Events

Tuesday, February 9, 7:30 p.m.

The Career Within You: How To Find the Perfect Job for Your Personality  BUY NOW

What a tragedy it is to posses such natural gifts and to hide them from ourselves and the world. Wagele and Stabb are great detectives who will help you understand your perfect habitat for all you can bring to the workplace. (Chip Conley, Founder & CEO, Joie de Vivre Hospitality, author of PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow )

This book will free you to become the person you know you really want to be. It is of immense help in understanding yourself and your colleagues. It will empower you to take those steps that will result in new and even joyful professional satisfaction. (Gil Garcetti, former Los Angeles County District Attorney, Consulting Producer of "The Closer," author and photographer )

"The Career Within You will help you recognize who you are in the working world, the kind of job you'll thrive at and how to find it." (Jonathan Feinstein, John G. Searle Professor of Economics and Management, Yale School of Management)

Elizabeth Wagele is a professional writer, cartoonist, and leading expert on the Enneagram. A graduate of UC Berkeley, she blogs regularly about personalities and other subjects.

Ingrid Stabb, a Yale MBA, chairs the career development committee of the Yale School of Management Alumni Association. A graduate of Columbia University, she is currently a social media marketer for Lithium Technologies.

Co-sponsored by the Yale Club of Silicon Valley

Los Altos Community Read

Tuesday, February 9, 7:30 p.m.

Not a Genuine Black Man  BUY NOW

Los Altos High School - Eagle Theatre, 201 Almond Ave., Los Altos

This year’s featured speaker is Brian Copeland, social-commentator, comedian, author, and radio host.  Known to be alternately profound, sad and funny, he tells his first-hand account of growing up in San Leandro in the early 1970’s and the racial discrimination he faced.  He also turned his touching tales into a long-running one man show in San Francisco.

This event is free and open to the public.

in Conversation with Susan Karl, head of the Annabelle Candy Company in Hayward

Thursday, February 11, 7:30 p.m.

True Confections  BUY NOW

True Confections, the irresistible new novel by Katharine Weber, is about a family-run candy factory that's trying to stay alive after 85 "sweet" years. Katharine's work has won accolades from Iris Murdoch, Madeleine L’Engle, Wally Lamb, and Kate Atkinson, to name a few. 

Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky’s marriage into the Ziplinsky family has not been unanimously celebrated. Her greatest ambition is to belong, to feel truly entitled to the heritage she has tried so hard to earn. Which is why Zip’s Candies is much more to her than just a candy factory, where she has worked for most of her life.

“Delicious, stuffed with humor and brimming with greed and goodness. Weber adroitly evokes a real candy factory, with all its aromas and intrigue, providing the perfect setting for the Ziplinskys to chase their dreams. True Confections is good enough to eat! Better yet, savor one of the best novels of the year!”
—Susan Karl, president and CEO, Annabelle Candy Company.

KATHARINE WEBER is the author of the novels Triangle, The Little Women, The Music Lesson, and Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, the cultural historian Nicholas Fox Weber, and is a thesis adviser in the graduate writing program at Columbia University.

Photo Credit: Marion Ettlinger 

 
Friday, February 12, 5:30 p.m.

Captivate  BUY NOW

Hearts at Stake BUY NOW

The author of Need discusses her new sequel, Captivate.  The new pixie king is convinced that Zara is destined to be his, and Zara wants to trust him.  But there’s a lot more than her relationship with Nick at stake.  It’s her life—and his.

Meet the author of Hearts at Stake in which 16 year-old Solange, the only daughter born to an ancient vampire dynasty, has to outwit her seven overprotective older brothers and the agent of an anti-vampire league intent on staking her and her entire family.

Friday, February 12, 7:00 p.m.

The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: 11th Grade Burns  BUY NOW

Calling Heather’s Minions!

