is also tucked inside the curl of a wave that hasn't even broken yet. An exciting and dynamic writer, Veselka gives her narrator Della soul to spare. I want to tell you this book is powerful politically and culturally, unless you think you hate that kind of thing, in which case I will tell you to read it for the compelling story, beautiful writing, and simultaneously funny/alarming take on what the world is coming to.

The Speed Chronicles
edited by: Joseph Mattson (Akashic)

The caveat is that I contributed a short story to this one, but I do not endorse all anthologies I have appeared in (or even all stories I have written for anthologies!). This one I really like. Edited by Joseph Mattson, who also has a great piece in the collection, these are stories about the drug speed. Some grim, some weirdly uplifting, all well-executed. Contributors include Sherman Alexie, Rose Bunch, James Franco, James Greer, and William T. Vollman, among many more.

Lola, California
by: Edie Meidav (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

This is a big old novel, gorgeously written, by a writer who knows how to layer a story. It's centered on the lives of women who were besties in their teens, re-entangled now that one of their fathers, a cult academic figure, is on death row. It's one doozy of a California book in the best possible way.

Still Standing
by: Bucky Sinister (Conari Press)

Bucky has been writing and reading his poetry in San Francisco for the past 20 years. If you've ever caught one of his performances, you were probably impressed that someone so funny could also be so sad and profound. After many chaotic years of boozing and losing, Bucky cleaned up and has turned into one of the greatest spokespeople for sobriety. This follow-up to his book on getting clean (Get Up) is the perfect thing to give that newly sober person in your life who thinks 12 step is all about sitting around in a circle drinking burned coffee, eating stale donuts, and looking forward to that next cigarette.

The Love List #4: Frank Sanchez

2011-12-12T16:50:00.000-08:00

Frank Sanchez is the head buyer at Kepler's. This means that he has impeccable taste, and any time he anoints a title with his approval, we all take note. Frank's chosen titles are often more shadowy, slightly offbeat books with a sharp taste for both aesthetics and a hint (or a glut) of grittiness. You may have seen his reviews posted around the store. They tend to resemble poems, and are both intriguing and inexplicable enough to lure you into at least picking up the book they refer to. One of my favorites is the one he wrote about Nick Cave's The Death of Bunny Munro.

This is Frank.

THE LOVE LIST #4: FRANK SANCHEZ

[Frank has, in typical Frank fashion, given us a few lovely and spare words about the books he chose. Both titles are gorgeous, coffee-table-worthy, books about Francesca Woodman, the photographer whose stunning, haunting, and unsettling work is being exhibited at the SFMOMA through February 20th. I highly recommend the exhibit, and will say that if you do spoil yourself or someone else with these books, they should be thumbed through and examined and minutely appreciated, and not actually left shut on the coffee table for very long.]

we forgive as we forget

as the day is long

rain from heaven

Francesca Woodman

by: Corey Keller, Francesca Woodman, Jennifer Blessing

Francesca Woodman's Notebook
by: Francesca Woodman, George Woodman

The Love List #3: Sina Herkelrath

2011-12-08T10:23:00.001-08:00

Sina Herkelrath has a knack for picking out books that are extremely readable, extremely enjoyable, and still hefty enough in terms of content and beauty to provide a satisfying companion for your hours of reading leisure. This is one of the reasons that she coordinates our book club program (the other reasons are both many and varied, and include her vigorous enthusiasm and impressive organization). If you wander over to the shelves devoted to both our in-store book clubs and our community book clubs, you can see some of the evidence of Sina's labors. And if you have your own book club (or want to start one), take a look at our book club page where you can find information about registering with Sina. Registered book clubs get a bunch of perks, including an invitation to the FANTASTIC book club presentations where you get to hear about amazing books from the authors themselves (this is where I discovered Going to See the Elephant by Rodes Fishburne, a book I am still quite taken by!).

This is Sina

THE LOVE LIST #3: SINA HERKELRATH

On Canaan's Side

by: Sebastian Barry

Our old heroine, Lilly Bere, is Irish woman grieving over the loss of her grandson. Her grief is deep, real, and you instantly find yourself in an intimate relationship with a woman to whom you were just introduced. Each day after the death of her grandson she recounts her life’s story in hopes of understanding how she got where she is. As she sits at her kitchen table she asks herself, “What is the sound of an eighty-eight year old heart breaking?” As the reader, you will experience the highs and lows of Lilly Bere’s life, her loves, her hopes and her sorrows.

This novel immediately grabs you with its literary style and poignant subject matter. It is a classic, and not to be missed.

The Language of Flowers

by: Vanessa Diffenbaugh

How wonderfully redemptive that a 10-year-old orphaned girl was given the gift of flowers: the meanings given to them in the Victorian Age, their needs, their color…in essence, their language. Once emancipated and left to fend for herself on the streets of San Francisco, she begins her new life sleeping in a park where she creates a garden. A local florist discovers her talent and Victoria slowly blossoms and grows into her life.

Ms. Diffenbaugh has truly been able to get into the psyche of an abandoned child and express the loneliness, fear, and self loathing that these kids experience, yet at the same time celebrate those families that can bring something special into these kids lives. A great book on many levels.

Clara and Mr. Tiffany

by: Susan Vreeland

In this novel, Susan Vreeland presents the Gilded Age New York, with its very wealthy, its impoverished immigrant population, and its unfair treatment of women in the work force. Out of this setting comes Clara Driscoll, a very talented artist who, as history will tell us, was the brains and talent behind Louis Comfort Tiffany’s lamps.

Thanks to the letters of the real Clara Driscoll, and the delicacy of her own writing style, Vreeland has created a novel that captures the intricacy and art of Tiffany lamps, the life of this elusive artist, and the realities and intimate details of the early twentieth century. It is a fascinating read and totally satisfying.

Remarkable Creatures

by: Tracy Chevalier

Remarkable Creatures is a novel, but our heroine is real. Mary Anning came from a working class family that was always one “curio” away from the poor house. Her father taught her how to scour the beach for odd bits of fossil, and bone so she could help supplement her family’s income. It is this gift that allows her to search the shores of Lyme, England and find the bones of ancient sea creatures. Her story and her findings take place when Darwin was still a small boy, and yet, have any of us heard about Mary, or her contribution to science? One of the goals of this book, revealed in an interview with Tracy Chevalier, was to awaken in her readers the sense of the earth’s history, and our place in it. She mentions that if she can excite us to take a closer look at our surroundings and have an eye for the extraordinary, she feels she will have accomplished her goal.

Started Early, Took My Dog

by: Kate Atkinson

This novel has several story plots that run in parallel and jump from 1975 to the present... something that might, at first, make it hard to follow. But give it a half hour and you will find this book hard to put down.

Tracy Waterhouse, a retired police officer working at a mall in England, is out running errands “until she makes a purchase she hadn’t bargained for." Actress Tilly witnesses the exchange, but she too is facing her own disaster. Jackson Brodie, a private investigator, is on the scene searching for someone else’s roots. As their stories intertwine, all three learn that "no good deed goes unpunished." This is another great book club read.

The Sandalwood Tree

by: Elle Newmark

This novel is set in India in 1947. The British are set to move out of India and the country is to be divided into India and Pakistan. Martin is a historian and his assignment is to document this “Partition." He brings with him is wife Evie, and his very young son Billy. As Evie settles into her new home, she finds a packet of letters that tell the story of two brave young women in the 1850s. Our author, Elle Newmark, alternates between the two stories and in doing so creates a rich picture of strong women characters and India in both centuries. This is a great book club choice with lots to discuss.

Cleopatra

by: Tracy Schiff

Notes From a Small Island

by: Bill Bryson

[I couldn't find Sina's reviews for these, but I can personally attest to the amazing awesomeness and immense, I-can't-put-this-down-because-it-is-gobsmackingly-fascinating, readability of both. Tracy Schiff and Bill Bryson are both smart, warm writers who pull from a huge vault of research and affection for their respective subjects. You might not think that you are particularly interested in either Cleopatra or the quirks of British oddity, but by the time you finish these books, you will be, to an unexpected and surprisingly contented degree.]

The Love List #2: Abraham Verghese

2011-12-06T01:04:00.001-08:00

Abraham Verghese is the author of several Kepler's favorites, including Cutting for Stone, My Own Country, and The Tennis Partner. He is also, impressively, a renowned physician as well as Professor and Senior Associate Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University. Reader's often come in to pick up Cutting for Stone, having heard about the novel from besotted friends, or read about it in some magazine or newspaper. A little while later, they hurry back--having finished the intensely satisfying story of twin brothers, Ethiopia, medicine, and love--and ask fretfully for Mr. Verghese's two memoirs. "You have them, right?" they ask. "You haven't, like, run out or anything? Because I would really like to read them as soon as possible."

This is Abraham Verghese

THE LOVE LIST #2: ABRAHAM VERGHESE

The two books I would recommend because they are so much on my mind now are:

The Cat's Table
by: Michael Ondaatje

[Notice that this is the second mention of Mr. Ondaatje's newest novel on the Love List. The Cat's Table is two for two! Mr. Verghese also had some more detailed praise to add.]

You can imagine my excitement when The Cat’s Table, Ondaatje’s latest, arrived on my desk. I found myself reading aloud with a loved one, savoring, just a few pages a day that were carefully rationed. Reading aloud was a way to make every morsel last longer, have it linger on tongue and ear. I can’t think of a book I’ve read where the sense of a journey—in this case, a ship going from Ceylon to England via the Suez Canal—is so carefully mirrored in the reader’s experience...When it was over, I had that sense one lives for as a reader: the feeling of having discovered a truth not just about the imagined world of the novelist, but also about oneself, a truth one can now carry forth into the world, into the rest of one’s life....

In One Person
by: John Irving

[In One Person won't be published until May 2012. Surely, you are jealous of Mr. Verghese's apparent and early relish of A NEW IRVING. So, while you cannot pick up a copy of this yet, keep it in mind--you can read this interview with Irving, in which he drops a few hints about the new book--and maybe take a look at Irving's other books to crank up your anticipation.]

The Love List #1: Marilyn Smith

2011-12-03T14:04:00.001-08:00

This time of year is flooded with end-of-the-year lists. Year's Best! Year's Most Popular! Year's Worst! Everyone, it seems, wants to enumerate their likes and dislikes and skin them down to a tidy collection that can fit onto a piece of paper (or webpage!). There's the New York Times list of the "10 Best Books of 2011." There's the delightful "A Year in Reading" from The Millions. There are lists for the best movies, the worst television shows, the most popular baby names. If you venture onto the internet or listen to the radio, you can't make it through the month of December without bumping your eyes or ears against these lists at least once a day.

And we're about to add our own.

Why, you ask?

We recently ran across the Literary Geek Gift Guide that the lusciously witty Maria Dahvana Headley is posting on her blog. And after admiring her gorgeous, unusual, and utterly tempting selections, it became obvious that the reason these end-of-year/gift guide/best of lists are so popular is that they can be a whole lot of fun. Treasure maps to offer you aid and succor on your search for the next thing that you, or a friend, or loved one can fall head-over-heels for.

So, in the next few weeks, you'll be hearing from our own brilliant Keplerites and some of our favorite local authors on the books they loved in 2011 and think you might love too.

Marilyn Smith often manages to point me to books that I've heard of, but haven't quite been tempted to pick up yet. And then her enthusiasm and descriptions propel me over the edge and I find myself emerging with several new favorites. Her reading rides rough and tumble over such piddling distinctions as "genre" or "age level," and she can almost always recommend a book for almost anyone. It's impressive. She very kindly sent me an impressive list of her favorite titles, organized by age level.

This is Marilyn.

THE LOVE LIST #1: MARILYN SMITH

For me, a day that I don’t wear earrings or read is a cryin’ shame of a day! Both things are as necessary as breathing for me. And since I’m curious about nearly everything, the daily quest for the newest, next beauty is always dangling as a shiny promise just around the corner.

PICTURE BOOKS

The Conductor

by: Laetitia Devernay

The forest conductor has regal, stately trees for his orchestra – each with its own sound and voice for this symphony’s magic. He perches atop the tallest tree, his arms spread, baton ready, and the forest music starts! Swoops and leaps of leaves take flight to dance and create new patterns and sound in the great sky.

This lyrical wordless tale shares the graceful beauty of the forest symphony. Take a bow, maestro, then please - Encore, Encore!

Over and Under the Snow

by: Kate Messner

Illustrations: Christopher Silas Neal

The little girl and her dad ski through wintry woods. They see the snow crust is laced with animal tracks: the quiet rabbit, a pouncing fox. But where are all the other animals? The clever illustrations show all kinds of forest creatures tucked in their dens and nestled in sleep. I love that this book celebrates the magic of a snowy forest wonder land.

YOUTH BOOKS

The Crowfield Curse

by: Pat Walsh

By chance, Will rescues an injured Hob and quickly finds his once dull life brimming with spooky adventure and daring battles. If you love fairy tales with hobgoblins, angels, and the like--you're sure to love this book!

The Inquisitor's Apprentice

by: Chris Moriarty

Early 20th century Lower East Side New York pulses with people and magic in this exciting tale. The air is abuzz with invention and industry – and magic. But it seems powerful political forces are trying to control the magic market. New NYPD Inquisitor Apprentices Sacha Kessler and Lily Astral find more danger and excitement than any kid dreams of! Funny and inventive, this book is perfect for magic lovers!

TEEN BOOKS

The Scorpio Races

by: Maggie Stiefvater

Thisby Island is home to the infamous Scorpio Races held every year in early November. That’s when the mythical carnivorous water horses jump onto land, terrorizing unwary citizens and animals with their insatiable hunger. Thisby Island is where the brave, hardy, or foolish ride these awesome beasts to fame and glory or agonizing death. And this year, Kate Connolly will join those riders –against all odds. What a marvelous book – I absolutely love the action and tension!

Ashes

by: Ilsa J. Bick

Ellie has a growing tumor that’s hiding, but it will be back and she needs to make a trip for her parents before she no longer can. She heads into the Michigan wilderness with her parents’ ashes while she can still walk and function. Then the morning is smashed by shattering jolts of energy that throw Ellie and her companions to the ground in explosive pain. Terrified animals stampede past, escaping something unseen and deadly. Ellie knows the world has changed drastically and she learns how she’s changed in ways that both interest and threaten the survivors she meets. Ashes, a high-octane fueled book with plenty of plot twists and wicked surprises, is perfect for action fans.

ADULT BOOKS

The Cat's Table

by: Michael Ondaatje

Three boys set off for school on a three week voyage bound for England. They have slight supervision and are left to pursue their own interests and intrigues. At the first dinner aboard ship they sit at the “cat’s table” far from the captain’s glittery table and open to endless possibilities of adventure. I reread whole sections of this book for the story’s beauty and the elegance of Ondaatje’s writing, and I will, of course, read it again with pleasure.

The Chicken Chronicles

by: Alice Walker

Alice Walker’s random sighting of a lone chicken while traveling starts her quest to reconnect and revisit points in her life. What more fitting start to her project than getting her own chickens to raise not for food but for their unique “chicken-ness”? I love Walker’s dialogue and the wisdom that is gathered here is like fresh eggs in a basket.

Rin Tin Tin

by: Susan Orlean

A newborn pup rescued by an American G.I. from shattered battlefields in France grows to be a superstar of film and TV named Rin Tin Tin. Susan Orlean writes this wonderful biography of both dog and trainer’s shared lives. Rich in detail, Rin Tin Tin is endearing as well as entertaining.

Travels in Siberia

by: Ian Frazier

Siberia. The very name creates a stir in your mind - vast blankness, endless frozen land, remote in every conceivable way. The idea of Siberia, with limitless vistas stretching into grayness, dwarfs most people’s ideas of the geographic boundaries that root a place, giving it a manageable grasp and shape. Ian Frazier expertly guides readers through the enormous landmass that is Siberia and its people – excellent!

Fiction Ruined My Family

by: Jeanne Darst

A truly gutsy, honest and brash biography – my favorite kind of book. Author Jeanne Darst is well placed being the youngest of four daughters, quick to hear, see and note all her artistic family’s adventures as well as her own. Darst’s book isn’t so much a series of family events but more a carousel of changing fortunes, direction, wildly divergent interests, and whimsy.

The Night Circus

by: Erin Morgenstern

Imagine a circus, brilliant in design, sumptuous with whimsy, delight and intrigue. Add a love story and you have a most delicious book to savor!

Post-Turkey SALE!

2011-11-24T16:17:00.001-08:00

(photo credit: Bowena/Creative Commons license)

After you've supped and celebrated, make sure to stop by Kepler's to take advantage of our Thanksgiving weekend sale. This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Kepler's members receive 20% off books and gifts at the store.

Wait! you might say. I'm not a member yet. How shall I celebrate my long weekend and surfeit of reading time?

Never fear, brave reader. If you stop by the store this weekend, you can sign up for a FREE trial membership that will be good through January 31st, 2012. You get all the benefits of membership (enumerated here... hello, free events!), the 20% off discount this weekend, AND an invitation to our member's only shopping party on December 4th (the best part of this party is not, as you might expect, the music, cookies, and cider...it's having our whole, brilliant staff of book lovers on hand to help you with your holiday lists).

ALSO! COMING SOON... Our favorite books of the year and the titles we're lusting after for our own wish lists.

Justin Torres at Kepler's

2011-10-17T19:30:00.000-07:00

Just last week, the phenomenally talented Justin Torres visited Kepler's to talk about his new novel, We the Animals. This is the book that Charles Isherwood, in his review for the New York Times, called a "spare, haunting story of a boy scrabbling toward wisdom of the adult world and his place in it."

