Book(ed) Passage

The Week Ahead @ Book Passage

2012-02-10T16:33:00.000-08:00

Among Bay Area bookstores, Book Passage in Corte Madera has one of the most active schedules going of author events, readings, classes and other literary happenings. In fact, it’s not uncommon for more than one or two author talks to take place at the store just about every day. Additionally, many of these events have a local connection- that's because Book Passage is a true community center. Looking to the week ahead, here are three events readers won’t want to miss.

Amy Franklin-Willis reads from The Lost Saints of Tennessee
-- Monday, February 13 at 7:00 pm

Here is what Pat Conroy, the author of Price of Tides, had to say about The Lost Saints of Tennessee (Atlantic Monthly). “The gifted novelist, Amy Franklin-Willis, has written a riveting, hardscrabble book on the rough, hardscrabble south, which has rarely been written about with such grace and compassion. It reminded me of the time I read Dorothy Allison’s classic, Bastard out of Carolina.” If such high praise intrigues, then don’t miss this exceptional debut.

Now a resident of Northern California (she married her college sweetheart, who hails from the Bay Area), Amy Franklin-Willis is an eighth-generation Southerner born in Birmingham, Alabama. She received an Emerging Writer Grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation in 2007 to complete The Lost Saints of Tennessee.

Literary Luncheon with Lisa See
-- Wednesday, February 15 at 12:00 noon

At this special literary luncheon, acclaimed novelist Lisa See discusses her new novel Dreams of Joy (Random House), which is now out in softcover. Devastated after discovering the shocking truth about her mother and father, Joy (a character from See’s 2009 novel Shanghai Girls) flees to China to find a new life (and her real father) – and Pearl, realizing what has happened, sets out for Mao’s China, resolved to find her daughter.

Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of Shanghai Girls, Peony in Love, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Flower Net (an Edgar Award nominee), The Interior, and Dragon Bones, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain. The Organization of Chinese American Women named her the 2001 National Woman of the Year. She lives in Los Angeles and is a Bay Area and Book Passage favorite.

Book Passage hosts literary luncheons with celebrated authors at its Corte Madera store. These events are catered by Insalata’s Restaurant of San Anselmo. The ticket price of $55 includes lunch and a signed book. Call Book Passage to reserve.

Katherine Boo talks about Behind Beautiful Forevers
-- Friday, February 17 at 7:00 pm

From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo comes Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Random House), a work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the 21st century’s great cities, Mumbai, India. At times, it’s hard to believe this is nonfiction (David Sedaris calls it “as rich and beautifully written as a novel”) – but it is, a true account of garbage pickers and petty thieves, of families and teenagers and their daily struggles and hopes which grow in the muck of almost unbelievable poverty. In its review, the New York Times described this remarkable book as “a true-life version of Slumdog Millionaire without the Bollywood ending.”

Katherine Boo spent three years among the residents of Mumbai’s Annawadi slum, a sprawling settlement of hundreds of tin-roof shacks in the shadow of the city’s International Airport. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post. Boo’s reporting has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. For the last decade, she has divided her time between the United States and India. This is her first book.

MORE INFO: Unless otherwise noted, all events take place at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., in Corte Madera. Call (415) 927-0960 or visit www.bookpassage.com for details.

Guest blogger: Kalpana Mohan

2012-02-09T12:03:00.000-08:00

The Book Passage blog welcomes Kalpana Mohan as a guest blogger. Kalpana is a local writer and regular patron of the store.

I'm a Book Passage stalker; I've commuted to Book Passage for a dozen years now all the way from Saratoga and every minute of my three hour drive has been worth it; I've made wonderful friends; my family has spent days reading at BP just because we all love to read. I'm part of Left Coast Writers and every time I walk into BP, it's a reminder about why I left the high-tech world. It's a reminder about why I do what I do, a reminder of how I love to write.

I'm really looking forward to talking to Katherine Boo when she reads at Book Passage on February 17th. I'm reading Boo's new book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, and I'm thinking about all the things it would have taken this writer – who did not speak the language or know the culture – to immerse herself in that alien world of grinding poverty. I have never been to that world even though I was born and raised in India. But I have been on the other side. I have looked at the slums from those high-rise hotels that she refers to in her book. I've never had the courage to walk into such a slum for I have been conditioned, since the day I was born, to ignore those slums, to pretend that they did not exist in my world and to be indifferent to the life teeming under those corrugated tin roofs. Oh, yes, our maid, our driver and our plumber belonged to them, but we didn't think of how and where they lived – unless they didn't report for work.

I can see how Behind the Beautiful Forevers will be a touchstone for nonfiction that will change the world. We need more such non-fiction work that will inspire the action to bring about systemic change in India. I hope I'll be able to do the same through my writing, even if it's in far less gritty ways than Boo.

I would love to share information with you about my blog – SARiTORIAL: Unfolding An Indian Icon – in which I write about India, the old and new. In it, I write about things, places and ideas that are specific to India and Indians in the diaspora. The stories are many. Every story, I promise, will make readers pause and reflect. I really do think that the stories I'm narrating are as universal as they are unique.

A few months ago I wrote about Aiyyelu, a renowned silk costume maker in the South Indian coastal city of Chennai who, at 82 (no one, not even Aiyyelu, knows exactly how old he is), doesn't need to wear glasses to thread his needle. His exquisite silk costumes are mailed around the world for classical Indian dance performances. Read about him at http://www.bit.ly/Aiyyelu.

On January 30th morning, on the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's death, I wrote about my day at his home, Sabarmati Ashram in India's Ahmedabad, and linked that to my experience of listening to Gloria Steinem's lecture at Stanford on January 26th. Check it out at http://bit.ly/gandhisteinem. And, just last week, when I found out that Starbucks was filtering into India, it became grounds for a venti post. Why? India grows coffee. India could teach Starbucks a thing or two about beans. The South Indian degree coffee is unmatched. Why not let this old coffee culture be? Why does India need yet another multi-national corporation? Read more about my frustration at http://bit.ly/degreecoffee.

I hope readers will subscribe to my blog and send me their thoughts and suggestions. I'd be thrilled if readers could pass the word and the link along to a relative, a colleague, a friend, a Facebook friend, an adversary, a Frenemy...anyone, really, who will find it interesting. Readers across the generations and across all cultures, follow me on my journey at SARiTORIAL.

About The Author: Kalpana Mohan enjoys writing about parenting, ethnic issues and lifestyle. Her stories have appeared in Better Homes and Gardens, Business Week Online, FamilyFun Magazine, USA Weekend Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Bay Area Parent, India Currents and other print and online publications.

The Week Ahead @ Book Passage

2012-02-03T16:45:00.000-08:00

Among the Bay Area’s many bookstores, Book Passage in CorteMadera has one of the most active schedules going of author events, readings, classesand other literary happenings. In fact, it’s not uncommon for more than one ortwo author talks to take place just about every day. And what's more, many ofthese events have a local connection. Looking to the week ahead, here are threeevents readers won’t want to miss.

Pam Houston talks about Contents May Have Shifted
-- Monday, February 6 at 7:00 pm

Pam Houston is the author of two collections of linked short stories, CowboysAre My Weakness, a bestseller which was the winner of the 1993 WesternStates Book Award and has been translated into nine languages, and Waltzingthe Cat which won the Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction. She has alsoauthored a book of essays and a novel and is the Director of Creative Writingat U.C. Davis, as well as the Director of the Tomales Bay Workshops.

Her new novel, Contents May Have Shifted(Norton), tells the story of Pam, who is stuck in a dead-end relationship; oneday, this fearless narrator leaves her metaphorical baggage behind and finds freedomin the air. Plane ticket in hand, she flies around the world and finds new reasonsto love life in dozens of far-flung places.

Adam Johnson presents The Orphan Master’s Son
-- Wednesday, February 8 at 7:00 pm

San Franciscoauthor Adam Johnson has been receiving a good deal of attention lately for hisnew novel, The Orphan Master’s Son(Random House). His book has been favorably reviewed in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times and elsewhere, and last week he was on the PBSNewsHour talking about what is fast becoming one of the big books of theseason.

The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icywaters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysteriousdictatorship, North Korea.Part dystopian thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romanticlove found, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of aworld heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption,and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and lastlylove.

Lysley Tenorio reads from Monstress
-- Thursday, February 9 at 7:00 pm

Monstress (Ecco), by Lysley Tenorio, introduces a bold new writer whoexplores the clash and meld of disparate cultures. In the National MagazineAward-nominated title story, a has-been movie director and his reluctantleading lady travel from Manila to Hollywood for one lastchance at stardom, unaware of what they truly stand to lose. In "FelixStarro," a famous Filipino faith healer and his grandson conduct anillicit business in San Francisco,though each has his own plans for their earnings. And in “Help,” after theBeatles reject an invitation from Imelda Marcos for a Royal CommandPerformance, an aging bachelor attempts to defend her honor by recruiting histhree nephews to attack the group at the Manila International Airport. (The last storyis based on actual incidents.)

Born in the Philippines,Tenorio is a graduate of UC Berkeley and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He currently lives in San Francisco, and is an associate professor at SaintMary’s College of California.

MORE INFO: Unlessotherwise noted, all events take place at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., in Corte Madera.Call (415) 927-0960 or visit www.bookpassage.comfor details.

Faculty Additions - Cara Black, Tony Broadbent, David Cole, George Fong, Lisa Gallagher, Al Giannini, William C. Gordon, Seth Harwood, Arthur Kerns, John Lescroart, D.P. Lyle, Tim Maleeny, Kirk Russell, and Jacqueline Winspear join the 2012 Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference

2012-02-02T20:07:00.000-08:00

Just announced! Cara Black, Tony Broadbent, David Cole, George Fong, Lisa Gallagher, Al Giannini, William C. Gordon, Seth Harwood, Arthur Kerns, John Lescroart, D.P. Lyle, Tim Maleeny, Kirk Russell, and Jacqueline Winspear to join the faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, July 19-22 in Corte Madera, California.

Cara Black
Cara Black frequents a Paris little known outside the beaten tourist track, a Paris she discovers on research trips and interviews with French police, private detectives and café owners. Cara is a San Francisco Library Laureate and a member of the Paris Sociéte Historique in the Marais. Her nationally bestselling and award nominated Aimée Leduc Investigation series, which includes Murder in the Latin Quarter, Murder in the Marais, and Murder at the Lanterne Rouge, has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Hebrew. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, a bookseller, and their teenage son. Read more >>

Tony Broadbent
Corbett is a skilled private investigator, having worked 15 years for the famed private investigation firm of Palladino & Sutherland. He is also a highly-talented writer of crime fiction. His novels including Do They Know I’m Running?, Blood of Paradise, Done for a Dime, and The Devil’s Redhead. Read more >>

David Cole
David has divided his time between publishing, writing, and marketing, cultivating experience in every aspect of the book publishing business. He founded Bay Tree Publishing in 2002. Read more >>

George Fong
Fong is Director of Security with ESPN and former Supervising Agent for the FBI.