Are you eagerly awaiting the newest installment in the Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, 11th Grade Burns? We are and are simply delighted to let you know that Heather Brewer will be in here, in person, to tell us more about this penultimate chapter in her thrilling vampire series. Don’t miss this opportunity to meet the creator of one of our favorite literary vampires.

Here’s what we know: Things have taken a darker turn for the half-human teenager with an appetite for blood.  Joss, a vampire slayer and Vlad’s former friend, has moved back to Bathory.  A mysterious and powerful new vampire, Dorian, appears with a shocking secret and an overwhelming desire to drink Vlad’s blood.  And Vlad’s arch enemy, D’Ablo, has a sinister plan to eliminate Vlad once and for all.  With death threatening from every angle, Vlad will have to use every ounce of his skill and training to survive, but nothing can prepare him for what awaits him in the end.

We can’t wait.

Heather Brewer likes to dance under the full moon, devour every book in sight, and attend renaissance faire in costume (and in character). And she doesn't believe in happy endings...unless they involve blood. 

Sunday, February 14, 11:30 a.m.

Guess How Much I Love You  BUY NOW

Henry in Love  BUY NOW

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue

Bring your Little Love Bugs down

To Story Time Won't You?

Join us for two LOVEly stories, cupcakes

and crafts! 

Tuesday, February 16, 5:00 p.m.

Eco-nomical Tips to Green-Up Your Bathroom

Susan & Bob Davis, co-owners of Spectrum Fine Homes, Inc., will share some simple, cost-effective ways to update your bathrooms to be water and energy efficient. They will also share some great information for those wanting to remodel or build a new bathroom. Making the right choices for this little room can have a BIG effect on your health, the long-term maintenance of your home, and on the environment! 

The Green Dream Team is a group of experts dedicated to providing you with the most comprehensive selection of services to improve, remodel, build, furnish, and landscape your home - always in an eco-friendly and sustainable way.

Wednesday, February 17, 7:30 p.m.

Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche  BUY NOW

It is well known that American culture is a dominant force at home and abroad; our exportation of everything from movies to junk food is a well-documented phenomenon. But is it possible America's most troubling impact on the globalizing world has yet to be accounted for? In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters reveals that the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: We are in the process of homogenizing the way the world goes mad.

But this book is not just about the damage we've caused in faraway places. Looking at our impact on the psyches of people in other cultures is a gut check, a way of forcing ourselves to take a fresh look at our own beliefs about mental health and healing. When we examine our assumptions from a farther shore, we begin to understand how our own culture constantly shapes and sometimes creates the mental illnesses of our time. By setting aside our role as the world's therapist, we may come to accept that we have as much to learn from other cultures' beliefs about the mind as we have to teach.

Ethan Watters is a free lance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Discover, Men's Journal, Spin, Details, and Wired. A frequent contributor to NPR, Watters' work appeared in the 2007 and 2008 Best American Science and Nature Writing. He co-founded the San Francisco Writers Grotto, a work space for local artists. 

Thursday, February 18, 7:30 p.m.

Things We Didn't See Coming  BUY NOW

Michael Williams, in Melbourne’s The Age, wrote of this award-winning, dazzling debut collection, “By turns horrific and beautiful . . . Humanity at its most fractured and desolate . . . Often moving, frequently surprising, even blackly funny . . . Things We Didn’t See Coming is terrific.” This is just one of the many rave reviews that appeared on the Australian publication of these nine connected stories set in a not-too-distant dystopian future in a landscape at once utterly fantastic and disturbingly familiar.
 
Richly imagined, dark, and darkly comic, the stories follow the narrator over three decades as he tries to survive in a world that is becoming increasingly savage as cataclysmic events unfold one after another.  In each story we see that, despite the violence and brutality of his days, the narrator retains a hold on his essential humanity—and humor.

Steven Amsterdam is a native New Yorker who moved to Melbourne, Australia, in 2003.  He currently works as a psychiatric nurse.
 