Justin chatted with us about We the Animals, and we are delighted to share a little bit of that chat with you:

Movie Night: The Revenge of the Electric Car

2011-10-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Kepler's is hosting a preview screening of The Revenge of the Electric Car. This film, directed by Chris Paine, takes a look at the resurgence of electric vehicles and gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the struggles and triumphs happening at Nissan, GM, and (our near neighbors) Tesla Motors.

Following the film, you'll get to hear a talk and Q&A by Jay Friedland, the Legislative Director of Plug In America, and Dorian West, the Director of Engineering Power Train at Tesla Motors.

The movie begins at 7 PM tonight and tickets are $16 at the door. Call ahead to check on availability. 650 324 4321.

Book of the Week: REAMDE

2011-10-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

We are incredibly excited that Neal Stephenson (the author of enormously popular and enormously satisfying books like Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and the hefty Baroque Cycle--Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World) is coming to Kepler's tonight. He'll be signing REAMDE, which is his newest novel and our Book of the Week. His publisher was kind enough to send us a set of questions and answers, so read on to learn more!

Get the book HERE.

An interview with Neal Stephenson, author of REAMDE.

Q: Reamde is an adrenaline-fueled, non-stop action adventure thriller with a large international cast of compelling characters. How did you come up with the idea?

NEAL STEPHENSON: It's been banging around in my head for years. We've all grown accustomed to stories about computer viruses that come out of nowhere and sweep across the world in days. I thought it would make a good plot hook to imagine a situation in which a powerful and vengeful person was seriously inconvenienced by such a virus, and decided to track down the hacker who created it and get even.

Q: Central to the storyline is Richard Forthrast’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game, T’Rain. Are you a serious gamer? Any plans (or dreams) to make T’Rain a reality?

NEAL STEPHENSON: I definitely spend more time than is good for me playing games, to the point where I put together a system for playing XBox while using an elliptical trainer. But my few encounters with actual twelve-year-old boys in the online universe have made it clear that I cannot aspire to the title of "serious gamer."

Making T'Rain a reality would be a massive tech development project that would probably extend over several years and require hundreds of millions of dollars in capital. If someone wants to pony up the dough, I'd be happy to get involved!

Q: One of the interesting backstories in the book is how T’Rain was developed and the unique talents behind it—especially the writers who devised its bible. What connections do you see between an MMORPG like T’Rain and literature—storytelling? Would you consider that kind of game to be a kind of participatory literature?

NEAL STEPHENSON: The two writers are a kind of self-parody; I've taken two literary tendencies that are always competing for control of my keyboard, and made them flesh.

All role-playing games are a kind of improvisatory literature. It's easy to make fun of RPG dorks. But those games wouldn't be interesting unless the people playing them were coming up with interesting characters and spinning tales with legitimate narrative qualities--some of which are at least as good as what gets published as officially sanctioned literature.

Q: Talk about your characters. While Richard is the central figure, his niece, the super-smart, super-cool Zula, is a great kickass heroine. You’ve also got a frighteningly intelligent and supremely capable villain in Jones. What inspired their creation?

NEAL STEPHENSON: It's difficult to tease specific answers out of the morass of ideas and impulses that is my brain. In general, though, I would say this about thrillers. The characters in thrillers find themselves in crazy, dangerous situations that fortunately don't happen to the vast majority of real humans. As a writer, you have two basic approaches as far as coming up with characters is concerned. You can make your characters into James Bond/Jason Bourne types who live in the thriller universe all the time, or you can come up with more realistic everyday characters---people you might expect to meet in the pages of a more sedate, literary novel, say---and then plunge them into the thriller universe, whereupon it becomes more of a fish-out-of-water proposition. I've taken the latter approach just because I think it gives me more options as a writer.

Q: Reamde is a massive tale with a number of moving parts. How did you keep track of the divergent characters and parallel storylines as you were writing?

NEAL STEPHENSON: With a spreadsheet. Sorry.

Q: Your previous novels have been set in the future and in the past. Reamde is a story that is very much of this time and place. How does this novel connect to your previous books?

NEAL STEPHENSON: While it's true that I've done a lot of future and past writing, the fact is that The Big U, Zodiac, half of Cryptonomicon, and all of Interface and The Cobweb (the thrillers I co-wrote with my uncle) are set in basically the present day, and even Anathem takes place largely in a setting that is very close to contemporary society. So, it doesn't feel like much of a departure for me. While it's enjoyable to make up imaginary future societies or bring old ones back to life, there's also a lot to be said for working within the present-day world and being able to fold commonplace observations into the story.

Q: Your work has been called cyperbunk, post-cyberpunk, speculative, historical fiction, even baroque, and you have proudly called yourself a science fiction writer. How have you and your ideas—and your writing matured—since Zodiac and Snow Crash? How are those changes reflected in Reamde?

NEAL STEPHENSON: I'd say that when I was younger I felt insecure about my ability to supply the old-fashioned literary qualities of plot and character and so made up for it with "special effects." But working on the Baroque Cycle renewed my interest in plot for plot's sake, and the virtues of just telling a good yarn, and so you could think of REAMDE as me just writing a book that is all about plot. This doesn't mean that every book I ever write henceforth is going to be the same way, but I did want to have a go at it.

Q: Your novels explore a number of specialized subjects—mathematics, currency, science, technology. Are you surprised at the success you’ve achieved? What might the future hold for expansive novelists like yourself in an age of shrinking attention spans, an age that is becoming increasingly defined in 140 letters (or less)?

NEAL STEPHENSON: When faced with that kind of competition, you can go one of two ways. You can try to become like the competition by making things briefer and more tweet-like. Or you can play to the real strength of the novel as an art form, which is its ability to handle material of great scope. I would argue that the success of long-form television series such as Battlestar Galactica and Game of Thrones is a reaction against all the forms of media that play on short attention spans. The audience enjoys immersion in worlds of enormous scope. The only media that can provide that experience are novels, television series, and increasingly games.

Q: Throughout the post-World War II period, science fiction was predictive of where society and technology were headed. Today, science and reason are being undermined by a number of cultural forces. Where is science fiction/speculative fiction headed as our optimism and faith in science declines?

NEAL STEPHENSON: If I have anything to say about it, we'll soon be seeing more SF that recalls the Golden Age techno-optimism of the 1950s. Not in a naive or campy way, but in a way that gives young scientists and engineers something that they can realistically aspire to during their careers. We are still flying around on airplanes and getting energy from reactors that were designed during the 1960s, and in many cases, such as Fukushima, we're paying a price for our lack of technological imagination. This decline in innovation has coincided with a growing hostility toward science and technology on both the left and the right, and with a turn toward a sort of hackerish cool hip gloominess in the SF world. We have to snap out of it.

Book of the Week: Mr. Fox

2011-09-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

Helen Oyeyemi's new novel comes out today in the US. Mr. Fox is one of my two favorite new novels of the year (the other one is The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson), so I'm delighted that it will soon be on bookshelves everywhere. Go forth!

Get the book HERE.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Helen for Fantasy Matters. We talked about Mr. Fox, fairytales, and her current art pleasures. And, in case you need further persuasion to take a look at this fantastic novel on its American birthday, here's my review that will be appearing on our October list of staff picks:

This is the story of a love triangle between Mr. Fox, a famous author, his wife Daphne, and Mary Foxe, a woman who is both his muse and a figment of his imagination. It is, in fact, several stories, each managing to be vivid and odd, as well as charming and brutal in turns. Mr. Fox and Mary Foxe find themselves transformed into different roles, playing out the magic of fairytales, the shock of violence, and the difficulties of falling in love.

This novel is written with precision, wit, and a warmth that illuminates, but doesn’t obscure. It is an intricate and beautiful set of Chinese boxes. I found myself eager to dive from one to another, and astonishingly sad when I reached the end.

--Megan K.

A Conversation with Diana Reiss

2011-09-20T23:50:00.000-07:00


Photo: Elizabeth Nolan

Diana Reiss is an expert on dolphin intelligence. As a professor of psychology at Hunter College in New York and the Director of Dolphin Research at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Dr. Reiss is well known for her work as a scientist. However, she is also one of the world's leading dolphin advocates, and has worked tirelessly to educate the public about dolphin welfare. Her work helped to inspire The Cove, an Oscar-winning film that she also served as an adviser on.

In her new book, The Dolphin in the Mirror, Dr. Reiss shares her stories and knowledge from a long career of working with dolphins, and introduces us to their fascinating personalities and impressive intelligence.

Diana Reiss will be visiting Kepler's on Wednesday, September 21st, at 7:00 PM. For more information, please visit our event page.

Get the book HERE.

Megan Kurashige: What inspired you to write The Dolphin in the Mirror? Was there a particular reason that you wrote this book now, or a particular event that made you want to give a broader audience a look into your work with these amazing animals?

Diana Reiss: I wanted to write this book for some time, but I felt it had to be written now. We are at a critical point now in gaining more global protection for dolphins and whales. As a scientist, I have been working as an advocate to stop the dolphin drive hunts in Japan--as featured in the Oscar winning film The Cove. I want to share my personal and scientific experiences and discoveries about dolphins with a broad audience in the hope that we can raise global awareness and gain global protection for these highly social and sentient species.

MK: I read that you studied theater and worked as a set designer. What made you want to switch to the study of psychology? Has your previous work as an artist had any influence on your work as a scientist and researcher?

DR: When I was younger I was torn between wanting to be a veterinarian and being an artist. As a young child and teenager, I took modern dance and art classes and I was also involved in rescuing and caring for animals. While in an MA program in theatre at Temple University, I began working as a set designer for a regional experimental theatre company, The Manning Street Theatre, in Philadelphia. The director (my husband) and I were invited to participate in an experimental theatre workshop in Poland with the well-known and highly revered director, Jerzy Growtowski. The actors attending the workshop all spoke different languages and one night, we were asked to find non-verbal ways of communicating. It was during this workshop that I had an epiphany that I should go back to college and study animal communication and cognition. It may seem odd but it all became quite clear to me that night. When I returned home I enrolled at the university, made up some needed classes and applied for graduate school in Speech and Communication Sciences. The tools and skills I have as a set designer have been invaluable to me as a scientist. My history in the theatre has made me a bit of a "bricoleur"--a "jack-of-all-trades"--one who uses non-specialized tools for a wide variety of purposes. I am often able to envision, draw and often fabricate my own apparatus and equipment as needed, but, of course, I have help from many others as well.

MK: Why did you choose to work with dolphins in particular?

DR: As I mention in my book, at the time I began my studies, I was struck by how little was known about the communication and cognitive abilities of dolphins and whales. Bottlenose dolphins seemed to be an important species to study because they had large and complex brains, like us and our closest relatives, the great apes, yet their brains are different--they don't have an area we would consider to be frontal lobes (the area associated with higher cognitive functioning). I was also struck by the fact that they were still being slaughtered in the annual practice of whaling. I felt there was an urgency to learn more about them.

MK: Dolphins have such complex brains and impressive intelligence. They are also immensely appealing to many people, yet there are still some exploitative and brutal instances of dolphin abuse and slaughter. How does your work as an activist tie into your work as a scientist?

DR: Knowing what I know about dolphins, as a species and as individuals, compels me to work as an advocate for their protection. The dolphin drives in Japan are unjustifiable on any grounds. The slaughter is a brutal and arcane practice, done with no concern to the pain and suffering that is inflicted on the dolphins. The practices have gotten even worse since the filming of The Cove. What was shown in the film is what I call "the Disney version" of what really goes on. The filmmakers could not show anything more graphic to a public audience. As a scientist with expertise in dolphin cognition, I am working to apply our science to global policy, to bring an immediate end to the dolphin drives wherever they occur. Currently, they primarily take place in Taiji, Japan. They just began this month and will continue through April.

MK: What do you most hope for readers to take away from your book?

DR: I hope that my readers will feel a compassion and empathy for dolphins and whales and join in in fighting for their protection. I think we are at a tipping point now, and with more global awareness and concern we can bring an end to this practice.

Book of the Week: The Night Circus

2011-09-13T10:50:00.000-07:00

We are jumping on the bandwagon today to tell you about one of the most talked-about and breathlessly anticipated debut novels of the season. Today is the day that Erin Morgenstern's first novel, The Night Circus, appears on bookshelves across the country, setting the hearts of booksellers (who are somehow never jaded by the joy of sharing a book they are terribly excited about) aflutter.

Get the book HERE.

The Night Circus is a lush, atmospheric, beautifully written fantasy about two magicians who duel each other as part of a mysterious circus that appears with the night. It has already received the stamp of approval from luminaries of that particular stripe of fantastical, intelligent, and slightly (or very) odd literature that I, personally, find most appealing: Audrey Niffenegger, Aimee Bender, and Katherine Dunn have already contributed enthusiastic praise. Almost every bookseller I know who has read this book is endearingly overexcited about how much they love it.

I haven't read it yet. But, I am definitely picking up a copy today. Read Penelope B.'s review below and I'm sure you'll be joining me.

When the Night Circus arrives, it does so on tides of slumber. You never hear the train shudder to a stop or the tents that toss you from a dream as they billow in the wind. When you awake, the circus is simply there, sumptuous tents that flow in endless streams. The scents of embers, rose, and caramel stun the senses as an ornate carousel clock reminds you to make haste and find a seat.

This tale is centered around two young illusionists who have been trained since childhood to duel one another within the confines of their chosen arena, the Night Circus. But a venue crafted from such mastery has its own history of secrets. In this book, Erin Morgenstern has created a world, grandiose and rich with lyricism, that I found very hard to leave.
--Penelope B.

And I just discovered this treat. A video sneak peek of the very great Jim Dale recording the audiobook of The Night Circus:

A Conversation with Tom Perrotta

2011-09-12T20:31:00.000-07:00

An event very like the Rapture has descended upon Earth and carried away millions of people. Tom Perrotta's new novel, The Leftovers, is the story of the people who were left behind. It's the story of loss and confusion on a scale appropriate to global catastrophe, but focused sharply and compassionately on a family living in a previously ordinary suburban town. I highly recommend reading Stephen King's review of the novel in the New York Times. It gives an excellent portrait of the book while preserving all the pleasures of reading it.

Even if you haven't read any of Tom's previous novels (including the brilliant The Abstinence Teacher and Little Children), it's very likely that you've seen a film adaptation of one of his books. The movie adaptations of both Election (starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick) and Little Children (starring Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, and Patrick Wilson) were both nominated for Academy Awards.

Tom will be visiting Kepler's TOMORROW (Tuesday, September 13th) to talk about The Leftovers. Join us at 7 PM to welcome this fantastic author to Menlo Park. For more information, visit this link.

Get the book HERE. Get the ebook HERE.

Megan Kurashige: What was the initial inspiration for The Leftovers?

Tom Perrotta: I've been fascinated by the idea of the Rapture for a long time, and my interest deepened during the writing of The Abstinence Teacher, when I kept bumping into descriptions of End Times scenarios. I decided to borrow the religious concept and use it for my own, mostly secular, novelistic purposes.

MK: What made you want to explore a novel from the angle of an event like the Rapture? By making something like an apocalypse a concrete element in the novel, were you able to write differently about the characters in it?

TP: The Rapture is a pretty unique version of the Apocalypse, because it leaves the material world unchanged. People are gone, but everything else is intact. In this sense, it's quite different from the more devastating apocalyptic scenarios we're used to--Zombie invasion, nuclear disaster, viral epidemic, etc.--that turn the material world into a wasteland. The challenge for the characters in The Leftovers is mostly psychological--how do they make sense of what happened, and how can they go on living in a world where such a thing has taken place? In the end, the Rapture became, for me, a metaphor for living with loss, the way we all have to figure out a way to keep going even as people we've known and loved disappear from the world.

MK: The novel focuses on individual losses and griefs in the wake of a globally traumatic event. Did you have a particular interest in exploring the differences between the grief of a community and the grief of an individual?

TP: For the most part, individuals deal with grief in a private way, sharing their sadness with family and friends. Collective trauma seems to demand some sort of larger social response, and that was the thing that most interested me in the writing of The Leftovers. As Mayor, Kevin Garvey tries to get the town of Mapleton back to some version of normal life. He doesn't deny the trauma caused by the Sudden Departure, but he wants to call end an end to the mourning period, to get people to look forward and start living again. His wife, Laurie, joins a Rapture cult whose main purpose is to ensure that no one ever forgets the terrible thing that happened on October 14th. The book is about the struggle between these two very different cultural impulses--to remember and honor the past, or to gradually forget it and embrace the future.

MK: Was there anything that surprised you about writing this novel? Was there any part of it that was especially difficult or easy to get through?

TP: On the whole, this was a hard novel to write. Basically, every character in the book is traumatized, whether they admit it or not. Having to imagine and experience that pain over the course of two years wasn't a lot of fun for me. But I really did enjoy inventing the three cults that are described in the book--the Guilty Remnant, the Healing Hug Movement, and the Barefoot People. Maybe I missed my real calling as Cult Leader.

MK: How can stories change the world?

TP: That's a pretty big question. Some stories change the world by exposing injustice or suffering, and waking people up to the truth. Other stories change individuals, expanding our sense of the world, allowing us to experience emotions and situations that we wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. Some stories just redeem a boring hour or two, and it's hard not to be thankful for that.