Lisa Gallagher
Lisa is a literary agent at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. As former Senior Vice President & Publisher of William Morrow, Lisa became known as an indefatigable author advocate who helped nurture the careers of many writers. She was lucky enough to work with numerous New York Times bestselling authors, including Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, Gregory Maguire, Christopher Moore, James Rollins, and Neal Stephenson. Read more >>

Al Giannini
Giannini is a San Mateo County District Attorney.

William C. Gordon
Gordon’s novel, The Chinese Jars, is a mystery set in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the early 1960s. He is also the author of King of the Bottom, The Ugly Dwarf, Duelo en Chinatown, and the forthcoming The Halls of Power. Gordon is an attorney with a law office in Sausalito, a father, photographer, and world traveler with his wife, author Isabel Allende. Read more >>

Seth Harwood
Harwood grew up in the Boston area and graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the author of Jack Wakes Up, This is Life, and his latest novel, Young Junius, billed as "The Wire meets Cambridge, MA in 1987" and picked by George Pelecanos as one of his best books of 2010. Read more >>

Arthur Kerns
Following graduation from college, Kerns did a stint with the US Navy amphibious forces, and then joined the FBI with a career in counterintelligence and counter terrorism. Retiring from the FBI, he became a consultant with the Director of Central Intelligence and the Department of State. His lengthy assignments took him to over 65 countries. He is the author of The Riviera Contract and The Past is Never Dead. Read more >>

John Lescroart
A New York Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into 16 languages in more than 75 countries, Lescroart is the author of numerous crime novels and courtroom mysteries. His books include Treasure Hunt, A Plague of Secrets, The Hunt Club, Damage, and The Hunter. Read more >>

D.P. Lyle
Lyle is a physician and the author of Howdunit Forensics, a definitive reference guide for writers. He is also the author of Forensics and Fiction, Hot Lights, Cold Steel, Royal Pains: First, Do No Harm, Royal Pains: Sick Rich, and more Forensics and Fiction, which will be published this spring. Read more >>

Tim Maleeny
Maleeny is the author of the acclaimed Cape Weathers series, including Stealing The Dragon, Beating The Babushka, and Greasing
The Piñata. His latest book is Jump. Tim's short fiction has won the prestigious Macavity Award and appears in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen, Crimespree Magazine, and the anthologies Death Do Us Part, Uncage Me, and Thriller 2. Read more >>

Kirk Russell
Kirk's early novels feature the head of an undercover California Fish and Game team. His latest novel, A Killing in China Basin, begins a new crime series set in San Francisco, featuring homicide inspector, Ben Raveneau, and his partner Elizabeth la Rosa. Read more >>

Jacqueline Winspear
Conference co-chair Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the acclaimed Maisie Dobbs, Birds of a Feather, An Incomplete Revenge, Among the Mad, A Lesson in Secrets, and the latest Elegy for Eddie. Read more >>

Register >>

Join us on Facebook, Twitter, and BookPassage.com for updates on upcoming additions to the Conference faculty.

Faculty Additions - Annie Barrows, Shirin Yim Bridges, Ying Compestine, Summer Dawn Laurie, Laurie McLean, Amy Novesky, Kathryn Otoshi, Julie Romeis, Lissa Rovetch, and Pam van Hylckama Vlieg to Join the 2012 Book Passage Children's Writers and Illustrators Conference

2012-02-01T19:02:00.000-08:00

We are ecstatic to announce the addition of Annie Barrows, Shirin Yim Bridges, Ying Compestine, Summer Dawn Laurie, Laurie McLean, Amy Novesky, Kathryn Otoshi, Julie Romeis, Lissa Rovetch, and Pam van Hylckama Vlieg to the faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Children's Writers and Illustrators Conference, June 14-17 in Corte Madera, California.

Annie Barrows
Barrows’ collaboration with her late aunt Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, has been a perennial New York Times bestseller, published in 25 countries and selling well over one million copies. Barrows is also a prolific author of children's literature. The first book in her children’s series Ivy and Bean was published in 2006 and was an ALA Notable book for 2007; it was followed by many others, with the latest, Ivy and Bean Button Factory to be published this April. Her 2008 stand-alone children’s novel, The Magic Half, was described by School Library Journal as “a delightful tale brimming with mystery, magic, and adventure.”

Shirin Yim Bridges
In addition to being head goose at Goosebottom Books, Shirin wrote all six books in Goosebottom’s first series, The Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Real Princesses, which includes Agrippina Atrocious and Ferocious, Hatshepsut of Egypt, and Artemisia of Caria. She is also the author of The Umbrella Queen and Ruby's Wish. Shirin has lived in many countries around the world, as is reflected in her writing — Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and England.

Ying Compestine
Ying is the author of YA and Middle Grade novels Revolution is Not a Dinner Party and A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts, as well as children's books including Crouching Tiger, The Runaway Wok, and Boy Dumplings. She has visited schools throughout the US and abroad, sharing with students her journey as a writer, how her life in China inspired her writing, and the challenges of writing in her second language.

Summer Dawn Laurie
Summer is an independent children’s book editor with ten years’ experience at Tricycle Press and Chronicle Books. After ten years working in-house at children's book publishers, most recently as senior editor at Tricycle Press, the kid's division of Ten Speed Press, and previously at Chronicle Books for Children, Laurie decided to head out on her own. Over the years, she has edited more than 50 published books, ranging from board books to picture books, middle-grade novels to non-fiction.

Laurie McLean
Laurie is a literary agent with the Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency. Laurie specializes in middle grade and young adult children's fiction. Laurie is also the Dean of the newly created San Francisco Writers University.

Amy Novesky
Amy is an independent children's book editor, creative director, and co-founder of Ever After Studio, a children's book production company. She is the author of Me, Frida and Elephant Prince. Amy is a former editor with Chronicle Books in San Francisco, where she acquired award-winning picture books. Currently she works with writers and publishers to produce children’s books of all kinds. In addition, she is the creative director for Paper Hat Press, a company that creates customizable children’s books and keepsakes. She also frequently teaches writing workshops at Book Passage.

Kathryn Otoshi
Kathryn is an award-winning writer and illustrator, whose books have won the E.B. White Read Aloud Honor, the Nautilus Gold Award, and the Mom's Choice Award. Her books include Zero, One, Simon and the Sock Monster, What Emily Saw, and Marcello the Movie Mouse.

Julie Romeis
Julie is Children's Editor at Chronicle Books. Julie has taught and presented at universities around the country, including in the prestigious Columbia University Publishing Course.

Lissa Rovetch
Lissa is the author of Ook the Book and the Hot Dog and Bob chapter book series, and she is the illustrator of There Was a Man Who Loved a Rat and Other Vile Little Poems. Lissa founded the monthly group for children's writers and illustrators, Kid Lit Salon, which has been meeting at Book Passage since 2008.

Pam van Hylckama Vlieg
Pam is a prolific book blogger at Bookalicious and Hicklebee's Books.

Join us for the 6th Annual Book Passage Children’s Writers & Illustrators Conference. The Conference will cover all aspects of writing and illustrating for children—from developing ideas to honing skills to finding a publisher. Students will work closely with other writers and illustrators, as well as with agents, editors, and publishers. The conference is designed to meet the differing needs of those who create for different age groups.

Students choose an area of emphasis for the morning sessions, such as writing for picture books, early readers, young adult books or illustration, and then work with a teacher in a workshop setting. In the afternoon, students choose from panels of common interest, such as working with editors, working with agents, marketing and promotion. There will be many opportunities for faculty and students to talk, laugh, and exchange ideas in classes, lunches, and at evening events.

Register >>

Check out the conference Facebook page, the conference Twitter feed, and BookPassage.com for upcoming announcements and additions to the Conference faculty.

Brian McMullen, Art Director and Editor at McSweeney's, Joins the Faculty of the 2012 Children's Writers and Illustrators Conference

2012-01-31T18:10:00.000-08:00

Book Passage is excited to announce the addition of Brian McMullen to the faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Children's Writers and Illustrators Conference, June 14-17 in Corte Madera, California.

Brian McMullen
McMullen is a writer and artist who lives in Bayview, San Francisco. He is an art director at McSweeney's, where he edits and designs books for McSweeney's McMullens, an imprint of Dave Eggers' McSweeney's. Brian will be accompanied by two new McSweeney's McMullens titles: The Night Riders by Matt Furie and Benny's Brigade by Arthur Bradford, with pictures by Lisa Hanawalt.

Read more >>

Join us for the 6th Annual Book Passage Children’s Writers & Illustrators Conference. The Conference will cover all aspects of writing and illustrating for children—from developing ideas to honing skills to finding a publisher. Students will work closely with other writers and illustrators, as well as with agents, editors, and publishers. The conference is designed to meet the differing needs of those who create for different age groups.

Students choose an area of emphasis for the morning sessions, such as writing for picture books, early readers, young adult books or illustration, and then work with a teacher in a workshop setting. In the afternoon, students choose from panels of common interest, such as working with editors, working with agents, marketing and promotion. There will be many opportunities for faculty and students to talk, laugh, and exchange ideas in classes, lunches, and at evening events.

Register >>

Optional private evaluations of student work are also available.

Stay close to our Facebook page, our Twitter feed, and BookPassage.com for upcoming announcements and additions to the Conference faculty.

Susan Orlean added to the Faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference

2012-01-29T16:01:00.000-08:00

Book Passage is delighted to announce the addition of author Susan Orlean to the faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference, August 9-12 in Corte Madera, California.

Susan Orlean
Orlean is a journalist and staff writer for The New Yorker. Her books include The Orchid Thief, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People, My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who’s Been Everywhere, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. She has contributed articles to Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside. Orlean lives in Columbia County, New York (with occasional stints in Los Angeles and in New York City) with her husband, her son, dog, and two chickens.

Read more >>

This four-day Conference offers an array of writing and photography workshops in the morning, a full afternoon of panels and discussions, and evenings of faculty presentations. There are optional, working field trips to explore the resources of the Bay Area.

The faculty includes publishers, magazine editors, photographers, travel essayists, food writers, restauranteurs, guidebook writers, travel bloggers, and more. There are hours of informal interaction between faculty and students at lunch and in other discussions that often last late into the evening.

There are optional writing and photography workshops on Thursday afternoon just prior to the Conference. They are available to participants for an additional fee.