Photo Credit: Corry De Neef 

Saturday, February 20, 2:00 p.m.

City of Dragons: A San Francisco Mystery  BUY NOW

February, 1940. In San Francisco's Chinatown, fireworks explode as the city celebrates Chinese New Year with a Rice Bowl Party, a three day-and-night carnival designed to raise money and support for China war relief. Miranda Corbie is a 33-year-old private investigator who stumbles upon the fatally shot body of Eddie Takahashi. The Chamber of Commerce wants it covered up. The cops acquiesce. All Miranda wants is justice--whatever it costs. From Chinatown tenements, to a tattered tailor's shop in Little Osaka, to a high-class bordello draped in Southern Gothic, she shakes down the city--her city--seeking the truth. An outstanding series debut.

"One of my favorite novels of all time. Watch out, Sam Spade, Miranda Corbie is a woman hardboiled and feminine enough to keep you in line!"
- Rebecca Cantrell, author of A Trace of Smoke

"Beautifully imagined and beautifully written--this book does everything great fiction is supposed to."
- Lee Child

"A stunning recreation of time and place that I greatly enjoyed...as will everyone who reads it."
- Robert B. Parker

Kelli Stanley is the author of the criticallly acclaimed Nox Dormienda, which won the Bruce Alexander Award for best historical mystery and was nominated for a Macavity Award. She lives in San Francisco. 

Sunday, February 21, 11:30 a.m. 

That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown  BUY NOW

Iggy Peck, Architect  BUY NOW 

Sunday, February 21, 3:00 p.m.

Cutting for Stone  BUY NOW

India Community Center, 525 Las Cochas St., Milpitas

iPods, iPhones But No iPatients Please! - The Art of Medicine in a Technological Age

Award-winning author, practicing physician and tenured Stanford professor Dr. Abraham Verghese will talk about his novel Cutting for Stone, an epic love story, medical story and family saga.

His first book, My Own Country, movingly chronicled his experience of treating AIDS patients in rural America in the early 1980s. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1994, and was later made into a film by acclaimed director Mira Nair.  His second book, The Tennis Partner, was a New York Times Notable Book and a national bestseller. 

Dr. Verghese began his medical career at the onset of the AIDS epidemic. He views medicine as a passionate and romantic pursuit, seeing the bedside ritual of examining the patient as a critical, cost-saving, time-honored, and necessary - but greatly threatened - skill that cements the patient-physician relationship. Earlier last summer, Verghese wrote a much-heralded op-ed on the practice of medicine. He will speak and answer questions.

Register by email to Vishnu@indiacc.org

Admission Free; Suggested donation $10 to defray expenses.

Monday, February 22, 7:00 p.m.

A Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer

Daniel Emerson lives with Kate Ellis and is like a father to her daughter, Ruby. But he cannot control his desire for Iris Davenport, the African-American woman whose son is Ruby's best friend. During a freak October blizzard, Daniel is stranded at Iris's house and they begin a sexual liaison that eventually imperils all their relationships, Daniel's profession, their children's well-being, their own race- blindness, and their view of themselves as essentially good people.

"A Ship Made of Paper" captures all the drama, nuance, and helpless intensity of sexual and romantic yearning, and it bears witness to the age-old conflict between the order of the human community and the disorder of desire.

Tuesday, February 23, 5:30 p.m.

Warriors: Power of Three #1: The Sight by Erin Hunter

The time has come for three kits of ThunderClan—Hollypaw, Jaypaw, and Lionpaw—to become apprentices. Grandchildren of the great leader Firestar, all three possess unusual power and talent. But dark secrets surround them, and a mysterious prophecy hints at trouble to come. The warrior code is in danger of being washed away by a river of blood, and all the young cats' strength will be needed if the Clans are to survive.