___________________________________

Tom Perrotta is the author of The Leftovers, as well as The Abstinence Teacher, Little Children, Joe College, Election, The Wishbones, and Bad Haircut. You can visit him online at his website.

Book of the Week: Ghosts by Gaslight

2011-09-08T13:13:00.000-07:00

It still feels like summer, but fall is swiftly approaching. And there is no more appropriate companion to the season of chilly evenings and falling leaves than a good ghost story. Sarah Langlais, mistress of the Kepler's webstore, advises you to get a head start with this book.

Get the book HERE.

Ghosts by Gaslight is the perfect example of what a short story collection ought to be. Though the stories are meant to convey a sense of dread (and indeed, many of them do - especially Lucius Shepard's dirty little tale), I found myself utterly delighted. It has always seemed to me that ghost stories are best suited for briefness—else the author runs the risk of losing the tension. And yet, I am often frustrated by short stories that seem to have been plucked from some greater tale. The varied authors of the tales in Ghosts by Gaslight have avoided this trap to the one.

It's fairly common in multi-author collections to have pieces that are, well, filler. I didn't find a single one in this entire collection. Certainly, there are some stand-outs, but each and every author seems to have brought their best to bear. I was especially impressed by how many managed the particular cadence of the Victorian-era without descending into parody. I would also note that the steampunk nature of the collection is profoundly understated. There's not a single dirigible to be had, and for these small things this particular reader is endlessly grateful.

--Sarah L.

_______________________________

There is a bang-up fabulous table of contents in this anthology and it includes some of my favorite authors of the fantastic. I'd like to point you especially toward Peter S. Beagle, Gene Wolf, Margo Lanagan (if you haven't read Lanagan's short fiction yet, you are in for a wholly disturbing and gloriously, viciously beautiful treat), and Jeffrey Ford. I haven't read the book yet myself, but I recently discovered a copy in my box at work and it is now resting, alluringly, on the top of the stack that is obliterating my bedside table.

Book of the Week: Just My Type

2011-08-31T22:55:00.000-07:00

You might not expect a book about fonts to be addictive... Then again, maybe you've already watched Helvetica, and I'm just late to the party. Just My Type by Simon Garfield is seriously addictive. Bite-sized stories about things that surround us and talk to us every single day. They go down easy and make you pay attention to something that you might take for granted (or not... I'm looking at you, graphic design junkies!).

Get the book HERE.

Fonts are not something that can be ignored. They are everywhere—in books, on books, in your car, on your coffee cup, emblazoned across every piece of advertisement that you receive—proclaiming things to be SERIOUS, LUXURIOUS, INTELLECTUAL, HUMOROUS, SILLY, or maybe even EFFORTLESSLY COOL. They are not just serviceable wrappings for communication. They are works of art, or offenders of the eye, and they say things underneath the naked message of the words they portray, coded in the wordless languages of space, proportion, and line.

In this book, Simon Garfield tells us the stories of some of the fonts, both famous and obscure, that surround us today. He lavishes them with enthusiasm and sharp detail, introducing us to the people and circumstances that created such celebrities as Arial, Times New Roman, and Helvetica. He is often funny and always entertaining, and you will quickly find yourself more deeply invested in the subject than you might like to admit. Read this if: you swoon over graphic design, enjoy curios, or think Chip Kidd is a genius.

Movie Night: Queen of the Sun

2011-08-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Our first movie night in the Roy Kepler Pavilion was a fantastic success. We completely sold out our screening of Tapestries of Hope last Saturday and even had to turn some people away (We're sorry! Another screening might be in the works... If you missed Tapestries of Hope and are interested in a second Saturday screening in September, send Clark an email at Clark[at]Keplers[dot]com).

This weekend, we're screening Queen of the Sun, a gorgeous documentary about honeybees and their alarming disappearance. By following the stories of beekeepers, philosophers, and scientists from around the world, this film investigates the ancient relationships between bees, humans, and their shared environments. Directed and produced by Taggart Siegel, this film has already won multiple awards and received enthusiastic reviews.

Roger Ebert called it "a remarkable documentary that's also one of the most beautiful nature films I've seen" and Ian Buckwalter of NPR described it as "a hymn to nature's unappreciated pollinators--whose existence has come under threat... making a sunny and optimistic case for why the world is worth saving, via gorgeous imagery and poetic appreciations of the bees themselves."

How can you resist that?

Local beekeeper Cat Fraley will be on hand to answer questions, and the screening will include honey and coffee tastings by Coastal Bee and Cafe Pura Vida, respectively. Ticketholders will also receive discounts from Roger Reynolds Nursery and Kepler's.

The screening is on Saturday, August 27th, at 7:00 PM. For tickets and more information, go HERE. (Clever tip: tickets are FOUR DOLLARS cheaper if you buy them in advance--$12 instead of $16 at the door.)

Trailer!

Book of the Week: The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

2011-08-25T22:53:00.000-07:00

Nancy S., who has a preternaturally accurate talent for picking out the books that will be loved by many before they hit anyone else's radar (a shelf of Nancy's recommendations is basically a visual catalog of recent and future bestsellers), would like you to read Vanessa Diffenbaugh's debut novel, The Language of Flowers. This elegant and emotionally intense novel came out just this week, but already sports an impressive assortment of enthusiastic words.

Get the book HERE.

Nancy says:

"I haven't read anything this good by a first-time novelist since The Help. I can't even do justice to it by writing about it. If I had five stars to give it, I would reinvent the system and give it ten. Writing, characters, plot... it's all there. Do yourself a favor... enjoy this book. It's amazing."

Learn more from the author herself:

A Conversation with Lev Grossman

2011-08-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

photo: Sophie Gee

The Magician King, Lev Grossman's new novel, continues the refreshingly sharp and unabashedly magical story that began in The Magicians two years ago. These books have often been labeled as "fantasy for grown-ups," and while the description is technically appropriate, the faint condescension is not. Grossman revels in the familiar tropes of fantasy literature and applies them with the full expectation that they can tell a story with all the sophistication, depth, and rigor of less fantastical stripes of fiction. Don't read this because it's "fantasy for grown-ups." Read it because it's a thrill ride of an adventure, a gracefully written novel, and a book that plumbs both the nasty and fine parts of being human.

In The Magician King, Quentin and his friends have become kings and queens of the strange and beautiful land of Fillory. When Quentin and Julia set out on a quest, they find themselves thrown back into the mundane world of Massachusetts and the dark and unpredictable magic of Julia's past.

Lev will be visiting Kepler's on Wednesday, the 24th (tomorrow!), at 7:00 PM. For more information, please follow this link.

Megan Kurashige: When did you know that the ending of The Magicians was not the end of this story? Was there a particular image, or idea, or storyline that proved irresistible and propelled you into The Magician King?

Lev Grossman: When I wrote The Magicians it was as a standalone. I never thought about a sequel at all. I was just hoping I could get the thing published! So I didn’t start thinking about a sequel until after it was already in bookstores. And then when I did… the thing I kept thinking about was the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The Pevensies are all grown up, kings and queens of Narnia, and you just see them for a page or two before they get shunted back to England.

And I thought two things. One, what was it really like, ruling Narnia? What if that was the start of a book, not the end? And two, what if the Pevensies didn’t investigate the lamppost? What if they said, ‘we’ve got a good thing going on – why throw it away on some stupid streetlight? Back to the castle for more feasts and wenches!’

MK: I read a fantastic piece you wrote for the Fantasy Matters website in which you describe the metaphorical “bins” you set up when starting the novel, one for mood and one for plot. This is particularly fascinating to me since the two books felt so different to me as a reader. Can you describe for us how you wanted The Magician King to feel compared to how you wanted The Magicians to feel?

LG: The Magician King is more of a straightforward adventure than The Magicians. The Magicians happens over the course of years, and it jumps around in time. The main plot of The Magician King unfolds in about three weeks. So I wanted a more propulsive, more hard-boiled feel. A little less C.S. Lewis and a little more Raymond Chandler. I watched Ronin a couple of times, and The Bourne Identity, to get myself in the mood.

Also, I wanted The Magician King to be less angsty. No one’s coming of age here, that’s already happened. These people are in their 20s, so no more of Quentin’s painful self-consciousness. I wanted him to have some fun. And kick some ass.

MK: These books seem to take great delight in playing with the conventions and love affairs of both the fantasy and “conventional” genres. Were there any books that provided particular succor or inspiration while you were writing The Magician King?

LG: I love books that question the basic conventions of the genre they’re in. Like Watchmen: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were the first people to write a superhero story that asked, why would somebody put on tights and go beat up muggers? What kind of person would do that? And by doing that they produced the greatest superhero story ever written.

Neuromancer is like that for me. And, in a different way, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. They demolish their genres and, in the process, make them stronger than they ever were.

MK: This novel splits the story between Quentin, the main character from the first book, and Julia, a minor character from the first book. How did the story become so much Julia’s? What was it like to look both backwards and forwards at this world and see events from an entirely different point of view?

LG: Julia was only supposed to be a chapter. I wondered what she’d been up to while The Magicians was going on, and I figured it would take about ten pages for her to tell us. But she just exploded. She was so angry and so bitter, and had been through so much. She hijacked the book, and her story grew until it was the same size as Quentin's. The book turned into a duet, not a solo.

MK: The magic in these books is pungent and aggressively striking to imagine (a friend of mine says she feels like she’s seeing the “best Tarantino movie ever” when she reads about your magic). How did the shape and look and sound of your magic, both the magic that’s wielded by characters and the magic that exists in the world, make its way into the books?

LG: I wish I had a good answer for you. Every time I’ve ever read a book with magic in it, I’ve always thought, I like this, but they’re not doing it quite right, and one day I'll write a book where they do it my way! I suppose my magic was influenced a lot by the old Dr. Strange comics: lots of arcane hand positions and bolts of light. But I think a lot of the time when people write about magic they under-describe it. They cover only one or two of the senses. They don’t tell us what it feels like – do your fingers get hot when you cast a spell? If you closed your eyes, what would magic sound like? Would it spit and snap like a green log burning? What would the air smell like, after a spell had been cast?

MK: The fact that this novel has a theme song is excessively awesome. Did you listen to any music while writing The Magician King? Do you have any treasures from a writer playlist that you would like to point us to?

LG: "Fantasies" and "Grow Up and Blow Away" by Metric. "Gimme Fiction" by Spoon.

Hm, those albums titles are almost too appropriate.

MK: How can stories change the world?

LG: The funny thing is, I think they can. The world is all made of stories: they’re not just things in books, they’re how we organize what we know and experience, and give it meaning. So the stories people tell about the world change it. Historians, journalists, politicians -- they write the past and present, and they change the future.

My stories don’t change the world though. They just make people feel better, sometimes.

__________________________________

Lev Grossman is the author of the bestselling novels The Magicians and Codex. A well-known cultural commentator, he is the book critic for TIME magazine and has written for numerous other publications, including the New York Times, The Believer, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, Salon and Wired. In 2011 Grossman won the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer from the World Science Fiction Society. His latest novel, The Magician King, is out from Viking now.

You can visit Lev online at his website or follow him on Twitter.

Have a Rocket

2011-08-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, the winners of the 2011 Hugo Awards were announced. The Hugos recognize excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy, and have been around since 1953. The Hugos are particularly interesting because they're awarded on the basis of a popular vote. Anyone who is a member of the World Science Fiction Society can nominate, and the winners are also selected by vote. The final ballot is an excellent indication of what some of the most enthusiastic and respected editors, authors, artists, and fans think is worthy of recognition in the world of speculative fiction.

Enormous congratulations to the 2011 fiction winners:

BEST NOVEL: Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis

I can vouch for the addictive nature of these books (a single novel in two volumes). With a deliriously thrilling story set in London during the Blitz and Oxford in 2060, Blackout (book one) and All Clear (book two) show off Willis' smart, compassionate writing; her meticulous historical detail; and her mastery of the cliffhanger. The novel bounces between characters who are connected by story, but separated by time, and Willis manages to balance their story lines so well and pull them so taut that you find yourself caught in a reading frenzy, unable to to resist devouring chapter after chapter. If you enjoy historical mysteries, give these books a try.

BEST NOVELLA: The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang
Ted Chiang is an extraordinary writer, but if you don't regularly read science fiction, you may not know about him yet. Lucky you! I envy you your introduction. Chiang's work is unique in its cool intelligence, its willingness to tackle difficult or analytical ideas, and its crisp, perfectly set prose.

BEST NOVELETTE: "The Emperor of Mars" by Allen M. Steele
This was originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, but is currently available to read on the author's website.

BEST SHORT STORY: "For Want of a Nail" by Mary Robinette Kowal
This was originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, but is currently available to read on the author's website.

BEST GRAPHIC STORY: Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse by Phil and Kaja Foglio

With the tagline "Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE," this popular series chronicles the story of the titular Agatha Heterodyne in fantastical alternate history of Europe. This is its third straight year of winning the Best Graphic Story award.

And a special congratulations to Lev Grossman, the winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Lev is the author of The Magicians and The Magician King, two novels that revel in a fresh and shocking view of what it means to tell a story with magic. Lev will be visiting Kepler's this Wednesday, the 24th, to sign The Magician King. We can't wait!

For a full list of winners and a list of nominated works, please visit the Hugo Award website.

Fun with Jane

2011-08-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

Last night, the magnificent Jane Fonda came to Kepler's to sign her new book, Prime Time: Making the Most of Your Life. It was a seriously fun event with a full and enthusiastic audience spilling to the edges of the store. Our own Lisa M., who hosted the event, describes Jane as "articulate, personable, and funny... I'm not worthy. She. Was. AMAZING!"


(Jane with Lisa!)

If you missed the event, you can still get Jane's book HERE. And you can catch a great interview that Charlie Rose did with Jane here (click on the main picture and the video will play). It includes some great clips from Jane's film career!

Movie Night!

2011-08-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, August 20th, Kepler's will--for the first time ever!--screen a feature-length, independent film in the Roy Kepler Pavilion. Director Michealene Cristini Risley will introduce Tapestries of Hope, her new documentary about human rights activist Betty Makoni and the Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe.

This film wrestles with the violence and abuse that women and children face in the midst of Zimbabwe's struggles with HIV and AIDS. It introduces us to Betty Makoni, whose work with the Girl Child Network seeks to protect and empower girls who have been victims of traumatic crimes, and offers a glimpse of the inspirational spirit and courage of people who are forging hope despite overwhelming odds.

For more information about the film, please visit the official website.

Tapestries of Hope screens this Saturday, August 20th, at 7:00 PM in the Roy Kepler Pavilion.

Please note that seating IS LIMITED, so get your tickets early. Tickets are available HERE.

Book of the Week: The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

2011-08-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

The book that I am currently pressing into everyone's hands is The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson. It's the late summer novel that I've gone crackers for, fallen a little bit in love with, and can't stop talking about. I read an advance copy back in March, so I am DELIGHTED that the book is finally out and everyone else can read it too.

(isn't that a stylish cover?)

Get the book HERE.

Meet the Fangs: Caleb and Camille (Mr. and Mrs.), Annie and Buster (Child A and Child B). Caleb and Camille are performance artists who attack normal life with audacious “happenings.” They stage rejected wedding proposals, agreed-upon shootings, fanciful candy store heists; and when they have children, they drag them along. Buster wins a beauty pageant in drag. Annie plays a scandalous Juliet. Everything exists for the creation of art. Until Annie and Buster leave, fed up, to grow up and come back again, licking their wounds, to face the most shocking “happening” in their lives.

The Fangs are exceptionally strange and exceptionally dysfunctional, and the oddness of them, both as a unit and alone, should render them aggravating or, at the very least, unbelievable. But Kevin Wilson’s writing is large in heart and wit, and his novel is one that you will want to return to, or stay in, for as long as it lasts because you find yourself falling in love. Enjoy the absurdities, but remain for the crackling shock at the end. Read this book if: you enjoy Wes Anderson, you want to imagine the effects of a potato gun.

-Megan K.

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The Family Fang is on the August 2011 Indie Next List, a 20-book strong collection of some of the August titles that independent booksellers are mad about.

You can read a charming profile of Kevin Wilson in the New York Times here. You can see a photo of the tattoo that they mention here, on Mr. Wilson's blog. Bonus treat: Mr. Wilson links to MANY of his short stories in the sidebar of his blog. You should check them out. I particularly recommend "The Museum of Whatnot" and "Spy vs. Spy."

A Conversation with Alice LaPlante

2011-07-13T17:37:00.000-07:00


photo: Anne Knudsen

Alice LaPlante's debut novel, Turn of Mind, is one of those books that has entire bookstores murmuring about it months before it comes out. Those nebulous words, "literary thriller," were brandished and it began appearing on lists titled "most anticipated" or "summer's best."

Our own Nancy Salmon has this to say about it:

Have you ever said, "I think I'm losing my mind?" Retired orthopedic surgeon Jennifer White is doing just that. She is accused of murdering her best friend Amanda by surgically severing her fingers. Did she do it? She doesn't have a clue. As she descends into the abyss that is Alzheimer's Disease, we are taken along with her. We see her memory erode bit by bit. We watch as she struggles with the relationships she has with her son, her daughter and her trusted caretaker.

Alice LaPlante does a masterful job of getting into this character's head. While this could have been depressing and maudlin, it is neither. The author approaches it with intelligence and empathy. She teaches creative writing at Stanford and I say "Sign me up!"

Alice visited Kepler's on July 6th, so if you hurry over to the store, you may still be able to snag a signed copy!