Register >>

Optional private evaluations of student work are also available.

Stay close to our Facebook page, our Twitter feed, and BookPassage.com for the upcoming announcement of the complete Conference faculty.

David Corbett, Robert Dugoni, and Sheldon Siegel added to the Faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference

2012-01-29T15:33:00.000-08:00

Book Passage is excited to announce the addition of David Corbett, Robert Dugoni, and Sheldon Siegel to the faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, July 19-22 in Corte Madera, California.

David Corbett
Corbett is a skilled private investigator, having worked 15 years for the famed private investigation firm of Palladino & Sutherland. He is also a highly-talented writer of crime fiction. His novels including Do They Know I’m Running?, Blood of Paradise, Done for a Dime, and The Devil’s Redhead.

Robert DugoniTwo-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest, Dugoni is the New York Times bestselling author of Murder One, The Jury Master, Damage Control, and Wrongful Death. Dugoni is a lawyer by training, and he practiced as a civil litigator in San Francisco and Seattle for 17 years before retiring to write full-time. His next novel The Conviction is due in 2012.

Sheldon Siegel
Conference co-chair Sheldon Siegel epitomizes the spirit of the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference. Siegel’s courtroom mysteries include Special Circumstances, Incriminating Evidence, Criminal Intent, Judgment Day and his newest book Perfect Alibi. Siegel is a Conference alumnus—his first book was published as a result of contacts he made at the Mystery Writers Conference.

The collegial atmosphere of this four-day conference attracts students and faculty from all over the country, many for repeat visits. Opportunities abound for faculty and students to talk, laugh, and exchange ideas in classes, workshops, panels, and informal lunches.

Register >>

There are optional writing workshops on Thursday afternoon prior to the Conference
that are available to participants for an additional fee. Stay close to our Facebook page, our Twitter feed, and BookPassage.com for the upcoming announcement of the complete
Conference faculty.

Mac Barnett and Gennifer Choldenko Join the Faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Children's Writers Conference

2012-01-29T14:51:00.000-08:00

Book Passage is pleased to announce the addition of Mac Barnett and Gennifer Choldenko to the faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Children's Writers and Illustrators Conference, June 14-17 in Corte Madera, California.

Mac Barnett
Barnett's books include Mustache!, Billy Twitters and his Blue Whale Problem, Oh No! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World), and The Clock Without a Face. Time magazine named his picture book Guess Again!, as the #2 Picture Book of 2010. The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity, the first Brixton Brothers book, was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2010. Mac’s on the board of directors for 826LA, a nonprofit writing center for students in Los Angeles.

Visit Mac Barnett's website

Gennifer Choldenko
Choldenko is an experienced writer and an inspiring teacher. She’s won numerous honors for her work. Her book Notes from a Liar and Her Dog was a California Book Award winner. Her book Al Capone Does My Shirts was named a Newbery Honor Book. Her other books include Louder, Lili, If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period, Al Capone Shines My Shoes (a sequel to Al Capone Does My Shirts), and No Passengers Beyond This Point. Gennifer is hard at work on the last book in the Al Capone trilogy, which is due out in 2012. A good deal of the research for the Al Capone books was accomplished while serving as a docent on Alcatraz Island.

Visit Gennifer Choldenko's website

Join us for the 6th Annual Book Passage Children’s Writers & Illustrators Conference. The Conference will cover all aspects of writing and illustrating for children—from developing ideas to honing skills to finding a publisher. Students will work closely with other writers and illustrators, as well as with agents, editors, and publishers. The conference is designed to meet the differing needs of those who create for different age groups.

Students choose an area of emphasis for the morning sessions, such as writing for picture books, early readers, young adult books or illustration, and then work with a teacher in a workshop setting. In the afternoon, students choose from panels of common interest, such as working with editors, working with agents, marketing and promotion. There will be many opportunities for faculty and students to talk, laugh, and exchange ideas in classes, lunches, and at evening events.

Register >>

Optional private evaluations of student work are also available.

Stay close to our Facebook page, our Twitter feed, and BookPassage.com for the upcoming announcement of the complete Conference faculty.

Come Celebrate World Book Night with Book Passage

2012-01-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

World Book Night is an annual celebration designed to spread a love of reading and books. To be held in the U.S. as well as the U.K. and Ireland on April 23, 2012. It will see tens of thousands of people go out into their communities to spread the joy and love of reading by giving out free World Book Night paperbacks.

Book Passage is proud to participate in World Book Night 2012. Book Passage will be a community pick-up location for book givers and we will be sponsoring a World Book Night Pick-Up Party a few days prior to the event -- find out below how you can be a giver on World Book Night, but hurry--you must register by February 1!

From the World Book Night U.S. Team:

World Book Night, through social media and traditional publicity, will also promote the value of reading, of printed books, and of bookstores and libraries to everyone year-round.

Successfully launched in the U.K. in 2011, World Book Night will also be celebrated in the U.S. in 2012, with news of more countries to come in future years. Please join our mailing list for regular World Book Night U.S. news. And thank you to our U.K. friends for such a wonderful idea!

Additionally, April 23 is UNESCO’s World Book Day, chosen due to the anniversary of Cervantes’ death, as well as Shakespeare’s birth and death.

This site exists in order to learn more about World Book Night and to keep updated on new developments – and most important, to register to be a World Book Night U.S. book giver.

Register to be a WBN 2012 Giver - Must sign up by February 1, 2012!

Click for details

The Week Ahead @ Book Passage

2012-01-27T10:54:00.000-08:00

Among the Bay Area’s many bookstores, BookPassage in Corte Madera has one of the most active schedules going of authorevents, readings, classes and other literary happenings. In fact, it’s notuncommon for more than one or two author talks or other events to take place herejust about every day. And what's more, many of these events have a localconnection. Looking to the week ahead, here are three events not to miss.

Group Poetry Readingwith Conflux Press poets
-- Sunday, January 29 at 4:00 pm

Abby Wasserman

Various Bay Area writers associated with Conflux Press will presenttheir work. Scheduled to read are poets Karen Benke, Karla Clark, Ed Colettie,CB Follett, Janet Jennings, Melanie Maier, Beverly Momoi, Daniel Polikoff,Susan Terris & Abby Wasserman.

Each is talented, and each is multi-talented. Abby Wasserman,for instance, is a writer and artist and the former editor of the OaklandMuseum of California's quarterly magazine. Her publications include The Spirit of Oakland, a multiculturalhistory of the city, Portfolio,essays on 11 Native American artists, and Praise,Vilification & Sexual Innuendo, or How to Be a Critic: The SelectedWritings of John L. Wasserman, which she edited. (The late John L. Wasserman,a much loved San Francisco Chroniclecritic and entertainment writer, was her brother.) Since 2003, Wasserman hasserved on the Board of the O'Hanlon Center for the Arts in Mill Valley.She facilitates two writing groups at the Center while devoting most of hertime to her poetry and her art.

Julia Flynn Siler, inconversation with Liz Epstein, discuss LostKingdom
-- Monday, January 30 at 7:00 pm

Julia Flynn Siler

Only one American state was ever a sovereign monarchy. Thatstate is Hawaii – the subject of a new book byNorth Bayauthor Julia Flynn Siler. Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure (AtlanticMonthly Press) chronicles how this Pacific nation – inhabited by a proud but vulnerablePolynesian people, was encountered, annexed and absorbed by a relentlesslyexpanding world power, the United States.

Siler’s 2007 bestseller, Houseof Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, travelledsimilar ground. It told an epic story of a "takeover proof" family-controlledcompany which was sold over the objections of several key family members. Silerwill be in conversation with Kentfield writer Liz Epstein.

One Book One Marin2012 Celebration with Michael David Lukas
-- Thursday, February 2 at 7:00 pm

Michael DavidLukas

Book Passage, along with The Marin County Free Library, CityPublic Libraries of Marin County and DominicanUniversity of California, is pleased to announce the OneBook One Marin selection for 2012 – The Oracle of Stamboul (Harper Perennial), by Oakland-born author Michael DavidLukas. This special event at DominicanUniversity in San Rafael launches a county-wide celebrationwith a talk and book signing by the author.

Set in 19th-century Turkey(then the Ottoman Empire), beautifullywritten, passionate, and fragrant with political intrigue, historical upheavaland Eastern mysticism, The Oracle ofStamboul revolves around a girl who changes the course of an empire. Thebook is now out in soft cover. When first published in hardback, one reviewer calledit “a bold portrait of an empire precariously poised on the chasm between anold and a new world.”

Lukas – who teaches in the EastBay – has been a Fulbright scholar in Turkey, a proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a Rotaryscholar in Tunisia.He brings a raconteur’s sense of story telling and a traveler’s eye for detailto this, his bestselling debut novel. For more on One Book One Marin visit www.onebookonemarin.org.

The 2012 Notes & Words Essay Contest

2012-01-23T17:32:00.000-08:00

Notes & Words is looking for the next great memoirist. We’re calling for short personal essays about the challenges of caring for a child (age 18 or younger), including medical issues (e.g., an accident, illness or diagnosis) or emotional crises (e.g., a death, divorce, breakdown) or one of any one of the more common parenting dramas (e.g., academic, social, athletic, epicurean). We welcome both humorous and serious essays of up to 800 words.
The first prize winner will have one-on-one phone consultations with:

A senior editor at Random House/Ballantine
A top literary agent at ICM
The Executive Editor of O Magazine

and introductions to:

Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winner
Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author
John Hodgman, The Daily Show and HBO’s Bored to Death
Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author

Finalists will receive two tickets to Notes & Words performance and after-party on April 28, 2012 at The Fox Theater in Oakland.
Click here for a list of Frequently Asked Questions
Click here for the Official Contest Rules

Read more about Notes & Words

Interview with Mary Helen Stefaniak, Author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia

2012-01-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

One of our Book Passage Signed First Editions Club members, Jaime Boler of Laurel, Mississippi, shared with us an interview she conducted with author Mary Helen Stefaniak for her book The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia. Jaime is a history instructor and she reviews books on her blog Book Magnet.

By Jaime Boler

The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia ($15.95)

Jaime Boler: When did you begin writing this novel? And what inspired you to write it?

Mary Helen Stefaniak: I began writing this novel in March 2003 after reading a newspaper story about the shock-and-awe bombing of Baghdad. I knew almost at once that I wanted to write a novel in which a group of Americans had a relationship to Baghdad—and everything Baghdad represents—that was different from the one being developed at the time. I wanted to remind anyone who happened to read the book that Mesopotamia is the cradle of our civilization.

JB: Do you have a favorite character in the story? If so, who and why? Which character is most like you?