Please bring $2.00 for pizza and drinks. Do let us know if you plan to come, or if you have a question. Contact Megan at megan@keplers.com

Tuesday, February 23, 7:30 p.m.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey: A Novel  BUY NOW

Zachary Mason’s brilliant and beguiling debut novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, reimagines Homer’s classic story of the hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer’s original that taken together open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is punctuated with great wit, beauty, and playfulness; it is a daring literary page-turner that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent.

ZACHARY MASON is a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence. He was a finalist for the 2008 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. He lives in California. 

Literature's First Unreliable Narrator
The unexpected lessons of The Lost Books of the Odyssey.

By John SwansburgPosted Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010, at 9:28 AM ET 

http://www.slate.com/id/2244933/

Photo Credit:  Yan Li

Kepler's and Cedro Ristorante present a Special Dinner Event:

Valentina Cirasola

Wednesday, February 24, 5:30 - 7:00 p.m.

Come Mia Nonna: A Return to Simplicity  BUY NOW

Cedro Ristorante, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park

Octavian, a Roman Emperor once said "slow down, we are in a hurry." This book is a tribute to slow food and appreciation of life, a life made with human rhythms. A return to simplicity because these recipes from the Region of Puglia, in Italy are so very uncomplicated that even if you have never cooked in your life, you will be able to put an attractive dinner together in a short, short time. 

Meet the author and enjoy live music and a 5-course dinner made by Cedro's from recipes in the book.

Tickets: $72.95 + tax. Includes dinner, a glass of wine, tip, and one signed copy of the book.
  

For more information and for tickets, please contact Elizabeth at Cedro Ristorante, 650-322-3376.

Wednesday, February 24, 7:30 p.m.

Admission Matters: What Students and Parents Need to Know About Getting Into College (Second Edition)  BUY NOW

The updated edition of the must-have resource for any student applying to college

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of the bestselling book Admission Matters demystifies the college application process and offers practical advice for choosing the right school, writing an effective essay, navigating financial aid, and more. This handy resource will help any college-bound student whether they attend well-funded private schools or cash-strapped public schools. Filled with helpful suggestions, ideas, and advice, the new edition also includes tips for home-schooled students who are preparing to attend college.

• Helps all students who are applying to college understand the process and find the school that fits their needs
• Expanded information on testing, early decision/early action, applying as a home schooler, and tackling the dreaded college essay
• Up-to-date advice on financial aid in tough economic times – how it works and how to maximize your chances of getting aid
• Authors bring the multiple viewpoints of college admissions officer, high school counselor, and parent of college-bound students

This book gives any college-bound student the information they need to make the application process run smoothly. 

Thursday, February 25, 7:00 p.m.

Business Mensch  BUY NOW

Oshman Family JCC - Schultz Cultural Arts Center, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto

As a successful entrepreneur, seven years after it's creation, Noah's New York Bagels was sold for $100 million. Business Mensch offers seven accessible strategies to incorporate Judaism’s rich values into one’s life and career.

This book is about achieving financial success while remaining loyal to timeless values.

Co-sponsored by the Commonwealth Club of California and the Harvard Club of Silicon Valley.
  

For more information and tickets, click HERE

Thursday, February 25, 7:30 p.m.

Union Atlantic: A Novel  BUY NOW

The eagerly anticipated debut novel from the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist You Are Not a Stranger Here: a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.

At the heart of Union Atlantic lies a test of wills between a young banker, Doug Fanning, and a retired schoolteacher, Charlotte Graves, whose two dogs have begun to speak to her. When Doug builds an ostentatious mansion on land that Charlotte's grandfather donated to the town of Finden, Massachusetts, she determines to oust him in court. As a senior manager of Union Atlantic bank, a major financial conglomerate, Doug is embroiled in the company's struggle to remain afloat. It is Charlotte's brother, Henry Graves, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, who must keep a watchful eye on Union Atlantic and the entire financial system. Drawn into Doug and Charlotte's intensifying conflict is Nate Fuller, a troubled high-school senior who unwittingly stirs powerful emotions in each of them.