Megan Kurashige: In Turn of Mind, Jennifer White, a once brilliant orthopedic surgeon who is succumbing to dementia, finds that she may be responsible for the murder of her closest friend. This is such a shocking and powerful premise... What made you decide to write this story?

Alice LaPlante: My mother has Alzheimer's. It's a topic that has occupied my mind over the last 10 years. I frequently go back to Chicago, where my parents still live in the house they raised eight children in, to visit and help out as much as I can (at this stage, there isn't much that can be done). I'd been writing extensively about my mother, and the disease, in my personal journals. Watching her go through the various stages of the disease in particular caused me to explore how it might feel from her perspective-how frightening, frustrating, and enraging an experience it must be to find yourself deteriorating and be powerless to do anything about it.

I'd just come home from a particularly brutal trip to Chicago, and was watching an episode of the BBC's Sherlock Holmes with my partner. He asked, "do you think you could ever write a mystery?" I laughed and said, "of course not." Then, a moment later, I said, "But wouldn't it be funny"--using the word ironically, as we'd been discussing the horrors of Alzheimer's for hours--"if a detective had dementia and couldn't remember the clues?" David said, "go ahead! Write that!" I told him I couldn't--I wasn't smart enough to write from a detective's point of view. But then I said, "But I could write from the perspective of the suspect." That night, I sat down and wrote the opening to Turn of Mind. Those paragraphs made it into the final book virtually unchanged.

MK: You're an accomplished short fiction and non-fiction writer, as well as being a teacher of creative writing, but this is your first novel. How was the experience of writing long-form fiction different from your other work as a writer?

AL: Novel writing is fun. I find it so much easier, and so much more rewarding, than writing short fiction! I'm almost done with my second novel, and had a blast writing that as well. I think it's having a larger canvas--not worrying so much about having to wrap things up in 10 or 12 pages. You have more creative possibilities, and can let your imagination expand in whatever direction it chooses to go. I regret waiting so long to write longer fiction.

MK: Turn of Mind is told from the point of view of its central character, a woman whose memory is deteriorating and whose experience of reality is both confusing and unreliable. What was it like to write in her voice? Was it challenging to structure a narrative in which so much information and "truth" is obscured by the person who is experiencing it?

AL: I wish I had a good answer to this question, as everyone is asking it. Perhaps because I had been pondering what the experience of Alzheimer's was like for so many years, I didn't have any trouble putting myself in that space. That came very easily. It was technically very tricky to figure out how to communicate to readers what was happening in the "real" world of the story, as opposed to Jennifer's mind. I used a variety of devices to do this. For example, in the first part of the book, when Jennifer can still read and write, I had her keep a notebook where she wrote down facts from her day that she could refer back to later. That helped me slip in quite a few details to ground readers in reality. I also was very careful that the dialogue throughout was absolutely reliable. Jennifer wanders in her mind, even hallucinates visually, but when she hears someone say something, the reader can trust that it was actually said. I devoted a chapter to unreliable narrators in my creative writing textbook, The Making of a Story, published by Norton. I found myself going back to my own advice quite frequently while writing Turn of Mind.

MK: What was your most striking experience in working on this novel?

AL: I think the most striking aspect of writing Turn of Mind was, again, how easily it came. For whatever reason, I didn't have to do a lot of work at the conscious level... everything just seemed to naturally fall into place. In retrospect, this is astonishing, especially given it's a mystery, which by definition requires careful plotting. But I didn't even know myself who had done it until 50 pages from the end. Then when I went back, I saw that I had somehow prepared for the ending that now seemed inevitable.

MK: How can stories change the world?

AL: We read fiction for many reasons. But right now, I think the most important thing that stories can do for us is give us experiences we otherwise wouldn't have. By "experiences" I mean everything from events, to thoughts, to emotions, that are outside our normal frame of reference. Experience can lead to understanding, which can lead to compassion for our fellow human beings. Not always, but often enough. And in difficult times, compassion is essential for helping as many people as possible survive until things get better all around. Not to sound too smarmy. But if people had more insight into their neighbors' hearts and minds, we could possible alleviate much unnecessary suffering. Stories have the power to do that.

A Conversation with Ann Patchett

2011-06-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

photo: Melissa Ann Pinney

A new book by Ann Patchett is always an exciting occasion. And her newest novel, State of Wonder, is an ambitious piece of work that echoes the strange thrill of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Our very own Nancy Salmon has already read and loved this book, and recommends it below:

When the news of the death of her colleague is announced with no details, Maria Singh sets out to find the truth about his research project and mysterious death deep in the jungles of the Amazon. What she finds is a whole different kind of life in the rain forests of Brazil, where every step and every breath can be threatened by bugs, snakes and disease. All of the odds are stacked against her until she uncovers, in tiny wisps of information, that this research may change all of humanity. Is it possible to extend human fertility well into our 80's? Can the bark of an indiginous tree wipe out malaria? These are a few of the subplots in this beautifully crafted novel.

Ann Patchett's powers of description are truly rare. One can almost feel and smell the humid scent of the verdant jungle. Her characters are substantial and not always likable, but you will care about them. A young deaf boy from a native tribe becomes a quiet hero. And, as Maria pieces together this puzzle, you will root for her every step of the way.

Ann will be visiting Kepler's on Wednesday, June 15th, at 7:00 PM. For more information, please follow this link.

Megan Kurashige: State of Wonder is your sixth novel. Can you tell us about some of the ideas or influences that became the engine driving this particular story?

Ann Patchett: I've done a lot of convocation programs in colleges where the in-coming freshman class all read the same book. Without ever meaning to I tend to write books with very little sex, very little swearing, and some sort of strong moral center, so I'm a popular pick. People always ask me to recommend a book for next year. I've had so many people ask me to recommend a contemporary work of fiction with strong female characters who aren't falling in love or falling out of love or being in some way defined by men, and I could never think of one. I think those conversations were probably my first step down the path to State of Wonder. I also wanted to write about a relationship between a former teacher and an adult student. That was very compelling to me.

MK: The novel is filled with such dense and interesting detail in both setting and incident. Why did you choose to write about scientists and the Amazon? Are there certain pleasures and challenges in writing within worlds and experiences that are so different from your personal history?

AP: I love making things up. I love to do research and to think about worlds outside of my own. To me this is the great pleasure of writing fiction, the freedom to imagine things. Once I decided I wanted to write about a teacher and a student I thought, okay, what did this student study? My husband is a doctor and I've always loved his stories about how barbaric medical school and residency programs were at times. I knew this was a place to develop some very strong characters. As for the Amazon, I wanted a setting that had malaria (I was always heading towards malaria) as well as great possibility for developing new drugs. Africa and India have more malaria but fewer pharmacological opportunities.

MK: You draw an incredible portrait of the effect that a teacher can have on a person's life and memories, and the imbalance that's inherent in most teacher-student interactions. Did you have any teachers who had an irreversible effect on the way you think?

AP: Absolutely, though they were nothing like Dr. Swenson. Allan Gurganus and Grace Paley had such a huge impact on my life. It isn't enough to say I admired them, I really wanted to shape my life so that it would be like theirs (though in truth I knew nothing about their lives). I was a quiet, hardworking kid at Sarah Lawrence, a place where flamboyance reigned, so I wasn't the kind of student anyone would notice. The two of them had an untold number of students over the course of their lives. In short, I shaped myself in their image and they really had no idea who I was. (disclaimer - Allan and I later became good friends.)

MK: You have written both fiction and non-fiction, and done so with both grace and a wonderful, intense lucidity. How does your process differ depending on what you're working on?

AP: In a nutshell, fiction is hard for me and nonfiction is easy. Fiction requires making up every single thing. You have to make all the people and their houses and jobs and all the trees and the leaves and decide who gets to fall in love and who has to die. Nonfiction is writing down what happened, recording what I saw, what I felt, where I went. There's almost no comparison. Writing nonfiction for me is closer to making a shopping list than it is to writing a novel. Please note, I do not feel this way about other people's nonfiction, only my own.

MK: How can stories change the world?

AP: Fiction gives us empathy. When done well, it forces us into other people's skin, it makes us live their experiences. One of my favorite books in the past several years was What Is the What? by Dave Eggers. I was so intrigued by why he chose to write that story as a novel, but it had a kind of life force that I think would have been very hard to achieve in nonfiction. It made the reader march through Sudan with those boys. It made it impossible to look away from their suffering because it became our suffering. That changes the world.

A Conversation with Emma Donoghue

2011-06-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

photo: Andrew Bainbridge

Emma Donoghue's brilliant novel, Room, was released in the U. S. last fall. It quickly received both critical praise and popular affection, including the enthusiastic recommendations of several Kepler's booksellers. I've included two of them here to tempt you:

Room is the place where 5-year-old Jack was born and the only home he has ever known. His Ma has been imprisoned there for seven years by Old Nick, who kidnapped her when she was a college student. Ma has devised play routines and physical education for Jack and taught him much about the outside world through the use of a television. But she realizes that they must escape if he is ever to have a normal life. And that she must depend on his bravery to make that escape possible. What she doesn't foresee is the incredible adjustment he will have to make to become part of the real world.

This is a dark and powerful love story that celebrates the strength of the human spirit, the love of a mother and a child, and the will to go on against all odds. I highly recommend it. -Nancy Salmon

Told from Jack's point of view, this book is both disturbing and uplifting, horrifying and yet beautiful. A book about survival, about hope, and mostly about love. It is a book to savor - a book that has stayed with me and made me look again at all we take for granted. -Angela Mann

With that much bookseller excitement, how can you resist? Especially now that Room is freshly adorned in paperback covers.

Emma will be visiting Kepler's on Thursday, June 2nd, at 7:00 PM to celebrate the paperback release of Room. For more information, please follow this link.

Megan Kurashige: Room is so immediately compelling. As readers we are, from the very beginning, immersed in the world and voice that belong to Jack. Was it at all frightening to commit your story so completely to the voice of such a young character, particularly one whose world has been entirely confined to such a small and spare space?

Emma Donoghue: No, it was one of those liberating limitations that writers love. A five-year-old's mind is seemingly small but actually massive; my experience of talking to my kids is that there's no subject they can't tackle and bring a fresh perspective to.

MK: The novel tackles so many aspects of growing up and emerging into the outside world. It takes this ordinary and universal experience and pushes it into the most extreme high-relief. What did you find the most compelling about investigating this idea?

ED: The tug between freedom and safety. Readers are sometimes appalled to realise that they are thinking of Room as a cozy haven when it's a dungeon, but of course it's both. As as parent I'm constantly struggling to figure out what my kids need at any particular moment: a warning or a hug, routine or spontaneity, limits or exuberance...

MK: You are a literary scholar as well as a writer of fiction. How has your familiarity with literary history affected your fiction? Do you think you approach your fiction writing in a particular way because of your academic background?

ED: I hope that background doesn't show too much! Sometimes readers at Q&As are unsettled to learn that I plan in such detail before I write a book, and that I'm hyper-conscious of literary precedents, symbolism, etc. Room is full of references to other works, from Gulliver's Travels to The Catcher in the Rye, and my hope is that erudite readers will enjoy picking them up but other readers will not be irritated by them. I wanted Room to work at the level of plain realism first, but of course it's a philosophical parable as well; I really hoped it would be enjoyed by academics and by 11-year-olds.

MK: I've read a few interviews in which you mention that you are working on a novel about an unsolved murder in 1870s San Francisco. Can you tell us anything about your new project, or about the process of writing or researching it?

ED: All I'll say for now is that Victorian San Francisco was a thrillingly modern city: multi-cultural, fast-moving, even self-conscious about its own status as a haven for eccentrics. I'm very much enjoying this new territory, and the novel is also new territory for me in genre terms because it's a sort of a thriller.

MK: Room seems to evoke very strong, visceral reactions from readers. Did you expect it to have such an enormous effect on such a large audience?

ED: I thought it would work strongly on those readers it found, but no, I had no idea that it would end up being translated into forty languages...

MK: How can stories change the world?

ED: The fastest way possible: by changing people. Look how powerfully Uncle Tom's Cabin helped convince a whole generation of the repulsiveness of slavery.

You can visit Emma at her website and follow her on Twitter.

A Conversation with Adam Hochschild

2011-05-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild's newest book, is an intense and riveting examination of the first World War and the people who both fought in it and stood against it. In his New York Times review, Christopher Hitchens describes it as "a book to make one feel deeply and painfully, and also to think hard."

A respected writer and historian, Adam has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of numerous other awards for his work.

Adam Hochschild will be visiting Kepler's on Wednesday, May 25th, at 7:00 PM. For more information, please follow this link.

Megan Kurashige: To End All Wars is your seventh book. What drew you to writing about WWI? What is it about a subject that fascinates you enough to write a book about it?

Adam Hochschild: I had some sources of personal interest in the war, chiefly that an uncle of mine, whom I wrote about in my first book, Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son, fought in the war. But the First World War is well worth anyone being interested in, because it killed some 20 million people, military and civilian, and remade the world for the worse in almost every conceivable way.

MK: Can you describe some of your research for this book? When you go to a specific location, how do you record and absorb the details that make your work such a vivid reading experience?

AH: Most of my work was in libraries and archives. But I did twice visit the old Western Front, once in France and once in Belgium, looked for places that figured in my narrative, and tried to imagine what it was like in them some 90 years ago. I always like to try to go to the places where the history I’m writing about happened. I like to think it brings me closer to it.

MK: In this book, you introduce the reader to a large number of compelling historical characters, resurrecting them in an intensely human way that I might more frequently associate with fiction. How do you balance the demands of a compelling narrative with the rigors of journalistic accuracy?

AH: If you’re writing history or nonfiction, as I am, there can be no sacrifice of accuracy. Not one ounce. If I say that someone felt a certain way on a particular day, it’s because he or she said so in a letter or diary entry—and generally I quote that. People are colorful and interesting and complicated enough as they are. You don’t have to invent a single detail to have full-fledged characters.

MK: You have compared WWI to current military conflicts in the Middle East that the U. S. is involved in, pointing out similarities in rhetoric, motives, and outcomes. How can educating ourselves about history enable us to see the contemporary world more clearly?

AH: One would hope that knowing history better would help our leaders avoid the folly of needless war today, but unfortunately I don’t see many signs of that!

MK: Why do you write? Why do you favor narrative journalism as a medium?

AH: I write because I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather do. I love reading fiction, but I seem to be better at writing nonfiction, so that’s the direction I’ve taken. It’s work I’m very grateful for. And, unlike quarterbacks or ballet dancers, writers never have to retire.

A Conversation with Julie Orringer

2011-05-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Photo: Stephanie Rausser

The Invisible Bridge, Julie Orringer's first novel, is one of those books that steals the hearts of readers, even when those readers are experienced bookstore staff members whose hearts are accustomed to literary charms. Pam Grange, our events coordinator at Kepler's, says this about The Invisible Bridge:

"This book is astounding in its magnitude and depiction of an international tragedy told on an intimate scale. The writing drew me in so completely that I could actually feel Andras's feelings-the terror and uncertainty he suffers as a result of the war, as well as the joy and happiness he experiences in his art, his true love, and his family. I LOVED this book! It's right up there among my favorite books of all time, and it will remain in my thoughts for a very long time to come."

To celebrate the paperback release of The Invisible Bridge, Julie Orringer will be visiting Kepler's on Tuesday, May 24th, at 7:00 PM. For more information, please follow this link.

Megan Kurashige: You've published a number of short stories, including a collection, How to Breathe Underwater, but The Invisible Bridge was your first novel. It's such a broad and deep story, enormous in its range of characters and the detail of its historical setting. What made you decide to tell this particular kind of story? How was it different from working in a shorter form? Do you feel there are certain strengths or weaknesses to either?

Julie Orringer: I love the short-story form, and when I was working on How to Breathe Underwater I thought I might want to work in that mode forever. But when I came across the material that gave rise to The Invisible Bridge, I knew it couldn't be translated into a twenty- or thirty-page story. It had to be a novel, and a long one at that. The material was compelling enough to make me want to take the plunge. The form was a matter of narrative necessity. I loved working at greater length, getting to know the characters more deeply and seeing them transform over the course of seven years and hundreds of pages. The novel seemed to demand longer continuous periods of work. But it was just as unforgiving, from the perspective of pacing and economy, as the short story; nothing can be wasted in either form.

MK: You've said that you were inspired to write this novel partially by events from your grandfather's life. What was it like to consider the realities of such a difficult point in history on such a personal level, even if those personal events were a starting inspiration that grew into something quite different?

JO: That was the hardest part of writing the book--coming to understand what my grandparents and their families suffered during the war. It was terrible to hear about the conditions of their lives and the uncertainties they faced; I tried to imagine, for example, what it might have been like for my grandfather not to meet his own daughter until she was a year and a half old, and never to have known, for all that time, whether she and her mother had survived or not. I think I have a different understanding now of both human cruelty and fortitude.

MK: You manage to communicate so well how enormously devastating historical events affect the lives of individuals, and how people manage to carry on being incredibly human despite them. I think novels like yours help those of us who aren't personally familiar with such events to discover the intimate reality of them. Was it difficult to balance the recreation of a historical environment with the kind of story that makes us feel like the characters are real people who exist at this moment?

JO: It was difficult at times to know how much historical detail to include, and how to integrate that information into the story. In the end I decided that the best approach would be to let the history emerge as the characters experienced it--day by day, through newspapers and radio and overheard conversation on the street, through the appearance of planes in the sky and tanks on the boulevards. I wanted to preserve some element of suspense, of surprise; though we know how things turn out in Europe, the characters discover their fate as they go along.