MHS: My favorite character? I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I love them all. Well, maybe I don’t love Mr. Gordon and Mavis Davis, Sr., quite as much as I love the rest of them, but I do agree with whoever said that you have no business creating a character for whom you feel no sympathy.

The answer to which one is most like me has to be the same as Flaubert’s famous comment: “Madame Bovary, c’est moi!” They are all me in some way or another or I couldn’t have imagined them onto the page.

JB: Is the character May modeled on your grandmother Mattie? Was she also a storyteller?

MHS: I never met my grandmother Mattie. She died in childbirth with her sixth child.

JB: In a different time, do you think Ildred and Theo would have been more than just good friends? Or am I reading something that was not intended?

MHS: I think Ildred had strong feelings for Theo, and he obviously cared about her. They respected one another’s intelligence and understood each other’s value. Those are the kinds of feelings that could support a deep and lasting relationship.

JB: What does the white dirt, or kaolin, symbolize in your novel?

MHS: I don’t know that it symbolizes anything, but it is analogous to natural resources that have led to conflicts and exploitation in other parts of the world. As a defeated country occupied and exploited by victorious forces and plagued by terrorism in the aftermath of a bitter civil war, the American South has a history that is not unlike that of other countries that have been occupied and exploited by victorious forces and plagued by terrorism in the aftermath of a bitter civil war.

When Theo is pulled from the old kaolin pit, the deadly power of white dirt certainly suggests the deadly power of intolerance and hatred.

JB: What was the most difficult part of writing this story?

MHS: Keeping everything straight is tough whenever the story is long and complicated enough to be a novel, and simply persevering to the end was sometimes difficult, but the hardest part, as Hemingway once put it, was “getting the words right.”

JB: Your book is narrated by eleven-year-old Gladys Cailiff. Why did you choose to use the first-person narrative? Why did you choose Gladys as narrator?

MHS: I needed someone who would be perceptive and observant but also innocent, at the time—and someone who could be completely enamored with Miss Spivey.

JB: I had very mixed feelings about Miss Grace Spivey. On one hand, I applauded her for bringing life to Threestep and for opening the minds of her students to new cultures and a love of learning. Yet, she has an affair with a minor and seems naïve as to the consequences of the actions she sets in motion. What is your opinion of Miss Spivey? How did you come up with her? What do you think would have happened to her?

MHS: A reviewer named JoAnn Heydron described Miss Spivey as “cigarette-smoking, libidinous, and wildly generous.” I think that’s about right. I see her as a well-educated, highly privileged person who was really trying to do some good in the world but who wasn’t willing or able to suppress her own desires and interests while she did it. She probably has a lot in common with certain Teach for America volunteers of our own day. As for what would have happened to her, I think she would have gone back to her privileged life, back “home to her Daddy,” as Theo predicts when he’s arguing with Force about her, and from there, she would set out again on future adventures.

I asked one book club with a high proportion of teachers among the members to let me know what they thought of Miss Spivey, and they were kind enough to take notes on their discussion. They acknowledged that she wasn’t perfect—they were glad, at least, that Force was not one of her students—but they gave me a pretty long list of what they liked and admired about her, which included things like reading to the students, recognizing the importance of storytelling in teaching, the field trips, involving the whole community in school activities, valuing diversity (to put it mildly), and getting rid of the paddles. What kept coming up again and again, though, was Miss Spivey’s attitude toward state mandated requirements, which, for the most part, she ignored. Many of the teachers liked her for that. There was some feeling that state mandates reduced opportunities for creativity in teaching.

Miss Spivey did for Gladys and Threestep what good teachers always do for us: they transform us, they empower us, they endow us with a love of learning that lasts our whole lives—and then, in the vast majority of cases, they disappear from our lives before we’ve gotten wise enough to know what they’ve done.

JB: You make such a convincing case for the existence of Baghdad, Georgia, that I did some research and expected to find such a place. I was so surprised to learn you made it all up! What was your inspiration for creating this special town?

MHS: The name and the location and the one-and-a-half-room school house are inspired by the real town of Deepstep, Georgia, which claims to be the Kaolin Capital of the World.

JB: I was especially interested in the story of Bilali Mahomet. I’m a historian who specializes in slave culture and resistance. In some research, I came across African-American slaves who practiced Islam. One notable person was Ibrahima, who was an African prince brought to Natchez, Mississippi. His master renamed him Prince, yet Ibrahima still practiced some Islam. Did you know Bilali Mahomet would be in your novel when you set out to write your story or did you learn about him later?

MHS: I “discovered” Bilali Mahomet on a visit to Sapelo Island. I’d already been working on the book for close to three years at that point, and I needed a coastal island for purposes of the plot, so on our next trip to Georgia, my husband and I left my mother with her sister in Milledgeville and set out for the coast. We were in the visitor’s center, where you buy your tickets for the ferry and tour (on a schoolbus driven by a Park Ranger) of Sapelo Island, when my husband spotted something amazing in a display case: a picture of a little handmade notebook, lying open, its pages crammed with Arabic script! Just like that, I knew that I had found a real cultural ancestor for Theo Boykin, the smartest person in Piedmont County. I had even equipped Theo with a notebook before I learned about Bilali’s. I started reading in that direction and found out about other literate Muslims from West Africa who wound up enslaved in the Caribbean and in the Southern United States.   And here I’d been thinking that it was kind of a stretch, to put Georgia and “Baghdad” together in one novel!

JB: I like how you have Bilali Mahomet’s descendants naming their children Bilali. They may not know its original meaning, yet the name still means something to them. That was one of many historical accuracies I found in your book. How important is real history in writing historical fiction?

MHS: It’s funny, but I don’t think of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia as historical fiction, which I define as fiction whose purpose is to allow readers to experience a time other than their own. While I had to try and “recreate” rural GA in 1938-39 (not to mention the Arabian peninsula in 1916, the Georgia coastal islands in 1920 or so, a bit of General Sherman’s march to the sea, a journey from West Africa to Baghdad in 1775 or so, and scenes from 9th-century Baghdad), my purpose was not, primarily, to allow readers to experience those other times and places.

My primary purpose was to help readers (and myself) to see our own time more clearly. That said, whatever the novelist’s purpose in recreating another time in fiction, I think writers are obliged to be as accurate as possible in using historical events and details. My personal rule for the use of history in my fiction, borrowed from Donald Barthelme, is simply: “It does not contradict what is known.”   You can find long, windy essays on the subject of using history in fiction, but I think Barthelme pretty much says it all in those seven words, which I try to live by.

JB: I read where your mother went to the same high school as Flannery O’Connor. Peabody High School in Milledgeville, Georgia. Your mother graduated in 1943 and O’Connor in 1942. Did they know each other? Were they friends? What is your literary relationship with O’Connor?

MHS: I was in high school when I found out about that. Somehow, knowing that my mother had gone to school with the author of one of the stories in the anthology we were reading in English class, that she and O’Connor walked down the same school hallways, and so forth, made it seem more possible to be a writer. And the stories she wrote! They made you believe in the power of fiction, that’s for sure. My mother and her sisters knew who she was, but they belonged to the socioeconomic class from which she drew many of her characters, rather than the one to which she herself belonged. Maybe that’s one reason why I felt so pleased to have my mother and her sister and some cousins in the audience when I did a reading in the dining room at Andalusia, the O’Connors’ farm outside Milledgeville (where Flannery lived and wrote during the most productive years of her short life). As I have said on other occasions, pretty much everything I’ve ever written has been a tribute to Flannery O’Connor and at the same time an argument with her.

JB: You and your husband John live in a 150-year-old stagecoach inn you restored. What is it like living there? Could there be a future story there?

MHS: There are a hundred future stories there, but I haven’t written any of them yet.

JB: I read a review that compared The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. But you really turn Harper Lee’s work on its head. Can you talk about that?

MHS: I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time in a Great Books program. I was twelve or thirteen. I loved it immediately. I’ve read it several times since. I owe a debt of gratitude, as a reader and as a writer, to Harper Lee, but as you say, there are some ways in which The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia turns To Kill a Mockingbird upside down. If Atticus Finch is the best read person in Maycomb, Alabama, then his counterpart in The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia is a 17-year-old African American named Theo Boykin. (Not only that, but the only lawyer in Threestep happens to be the Grand Goblin of the local KKK.) In my novel, I wanted to give some credit to the less fortunate classes, both black and white.

JB: What was your reaction upon learning your novel received the 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, an award that recognizes books that contribute to our understanding of racism and appreciation of diversity?

MHS: As I told the audience at the award ceremony in Cleveland, I was so thrilled to learn that people like the members of the Anisfield-Wolf award jury—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Joyce Carol Oates and Rita Dove and Stephen Pinker and Simon Schama–had read my book that they wouldn’t even have had to select it for the award. Just knowing that writers and thinkers of their stature had read my work was so exciting. Of course, I’m glad they chose it for the award, too. If you go to the Anisfield-Wolf website and see the books and authors who have won the award in its first 75 years, you’ll have some idea of how honored I feel to have my book be among them.

JB: Who has influenced you the most in your writing?

MHS: I don’t know who has influence me the most, but I’ve learned a lot from Flannery O’Connor.

JB: You grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and vacationed in Georgia. How was segregation different in the two very different places?

MHS: A librarian in Macon, Georgia, once told me, “In the North, segregation was spatial. In the South, it was psychological.” Growing up in the 1960s in a working class neighborhood on the south side of Milwaukee, I had no occasion to meet or speak to an African American until I went to high school. By contrast, in the little town where my aunt Sissie lived in Jones County, Georgia, her neighbors across the street were black, as were the families who lived down the road behind her little house. Not that I didn’t know there were official rules separating blacks and whites in Georgia. But I can also remember thinking, as a kid, that the reason there were no “whites only” signs on drinking fountains in Milwaukee—we call them bubblers there—probably was that the nearest African American was likely to be miles away from that bubbler, there being no black people in sight.

JB: Did you find any people, events, or issues in your research for The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia, that you would like to return to someday?

MHS: Issues, yes. I think it’s so instructive to realize that racism is the same and different—in its manifestations and its targets—from generation to generation. I’ve made some notes for a novel starring the interracial couple we meet in The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia: Ralph Ford, who saved Gladys Cailiff’s daddy, you may recall, in the Great War, and Lily. Ford, I’ve decided, is from Milwaukee, where he grew up in an Italian neighborhood in the Bay View area (not far from the house where we lived with my Croatian/Hungarian grandparents when I was very small). Ralph Ford’s father went through hell and high water in the 1890s, let’s say, to win permission to marry Ralph’s mother, who was the child of Italian immigrants. He had to convert to Catholicism and move in with his in-laws before they would give their blessing. His own English/Irish/German-American family disowned him in the meantime.   His son Ralph Ford, who “grew up Italian,” may have hoped that his family would accept his marriage to Lily because of the obstacles that his own parents faced back when Italians and other Southern Europeans were “blacks” as far as white Anglo-Saxon Protestants were concerned.