“Adam Haslett has the rarest of talents: the ability to combine a powerful intelligence with storytelling that is both elegant and suspenseful, and to break your heart in the process. Union Atlantic is a masterful portrait of our age.”
—Malcolm Gladwell

Photo Credit: Brigitte Lacombe 

AAUW Authors' Luncheon 

Saturday, February 27, 12:00 p.m.

Michael's at Shoreline, 1900 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View 

Meg Waite Clayton: Wednesday Sisters  BUY NOW

Milly Kalish: Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the great Depression  BUY NOW

Keith Raffel: Smasher: A Silicon Valley Thriller  BUY NOW

Tad Williams & Deborah Beale: The Dragons of Ordinary Farm  BUY NOW 

This benefit luncheon is sponsored by the American Association of University Women, Palo Alto Branch. Fifty percent of the ticket price is a contribution to send deserving 7th-grade girls to Tech Trek, AAUW's math/science camp to be held at Stanford in July. 

You will hear presentations from five successful local-based authors of bestselling books while enjoying lunch.  There will be time for questions, and the chance to purchase books and have them autographed by the authors.

Make lunch reservations by February 19th to ensure a place.  

It's All About Friends Story Time

Sunday, February 28, 11:30 a.m.

Big Wolf and Little Wolf  BUY NOW

A Visitor for Bear  BUY NOW

Sunday, February 28, 2:00 p.m.

It Is Daylight by Ardna Collins

Arda Collins is the 2008 winner of the annual Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Mesmerizing and electric, her poems seem to be articulated in the privacy of an enclosed space. The poems are concrete and yet metaphysically challenging, both witty and despairing. Collins’ emotional complexity and uncommon range make this debut both thrillingly imaginative and ethical in its uncompromising attention to detail. In her Foreword, contest judge Louise Glück observes, “I know no poet whose sense of fraud, the inflated emptiness that substitutes for feeling, is more acute.” Glück calls Collins’ volume “savage, desolate, brutally ironic . . . a book of astonishing originality and intensity, unprecedented, unrepeatable.” 

Monday, March 1, 7:00 p.m.

Doce cuentos peregrinos by Gabriel García Márquez 

En Barcelona, una prostituta que va entrando en la vejez entrena su perro a llorar ante la tumba que ha escogido para sí misma. En Viena, una mujer se vale de su don de ver el futuro para convertirse en la adivina de una familia rica. En Ginebra, el conductor de una ambulancia y su esposa acogen al abandonado y aparentemente moribundo ex presidente de un país caribeño, sólo para descubrir que sus ambiciones políticas siguen intactas.

En estos doce relatos magistrales acerca de las vidas de latinoamericanos en Europa, García Márquez logra transmitir la amalgama de melancolía, tenacidad, pena y ambición que forma la experiencia del emigrante.

Monday, March 1, 7:00 p.m.

The Five Ancestors Book #7: Dragon  BUY NOW

Hey kids! Come see Jeff Stone as he talks about the final book, #7: Dragon, in his award-winning middle grade series, The Five Ancestors. Jeff is a martial arts black belt and will demonstrate awesome kung fu moves, especially the "Flying Dragon."  The six previous books in the series are: Book 1: Tiger; Book 2: Monkey; Book 3: Snake; Book 4: Crane; Book 5: Eagle; Book 6: Mouse.

Like the characters in his stories, Jeff practices the martial arts daily. He holds a black belt in Shaolin Do Kung Fu, and often trains in other styles as part of his research for his books. He loves to do demonstrations during his events and often invites kids to learn the basic animal moves!  

Jeff Stone has worked as a photographer, an editor, a maintenance man, a technical writer, a ballroom dance instructor, a concert promoter, and a marketing director for companies that design schools, libraries, and skateboard parks. Like the heroes of The Five Ancestors series, he was adopted when he was an infant. He began searching for his birthmother when he was 18; he found her 15 years later. The author lives with his wife and two children in Carmel, IN.