MK: Your writing is such a pleasure to read. Did you have any specific thoughts on how you wanted to book to sound and feel in style and structure before you started? What was the most difficult part to work through?

JO: I didn't have a particular sound or style in mind; I wanted to write in a tone that would admit both gravity and levity, and to use a structure that would proceed more or less like a nineteenth-century novel at first, but that could break open later on into a more contemporary mode. The most difficult sections to write were the ones that took place in forced labor camps in Hungary and Ukraine. I wanted to capture Andras's shock and grief, and I wanted to render the details of the camps clearly but without overdramatization. In the end I learned that the details spoke for themselves; I just had to get out of the way.

MK: Can you share something about what you're working on now? I've read that you're writing a novel about Varian Fry, who was an American journalist involved in WWII. What's it like to be immersed in the same time period, but within a completely different story?

JO: It's great--it feels liberating to be in a different character's world but to know most of the historical background already. Fry's story was fascinating not only because he saved so many lives, but also because he had to make impossible moral decisions. What makes one surrealist painter worth saving, and not another? How can life continue after one has been faced with choices like those? The psychology of it is endlessly fascinating.

MK: How can stories change the world?

JO: Fiction is an empathy engine. It drops us directly into other people's lives. Who hasn't emerged from the grip of a great novel and walked through the familiar neighborhood streets as if seeing them for the first time, through someone else's eyes? No other medium can do that-not with the same potency, not with the same intimacy.

You can visit Julie online at her website. And you can follow her on Twitter.

A Conversation with Mary Gordon

2011-04-27T09:50:00.000-07:00

Mary Gordon is an award-winning, best-selling, and beloved author. She lives in New York and teaches at Barnard College. Her newest novel, The Love of My Youth, is an evocative examination of old romances, second chances, and the passing of time. It is a novel you might want to linger in, wandering through the beauties of Rome and back in time to the 1960s in the company of two people who were once passionately in love, but are now meeting again for the first time in 40 years.

FOR YOUR CALENDARS: Mary Gordon will be visiting Kepler's on Friday, April 29, at 7:00 PM. Follow this link for more information. Mary's website is here.

Megan Kurashige: Your new novel, The Love of My Youth, follows the reunion of Adam and Miranda, former high-school sweethearts who haven’t spoken to each other in almost 40 years. What drew you to writing about young love from the vantage point of people who have grown older and apart?

Mary Gordon: Partly, of course, the spectacle and process of my own aging. I am 61. I found myself thinking about the question: are we who we were? And also about what time takes from us and gives us.

MK: What was it like to consider such a long span of life with these characters, both together and apart? What was it like to examine so many decades in their company?

MG: One of the questions that I seem to live with and return to is the effect of the 60s on the generation (mine) that was young during it. It was a time of so much radical change happening so rapidly…and a lot of hopes and dreams which were mostly not realized, and often betrayed or abandoned.

MK: The novel takes place in Rome. Why did you choose to take your characters there? Does the city have any personal significance to you?

MG: First of all, I love Rome: it is my great good place. Simply to walk down a street there makes me happy. There is always something wonderful to look at: it is a place where visual pleasure is as available as air. To say nothing of the pleasures of the palate! But it is also a place that makes concrete the passage of time, the effects of time…and so it seemed a good place to discuss issues of time, change, pleasure, beauty.

MK: This is your sixth novel. Has your working process or the way you look at stories and build them changed over the course of your writing career?

MG: As I’ve written more, I think I’ve felt more free to experiment formally: for example, I wanted to include sections in The Love of My Youth that were almost entirely conversation, and juxtapose them with more narrative sections. In terms of process, I don’t think that much has changed. I always need to have an end in mind before I begin…and have always felt free to give that up if it didn’t seem to work. I always write a first draft by hand, but the way the following drafts (usually three or four) have come into the world has changed. My first books were written in the age of the electric typewriter: much sloppier, but I did have the fun of literally cutting up pages and pasting them on to others; this is now done metaphorically, although I always completely re-type each draft.

MK: How can stories change the world?

MG: I don’t know if they will change the world, but if they can, they do what they do because they remind us that everything is probably a lot more complicated than we thought.

A Conversation with Joel Brinkley

2011-04-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

Joel Brinkley won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1980 for his coverage of the fall of the Khmer Rouge. He is a professor of journalism at Stanford, wrote for the New York Times for 23 years, and is currently the author of a nationally syndicated column on foreign policy. Cambodia's Curse, his fifth book, gives us a glimpse of current conditions in Cambodia and examines the role of the West in unstable and developing nations.

In the course of conducting this interview, I realized the depth of my ignorance when confronting the history and current affairs of Cambodia. Prior to doing some research, the words "Khmer Rouge" were about the only things I could come up with. The country was, to me, as Joel says in this interview, "invisible." Joel's answers to my questions have made me want to learn more about both Cambodia and foreign affairs in general. They've inspired me to take more time to read my favorite newspapers and to remember that, even though the world is a very big place, the farthest corners of it have an enormous impact on all of our lives.

FOR YOUR CALENDARS: Joel Brinkley will be visiting Kepler's on Wednesday, April 20th, at 7:00 PM. For more information, please follow this link.

Megan Kurashige: In your new book, Cambodia's Curse, you revisit the country where you previously reported on the fall of the Khmer Rouge. Can you give us a brief idea of what life is like for most people in Cambodia right now?

Joel Brinkley: Most Cambodians live more or less as their ancestors did 1,000 years ago. They grow or pick their food and live in one-room homes they built from trees and other surrounding forest products. They have no electricity, clean water or other accouterments of the modern age. They "live by nature," as they like to say. The paradox is that they aspire to nothing more. I asked one poor, elderly man if he was satisfied with his life. He nodded and said, "Yes, I am. Like the old people used to say, life is hard, but I survive." His view was typical. Given their tragic history, most Cambodians seem to hold no aspirations for a better life.

MK: Why did you decide to go back to Cambodia? What drove you to write this book?

JB: Shortly after I left the NY Times in 2006 and joined Stanford University, I began writing a weekly column on foreign affairs, first for the San Francisco Chronicle and then for a syndication service, beginning in the fall of 2007. Because I was writing about foreign affairs, I realized I would need to travel and report. So in the summer of 2008 I decided to visit Southeast Asia again - for me the most interesting part of the world. I made plans to visit Thailand, Laos - and Cambodia, a place I hadn't visited in almost 30 years. I did some research and found a fascinating untold story. I sold an article on this to Foreign Affairs magazine. And after I had spent part of the summer there, researching that article, I realized: This is a book!

Here's a country that was central to American foreign policy 40 years ago, a nation that suffered an incomparable tragedy during the Khmer Rouge years and then was the beneficiary of the most ambitious nation-building effort the United Nations had ever undertaken. After all of that, however, it disappeared from view. No one knew what was happening there. I found that in January 2008, when I began looking at Cambodia, the Nexis news-research service carried 3,010 stories with headlines including the word Vietnam and 3,443 stories about Thailand. That same month, Nexis carried 308 stories with Cambodia in the headline. The place was invisible.

MK: You write about the corruption of Cambodia's current government and the spectacular failure of the U.N.-sponsored attempt to build a democratic nation. What can Cambodia teach us about future Western involvement in developing nations?

JB: We have been watching the United States in Libya, eager to pull out of the conflict as quickly as possible. Well, that's what the United Nations did in Cambodia. The nation's first-ever national elections took place in the summer of 1993, and the last UN officer was gone by autumn - leaving behind squabbling aspirants for power. They continued grasping for years until finally they fought a small civil war in 1997. Prime Minister Hun Sen was victorious. Today, Cambodia is effectively a one-party state. Hun Sen says he will remain dictator for life, just as Qadaffi planned to do in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt, Ben Ali in Tunisia. Already Hun Sen is the longest serving leader in Asia.

As Cambodia shows, a nearly inviolable rule governs this arena: Democracy cannot be implanted in any nation unless its people and its leaders ask for it. Otherwise the nation's oligarchy will fight to restore the old order of things, to protect their positions and perquisites. It happens every time.

Look at Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood and the National Democratic Party, Hosni Mubarak's political party, appear to be the strongest players in the upcoming elections. While ruling-party operatives have been purged from the government in Tunisia, they remain players, well able to influence events.

All of this happened in Cambodia. The destruction of the UN initiative began even before the UN left and played out over several years until finally King Sihanouk declared it dead. "The public is not concerned about liberal democracy," he averred in 1996, less than three years after the United Nations left. "Everything is very special in Cambodia." That constitution the U.N. drafted and the voters approved, "it's a paper monument. We consider it a monument."

One thing the West must do, should democracies grow up in the Middle East states now in play: Remain engaged.

MK: Traditional news venues are shrinking. Why is it important for us to maintain coverage of international news?

JB: Most everyone knows this, but the world is richly interconnected, both politically and financially. What will happen if Islamic fundamentalists capture control of those Middle East countries in revolt right now? What will it mean for us if China's housing bubble bursts, as many economist fear, and their economy falls into recession? After all, China holds nearly $1 trillion of our debt. I cannot remember a time, since the days after the Berlin Wall fell, when so much of consequence was happening around the world. Already, the earthquake, tsunami and resultant nuclear disaster in Japan have put a chill on the nuclear-power industry in this country. Most everything that happens around the world has a direct consequence for us.

MK: We are offered so much information, through so many different mediums. What are the constants of good journalism? How can they increase our awareness of and compassion for the world we live in?

JB: The constants of good journalism are unchanging: Thorough, accurate and fair reporting. Today it's in short supply, and it is now in competition with the natural human desire to read writers or listen to commentators who hold opinions consistent with our own. I am, of course, referring to MSNBC, Fox "News," the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report and others of that ilk.

In this country we have a free unfettered press that is, justifiably, the envy of the world. But the current media environment places an extraordinarily important burden on the few remaining major news sources that continue to provide full and fair reporting of the nation and the world. NPR, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and a few others. Awareness and compassion are not possible without balanced information. We should hope that at least these major news agencies will survive.

SNEAK PEEK: Put these books on your summer wishlist

2011-04-12T14:25:00.000-07:00

We're putting together the summer issue of the Indie Reader (our quarterly Kepler's newsletter), and Frank Sanchez, our head buyer and book tastemaker, has put together a list of his top picks for spring and summer titles. These are the books you're going to want to read while enjoying the sun.

The Indie won't be out for a few more weeks, but you can check out part one of Frank's list now.

BUYER'S CHOICE

(part one)

Our very own Aggie Z. wrote a spectacular review for this novel, which is available now: "Remembering is sometimes like 'juggling a hundred thousand crystal balls all at once.' This beautifully written book is, at the same time, an elegant, elegiac novel; a brutal, honest memoir; and the longest and most tender love letter in the world. Say Her Name is a gift of love for the author's beautiful young wife, Aura Estrada, who died after an accident in the waves at Mezunte Beach in Mexico. I don't believe in the spirit world, yet when Francisco stops to hug and kiss Aura's favorite tree, a hale silver maple at the end of his block, I, too, felt Aura's presence. And if that's not enough, the last pages will take your breath away."

This is the sixth and final book in Jean M. Auel's spectacularly popular Earth's Children series. The previous books in the epic saga, set in Europe 30,000 years ago, have sold more than 45 million copies and been translated into over 30 languages.

The Land of Painted Caves was released at the end of March, and is no doubt making its way into the hands of many people who have been waiting to know how Ayla's story ends since The Clan of the Cave Bear came out in 1980

The Savage City tackles a decade of fear, racial violence, and turmoil in New York City. In 1963, the murders of two young white women sent a wave of fear through a city that was mired in racial tension, corruption in law enforcement, and enormous political and social change.

You can see T. J. English be interviewed by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show here.

In 2008, the literary world lost one of its most spectacular and blazingly unique talents. David Foster Wallace, the author of Infinite Jest, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Consider the Lobster, and other wide-ranging, astonishingly original novels, short stories, and essays, left behind an unfinished manuscript when he committed suicide. The Pale King is that unfinished manuscript, excavated and pieced together by Wallace's editor, Michael Pietsch.

Lev Grossman, of Time Magazine, wrote a fascinating review of The Pale King. He says:

"All of Kafka's novels were unpublished when he died, and he left instructions that they should be burned. They were also unfinished; the order of the chapters in The Trial is still just guesswork. But I for one would not be prepared to give The Trial back. I wouldn't give The Pale King back either."

Billy Collins and National Poetry Month

2011-04-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

April is National Poetry Month. And, with perfect timing, the marvelous Billy Collins (Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001-2003 AND Poet Laureate of New York from 2004-2006) will be at Kepler's tomorrow evening to introduce us to his new collection, Horoscopes for the Dead.

Today, Collins was interviewed by Neal Conan on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." It's a great interview, with some excerpts from Collins's new book, and you can listen to it here.

Did you listen? Did you enjoy it? Are you hungry for some more? Then make sure you come to Kepler's tomorrow, Thursday, the 7th at 7:00 PM.

April Sale: Great Finds

2011-04-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

If you've been ogling some of the titles on our Great Finds tables (and if you haven't you should be... I'm consistently astonished by the number of intriguing and gorgeous books that appear there), you'll be delighted to know that these wonderful, eclectic, and reasonably priced titles will be even MORE reasonably priced. For the month of April, all Great Finds titles at Kepler's are on sale for HALF-OFF, 50% LESS, YOU-CAN'T-GET-MUCH-BETTER-THAN-THAT. Such excitement! Go forth! Load up your shelves!

A Conversation with Joshua Foer

2011-03-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

I am just going to put this out there: Moonwalking with Einstein is my favorite of all the books I’ve read in the past six months. It is sheer pleasure and an absolutely intoxicating, fascinating delight.

Joshua Foer is a journalist whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Slate, National Geographic, and the New York Times. Moonwalking with Einstein, his first book, explores the world of memory. In what begins as a fantastic journalistic stunt, but soon grows into a witty study of something universal, extraordinary, and strange, Foer finds himself on the hunt for the U. S. Memory Championship. On the way, he digs through research on neurology, history, and culture, and introduces us to a cast of characters who range from admirably dedicated to colorfully bizarre. It’s a generous and humane book, and it will make you want to re-examine the contents of your head.

FOR YOUR CALENDARS: Joshua Foer will be visiting Kepler's on Monday, March 28th, at 7:00 PM

Megan Kurashige: I read your book and adored it, so now, after the fact, writing a book about memory and going absolutely whole hog with your personal investigations seems like the most obvious thing in the world. But what enchanted you about this universal, but still rather arcane, subject? Is there something particularly compelling about memory that lured you into such a full-blown project?

Joshua Foer: Memory is at the root of who we are, and yet I had this realization at the beginning of this project that I didn't have a clue how my own memory worked. Not a clue. It was kind of a depressing realization, but it set me on a journey that ended up as this book.

MK: You've written for many publications as a journalist, but this is your first book. How was working in a longer form different?

JF: It's both different and the same. A book gives you more room to explore, obviously, but it also imposes requirements in terms of pacing and arc that you don't have to pay as much attention to with shorter pieces. There was so much more information I would have liked to have shared in this book, but I tried to notice where I was getting bored reading my own work. Those sections got cut. It was painful, but hopefully for the best. I was extremely lucky to be working with a very talented editor, Eamon Dolan.

MK: Throughout the book, you introduce us to a whole crowd of fascinating people-scientists, historical figures, teachers, and competitive memorizers. What was it like to spend so much time with people whose lives are focused on memory?

JF: It was inspiring. There is nothing more exciting to me than talking with people about their passions. In this case, those passions all circled around a common theme of memory. It was great spending time with all these people who had different perspectives on what was fundamentally the same subject.

MK: Do you have a favorite memory from the time you spent working on this book? Will it influence your next project or your future work?

JF: I will never forget the time I spent with EP, the man with the worst memory in the world, and Kim Peek, the savant who was the basis for the movie Rain Man. I hope my next project allows me to cross paths with such extraordinary individuals.

MK: I ask this question of most of our visiting authors because I'm interested in what keeps them working in this particular medium: How can books change the world right now? Why did you choose to explore this subject in the form of a book?

JF: I'm not wedded to writing as a medium. It happens to be the only thing I know how to do. But if it were possible to tell the kinds of stories I'd like to tell, and have the kinds of experiences I want to have, while working in a different medium, I would be totally open to that. I just haven't figured out how to do that with the degree of depth that would make it worthwhile.

You can visit Joshua online at his website.

A Conversation with Meg Waite Clayton

2011-03-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

In just five days, you'll be able to read Meg Waite Clayton's newest novel, The Four Ms. Bradwells. Her previous book, The Wednesday Sisters, took Kepler's by storm. Our very own Nancy Salmon (who, I'm almost convinced, can pick out which books will win widespread devotion before anyone else on the West Coast) called it "a literary feast for book lovers that earns a place among those popular works that honor the joyful, mysterious, unbreakable bonds between friends."

A resident of Palo Alto, Meg is one of our favorite local authors. She often stops by Kepler's and sometimes attends our monthly Fiction Book Club. Along with being a novelist, Meg is also a lawyer. Her experiences from law school and the friendships she made there, are part of the basis for her new book, which explores the lives of four women against the background of law, law school, Chesapeake Bay, and past secrets.

FOR YOUR CALENDARS: Meg Waite Clayton will be coming to Kepler's to celebrate the release of The Four Ms. Bradwells on Tuesday, March 22nd, at 7:00 PM.