JB: What do you hope readers take with them after reading The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia?

MHS: A different, more intimate and affectionate, feeling about the word “Baghdad” and the whole broad swath of history and culture that word represents—and more awareness of the long history of Islam in the U.S. (I also hope that Gladys and Mavis and Force and Theo will live in their hearts forever!)

JB: What’s next for you? I read where you were working on something that involved baseball?

MHS: The truth is that I’m working on three projects—two fiction projects and one nonfiction—waiting to see which one demands to be next. Baseball plays a part in two of the three.

The Week Ahead @ Book Passage

2012-01-20T15:33:00.000-08:00

Among Bay Area bookstores, Book Passage in Corte Madera has one of the most active schedules going of author events, readings, classes and other literary happenings. In fact, it’s not uncommon for more than one or two author talks to take place here just about every day. And what's more, many of these events have a local connection. Looking at the week ahead, here are three events not to miss.

Sarah G. Allen discusses Field Guide to Marine Mammals of the Pacific Coast
-- Sunday, January 22 at 1 pm

Don’t miss local scientist Sarah G. Allen as she presents her Field Guide to Marine Mammals of the Pacific Coast: Baja, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia (University of California Press, $24.95), a handy guide to the identification, natural history, and conservation of species which inhabit the spectacular coastal region we call home.

This interpretive field guide – which includes color illustrations, photographs, drawings, and maps – describes the various whales, dolphins, seals, and otters that are resident in, migrate through, or forage the waters from the Baja peninsula in the south to British Columbia in the north – with stops along the way in the waters off Marin County. And what’s more, this new book tells where and how to view these many fascinating creatures.

Algonquin Book Club Night with Naomi Benaron, author of Running the Rift
-- Tuesday, January 24 at 7 pm

Algonquin books, the fiercely independent publishing house that launched national bestsellers like Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and When She Woke by Hillary Jordan comes to Book Passage to showcase some of their new and forthcoming releases. Algonquin's director of marketing will share book club recommendations while also answering questions about writing and publishing in today’s ever changing literary landscape. Highlighting the event will be Algonquin debut novelist Naomi Benaron, who will introduce her Bellwether Prize winning novel, Running the Rift (Algonquin, $24.95) the Indie Next Pick for January. Book Passage favorite Barbara Kingsolver called this new book “Ambitious, beautiful, and unapologetically passionate.”

Those in attendance will have a chance to win $150 worth of Algonquin titles. As well, complimentary Algonquin catalogs and tote bags will be available, as will a sampling of wines which pair perfectly with Algonquin's full-bodied, hand-crafted, fiction.

Literary Luncheon & Chinese New Year Celebration with Ying Compestine
-- Friday, January 27 at 12:00 noon

Join multi-talented Bay Area author Ying Compestine as she presents Ying’s Best One-Dish Meals: Quick & Healthy Recipes for the Entire Family (Sellers Publishing, $18.95), a collection of delicious meals "Designed for working families who want to eat nutritious, home-cooked meals with fast-food timelines" (Contra Costa Times). Prepared for modern families short on time but wanting to eat healthy, these recipes allow readers to pull together satisfying meals in a snap.

Besides her many accomplishments as a speaker and food editor, the Chinese-born Compestine has also authored notable books for young readers including Revolution is Not a Dinner Party (2007), a winner of the California Book Award and the One Book/One County pick in San Mateo, and A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts (2009), which was chosen by the AARP as a Grandparent's Book for Children. Tickets are $35.00. Admission includes 3 courses, tea, and a signed copy of Ying’s Best One-Dish Meals. Call Book Passage to reserve a seat.

MORE INFO: Unless otherwise noted, all events take place at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., in Corte Madera. Call (415) 927-0960 or visit www.bookpassage.com for details.

A bit mad for Downton Abbey

2012-01-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

The staff and customers at Book Passage, like much of the rest of the country, have gone a bit mad for "Downton Abbey," the hit historical drama which airs Sunday nights on PBS. The show is, as the New York Times dubbed it, the darling of American public television. And, it is also the subject of something of a frenzy of reader interest. Like the earlier and widely acclaimed "Upstairs, Downstairs," "Downton Abbey" is set in the years just before, during, and after the First World War.

Our "Downton Abbey" display at Book Passage.

Book Passage customers are keen on not just books about the series, like the lavish pictorial, The World of Downton Abbey (St. Martins, $29.99) by Jessica Fellowes (the niece of show writer Julian Fellowes), but also books which tie in directly to the story on the screen, like Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle, by the Countess of Carnarvon (Broadway, $15.99). And then there are related titles like the recollections of a lady’s maid Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor (Penguin, $15.00), by Rosina Harrison - and What the Butler Winked At (Westholme Publishing, $14.95), by Eric Horne, a memoir by a someone who worked as a butler for more than 50 years. And don't forget Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid's Memoir That Inspired "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "Downton Abbey" (St. Martins, $22.99) by Margaret Powell. It too is very good.

Another view of our "Downton Abbey" display.

We picked out some of these titles and a few others titles - fiction, memoirs and a biography - and made a display at our store in Corte Madera. Why not drop by and check it out. You can find each of the Downton Abbey-related titles mentioned in this blog for sale at Book Passage.

New novel depicts 1920s coming of age story

2011-12-30T07:00:00.000-08:00

Charming and a little different, Caroline Preston's new novel, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (Ecco / HarperCollins Publishers), is a hybrid work where the pictures do the talking.One might describe it as something F. Scott Fitzgerald might have come up with for the Saturday Evening Post had he been a collage artist or even, in today's parlance, a graphic novelist. Like the best stories of that Jazz Age writer, this engaging work is poignant, tender and leaves you wrapped up in the tangled plight of its protagonist.

In many ways, Frankie Pratt is a typical small town young woman of the 1920s -- she's envious of the flappers she has read about in magazines, but is tentative about copying their modern ways. She is also looking for love and success, and dreams of being a writer.

For her graduation from high school, Frankie receives a scrapbook along with her father's Corona typewriter. A bright young thing, she begins to fill her scrapbook with clippings as well as her own thoughts and observations. Frustrated in her ambition, and about to see her dreams fade away, Frankie forgoes a scholarship to Vassar in order to help her widowed mother. Still living at home, a mysterious WWI veteran named Captain James sweeps Frankie off her feet; her mother must find a way to protect Frankie from the less-than-noble intentions of this unsuitable admirer.

Frankie eventually makes it to Vassar, and there crosses paths with other co-eds turned flappers as well as a real writer -- alumna Edna St. Vincent Millay, who encourages Frankie to move to Greenwich Village and pursue her dreams.

In New York, she finds a job writing for a pulp magazine while also experiencing big city heartbreak. Frankie then sets off for Paris and en route keeps company with a spinster adventuress. Once in the French capital, Frankie takes a room above Shakespeare & Company -- the hub of expat life, and pursues her dreams until the Captain from her past reappears.

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a coming-of-age story composed of visual scraps -- postcards, photographs, letters, advertisements, ticket stubs, maps, catalog pages, fabric swatches, candy wrappers, headlines, fashion spreads, menus, and other ephemera from the roaring Twenties. Charlie Chaplin, Babe Ruth, John Barrymore and T.S. Eliot are all referenced visually. Though images dominate, text nevertheless plays a vital role in advancing the narrative -- and ever-so gracefully, Preston's tone is right on the mark.

I was impressed, for example, when I read that the 1918 Corona Portable used by Preston in the typewriting of the captions is the same model used by another writer who came of age in the 1920's, Ernest Hemingway. That is the kind of detail one finds in this unusual book which helps enrich the story. (Font enthusiasts will know what I mean.) One reviewer has described this book as "lighter than lightweight" -- but in a complementary way. It is that, certainly, and also a lot of fun and a worthwhile read.

Preston's new book will also appeal to memorabilia collectors and those who scrapbook, as well as Jazz Age enthusiasts and those seduced by the charm and history behind Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist or Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. They each tread similar ground. And what's more, there is full-color vintage ephemera from the author's collection pictured on every page.

Preston has collected antique scrapbooks since she was in high school, and has become an expert on the history of the scrapbook in America. She has worked as an archivist at the Peabody/Essex Museum and Harvard University Houghton Library. Preston is also the author of three previous novels, Jackie by Josie (a New York Times Notable Book), Lucy Crocker 2.0, and Gatsby's Girl. The latter is another charming Jazz Age period piece, the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald's first love -- a pre-Zelda Chicago socialite named Ginerva.

Who’s Snooping Around Bookstores?

2011-12-28T15:43:00.000-08:00

Lots of people, it appears.

by William Petrocelli

Browsing in a bookstore is one of the world’s greatest forms of entertainment. The price is right, the pace is leisurely, the resources are unmatched, your fellow browsers are usually thoughtful, and the intellectual stimulation is endless. Many people never get tired of it. We own a bookstore, but we still find it invigorating to walk into someone else’s bookstore and look around.

But when does browsing become a bit abusive? According to the New York Times, it’s probably when browsing morphs into “showcasing.” According to Julie Bosman (NYT 12/5/11),
“Bookstore owners everywhere have a lurking suspicion: that the customers who type into their smartphones while browsing in the store, and then leave are planning to buy the books online later.”
And they’re not buying them, one suspects, from the store that hosted their research.

Is this such a bad thing? In small doses, of course not. But when the practice begins to mushroom, independent booksellers start wondering if publishers ought to be paying them an advertising fee to showcase books that many are buying elsewhere. A recent survey conducted by the Codex Group, a book market research and consulting company, showed that 24% of the people who bought a book from an on-line retailer said they had looked at the same book in a brick and mortar bookstore before making that purchase. In the case of customers purchasing from Amazon.com, that number jumped to 39%.

Ah, Amazon.

If there’s a questionable practice going on anywhere, you can usually count on Amazon.com to push it over the limit.

Not content with the advantage it gets when 39% of its customers kick the tires on the merchandise in someone else’s showroom before buying from Amazon, that online giant decided to go a little further. In December 2011 Amazon instituted a program by which customers could earn a $5.00 discount on any purchase if they first went into a brick and mortar store and checked out the same merchandise.
And, yes, they have an app for that.