Photo Credit: Tom Casalini 

Tuesday, March 2, 7:30 p.m.

That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week: Helping Disorganized and Distracted Boys Succeed in School and Life  BUY NOW

With an accessible and no-nonsense approach, top academic counselor Ana Homayoun shows how to:

*Identify their son's disorganizational style
*Help him set academic and personal goals he cares about
*Design and establish the right "tools of the trade"
*Complete assignments without pulling all-nighters
*Help him tune out social pressure and fend off anxiety

Much more than a study guide, this insightful, user-friendly book provides a roadmap for the success too many boys have trouble finding--in school and in life.

Ana Homayoun is the Founder and Director of Green Ivy Educational Consulting, where she has helped hundreds of students dramatically improve their academic performance while reducing the stress and anxiety often associated with juggling a rigorous course load and extracurricular activities. A graduate of Duke University, she also holds a Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology.

Giving Disorganized Boys the Tools for Success by Alan Finder

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/education/01boys.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&ei=5070&en=33821f10c10d3e67&ex=1199941200&emc=eta1 

Wednesday, March 3, 7:30 p.m.

Model Home: A Novel  BUY NOW

Warren Ziller moved his family to California in search of a charmed life, and to all appearances, he found it: a gated community not far from the beach, amid the affluent splendor of Southern California in the 1980s. But his American dream has been rudely interrupted. Despite their affection for one another, Warren, his wife, Camille, and their three children have veered into separate lives, as distant as satellites. Worst of all, Warren has squandered the family's money on a failing real estate venture. 

When tragedy strikes, the Zillers are forced to move into one of the houses in Warren's abandoned development in the middle of the desert. Marooned in a less-than-model home, each must reckon with what's led them there and who's to blame -- and whether they can summon the forgiveness needed to hold the family together.

Puchner's short stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All Story, Chicago Tribune, The Sun, The Missouri Review, Best New American Voices, and many other journals and anthologies.

A recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, he is an assistant professor of literature at Claremont McKenna College.

Photo Credit: Saeed Mirfattah   

Photo Credit: Saeed Mirfattah 

Sponsored by

Author Kurt W. Beyer in Conversation with Northern California Public Broadcasting’s Linda O’Bryon 

Thursday, March 4, 12:00 p.m. 

Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age   BUY NOW

The Computer History Museum, 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View

March is Women’s History Month and the Computer History Museum is proud to showcase the career and accomplishments of a genuine innovator, Grace Hopper. Among her many awards, Grace Hopper was the Computer History Museum’s first Fellow award recipient for her development of programming languages, computer instruction, and her lifelong naval service. The complete list of her awards and degrees exceeds two full pages, including the National Medal of Technology and 37 honorary doctoral degrees.  

In Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age, Kurt Beyer reveals an authentic Hopper, a vibrant and complex woman whose career paralleled the meteoric trajectory of the postwar computer industry, and discusses the indelible contribution she made to the nascent computer industry.  According to Beyer, Grace Hopper is arguably as important a figure to computing as Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs.

Register Now

Call (650) 810-1898 for information. 

The Computer History Museum offers a variety of membership levels. To find out more, please visit our individual membership or call 650-810-2727.

Thursday, March 4, 7:30 p.m.

The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature  BUY NOW

In his most important book to date, award-winning author Timothy Ferris—“the best popular science writer in the English language today” (Christian Science Monitor)—makes a passionate case for science as the inspiration behind the rise of liberalism and democracy. Ferris argues that just as the scientific revolution rescued billions from poverty, fear, hunger, and disease, the Enlightenment values it inspired has swelled the number of persons living in free democratic societies from fewer than one percent of the world population in 1600 to over a third today.

Ferris deftly investigates the co-evolution of these scientific and political revolutions. A sweeping intellectual history, The Science of Liberty is a stunningly original work that transcends antiquated concepts of left and right.