Megan Kurashige: The Four Ms. Bradwells is your third novel, after the much-loved The Wednesday Sisters. Was the experience of writing this book, or of having it come out, any different from your previous work?

Meg Waite Clayton: The Four Ms. Bradwells is a friendship story, much like The Wednesday Sisters. But it’s more clearly a mystery than anything I’ve written before. Four law school roommates gather 30 years later at a Chesapeake Bay summer home, on the eve of Betts’s appointment to the Supreme Court, only to have a skeleton fall out of their collective closet. It involves a secret they’ve kept in some ways even from each other, which now threatens not just Betts’s appointment, but their friendship, their reputations, and more. The result is a higher-stakes story than anything I’ve written – a new challenge for me.

The writing was quite a different experience in other ways too. Among other things, I worked with editors from the get-go. Anika Streitfeld brainstormed with me to finalize the proposal she then acquired. And as I wrote it, I could call up my now-editor, Caitlin Alexander, and bounce ideas off her. Once I had a decent draft, rather than sticking it in a drawer for a month or more until I could see what it needed, I sent it to her and had incredibly insightful comments just days later. Rewash, rinse, spin, and repeat as needed until it’s a nice, clean manuscript. I love love love working with Caitlin.

MK: What inspired you to write this particular story?

MWC: I shy away from the concept of “inspiration.” For me, writing is more like going on a mad hunt in the hopes of uncovering something that I can beat on until it makes some small yelp that might turn into words on the page. I read and research endlessly in the never-ending quest for material to shape into story.

I did so enjoy writing The Wednesday Sisters – a story more about my mom’s generation than my own – that the idea of wrapping myself up in the warmth of my own real-life friendships for the long slog through a new book was really appealing. I have such wonderful friends from my law school days, and it seemed our generation and the challenges women of our generation faced – some of which were probably unique to being in the first wave of women entering the professional world in substantial numbers, but most of which turn out to be pretty universal – seemed a good place to start my little hunt.

MK: As a lawyer yourself, what was it like to explore the world of law from a fictional perspective?

MWC: One of the things that never ceases to surprise me is the different paths lawyers take. That’s especially true of women lawyers. In The Four Ms. Bradwells, Betts goes on to teach law at University of Michigan, where the four went to law school together (and, not coincidentally, my alma mater), and Laney goes into politics – not so far afield for law grads. But Mia becomes a journalist and Ginger writes poetry and teaches yoga. Seems a bit odd until you look at my law school housemates: Jenn runs a preschool; Darby raises children and helps revitalize a neighborhood of beautiful old Los Angeles homes that have seen hard times; I write fiction; Sherri is the only one of us who still practices law.

It was also interesting to explore the kinds of things we’ve all experienced since law school, the kinds of things all women – professional and not – have to deal with, from the vantage point of some years later. Lord, we were young and naïve. Or at least I was.

MK: Your past two novels have featured strong friendships between women. What do you find compelling about these particular relationships? Do you feel like you’ve explored different aspects of friendship in the two books?

MWC: It can be such a hard thing to believe that you can do things beyond the ordinary. Having supportive friends can help us find the courage to reach for things we don’t always believe we can do. If we fail, well, our friends will still be there. It’s a great luxury to have that kind of support. So I guess in one way I’m trying through my novels to pay the support my own friends have given me forward to a broader audience.

The friendships in the two books are similar in their strength, but different in other ways. In part, that’s generational: the Wednesday Sisters come of age before the second wave of the women’s movement, and have their home lives relatively settled when they meet; the four Ms. Bradwells come of age more than a decade later, leaving them with different expectations and different challenges. Among other things they have to work out the jealousies that arise as they compete for the same honors, the same jobs, and even the same men.

But probably more importantly, the friendship in The Four Ms. Bradwells is tainted in a way the one in The Wednesday Sisters is not. They’ve experienced something awful that for complicated reasons they’ve left undiscussed. The result is a lot of scar tissue building up in the intervening thirty years: bad choices and misunderstandings. So The Four Ms. Bradwells explores a different set of challenges friendship can bring.

The Four Ms. Bradwells is also – this was the biggest surprise to me – more about motherhood than The Wednesday Sisters is, even though the Wednesday Sisters spend most of their daily hours as mothers while the Ms. Bradwells go off to jobs. A bit ironic, isn’t it?

MK: How can stories change the world?

MWC: Oh my … that’s a big question. And of course I’ve brought it on myself by using the Ghandi quote for the epigraph: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

Part of the answer, I think, is that through stories we can experience other people’s struggles, and loves, and lives; when we read, we imagine we are the characters we’re reading about. Surely understanding each other better helps provoke change. Look at the differences books like The Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird made.

But perhaps as importantly, it’s through stories that we often first realize that we aren’t alone in our own struggles. Coming to understand that others grapple with similar doubts, injustices, emotions, and dreams allows us some sense of company, and knowing others feel what we feel allows for the possibility that if we band together we can provoke change.

You can visit Meg online.

A Conversation with Guy Kawasaki

2011-03-10T17:43:00.000-08:00

The first time I heard Guy Kawasaki’s name, was when he visited Kepler’s to promote Reality Check. It was also the first time I heard my dad, who is a software engineer, get excited about someone appearing at the bookstore. “Guy Kawasaki?” he asked. “He’s an interesting guy.” From my dad, “interesting” is just about the finest praise an author could ask for.

Guy Kawasaki has written ten books, co-founded Alltop.com, was once the “chief evangelist” of Apple, and is a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. His enthusiasm is infectious, and his sheer likability is immediately apparent. His newest book, Enchantment, capitalizes on these skills—and, according to Guy, they can be skills, rather than unreachable, inherent qualities—and applies them our relationships with each other and the practical world.

FOR YOUR CALENDARS: Guy will be coming to Kepler’s on Thursday, March 31st, at 7:00 PM.

I recently had the opportunity to ask Guy a few questions about his new book. He talked about his reasons for writing Enchantment and the ideas that lie behind it.

Megan Kurashige: This is your tenth book. What inspired you to write another book? Why did you choose to focus on the concept of “enchantment”?

Guy Kawasaki: An honest author would say, "Royalties." :-) I wanted to leave my mark in business literature and write a definitive and tactical book about using social psychology tools to change the world.

MK: I have to admit that I picked up your book with the expectation that I wouldn’t like it. I work in the arts (as a dancer and a writer), and have a (probably unfair) prejudice against books about the world of business. However, you present so much great information about connecting and understanding people with such clarity and enthusiasm, that I found it incredibly invigorating both practically and artistically. What would you like to tell people who might not normally pick it up about this book?

GK: This is a heckuva of a setup! I'm glad I was able to dig myself out of the hole with you. Enchantment isn't about business per se. It's about making change happen, getting things done, and endearing yourself to people in the process. It's true that businesses need to do this, but so do artists, writers, and dancers.

MK: Can you describe the most recent thing or person or moment that enchanted you?

GK: I hate to say this because people already assume I'm a total Apple fanboy, but I love my iPad. I now carry an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro with me.

MK: In this volatile world, with new technology appearing all the time, do you think it is easier or more difficult for people to discover what enchants them?

GK: New technology is making it far easier for people to discover what enchants them because information flows faster and farther. Social networks are a big factor. They accelerate information so that people can gain exposure to far more enchanting things--just ask Mubarak if you don't believe me.

MK: Why did you choose to explore these ideas in a book, rather than a video, or a website, or something else? What is particularly enchanting about the book as a format?

GK: There are three reasons. First, a book captures the magic in a bottle like no other medium. A video or website cannot have the same impact. They are great at amplifying a book's impact, but they cannot replace a book. Second, I am not a filmmaker nor website designer. My tool is a word processor. It's what I do. Third, to be quite transparent, it's much harder to monetize a video or website compared to a book.

You can visit Guy online, or learn more about Enchantment on its own Facebook page.

Douglas Brinkley

2011-03-03T19:50:00.000-08:00

Last month, Douglas Brinkley came to Kepler's to discuss his new book, The Quiet World. Did you miss this event? If you did, you're in luck. Marilyn Stoddard very kindly wrote up her impressions of Mr. Brinkley's presentation. Which I will reproduce for you in a moment, after I point out that you can watch Mr. Brinkley yourself:

On CBS, talking about The Quiet World, here.

And on The Daily Show, with the one and only Jon Stewart, talking about his previous book, Wilderness Warrior:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Douglas Brinkley

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

And, now, from Marilyn Stoddard:

Douglas Brinkley has an impressive command of his material. He spoke in one continuous stream and seamlessly moved from one subject to the next. He is planning a multi-volume history of the environmental movement, of which this is the second. The first was Wilderness Warrior, his previous book which focused on Theodore Roosevelt. Brinkley said that TR was the only president we have had who was well versed in biology. He craved having animals around him and had over 200 pets. While president, he set up 51 wildlife preserves.

With Taft and Harding, there was a turn away from preservation. In the 1920s, extraction industries dominated, but the photography of Ansel Adams helped strengthen eco-tourism as an alternative to the extraction industries. Morris Udall delivered Utah for JFK and went on to be his Secretary of the Interior. Brinkley describes the second big environmental movement as beginning at this time. Nixon did not really believe in supporting environmental causes, but he promoted some positive measures. The Clean Air Act and the EPA began in his administration.

The book profiles a number of other key figures including Gary Snyder and Rachel Carson. The book begins with John Muir and his deep connection to Alaska. I was pulled in by the vivid descriptions of him leaping around glaciers in pure delight.

A Conversation with Maxine Hong Kingston

2011-02-20T12:25:00.000-08:00

Maxine Hong Kingston published her first book, The Woman Warrior, in 1976. Since then, she has published six other books, won numerous awards, and become an inspiring and beloved icon of American literature.

She began her newest book, I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, at the age of 65. It is a memoir told in the language of poetry and imagination, the reflections of a singular personality as she considers the inevitable process of growing older.

Megan Kurashige recently had the pleasure of asking Kingston a few questions about her new work.

**Maxine Hong Kingston will be visiting Kepler's on Tuesday, February 22nd, at 7:00 PM. Don't miss this chance to meet a heroine of American and Asian-American literature! For more information, follow this link.**

MK: You have written about the world and your life in so many ways. What made you decide on verse as the best vehicle for expression in this book?

MHK: The Fifth Book of Peace took 12 years. Tripmaster Monkey took 10. At the age of 65, I use poetry to hasten the pace of creation.

MK: Is storytelling, either in fiction, or in the remembering and relating of true events, an important aspect of the way you see and experience the world?

MHK: Story gives form and pleasure to the chaos that's life. By the end of the story, we have found understanding, meaning, revelation, resolution, reconciliation.

MK: In the middle of the book, you choose to revisit a character from the novel Tripmaster Monkey. Why did you decide to take Wittman Ah Sing on part of this journey?

MHK: When I was a child, I had many imaginary friends, armies of them. I brought Wittman along as an ally on my journey as an elder. Then I had to leave him, and go on alone. Each of us has to face death alone.

MK: Near the end of the book, you have a list of "your dead" who passed away during the writing process. I found this list surprisingly poignant and striking when set against the ordinary moments and conversations that you evoke so vividly. What was the process of writing this book like?

MHK: I wanted to write an elegy for each person who died. But there were so many dead. All I could do was list them, and by the end of the poem, the reader must know that each person deserves a novel.

Maxine Hong Kingston was born in California. She has received numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal, and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She was, for many years, a senior lecturer and is currently an emeritus faculty member at UC Berkeley.

Andrew Foster Altschul

2011-02-18T10:36:00.000-08:00

We recently hosted Andrew Foster Altschul, author of the new novel, Deus ex Machina. Mr. Altschul was featured on the PBS News Hour last week, discussing the "state of publishing" with Joshua Ferris, Hannah Tinti, and Jeffrey Brown. (You should definitely take a look... It's a great discussion between some very smart, very articulate, quite brilliant folks!)

If you missed his visit to Kepler's, read our very own Angela Mann's report on the event, and check out Deus ex Machina the next time you're in the store (or, if you want it RIGHT NOW, here's the link).

Angela Mann:

Tonight we hosted Andrew Foster Altshul, a Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford, who has taught in the MFA programs at the University of San Francisco, Mills College, and the University of Missouri-St Louis. He's the author of Lady Lazarus and several essays and short fiction that have appeared in many publications and anthologies including Best New American Voices, McSweeney's, Esquire, and the O Henry Prize Stories. He's a former music journalist and rock DJ and is now the Books Editor for The Rumpus and the Director of the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State.

His novel, Deus ex Machina, is about a fictional reality program where the competition gets out of hand. Very funny; it's written from both the control room and from the contestants' point of view. Andrew told us that he wanted to go behind the scenes of a reality TV show for research purposes but that's virtually impossible, whoever you know, because of confidentiality agreements. But a friend of his was asked to do a pilot reality TV show for kink.com, a porn store in the city, so that's where he did his research (really!).

Oh, and that a radio interview asked him whether he thought a reality TV show about writers was a good idea, with a book contract for the lucky winner!

Clark Kepler on KQED Radio!

2011-02-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

Today, Forum, hosted by Michael Krasny, took a look at the precarious financial situation of Borders Books, as well as the future of bookstores in general. Our own Clark Kepler joined professor Albert Greco, senior researcher at the Institute for Publishing Research, as Mr. Krasny's guests.

Listen to Forum here:

Many fascinating points about the value of bookstores, the business of providing books, and the place of independent bookstores in the community.

Are your bookstores important to you? Why do YOU make the trek to a bookstore?

Kepler's and Google eBooks

2011-02-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

Are you curious about Google eBooks™? Confused? Pondering why, exactly, a mortar and brick, independent, positively old-fashioned bookstore like Kepler's is now offering you books on electronic as well as paper pages?

(HINT: A book is a book is a book.)

Read on, friends. Sarah Langlais, the intrepid and brilliant manager of Keplers.com, would like to tell you about the pleasures of adding eBooks to your reading repertoire. She is quite on the ball about technology in general and the intersection of books and technology in particular, and, as any of you who have personally corresponded with her when buying books from the Kepler's website know (personal correspondence, yes... that's the indie bookstore difference, folks), a very smart cookie.

Sarah Langlais

Megan Kurashige: Why is Kepler’s selling e-books? And why Google eBooks™ in particular?

Sarah Langlais: Kepler's understands that eBooks are part of the future. We want to provide book-lovers with a product they can use, whether it be a physical book OR an eBook.

We're working with Google because Google is interested in providing an open format that allows all indie bookstores to compete in the eBook playing field.

MK: I love Kepler’s. How does buying a Google eBook support Kepler’s?

SL: Kepler's makes money off every eBook you buy from Keplers.com! So if you love eBooks, but want to support us, buying Google eBooks from Keplers.com is the way to go.

MK: Why would YOU buy a Google eBook?

SL: I've already bought several. They're easy to use, easy to read, and just as simple as ordering from Amazon. I'm already an eBook convert. While I will never give up physical books, eBooks are my favorite new thing when I’m traveling or commuting. They are also a wonderful way to support your local independent bookstore while still enjoying digital functionality.

MK: How do they work?

SL: Google eBooks are stored in a "cloud" bookshelf, not on your computer (although most come with a downloadable file). This means that you can access your bookshelf from anywhere in the same way that you can access your email from anywhere. You can pull your book to different devices, and sync across your devices (I often go from iPhone to computer to iPad).

MK: What’s the selection like? And how much do they cost in comparison to regular books?

SL: The selection is fantastic. You can buy everything from old, hard-to-find books to the latest bestsellers. Many prices are set by the publisher, but they are always cheaper than the physical edition. Where prices have not been set by the publisher, we have discounted titles 20 to 30% to remain competitive.

MK: What do they look like? Are they a pleasure to read?

SL: Google eBooks have great formatting options. You have a vast range of font sizes to choose from, which means you never have to worry about buying a book where the print is too small. You can also change fonts, so if you're obsessively fond of Georgia, like myself, you can read all your eBooks in that font. The level of customization available means never having to think a page is ugly.

MK: I still like regular books. Why should I fit Google eBooks into my reading life?

SL: There are always going to be pleasures to owning a physical book. I don't think any book lover will ever want to give up the joy of a particularly lovely hardcover, nor does Kepler's want them to. Where eBooks shine are in places where dragging books along is obnoxious and unwieldy: plane rides, commutes, dim areas (I admit to occasionally reading at a bar), and etc. I also find that if I am unlikely to read a book more than once, I purchase it in an e-format. This saves me from finding space on my already crowded bookshelves.

There's also the pleasure of instant gratification. Did you just read a Kepler's staff review that you loved? You can have the book on your e-reading device right away - no drive or shipping needed.

***

There you go. If you want EVEN MORE information, head on over to the Kepler's website, where there is a pretty exhaustive collection of information.

We're curious though. What do you think about e-books? Have you read any, and if you have, did you enjoy the experience? Will you be a convert, will you stick to paper, or will you join Sarah (and, in the interest of full disclosure, myself) in happily switching between the two? Please, comment away! Inquiring minds want to know.

A Conversation with Richard Panek

2011-01-23T12:22:00.000-08:00

photo: Deborah Copaken Kogen

Richard Panek's new book, The 4% Universe, offers a glimpse into a world where everything that we know and understand only makes up four-percent of the whole. He spoke with Megan Kurashige about this "ultimate Copernican revolution" and the importance of making scientific knowledge accessible to everyone.