Amazon customers were told how they could walk into a neighborhood store with their hand-held device and gather information. “Check prices instantly,” the Amazon webpage proclaimed. The customer was told to find the merchandise they wanted and then “scan it, snap it, say it, or type it” into their smart phone. That information then became a part of Amazon’s vast data-mining operation, and the customer received $5.00 off the purchase of the same item from Amazon. Spies apparently work cheap these days.

The uproar in the retailing world over Amazon’s tactics was immediate. The Alliance for Main Street Fairness said, “Small-business owners aren’t happy that Amazon is trying to turn their Main Street storefronts into digital showrooms.” Literary agent Andy Ross focused on the data-mining of the device: you are “uploading information to Amazon including the geographical coordinates of your price check. You are, in effect, an Amazon secret shopper.” Senator Olympia Snowe called it “an attack on Main Street businesses that employ workers in our communities. David Didriksen of Willow Books & Cafe in Acton, Mass., called it “another in a long series of predatory practices by Amazon. You would think that a company of that size would be willing to just live and let live for small retailers who can’t possibly affect them. But, no, they want it all.” Oren Teicher, executive director of the American Booksellers Association, wrote an open letter to Jeff Bezos, president of Amazon, concluding: “We suppose we should be flattered that an online sales behemoth needs a Main Street retail showroom. Forgive us if we’re not.” Author Richard Russo, in a N.Y. Times editorial (12/13/11) said:

Is it just me, or does it feel as if the Amazon brass decided to spend the holidays in the Caribbean and left in charge of the company a computer that’s fallen head over heels in love with its own algorithms?

Given Amazon’s history of predatory pricing, sales tax evasion, and arbitrary delisting of authors, we probably shouldn’t be surprised at this. A company that would spend the holiday season flooding us with ads in which the female actor is referred to as “Happy Pants,” is insensitive enough to do almost anything.

***

Snooping on bookstores is one thing; snooping on readers is far worse. But in a way, the two things are connected.

There’s a growing concern among civil libertarians and others that the reading habits of book purchasers may be in jeopardy. The first hint of this problem came in Kenneth Starr’s probe of President Bill Clinton. He issued a subpoena to KramerBooks in Washington. D.C., trying to obtain records of books purchased by Monica Lewinsky. The court struck down the demands of the Special Counsel as being overly broad and infringing on the First Amendment Rights of book purchasers.
The next big test came in Colorado, where investigators in a drug case issued a search warrant against Tattered Cover Books for the book-puchasing records of a suspect. In the landmark decision of Tattered Cover, Inc. v. City of Thornton, the Colorado Supreme Court limited the power of the police to those cases where the information being requested met a strict constitutional standard.
That’s two big cases and two wins.

But those two victories for reader privacy happened only because some courageous booksellers refused to comply with the initial demand and insisted on a court hearing. They could just as easily have said yes and handed over the records, as many big companies have done in similar situations. When First Amendment issues are at stake, there are few people as stubborn or feisty as independent booksellers.

The problem of protecting reader privacy has grown significantly more serious with the advent of the e-book. In the April 2011 hearings leading up to the new California Reader Privacy Act, the State Senate cited an NPR Report of March 2010:

“Digital book services have the ability to collect and retain very detailed information about readers. The level of detail that these services can collect would require an offline library or bookstore to hire an agent to follow each individual patron around the stacks, throughout their day, and finally into their homes. Digital book providers can easily track what books an individual considers, how often a given book is read, how long a given page is viewed, and even what notes are written in the “margins.” As reading has moved online, it also has become much easier to link books that are browsed or read with a reader’s other online activities, such as Internet searches, emails, cloud computing documents, and social networking. With all of this information, companies can create profiles about individuals, their interests and concerns, and even those of their family and friends.”

The California Reader Privacy Act, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2012, is a partial response to this problem The act says a bookseller shall not “knowingly disclose to any government entity, or be compelled to disclose to any person, private entity, or government entity,” any information about a customer without a proper hearing and court order. It applies in criminal cases, but it also applies in civil matters in which an enterprising attorney may obtain a subpoena for evidence in, say, a tax case or a divorce case This Act is an important first step, but it still leaves some pretty big holes in reader privacy.

First of all, the Act doesn’t apply in cases involving a federal investigation. There, it is possible that a bookseller could be served with an FBI request under the Patriot Act. In many of those cases the booksellers can neither contest the government’s demand or even reveal the fact that it was made.

Perhaps more significantly, the California statute only regulates disclosure to a governmental entity or disclosures made in a legal proceeding. It makes no mention of voluntary disclosure to anyone else: that apparently is left up to the bookseller’s own internal policy.

In evaluting a company’s privacy policy, a reader needs to look at how much wiggle room it contains. Sometimes you almost need a lawyer to figure out what it really means. For example, Apple says this in its e-books privacy policy:

“Apple shares personal information with companies who provide services such as information processing, extending credit, fulfilling customer orders, delivering products to you, managing and enhancing customer data, providing customer service, assessing your interest in our products and services, and conducting customer research or satisfaction surveys."

Amazon, for its part, uses this language:

“As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy stores, subsidiaries, or business units. In such transactions, customer information generally is one of the transferred business assets.”

One way to look at the potential threat to reader privacy is this: When you purchase an e-book, you are not really purchasing a book but rather access to the contents of that book in a vast, cloud-based digital system. As e-book designers add features to the system to make it smoother for the reader, they inevitably end up gathering more information about the reader. The database will not only show what you bought, but when you bought it, how fast you read it, what parts you went back and read again, and what page you were on when you put it down.

How important is any of this? Readers have to decide that for themselves. But in an e-book world, they would do well to get over the notion that a book is something they’re reading in the privacy of their own surroundings. The cloud-based data system knows what you are reading and a lot more personal information as well.

(And, yes—if you’re the one reading this article—that data system also knows you took that job of snooping around a store for a mere five bucks.)

***

William Petrocelli is an author, a bookseller, and a former attorney. For the past 35 years, he has been the co-owner, with his wife Elaine, of Book Passage in San Francisco and Corte Madera, California.

Book Passage picks on the Ronn Owens Show

2011-12-21T13:55:00.000-08:00

Elaine Petrocelli was on the Ronn Owens Show on KGO on December 21st, where she and show host Ronn Owens discussed some recommended books. The shows feature engaging conversation and excellent reading recommendations! Here is a checklist of the titles they spoke about. A more fully annotated and illustrated page listing these books has been posted to the Book Passage website.

GIFT BOOKS

Grantland
McSweeneys $19.95
call (415) 927-0960 to place an order

Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees
Nancy Hugo $29.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781604692198

Italian Racing Bicycles: The People, The Products, The Passion
Guido Rubino $39.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781934030660

The Conference of the Birds
Peter Sis/Rumi $29.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781594203060

Italian Baker (revised)
Carol Field $35.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781607741060

Pilgrimage ***
Annie Leibovitz $50.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780375505089

NON-FICTION

Extra Virginity
Tom Mueller $25.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780393070217

The Time of Our Lives: A Conversation about America
Tom Brokaw $26.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781400064588

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
Robert Massie $ 35.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780679456728

The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation
Elizabeth Letts, $26.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780345521088

The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food
Adam Gopnik $25.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780307593450

FICTION

The Language of Flowers
Vannessa Diffenbaugh $25.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780345525543

-- companion book
A Victorian Flower Dictionary
Mandy Kirkby, Vanessa Diffenbaugh $22.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780345532862

The Cat’s Table ***
Michael Ondaatje $26.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780307700117

The Buddha in the Attic
Julie Otsuka $22.00
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780307700001

The Drop
Michael Connelly $27.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780316069410

Love and Shame and Love ***
Peter Orner $24.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780316129398

Oracle of Stamboul
Michael David Lukas $13.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780062012104

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson $15.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780307949493

Dead Love zombie fiction
Linda Watanabe McFerrin $14.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781933330907

The Hunter not yet released
John Lescroart $26.95
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780525952565

KIDS BOOKS & BOOKS FOR YOUNGER READERS

Lonely Planet Not-for-Parents Travel Book
Michael DuBois, Katri Hilden, Jane Price
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781742208145

Lonely Planet Not-for-Parents London: Everything You Wanted to Know
Klay Lamprell
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781742208169

Lonely Planet Not-for-Parents Paris: Everything You Wanted to Know
Klay Lamprell
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781742208176

Lonely Planet Not-for-Parents New York: Everything You Wanted to Know
Klay Lamprell
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781742208152

Lonely Planet Not-for-Parents Rome: Everything You Wanted to Know
Klay Lamprell
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9781742208183

Time Travelling Fashionista
Biana Turetsky $17.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780316105422

Inheritance ***
Christopher Paolini $27.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780375856112

Book Thief
Markus Zusak $12.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780375842207

Here Comes Grandma!
Janet Lord and Julie Paschkis $13.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780805076660

Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site
Sherri Duskey Rinker (Author), Tom Lichtenheld (Illustrator) $16.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780811877824

Secrets at Sea
Richard Peck and Kelly Murphy $16.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780803734555

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell the Tales
Chris Van Allsburg $24.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780547548104

The Scorpio Races
Maggie Stiefvater $17.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780545224901

The Emerald Atlas
John Stephens $17.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780375868702

Bigger than a Bread Box
Laurel Snyder $16.99
http://www.bookpassage.com/book/9780375869167

*** some autographed copies available

Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend

2011-12-20T16:57:00.000-08:00

One of the most popular books at Book Passage this Holiday season is Susan Orlean's Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend (Simon & Schuster, $26.99). It is the story of a dog – a very special dog, as those who attended Orlean's earlier Book Passage event were fascinated and delighted to find out.

Rin Tin Tin was the name given to a puppy found on a WWI battlefield that went on to star in more than twenty films. Extraordinarily popular in the 1920's, Rin Tin Tin was a major movie star, reportedly won an Academy Award, and helped save Warner Brothers from bankruptcy. The dog’s name was subsequently given to several related German Shepherds featured in later films, books, comics, and radio and television programs.

Orlean’s book traces the legacy of not only an entertainment icon, but also a cultural icon which helped shape the changing role of dogs in American society, including military service. In her book, Orlean puts it this way: “I knew I loved the narrative of Rin Tin Tin because it contained so many stories within it: it was a tale of lost families, and of identity, and also of the way we live with animals; it was a story of luck, both good and bad, and the half turns that life takes all the time. It was a story of war as well as a story of amusement. It was an account of how we create heroes and what we want from them. It laid out, through the story of Rin Tin Tin, the whole range of devotion – to ideas and to a companion – as well as the pure, half-magical devotion an animal can have to a person.”

The book also tells the story of the American soldier – one time Oakland resident Lee Duncan, and his special relationship with the orphaned pup whom he found and called Rinty and brought to world fame. Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend is the poignant story of man’s love for man’s best friend. Recently, Susan Orlean took time to answer a few questions from Book Passage staffer & film buff Thomas Gladysz about her bestselling book.