Timothy Ferris, a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominee, is the author of 12 books, including The Whole Shebang, Coming of Age in the Milky Way, and The Mind's Sky. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

'The Science of Liberty,' by Timothy Ferris

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

Sunday, February 28, 2010
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/28/RVTE1C3UED.DTL#ixzz0grnuain8

Friday, March 5, 7:30 p.m.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman

When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different.

The Hmong see illness aand healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe, while medical community marks a division between body and soul, and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former. Lia's doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness, qaug dab peg--the spirit catches you and you fall down--and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred animal sacrifices.

Sunday, March 7, 11:30 a.m.

The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds

Join us for a special Storytime as we celebrate National Youth Art Month!

Art is not only in the way we hold a paint brush against paper or chalk against cement,

it is visual expression that is louder then words.

Zig, Zag, Squiggle and Swish that brush!

Sunday, March 7, 2:00 p.m.

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin 

Hailed by reviewers as "powerful,""haunting" and "a tour de force of personal journalism,"When A Crocodile Eats the Sun is the unforgettable story of one man's struggle to discover his past and come to terms with his present.

Award-winning author and journalist Peter Godwin writes with pathos and intimacy about Zimbabwe's spiral into chaos and, along with it, his family's steady collapse. This dramatic memoir is a searing portrait of unspeakable tragedy and exile, but it is also vivid proof of the profound strength of the human spirit and the enduring power of love.

Monday, March 8, 7:30 p.m.

The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy  BUY NOW

Opening with Oscar Wilde's observation that "nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing," Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced.  He reveals the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger (as much as $200), and asks how we came to have markets in the first place.  Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Patel argues, are a result of our democratically bankrupt political system. If part one asks how we can rebalance society and limit markets, part two answers by showing how social organizations, in America and around the globe, are finding new ways to describe the world's worth. 

Raj Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved, is an activist and academic who has been hailed as "a visionary" for his prescience about the food crisis.  Raj has worked for the World Bank and the World Trade Organization and has protested against them on four continents.  He is currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for African Studies, an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. 

Tuesday, March 9, 7:30 p.m.

Another Life Altogether  BUY NOW

A keenly observed depiction of the effects of a mother’s mental illness on her young daughter, Another Life Altogether is a profoundly moving, funny, and ultimately heartrending coming-of-age story.

After years of living in the shadow of her mother’s mental illness, Jesse Bennett is given a fresh chance at happiness when her family moves to a village in northern England. But just as it seems that she might be able to build a perfect life for herself after befriending two of her new school’s most popular girls, her mother’s worsening mental state and the secret Jesse fiercely guards about herself threaten to destroy her fragile stability. Caught in the storm of her mother’s moods, her father’s desperation, and her classmates’ strict adherence to cruel social hierarchies, Jesse is forced to choose between doing what’s right and preserving her long-held hope for a normal life.

At the heart of a maddening, eccentric, and ultimately lovable family—from her manic mother and her long-suffering father to her blowsy Aunt Mabel and her Uncle Ted, a comically inept criminal—Jesse is an utterly sympathetic narrator who navigates the ups and downs of adolescence with insight, emotional vulnerability, and a wickedly sharp sense of humor. Alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, Another Life Altogether marks the arrival of an immensely gifted novelist. 

Elaine Beale is the winner of the 2007 Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange contest, a competition for a partial draft of this novel. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in several anthologies. Originally from England, she has lived for the past twenty years in Oakland. 

A powerful tale of a troubled teen

By Sharon Ullman Globe Correspondent / March 1, 2010  

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2010/03/01/elaine_beals_debut_focuses_on_the_life_of_a_troubled_teen/

Wednesday, March 10, 7:30 p.m.