**Richard Panek will be visiting Kepler's on Thursday, January 27th, at 7:00 PM. For more information, please follow this link.**

MK: Your new book, The 4% Universe, documents the scientific hunt for the stuff, un-seeable and possibly unknowable, that makes up the majority of our universe. Why and how did this subject capture your attention and imagination?

RP: The idea that what we've always thought of as the universe in its entirety is only 4 percent of what's actually out there is absolutely wild. When I first started hearing about this idea at astronomy conferences, I figured there must be a catch. But there isn't! We don't know what 96 percent of the universe is. The more I investigated, the more I realized that scientists were reaching this consensus, despite their best efforts to convince themselves otherwise.

The idea is so startling that I suspect most people would have an initial response similar to my own. Even the scientists who made the key discoveries had the same reaction. But over the past decade, the evidence has become overwhelming; the "dark universe" is now scientific orthodoxy. The impulse to write this book grew out of my overwhelming desire to spread the news: "You're not going to believe this-but it's true!"

MK: Can you explain the "ultimate Copernican revolution"? How does the potentially massive shift in the way we view the universe impact our ideas about ourselves?

RP: The Copernican revolution refers to the idea that the Earth is not at the center of the universe. Starting in 1609, Galileo used a primitive telescope to validate this hypothesis. Since then, we've discovered that not only is the Earth just one more planet orbiting the Sun, but the Sun is just one of 100 billion stars orbiting the center of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way is just one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. In recent years, astronomers have discovered that a mysterious substance they call dark matter makes up 23 percent of the universe, and that an even more mysterious dark energy makes up 73 percent of the universe. Which leaves only 4 percent for the familiar protons and neutrons that make up you, me, Kepler's Books, the Earth, the Sun, and all the planets and stars.

We can safely say that the implications of this discovery will be profound. Galileo's observations changed physics and philosophy in ways nobody could have anticipated. With The 4 Percent Universe, I didn't just want to reconstruct the day-to-day details leading up to pivotal discoveries, though they were a pretty thrilling ride in themselves. I wanted to put the dark universe into a broad historical and philosophical perspective. The fun is just beginning.

MK: You write about the rivalry between different scientists and scientific organizations. How does this rivalry (and the personalities that fuel it) shape our understanding of the world we live in?

RP: In the 1990s two independent teams of astronomers and physicists were racing each other to find the answer to an eternal riddle: How will the universe end? They already knew that all matter attracts all other matter through gravitation and that the universe is expanding from a Big Bang. Does the universe contain so much matter that the expansion will eventually stretch as far as it can, stop, and reverse itself, like a tossed ball returning to Earth? Does it contain so little that the expansion will never stop, but just go on and on, like a rocket leaving Earth's atmosphere? Or does it contain just enough to result in what astronomers call a "Goldilocks universe"-one that has not too much and not too little, but just the right amount to slow expansion to an eternal standstill?

What the two teams discovered was that the expansion isn't slowing down at all. Instead, it's speeding up. Some other force is overpowering the effects of gravity-as if the tossed ball is not only rising in the air but going faster and faster. They call this mystery force "dark energy." If only one team had found that result, the scientific community could have easily dismissed it. But the two teams worked independently, using different methods and different data. They actively distrusted each other and resented each other's very existence. Yet both reached the same improbable conclusion. Their peers had to take the result seriously. The rivalry that motivated the two teams, often to the point of exasperation, actually turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to them.

MK: How did you get started writing about science?

RP: I have no background in science. In fact, I never liked the subject in school. My background is in journalism and fiction. So when an editor approached me in 1996 about writing a book on the history of the telescope, I passed. I explained that the idea of devoting years and years to researching and writing a 700-page, 500-footnote book about a piece of technology sounded like death. She said, "Think of it as an essay."

I started looking into the subject and soon realized that the history of the telescope traces the history of modern science-and our understanding of the universe and our place in it. Writing about science is like going back to college (but without the student loans), only now I hope I'm mature enough to appreciate the education. Since agreeing to write that book (Seeing and Believing: How the Telescope Opened Our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens), I have written primarily, though not exclusively, about science. By combining the just-the-facts methods of journalism with the narrative momentum of fiction, I try to explain the history and philosophy of science to readers who, like myself before I began writing about science, might know little or nothing about the subject.

MK: Recently, there have been so many great books that make science accessible to the general public. Why is it important to encourage the access to and curiosity about science for people who are not necessarily serious scientists?

RP: I once asked a prominent scientist-a probable future Nobelist-this question. His answer: "It's good for democracy."

Before the Scientific Revolution, the responsibility for understanding the workings of nature resided with distant rulers and remote deities. But the scientific method allows you to see the evidence for yourself, and seeing for yourself means thinking for yourself. Each individual becomes the ultimate authority-along with each of the numerous other individuals who then repeat observations and validate discoveries. The power that comes from knowledge became the power of the masses.

But in order for the democratization of knowledge to work, you have to accept the evidence for what it is. During this past decade we've seen what happens when there's widespread confusion between theory and wishful thinking. You get things like Intelligent Design and denial of the science behind global warming. The truth isn't always pleasant. I think if you had asked most astronomers fifteen years ago whether they wanted the universe to be 96 percent unknown and possibly unknowable, they would have said, No! But they have to accept the universe on its terms, not theirs, and this human limitation has become a source of intellectual liberation.

I often think of something I once heard a theorist say: "If you could put the timeline of the history of science before me and I could choose any time and field, this is where I'd want to be." This sensibility is what accessible science books offer a non-specialist readership. Welcome the unknown, no matter what. See possibilities in the seemingly impossible. Understand our relationship to everything that is not us-a category that now encompasses 96 percent of the universe. To me, that's democracy in action.

Richard Panek is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and the author of The Invisible Century and Seeing and Believing. He has frequently written for the New York Times-where The 4-Percent Universe began as an article-as well as Discover, Smithsonian, Esquire, and Outside, among other publications. Visit him on Facebook.

A Conversation with Kim Edwards

2011-01-19T21:44:00.000-08:00

Kim Edwards grew up in the Finger Lakes district of upstate New York, where her new novel, a captivating story of a woman discovering her lost past, is set. Megan Kurashige had the pleasure of asking her some questions about The Lake of Dreams and the history and ideas that inspired it.

**Kim Edwards will be visiting Kepler's on Friday, January 21st, at 7:00 PM. For further information, please follow this link .**

MK: In The Lake of Dreams, you offer the story of a woman returning home after an absence of some years to discover that her past is filled with unexplained mystery and secrets. What made you want to explore this story and these themes?

KE: The underlying structure of this story is the hero's quest, and as such, Lucy is called home in the early chapters. I understood from the beginning that she would need to resolve and heal aspects of her past in order to move forward in her life, though I didn't initially know how deep that past would go.

MK: You manage to intertwine historical elements with a contemporary story line. What drew you to the American suffragette movement? How did it affect the telling of your story?

KE: It was geography that brought me to the suffragettes. I wanted to set this novel in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York because I had grown up there, knew the landscape well, and loved it's beauty. As I began visiting, I was intrigued by the rich history, which I'd known in a glancing way as a child, but understood differently as an adult. At first I imagined this history would play a more minor role, but as Rose's voice emerged and began to take hold, the importance of the past grew.

MK: This is your second novel. How was the experience of writing it different from your first novel?

KE: I've been writing for many years, and in all essential ways, the writing of The Lake of Dreams--the exploration and discovery of the story, as well as the crafting and shaping--was much the same, though the structures of the novels are very different, as are the narrative voices. It did take me a few months to make the transition from the very public act of touring back to the very private act of writing; I had to work harder to regain the contemplative space from which I write.

MK: Both of your novels tackle family secrets, obsessions, and the revisions we make on our own histories. What do you find compelling about the darker edges of human interaction?

KE: If there is no trouble, there is no story. I'm interested in the resilience of the human spirit, and in what my characters learn about themselves in the face of adversity.

MK: Why do stories matter?

KE: Stories don't just matter; they are essential. This is something that became vividly clear to me when I was living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in the early 1990s. The country had just become open to the West after years of war and civil war, and people carried with them stories of what they had suffered. Wherever I went people told these stories. They were grim stories, difficult to hear, but I always listened, because it was clear to me that in telling what had happened to them, what they had suffered and lost, people were giving some sort of shape and order to the unimaginable horrors they'd survived. They were literally remembering, putting the past back together. In a larger sense, this is what art always does; it seeks to explore and illuminate something of what it means to be human.

Kim Edwards was born in Killeen, Texas. She is the author of a collection of short stories called The Secrets of a Fire King, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and The Memory Keeper's Daughter, which spent 122 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. She is Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. Visit Kim on the web at her site .

A Conversation with Penelope Barcelo

2010-12-06T21:52:00.000-08:00

Penelope Barcelo is the person we turn to at Kepler's when we need a recommendation for a new cookbook, or a good restaurant, or a truly luscious and dependable recipe. If we are particularly lucky, we will be there on a day when she brings in a pan of heavenly lemon bars, delicate and perfect macaroons, or an absolutely stunning, elegantly iced chocolate cake.

She has attended culinary school, worked in professional kitchens, and occasionally contributes to a food and cooking blog. She is also a passionate believer in children's literature and an all-around warm and wonderful person. I am delighted to share this brief interview with Penelope. Enjoy her recommendations and be sure to try her delicious recipe. And the next time you're in the store, feel free to say hello!

Q. What are three essential cookbooks that everyone should have on their shelf?

A. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything is absolutely amazing - everyone should have a Bittman book in their library. He is not only a great cook, but also an incredible teacher who knows how to talk and inspire the home cook.

When Alice Waters released The Art of Simple Food, she definitely changed the game and really got people thinking about and supporting their local food movement. I always open my copy up when I'm in a bind.

Although I haven't been a member of this club for a while, local food hero Heidi Swanson opened a super natural world with Super Natural Cooking. She is the lovely woman behind the blog "101 Cookbooks," a vegetarian friendly journal that aims to get everyone excited about whole foods. It is not only exciting but delicious - I often turn to this one.

Q. Are there any new cookbooks that stand out to you? Why?

A. Chad Robertson has unleashed the fervent baker in me with Tartine Bread. I have been talking non-stop about this book since it hit the shelves. What Alice Waters did with locally sourced ingredients I believe Robertson has already done with bread. Every good meal begins with a truly magnificent loaf of bread that anyone can learn to make.

Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan is tops, and I am going to go right ahead and say that Ms. Greenspan is THE modern day Julia Child. Like Julia she has made French comfort cooking effortless. It will be getting a lot of use this holiday season.

David Tanis blew me away with his Platter of Figs, but most recently with his newly released Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys. I loved reading each memory associated with a particular recipe and he most reflects how I cook. I read this one cover to cover; it's beautifully written.

NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine is stunning. Chef Rene Redzepi is sure to inspire a whole generation of new chefs and cooks. Although this particular book isn't exactly kitchen friendly due to the use of ingredients local to Nordic countries, I cannot stop flipping through this book. If anything, it will make you want to get out and forage for your own NOMA.

Q. You take such great pleasure in the beauty of food and the culture of its creation, as well as the cooking of it... Do you have any recommendations for books about food?

A. MFK Fisher's How To Cook a Wolf is the Bird by Bird of food and culinary essay. My mother gave me her copy very early and it has never left me. Ms. Fisher wrote about food in a time when ingredients were scarce. She was the first creative and improvisational cook.

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant by Jenni Ferrari-Adleris a collection of short stories, a delicious mishmash of some great food writers. It is not only a tribute to food but the act of preparing and savoring it alone. It is hilarious and comforting at the same time. If you find yourself staring into the contents of a bleak pantry and a bare fridge (maybe some herbs and block of cheese), then this one is for you!

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee is indispensable and always at hand in my kitchen. I have read this cover to cover a number of times and it was my tool box in a book in culinary school.

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen by Molly Wizenberg. I have been following her now legendary blog, Orangette, since it's conception and firmly believe that she is my other, at least when it comes to matters in the kitchen. Stories filled with heart, prose, and recipes to savor and linger over.

Q. Can you share a favorite cooking memory?

A. I have too many. One that I look back on involves a very simple sandwich and a hitchhiking attempt gone right. My family and I were just outside of Barcelona visiting relatives when my older brother and I decided to go into the city for the day. We hadn't secured a ride home, so we decided to hitchhike. A lovely man named Javi ended up taking pity on us. We climbed into the back of his van and to our utter amazement we found every type of Jamón (Spanish dry-cured ham) hanging from the ceiling. A bit eerie and unsettling to the lost tourist, but to us a most delicious happenstance. About midway through our trip he pulled over and opened the back to retrieve a very long, very thin paring knife. He slid the knife across the jamón as if it had been a pat of butter, each slice falling atop a small loaf of bread that we later learned his wife had baked. He generously buttered both sides of the bread and handed each of us a sandwich. I am sure my brother shed a tear or two. It was not only one of the most delicious and simplest of things but an incredible act of kindness. We have never forgotten Javi and his Jamón sandwich.

Q. Can you share a favorite recipe?

A. There was a small rotisserie called Mistral in the Ferry Building. It was a place where happiness took shape in the form of French comfort food. My family and I would often make the trip up to San Francisco every Sunday to have a lazy lunch by the water, but one day, to our horror, the windows were papered up. My mother gave a fairly good pout, and we're still not over the closing, but the meals we shared there live on. This recipe is inspired by one of the many side dishes we would feast on - accompanied by an Acme baguette.

Patate Douce aux Provencal (Roasted Sweet Potatoes aux Provencal)

1 medium or 3 small sweet potatoes (I had the small on hand and was able to slice them into about 1/2 inch circles, but if you have a bigger one, slice the sweet potato in half from top to bottom and do a half moons instead - keeping the width to 1/2 inch)

Extra virgin olive oil for coating

Salt and pepper to taste

1-2 teaspoons of raw sugar (or whatever type you have on hand)

1-2 teaspoons of herbs de Provence

Note: herbs de Provence is a staple in the south of France, usually a blend of rosemary, marjoram, basil, bay leaf, thyme and lavender. A little goes a very long way.
Note: Even though sweet potatoes are naturally sweet, the sugar helps bring their flavor out just a little more.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

On a large baking sheet or large ovenware dish, toss the sweet potatoes in olive oil, making sure they're well coated. Spread the potatoes, making sure they are flat and facing up - they will cook more evenly. Season with salt, pepper, sugar and herbs.

Bake the potatoes for about 20 minutes--the edges should shrivel and caramelize a bit. Take your baking sheet out and flip each round, seasoning again on the other side, and place back in the oven for another 20 minutes.

Let them cool slightly. I actually enjoy these at room temperature; they're fabulous.

After working at a string of restaurants abroad, Penelope found Kepler's and discovered that she preferred cooking for a community of booksellers. When not in between the shelves, she can be found in the kitchen, enjoying a memorable meal among the company of good friends, and being a gypsy at heart, traveling when she can.

A Conversation with Harold McGee

2010-10-28T22:51:00.000-07:00

Harold McGee is one of our foremost experts on the science of food and cooking. As the author of the classic On Food and Cooking and a wonderfully lucid, extremely entertaining, monthly column in the New York Times called "The Curious Cook," McGee has introduced many readers to the joys, both practical and entertaining, of understanding the science behind what we eat and how we cook.

McGee's new book, Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best Food and Recipes, distills his knowledge and investigations into a practical guide that will help the home cook navigate the kitchen with new confidence and understanding.

Watch McGee demonstrate some of his wonderful kitchen tips in some great videos here.

**Harold McGee will be coming to Kepler's on Friday, October 29th, at 7:00 PM.**

Megan Kurashige was delighted to ask Harold McGee the following questions about his new book.

Q. Your new book, Keys to Good Cooking, is a concise and clear guide to the scientific understanding of food and cooking. How can it be an ally to the home cook?

A. I wrote KEYS to be exactly that, an ally to the home cook who has plenty of cookbooks and recipes, but no single reliable source to check for basic facts and advice about cooking. KEYS is a kitchen and cookbook companion. It's a compendium of facts and advice that cookbooks often don't provide, or get wrong. It will help a cook understand how cooking methods work, evaluate recipes and recognize likely problems, and make adjustments during the cooking process. It will help cooks cook better.

Q. You have been an acknowledged expert and respected authority on the science of cooking for some time. How has the general public's attitude toward the intersections of science and food changed over the years?

A. When I started writing about the science of cooking in the late 1970s, most people thought of it as an odd and amusing angle, great material for Trivial Pursuits, but not that useful. Now, thanks to a generation of celebrity restaurant chefs who have used kitchen science as a tool to invent new dishes, it has become fashionable to give "molecular" explanations for everything. People are much more interested these days in food generally, but also in understanding where it comes from and what makes it good.

Q. What has been your own favorite kitchen discovery?

A. The fact that I can delay the spoilage of the strawberries and raspberries and blueberries that I buy too many of at the farmers' markets, simply by dunking them in hot water for a minute.

Q. How can understanding the science that underpins everyday activities like cooking and eating increase our pleasure and appreciation of them?

A. We get more pleasure out of cooking when we're successful at it! And understanding certainly helps us cook better. It also gives us that much more to notice and marvel at and savor as we eat--for example, that the deep flavor and color of caramel starts from just one pure substance, table sugar, which the simple act of heating transforms into hundreds of different substances, brown and sweet and sour and bitter and savory and aromatic. Talk about alchemy!

Q. What is one thing that you've learned recently about science or food (or both!) that absolutely delights you?

A. That you can boost the flavors of some drinks simply by adding water--by diluting them, which you would think would do the opposite. Coffee, high-alcohol wines, cocktails can all benefit from some water. It has to do with the chemistry of aromas and the way we perceive them.