Thomas Gladysz: In your book, you write about the Rin Tin Tin figure which sat on your grandfather’s desk which you admired as a youth. When and how did the idea of writing about Rin Rin Tin come to you as an adult and as a writer?

Susan Orlean: I hadn’t thought about Rin Tin Tin for decades. Then I was working on a story about animals in Hollywood for the New Yorker, and Rin Tin Tin’s name came up, as it inevitably does when you look into that particular subject. I was astonished by how powerful the memory was, and by how many memories rushed back the minute I was reminded of him. When I discovered that his story was far more complex than I had imagined – that he wasn’t merely a television character but in fact a real dog with a long and intricate history, I was fascinated – and immediately convinced that I had to write a book about him.

Thomas Gladysz: Rin Tin Tin was found as a puppy on a WWI battlefield. What was special about the relationship between Rin Tin Tin and the American soldier, Lee Duncan, who became the dog’s original owner & trainer?

Susan Orlean: The bond between devoted owners and dogs is universal. In the case of Lee and Rin Tin Tin, they were almost inseparable from the time they first came together, when the puppy was just a few days old. That gave them an extraordinary connection, as did Lee’s focus on training the dog and spending so much time with him. But there was something else – something that’s impossible to define, that made their connection so intense.

Thomas Gladysz: Lee Duncan was raised in an orphanage in Oakland, and visited there later in life with his famous canine. Does the Bay Area play a significant part in Lee Duncan’s life?

Susan Orlean: Lee’s years in Oakland molded him for life. He was only in the orphanage for four years, but they were formative ones, and even after his mother reclaimed him and took him back to southern California, he remained permanently fused to his memory of his days in Fred Finch. It was central to his character and his emotions. He visited Fred Finch many times throughout the remainder of his life, returning to Oakland as often as he could.

Thomas Gladysz: The early films which feature Rin Tin Tin – especially the silent films – are very entertaining. Rin Tin Tin himself had real charisma, and great athletic ability. Do you think Rinty was in any sense an actor?

Susan Orlean: Yes! He performs not just as a dog responding to commands but as if he had a sense of what he was trying to portray. I don’t think you can teach that; I think the dog had to have had a sense of being observed, of needing to put his heart into his behavior. Once you seen those early films, you can’t help but think he was an actor.

Thomas Gladysz: Your book takes readers through nearly 100 years of history and culture while examining the enduring appeal of Rin Tin Tin. Why do you think the dog, as a character and as a symbol, lasted so long? Could there be a Rin Tin Tin today?

Susan Orlean: Rin Tin Tin has lasted for several reasons. The people who were drawn into his life were unusually committed to the bigger idea of keeping his story alive, rather than what would have been easy — cash in and move on. And he connected with a need and desire the public has had to believe in a heroic character. Could we still feel that today? We’re in the post-heroic period these days, but we may be moving past that. The idea of a hero, of rising above circumstance, braving the risks, being selfless — those are eternal, and even if the last few decades of skepticism and disappointment have made it harder to believe in that, I think people will always want something to dream about. Maybe we’re ready to embrace Rin Tin Tin as that figure once again.

Thomas Gladysz: Finally, there have been many Rin Tin Tins. Do you have a favorite?

Susan Orlean: The dog who starred in the television series was the most beautiful of the Rin Tin Tins, and he was the dog I imprinted on as a kid, so that’s my favorite Rin Tin Tin to gaze at and pine for. But the first Rin Tin Tin is the most charismatic of them all, and his life was so amazing that it’s hard not to be awed by him. And he could jump over the moon.

Fans of Susan Orlean will be pleased to learn that the acclaimed writer has agreed to participate in the 21st annual Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference, which will takes place August 9th through August 12th in Corte Madera. Watch this blog and the Book Passage website for details.

Some recommended film books published in 2011

2011-12-11T16:05:00.001-08:00

There have been a number of excellent film books published in the course of the year. A number of them have looked back to classic Hollywood, and a number of them have been biographies, memories, or biographical or career studies. We've put together an annotated list of what we feel are some of the best films books from 2011. Each can be ordered through Book Passage.

Harlow in Hollywood: The Blonde Bombshell in theGlamour Capital, 1928-1937, by Darrell Rooney and Mark A. Vieira (Angel CityPress)

This is Jean Harlow like you'venever seen her before. Rooney is one of the foremost collectors of Harlowmemorabilia, and Vieira is one of the foremost authorities on classic Hollywood photography. (Vieira has a handful of otherrecommended pictorial books to his credit). They've joined forces in authoring thisgorgeous pictorial which not only tells the story of the life and career of thefamous platinum blonde but also features a remarkable assemblage of images, themajority of which are little known. Harlow islovely in most every one; this equally appealing and elegant book is a fittingtestimony to her legend.

Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, by Richard Rhodes (Doubleday)

What do actress Hedy Lamarr,avant-garde composer George Antheil, and your cell phone have in common? Theanswer is spread-spectrum radio, a revolutionary invention based on the rapidswitching of communications signals among a spread of different frequencies.Without this technology, many of the devices we take for granted, such as cellphones, wouldn’t work. As it turns out, the idea of spread-spectrum was thoughtup & patented not by a computer engineer in recent years, but by abeautiful actress and an experimental composer during WWII. Their idea, then,was to create a jam-proof radio guidance system for torpedoes. Pulitzer Prizewinner Rhodes tells their story.

John Huston: Courage and Art, byJeffrey Meyers (Crown Archetype)

As much as anyone – and perhapsmore, John Huston was a literary filmmaker; thirty-four of his thirty-sevenfilms adapted important novels, stories or plays. In fact, Huston got his startas a journalist and short story writer before moving on to the movies and workas a screenwriter. Huston’s Oscar nominated success as a screenwriter led tohis work as a director. He then made an auspicious debut with a film based on anovel, The Maltese Falcon (1941). Fittingly, Huston’s life story isrecounted by a literary scholar in a fine new biography. Meyers’ briskly toldbiography of the writer, director, actor (Chinatown), and Hollywoodbon vivant details one of the more colorful lives of the 20th century.

Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond, by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (Knopf)

Michael Lindsay-Hogg is aBritish director best known for his work on stage, on television - notably themuch admired Brideshead Revisited,and for his concert films and music documentaries including The Beatles’ LetIt Be and The Rolling StonesRock and Roll Circus. Lindsay-Hogg is also the son of Warner Bros.star and Academy Award nominee Geraldine Fitzgerald - Wuthering Heights (1939). His biological father, as isrevealed in this beautifully written book, is none other than Orson Welles.

Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl in Hollywood, byEmily W. Leider (University of California Press)

Leider, the author of acclaimed biographies Rudolph Valentino and MaeWest, has penned a thoroughly researched and stylishly written biographyof an accomplished actress who was more than just her screen credits. Leiderputs it this way in her introduction. “From day one Myrna Loy’s screen imagehas conjured mystery, a sense of something withheld, something intriguingbecause it seems unknowable. ‘Who is she?’ was a question posed in the first fanmagazine article published about her, in 1925. This book attempts to fill insome of the gaps and to counter the relative neglect that has befallen herabundant legacy.” Leider accomplishes this and more in detailing the career ofan actress whose career began in the silent era and lasted into the era oftelevision.

Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, by Brian Kellow (Viking)

For better or worse, and thereare plenty on both sides of the fence still willing to argue their case,Pauline Kael (1919-2001) is the most influential film critic of the last 50years. Not only did Kael influence a generation of critics - namely those weread today, she also affected the climate for filmmaking in America(according to Roger Ebert). Her witty, biting, and highly opinionated reviews -many of which were published in the NewYorker over the course of Kael's 20 year association with the magazine -also made her the most prominent film critic of her time. Kellow's newbiography shows what made Kael tick - namely, her love of the movies. Inreference to her film criticism, Kael once wrote "I'm frequently asked whyI don't write my memoirs. I think I have." Also just out is a 750 pagecollection of Kael's criticism and essays, TheAge of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael (Library of America), edited by Sanford Schwartz. Consider it a companion book, and a kindof alternative biography.

Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood'sLegendary Director, by Marilyn Ann Moss (University Press of Kentucky)

Along with Frank Capra and JohnFord, Raoul Walsh (1887-1980) was one of Hollywood'searly mavericks. Walsh's career spanned more than fifty years - from the silentera through the 1960's, and he helped create the American action adventurefilm. Whether directing a swashbuckler, a Western, a gangster film, a war epic,a drama or even a musical, there was often something of a romantic flair aboutWalsh's films - much of which has held up remarkably well. The Thief of Bagdad (1924), What Price Glory? (1926), Sadie Thompson (1928), The Roaring Twenties (1939), Dark Command (1940), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), High Sierra (1941), White Heat (1949) and TheNaked and the Dead (1958) are all his work. Moss's thoroughly researchedbook is both exemplary and groundbreaking, as this is the first full-lengthbiography of a dominant figure in the history of film.

Rin TinTin: The Life and the Legend, by Susan Orlean (Simon &Schuster)

Rin Tin Tin tells the story of the famous canine whowent from an orphaned puppy found on a WWI battlefield in France to anextraordinarily popular Hollywood movie star (so much so he helped save WarnerBros. from bankruptcy and reportedly won an Academy Award) in the silent era tointernational icon and television star in the ensuing decades. Rin Tin Tinis also the poignant exploration of the bond between one man (the lonelyAmerican soldier who found Rinty) and one dog – as well as a history of 20thentertainment and the changing role of dogs in the American society. As such,this book strays from film history to cultural history - but is nevertheless agreat read. In its review, The New York Times Book Review asked“Do dogs deserve biographies?” In Orlean’s hands, the answer is anaffirmative “Bark.”

Silent Visions: Discovering Early Hollywood and New York Through the Films of HaroldLloyd, by John Bengtson (Santa Monica Press)

John Bengtson is anarcheologist of the cinema. And his new book, the last in a trilogy-of-sorts,is a visual excavation of the past. Following books devoted to Buster Keatonand Charlie Chaplin, Silent Visionsnow explores the films of Harold Lloyd. Bengtson’s detailed examination andcomparison of scene stills and screen captures with old maps, city directories,newspapers, photographs and dusty building records (and yes, Google maps too)reveals not only where Lloyd shot films in Los Angeles and New York, but alsohow those two great cities have changed in the meantime. “History is hidden inthe background of films” is this way lawyer by day / film historian by nightput it in a recent interview. Bengtson'snew book is a brilliant then-and-now triumph. Silent Visions includes a foreword by 2010 Academy Award winningfilm historian Kevin Brownlow.