Murder in the Palais Royal: Aimee Leduc Investigations #10  BUY NOW

"The buzz is partly about her heroine's hip, next-generation, cutting-edge investigations and partly about Paris, a setting of unrivaled charm."-Houston Chronicle

"Will have you wondering if it's not too late to book that summer vacation to Paris you always wanted."-USA Today

"The trendy byways of Paris belong to Aimee Leduc, the clever young sleuth in a winning series by Cara Black, an American with an uncanny feel for the street culture of old Parisian neighborhoods."-The New York Times Book Review

"The Parisienne Kinsey Milhone."-Los Angeles Times

"One of the best heroines in crime fiction."-Lee Child

Her partner Rene has been shot and eyewitnesses have identified Aimee as the culprit. A mysterious deposit has been made to their firm's bank account, interesting the taxman in their affairs. Someone seems to be impersonating Aimee; someone wants revenge. Two murders ensue. How do they relate to the youth whom Aimee's testimony sent to jail in the very first Aimee Leduc investigation, Murder in the Marais?

Cara Black is the author of nine previous books in the best-selling Aimee Leduc series. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and son and visits Paris frequently.

Thursday, March 11, 6:30 p.m.

Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence  BUY NOW

Menlo Park City Council Chambers, 701 Laurel Street, Menlo Park

Shostak has been at the center of the sometimes admired, sometimes dismissed effort to pick up extraterrestrial radio communication. Shostak will explain the challenges of trying to detect alien communications using ever more sophisticated methods and explaining why the almost 50-year effort has so far yielded nothing.

He will also discuss practical questions: Would alien societies communicate via radio or something more advanced? If they were more advanced, how could we understand what they were saying? Would it be safe and proper to reply, and who would decide what to say back? Might aliens have evolved into something akin to computerized machines?

Seth Shostak is a scientist, author, and frequent commentator on TV and radio. He writes a monthly column on SPACE.com, and often lectures on his work at SETI. He lives in Palo Alto.

For reservations call 1-800-847-7730 or register online at www.Commonwealthclub.org/sv

Thursday, March 11, 7:00 p.m.

Either You're In or You're In the Way: Two Brothers, Twelve Months, and One Filmmaking Hell-Ride to Keep a Promise to Their Father  BUY NOW

Redwood City Library - Community Room, 1044 Middlefield Road, Redwood City 

When identical twin brothers Logan and Noah Miller′s homeless father died alone in a jail cell, they vowed come hell or high water that their film, Touching Home, would be made as a dedication to their love for him. EITHER YOU′RE IN OR YOU′RE IN THE WAY is the amazing story of how-without a dime to their names nor a single meaningful contact in Hollywood-they managed to write, produce, act, and direct a feature film in under a year starring four-time Academy Award®-nominated actor Ed Harris (and a cast and crew with 11 Academy Awards® and 26 nominations) that premiered at the coveted San Francisco International Film Festival. The Miller brothers′ incredible and comic gonzo story is essential reading for aspiring filmmakers and movie buffs, and readers looking for a fast-paced, thrill ride of heartbreak and redemption. 

Photo Credit: Mikhail Lemkhin

Thursday, March 11, 7:30 p.m.

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them  BUY NOW

THE TRUE BUT UNLIKELY STORIES OF LIVES DEVOTED—ABSURDLY! MELANCHOLICALLY! BEAUTIFULLY!—TO THE RUSSIAN CLASSICS

No one who read Elif Batuman’s first article (in the journal n+1) will ever forget it. “Babel in California” told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University during a conference about the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. Over the course of several pages, Batuman managed to misplace Babel’s last living relatives at the San Francisco airport, uncover Babel’s secret influence on the making of King Kong, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature.

Batuman’s subsequent pieces—for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the London Review of Books— have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation, and its best traveling companion. In The Possessed we watch her investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying; and see an eighteenth-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva.

Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their place in The Possessed. Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence—including her own.

ELIF BATUMAN was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey. She now lives in Twin Peaks, San Francisco (near the radio tower). She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Prize. She teaches literature at Stanford.