Harold McGee writes about the science of food and cooking. A graduate of the California Institute of Technology and Yale University, McGee is the author of both On Food and Cooking and Keys to Good Cooking. He writes a monthly column for the New York Times called "The Curious Cook," which you can read here. You can also visit Harold McGee at his website.

A Conversation with Michael Krasny

2010-10-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

Michael Krasny's voice is a familiar companion to anyone who listens to NPR in the Bay Area. As the host of KQED's incredibly popular program, "Forum," he has led conversations with some of the world's most interesting and influential people.

In his new book, Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic's Quest, Krasny shares a personal investigation of some of humanity's biggest and most enduring questions. “I was,” he says, “a doubter, an agnostic, and like perhaps hundreds of thousands of others, a seeker.”

**Michael Krasny will be appearing at Kepler's on Wednesday, October 13th, at 7:00 PM**

Recently, Megan Kurashige had the pleasure of interviewing Krasny about his new book.

Q. Your new book follows your personal search for answers to and understanding of some of the biggest questions we can ask ourselves. What inspired you to record this search in writing and to share it with a broader audience?

A. I wanted to write in order to see what I believe and to do so with the intent of finding the illumination that writing can provide. I also knew that the quest for enlightenment on "the big questions" and many of the ideas that had taken root in me since boyhood were worth communicating to a broader audience.

Q. You talk about your childhood and youth in the new book. How did it feel to revisit your past through its lens?

A. There are many challenges in revisiting the past including, perhaps most prominently, the need to rediscover its authenticity and deal with the emotions that emerge.

Q. You’ve interviewed so many fascinating and brilliant figures who are experts in a wide variety of fields. How has this experience affected your views on religion and the world?

A. It has been a fascinating and humbling journey for me to have had the good fortune of interviewing some of the most extraordinary men and women of our time. It has shaped my thinking on most every subject, and it has certainly contributed in no small way to my views on religion and the world, not only by allowing for a true distillation of knowledge, but enabling me to navigate through the often uncharted oceans of contradictory and warring ideas. Much of what I have done in talking to learned and remarkable guests on air has centered around questioning, and many of the questions and the responses they elicited propelled me into the writing of Spiritual Envy.

Q. With so much polarization happening in the world today, what is the role of the agnostic?

A. I can only speak here for myself. I think the role of the agnostic is to caution against absolutes and to make others understand that there is a wide continuum of belief and disbelief that should enjoin tolerance. Also, agnosticism, for me, provides a different path between the dogmatic certainty of much faith-based belief and the dogmatic certainty of much of the newer militant atheism.

Q. If you could ask anyone to be a guest on Forum for a discussion of faith, who would they be? What is one question you would ask them?

A. Stephen Hawking has joined the new atheists with his recent published book which posits that gravity allowed for the creation of the big bang -- indicating that we do not have to look for the what led to the big bang. I would want to ask him how that led him to reject a creator or prime mover, and how gravity could have simply come into existence.

Michael Krasny is the host of KQED's "Forum," a professor of English at San Francisco State University, and the author of both Spiritual Envy and Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life.

Banned Book Month Kicking off Early?

2010-09-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

We here at Kepler's have always been proud to carry books that some close-minded folks try to ban. We were shocked and disheartened to hear that a man named Wesley Scroggins, an associate professor of management at Missouri State University, is trying to ban a fantastic YA book by Laurie Halse Anderson called Speak (she is speaking at Kepler's November 10th!). I rarely recommend YA selections since my picks are typically from when I was young, and are likely a bit dated, however, our entire store concurs that this book is amazing, and SHOULD be read by young and old alike.

Our fabulous Youth Events Coordinator Angela posted the following on the Teen Blog (which you should read regularly because is it awesome):

Welsey Scroggins characterized SPEAK as filthy and immoral. Then he called it “soft pornography” because of two rape scenes.

I simply find it hard to believe that any educator (or anyone at all for that matter) could possibly claim that rape is synonymous with pornography. Makes me shudder just to think about it.

We're talking about Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, a book I think all teenagers should read, a book that has inspired so many, and helped so many more. It's a book that helps students, teachers, and parents discuss a topic like rape and not ignore it - because ignoring it simply will not make it go away. It teaches people to speak out.

Can Mr Scroggins really have read Speak? So many speak out against books they only hear about. Almost worse if he has read it because there is no way you can find those scenes in Speak arousing. But once again someone is putting a fine writer on the defensive (just like Ellen Hopkins last month when she was uninvited to speak to teens).

In this run up to banned book week, we are again reminded why we have to fight censorship and stand up for our intellectual freedoms. So if you haven't already read Speak, do so. It is a wonderful book that should be read by all.

And if you want to read more about this, click here to read Laurie's own account.

Kepler's Coupons Galore!

2010-09-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

Popular blog The Week for Dinner is having a special Kepler's promotion!

First, read the featureon us here and then leave a comment here to win great prizes from us AND Cafe Borrone!

Review of the Week: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

2010-09-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Reviewed by Penelope B.

On a brief trip to Europe, Elisabeth falls ill with a mysterious bacterial pathogen that results in severe neurological symptoms. She spends most days bedridden, observing her new companion, a wild snail brought in from the woods by a good friend. At first she wonders why she would enjoy a snail. She describes her experience beautifully in a letter to her doctor: "I would never have guessed what would get me through this past year - a woodland snail and its offspring; I honestly don't think I would have made it otherwise... watching another creature go about its life... somehow gave me, the watcher, purpose too."

You will never look at a snail the same way again. This is a short read on how the natural world illuminates our own human existence. It offers an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.

William Gibson at Kepler's this Friday

2010-09-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

A Conversation with William Gibson

William Gibson will be coming to Kepler's on Friday, September 10th, at 7:00 PM.

William Gibson has been called "one of the most visionary, original, and quietly influential writers currently working." (The Boston Globe)

This fall he returns with his first new novel since Spook Country. Gibson's work is thrilling and perceptive, anchored by fascinating characters and versions of our world created with such fine and prescient detail that they will change the way you imagine the future. With shadowy corporations, arms deals, mysterious allies, and equally mysterious enemies, all combined in an intricate and provocative story, Zero History promises to be another stunning adventure taken in Gibson's company.

Q. Zero History shares some elements with your two previous novels. Can you describe the new book and how it connects to your earlier work?

A. I'm sure no one believes me, but I don't plan these things as sets of three, and certainly not as "trilogies." They emerge laterally, out of one another, in some way that I actively avoid trying to understand. Zero History seems to be more of a literal sequel to Pattern Recognition and Spook Country than All Tomorrow's Parties was to the two previous books, and again I don't know why. If Pattern Recognition was about the world after 9-11, and Spook Country about the deep end of the war in Iraq, Zero History is about the world after global financial meltdown. Though really it's about "business as usual" after all three of those things, and about how not usual that really is.

Q. What do you strive for when you're working on a new book? What would be the ideal reaction that you could evoke from your audience?

A. Like the fiddle-maker who said that he started with a block of wood and removed everything that wasn't the fiddle, I try to remove everything that isn't that particular book. Though to start with, I have to generate my block of wood. Which is an ugly process, best done in private. There are optimal readers for each writer, and I write for my imagined optimal readers. I write for someone who's going to get it. Perhaps for someone who gets it more thoroughly than I do myself. Which does happen, because sometimes I meet them.

Q. How does science fiction (or fiction in general) enable us to explore the world and time that we live in?

A. Given the nature of the world today, any attempt at literary naturalism, in a present-day scenario, involves a constantly emergent body of what previously were science fiction scenarios (global warming, the Internet, new media, new medical technology...). The tool-kit of science fiction allows for the disassembly and examination of this often bewildering present.

Q. Your work is loaded with intense and vivid images of our world, in both familiar and unfamiliar incarnations. What inspires you to create such solidly imagined vessels for your stories?

A. I've always loved fiction that's been thoroughly and creatively visualized, which is not the same as creating concept or plot. Fiction that doesn't do that usually doesn't engage me. Not that I need it laden with description. It can be quite spare; but the work has to have been done, the visual ground gone over. As a writer, I can't believe in fiction that I'm writing unless I can visualize it to a greater degree than I would necessarily want to share with the reader.

Q. How can stories change the world?

A. I think that "the world" consists, in some rather literal if mysterious way, of stories. New stories, new world.

William Gibson lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with his wife. He is the author of nine previous novels, including the critically acclaimed and bestselling Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition. Visit him online at williamgibsonbooks.com.

Spoil yourself.

2010-09-06T18:03:00.001-07:00

I was sent this and couldn't help but share. These two summarize and spoil 50 books in under four minutes!

Bestsellers into Movies

2010-09-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

2 bestselling books are about to be released in cinematic form: Freakanomics and The Social Network. Come in and grab copies of the books so you can read them before the movies come out.

Saturdy Surprise

2010-09-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

Local, bestselling author of Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese popped into Kepler's today and signed ALL the copies of his books in the store.

Currently, the critically acclaimed Cutting for Stone is #4 on New York Times Bestseller list, so it is 20% off! In her review, Buyer Aggie says: "This book will stay on my night table for a long, long time – I cannot wait to start re-reading it."

New Indie Reader is Out!

2010-09-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

Our Fall Indie Reader has arrived!

In addition to the wonderful Event Calendar (check out JIMMY CARTER, AMY SEDARIS, AND SALMAN RUSHDIE!!!), the newsletter is chock full of awesome reviews.

Pick one up to read my review of Gary Shteyngart's latest, A Super Sad True Love Story.

Buyer and published writer Aggie reviewed Monqie Truong's Bitter in the Mouth:
Are you hungry for a good book? How about a book that is a gourmet banquet for even the most ravenous reader? Something extraordinary happened as I was reading Monique Truong's exquisite second novel. The mesmerizing voice of the book’s young protagonist, Linda Hammerick, became a rare and succulent verbal delicacy. Linda has a secret, a neurological condition that causes an involuntary mixing of the senses, and this unusual gift enables her not only to hear words, but also taste them. The name of the boy she has a crush on tastes like orange sherbet (Wadeorangesherbet). Her beloved great-uncle has a name that tastes like celery. Back in the seventies, Linda and her best friend Kelly wrote letters to each other every day, and those pages are a nourishing soul food made from girlhood, friendship, and intimacy. They also foreshadow a secret correspondence between Linda's father and a young Vietnamese woman, a revelation that makes Linda realize that she harbors yet another secret, a secret concealed in those long-ago letters, the secret of why the bitter taste was her first memory. Truong's writing is a sensuous literary feast; it makes one want to read it aloud, to devour each word, to hear it and taste it, just like Linda, who longs for a certain word "like it was a spoonful of peach cobbler."

Nancy, who has been referred to as a 'bestseller clairvoyant,' reviewed Room by Emma Donoghue:

Room is the place where five year old Jack was born and the only home he has ever known. His ma has been imprisoned there for seven years by Old Nick, who kidnapped her when she was a college student. Ma has devised play routines and exercises for Jack, and taught him much about the outside world through the use of a television. She realizes they must escape if Jack is ever to have a normal life, and that she must depend on his bravery to make that escape possible. What she doesn’t foresee is the incredible adjustment he will have to make to become part of the real world.

This is a dark and powerful love story that celebrates the strength of the human spirit, the love of a mother and a child, and the will to go on against all odds. I highly recommend it.

Grab a copy to read Megan's review of Bill Bryson's upcoming release At Home: A Short History of Private Life or Marilyn's thoughts on Ian Frazier's Travels in Siberia.

In addition to the many literary delights, the Indie also features many of our unique gifts, such as Judi Eichler's beautiful, seasonal, and HANDMADE leaf necklaces:
We are also carrying hand-painted, handcrafted (by the multi-talented Megan and her sister, Shannon!) Reluctant Dragon (there are also versions featuring beautiful fairies and other mythical creatures!) tote-bags that are great for everyday use, picking up some groceries, or school books!

Interview with Brad Herzog-Appearing at Kepler's TONIGHT!

2010-08-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

Author Brad Herzog will be speaking at Kepler's tonight about his latest book, Turn Left at the Trojan Horse: A Would-Be Hero's American Odyssey

"Herzog's third travel memoir follows the highways cross-country examining the idea of the hero along the way. He captures stunning details of the American landscape. The hero's return, is irresistible...a near-perfect ending." --Kirkus Reviews

Turn Left at the Trojan Horse has been described as On the Road meets Eat, Pray, Love because it goes well beyond a road trip. More than just a funny and profound narrative of Brad Herzog's cross-country trek toward a college reunion in Ithaca (New York) and more than another reimagining of Odysseus's ancient journey (he visits places like Troy, OR... Iliad, MT... Apollo, PA...), it is a memoir exploring the parameters of a heroic existence - by chronicling the lives of people in America's oft-ignored spaces, by examining the universal truths embedded in ancient myths, and by undertaking a fair bit of self-evaluation. It is the memoir of an Everyman searching for the hero within.

Brad Herzog has been described as a "modern-day Steinbeck" and a "Picasso of the Winnebago," and Lonely Planet has ranked his travel memoirs among eight classics of the genre, along with books like Travels with Charley and On the Road. As an award-winning freelance writer, he has chronicled some of the nation's most unusual and intriguing subcultures, from nudists to North Pole explorers and from Pez collectors to pro mini golfers. Please visit him at bradherzog.com

The always lovely Megan interviewed Brad:

INTERVIEW:
1. Turn Left at the Trojan Horse tells the story of your own, very personal, cross-country road trip and connects it to the story of Odysseus’s journey from Troy to Ithaca. What inspired you to shape this trip (and this book) in that way?

I was invited to my college reunion at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. When you’re asked to revisit where you’ve been, you tend to assess where you are. So, as I envisioned encountering my ultra-successful classmates, I wondered just how heroic my life had been to date. What are the parameters of a heroic life? I find that a road trip is the best way to clear the existential cobwebs, so – since Ithaca was my destination – I decided one way to answer the question was to approximate the homeward journey of Odysseus, who was the template for all future heroes. Also, my wife thought I needed to get away for a while.

I wanted my journey to have lots of layers. Certainly, geography and biography and personal history. But also an exploration of philosophy and mythology – the lessons to be learned from myths that have lasted thousands of years, myths that were a reflection of society’s fears and fantasies and foibles. It’s a road trip that journeys back in time in an attempt to face the future.

2. You talk about what it means to live a good life. How did your travels – meeting new people, experiencing new places – change your ideas about what makes a satisfying life?

As always seems to happen when I embark on an epic journey, my perspective of what constitutes a life well-lived was injected with a healthy dose of enlightenment. I found myself defining a "heroic life" more and more broadly. I learned that there are all kinds of heroism. It can mean courage, like the sheriff in Siren (Wisconsin) who risked his own life to warn his neighbors about a tornado. It can mean sacrifice, like the soldier I encountered at an army base in Sparta (Wisconsin) who spends his days diffusing bombs in Iraq. It can mean dedication, like the teacher I found in a one-room schoolhouse in tiny Troy (Montana). It can mean resilience, like the elderly man in Pandora (Ohio) who has spent the past six decades dutifully recording the local daily weather to the National Weather Service. In the end, I found that the hero is in the eye of the beholder. And seeing my wife and kids again clarified that for me.

3. If you could urge readers to visit one of the places you stopped at on your trip, what would it be?

The awe-inspiring beauty of northeastern Oregon -- the Hell's Canyon area, near the hiccup of Troy -- is hard to top. Then again, the Wild and Scenic Missouri River that passes by Iliad, Montana, is pretty spectacular. Snow-topped Mount Rainier in Washington is utterly majestic. The Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania are gorgeous. The pine-rimmed lakes near Minnesota's Lake Itasca are like picture postcards. Honestly, I can't pick one.

4. Why should we travel? Do stories and history influence the way we see a place, and the way we see ourselves?

I think we travel to add to our capacity for wonder, but also to gain a greater understanding of our world. My travel memoirs are an attempt to examine big-picture questions by chronicling stories and history in some of the nation's tiniest hamlets. I have long believed that America’s attempts at self-description have produced inadequate metaphors. The United States is not really a melting pot, which implies the evaporation of various flavors, ignoring our pride of heritage. Nor is it a patchwork quilt, which suggests a collection of clashing sections and fails to take into account the uniqueness of each thread. We are fifty states, yes, but these are largely the result of geographical happenstance and political compromise.

I contend that the nation’s character is most evident in its overlooked parts, the places ignored by folks in a hurry to get to elsewhere. Big cities may be the nerve centers of a nation, but its heart can be found in the communities small enough to be inseparable from the folks who live there. I think America may be best described as a dot painting, a masterpiece of pointillism defined by its towns and villages and crossroads – the tiniest dots on the map. To truly understand America, you have to connect the dots.

5. How can stories (both real and fictional) change the world?

I'll defer to Walt Whitman. He once claimed that heroic people cannot exist without heroic literature to provide a blueprint for an era-appropriate moral conscience. He wrote that great literature “penetrates all, gives hue to all, shapes aggregates and individuals.” Great literature can, indeed, change the world -- be it Homer or Shakespeare or Steinbeck or Sinclair. And once in a while, the rest of us hacks can make a smidgen of difference, too.

San Francisco Book Review on our Mockingjay Release!

2010-08-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

Last week we hosted a release party for the final installment of The Hunger Games series-Mockingjay.

Read about the awesome event on our Teen Blog AND in the SF Book Review!