Sitting Pretty: The Life and Times of Clifton Webb, by Clifton Webb and DavidL. Smith (University Press of Mississippi)

The never finishedautobiography of one of the top moneymakers at 20^thCentury Fox, ascompleted by David L. Smith. Though his star has waned in the years since hisdeath, Webb (1889-1966) knew pretty much everyone who was anyone duringHollywood’s golden age. This book makes for interesting reading, and includes aforeword by actor Robert Wagner.

Spencer Tracy: A Biography, by James Curtis (Knopf)

Since his death, Spencer Tracyhas become one of the cinema’s most misunderstood figures and the subject ofunsubstantiated claims, many of which center on the nature of his 26-year,extra-marital relationship with actress Katharine Hepburn. Which is a shame,because Tracy is still considered one of the finest actors in film history Thesturdy, congenial everyman won back-to-back Oscars in 1937 and 1938, and in thecourse of his long career, was nominated for the Best Actor award a record ninetimes. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Tracy among the ten greatestmale stars. Spencer Tracy attempts to set the record straightregarding the stories and legends which have grown up around the actor. Andthat it does in a detailed and definitive manner. This impressive, 1,000 pagebook concludes with a frank appraisal of the bookshelf worth of recentbiographies of Hepburn, many of which the author dismisses.

Thomas Ince: Hollywood's Independent Pioneer, by Brian Taves (University Pressof Kentucky)

Ince turned an art form into abusiness. Progressing from actor to screenwriter and director, Incerevolutionized the industry by developing the role of the producer. In additionto building the first major Hollywood studio - dubbed "Inceville,"this industry pioneer and "Father of the Western" had a hand in more than 800 films. Taves chronicles Ince's lifefrom his early days on the stage to his sudden death at a time when he wasabout to join forces with William Randolph Hearst. Taves details Ince's impacton the Hollywood production system, his creation of the first American moviesstarring Asian performers, and his cinematic exploration of the status of women. Until now, Ince (1882-1924), one of the most influential and neglectedof early moguls, had not been the subject of a biography. This authoritativework, scrupulously researched, offers considerable insight.

This list was compiled by Book Passage employee Thomas Gladysz, an early film buff and the Director of the Louise Brooks Society, an internet-based archive and international fan club devoted to the legendary silent film star. He has contributed to books on the actress, organized exhibits, appeared on television and radio, and introduced Brooks' films around the world. Last year, he edited and wrote the introduction to the “Louise Brooks Edition” of Margarete Bohme’s The Diary of a Lost Girl.

Honoring the Late, Great Steve Jobs at Book Passage

2011-11-17T17:01:00.001-08:00

Book Passage bookseller Allison Page unpacks boxes of the new biography of Apple CEO Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson at Book Passage in the San Francisco Ferry Building.
(Photos: REUTERS/Robert Galbraith)

Interview with Spencer Tracy Biographer James Curtis

2011-11-14T17:15:00.001-08:00

From the time of his screen debut in 1930, Spencer Tracy was considered one of the finest actors in Hollywood. The sturdy, congenial everyman won back-to-back Oscars in 1937 and 1938, and in the course of his long career, was nominated for the Best Actor award a record nine times. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Tracy among the ten greatest male stars in film history.

Adept at both drama and comedy, Tracy appeared in many popular and critically acclaimed films including The Power and the Glory (1933), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Tortilla Flat (1942), The Old Man and the Sea (1953), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and what would become his final work, the celebrated Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). Tracy, then 67 years old and in failing health, died only 17 days after filming was completed on the then topical Stanley Kramer directed film.

Since his death, Tracy has become one of the cinema’s most maligned and even misunderstood figures, the subject of both lurid stories and unsubstantiated claims, many of which center on the nature of his 26-year relationship with actress Katharine Hepburn.

Last month, a major new biography of the legendary actor – the first in more than 40 years – was published. At more than 1,000 pages, Spencer Tracy: A Biography (Knopf, $39.95) attempts to set the record straight regarding the actor and the stories which have grown up around him. It does that in a rather detailed and definitive manner. This impressive book concludes with a frank appraisal of the bookshelf worth of recent biographies of Hepburn, many of which the author dismisses.

Spencer Tracy: A Biography is the work of James Curtis, one of America’s leading film biographers. Curtis is the author of W.C. Fields: A Biography (2003), which was named one of the Notable Books of the Year by the New York Times, as well as James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters (1998), and Between Flops (1982), a biography of Preston Sturges. Curtis also edited and wrote the introductions to Mae Clarke’s autobiography, Featured Player (1996), and John Weld’s long unfinished September Song: A Biography of Walter Huston (1998).

Curtis will be speaking about his new biography on Wednesday, November 16th at Book Passage in San Francisco's Ferry Building. Start time for this talk is 6 pm. Recently, Curtis answered a few questions about his new book, which has been described by film critic Leonard Maltin as “a scrupulously researched life story that is also well-written and completely absorbing … This is the book Spencer Tracy deserves.”

Thomas Gladysz: Your earlier work includes biographies of Preston Sturges, James Whale and W.C. Fields. How did you find your way to Spencer Tracy?

James Curtis: I think of these biographies as a suite of books looking at the same industry, at approximately the same time, from different angles. I’d done a writer, a director, and a comedian, so it was only natural to do an actor at some point. Tracy was always a personal favorite, and he really hadn’t been done since 1969, so the choice was easy. My wife had a business relationship with John Tracy Clinic, and it was through them that I was able to make contact with Susie Tracy, the daughter of Spencer and Louise Tracy.

Thomas Gladysz: Despite acclaim, back-to-back Academy Awards and an additional seven Oscar nominations, Tracy is not someone film historians or even film buffs talk about much these days. Do you feel his long, extra-marital affair with nine-time co-star Katherine Hepburn has overshadowed the telling of his life story?

James Curtis: I think so. Katharine Hepburn survived Tracy by 36 years, and there have been countless books about her. Because of all the misinformation out there about him, it was easy for the authors of these books to cast him in an unfavorable light. Here was possibly the greatest actor of his generation, and he had been reduced over time to the status of a supporting player in the Katharine Hepburn story.

Thomas Gladysz: Do you feel Tracy had a career defining film, or films? Which do you feel were his best works? Do you have a personal favorite?

James Curtis: Tracy made 70-plus films, so it’s difficult to single out just one as career-defining. I think what really put him over with the movie going public was the variety of roles he was given when he moved to M-G-M in 1935. In the space of a couple of years he played an innocent man deranged by mob violence in Fury (1936), the young priest in San Francisco (1936), a newspaper editor in the screwball comedy Libeled Lady (1936), a soldier turned criminal in They Have a Gun (1937), and the Portuguese fisherman in Captains Courageous (1937). That was quite a range to show for a top flight attraction at that time. The industry took notice with Academy Award nominations for San Francisco and Captains Courageous, and of course he won for the latter. And then he did Boys Town (1938) and won a second Oscar for his work as Father Flanagan.

Some of his best works were comedies – The Show-Off (1934), Libeled Lady, Woman of the Year (1942), Adam’s Rib (1949). He could do something as gut-wrenching as Fury and then play farce comedy with equal authority. Few actors could do that convincingly. That said, I’d have to say my personal favorite is Inherit the Wind (1960). He did a masterful job as Darrow, and the material is as important today as it was 50 years ago. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen it.

Thomas Gladysz: You had access to Tracy’s papers. What were some of the surprising things you discovered about the man?

James Curtis: First, that his bouts with the bottle weren’t as frequent as I had been led (by previous books) to believe. And then there’s the depth of responsibility he felt – to his family, to his work, to an industry that didn’t always return the favor. In college he thought he’d study medicine, but quickly fell into acting. Later, when he was making steady money at Fox, he connected with an impoverished medical student and completely funded his education at McGill. Tracy felt that by going into the theatre he had left the world with one less doctor. This was his way of making up for that.

Thomas Gladysz: Your book doesn’t flinch when it comes to Tracy’s shortcomings, especially his drinking. The portrait on the cover (by Irving Penn) even suggests a conflicted personality, trapped by circumstance. Is that a fair assessment of the man?

James Curtis: Entrapment seems to have been a constant theme in his life. Circumstances compelled him to work as he did, just as his son’s deafness led his wife Louise to found John Tracy Clinic. There were aspects to his life that were larger than what a single human being could handle. Both Spencer and Louise Tracy were enormously gifted people who struggled to do their best with the cards dealt them. Neither was perfect, but there were aspects to both these people that bordered on genius. It’s not my job to be judgmental; rather I have aimed to illuminate their lives and what they did for others.

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Thomas Gladysz: At more than 1,000 pages, your biography is larger than similar books. What was it about Tracy’s life and career that required such an expansive approach?

James Curtis: There were so many different threads to the story – Tracy’s technique as an actor, the alcoholism, the marriage, his Catholicism, the Hepburn relationship, the weird business of being a movie star. And then, of course, all the films and plays he did. My approach to a first draft is to use everything that might possibly make it into the final book, then to trim and shape the material. The manuscript was much longer; we cut a lot. But we came to a point where we had to decide what we were willing to lose; we realized we had cut a lot of the fat, and that we were now down to the muscle. That’s when my editor decided to let it run that extraordinary length – 878 pages of text. There are still a lot of things we could have removed that the reader would never have missed, but even if we cut it by half, it was still going to demand a great commitment on the part of the reader. So why not let it run its course? I’ve had people tell me that they would have been perfectly happy if the book ran 1,500 pages.

Halloween at The Night Circus

2011-11-10T18:17:00.001-08:00

Okay, we've heard of the night shift. But what about the Night Circus shift? If you had the chance to stop by Book Passage Corte Madera on Halloween, then you saw Book Passage booksellers in costume inspired by Erin Morgenstern's novel The Night Circus. Fun times! And a great book!

Check it out >>

Book Passage Corte Madera staff in Halloween costume inspired by The Night Circus

Interview with Gregory Maguire - Author of Out of Oz

2011-11-09T17:25:00.000-08:00

Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author of Wicked, returns with the final chapter in his series of books set in a dark, politicized Land of Oz. Following where Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men left off, Out of Oz is a magical journey rife with revelations and reversals, reprisals and surprises—the hallmarks of the brilliant and unique imagination of Maguire. Book Passage welcomes Gregory Maguire on Friday, November 11th at 7:00pm. More info here. Book Passage staff member Zack Ruskin spoke with Maguire about his newest book. Their conversation follows.

Author Gregory Maguire

Zack Ruskin:When did you decide to take your fourth trip to the Land ofOz? Was there unfinished business from your first three novels set there?

Gregory Maguire: When I reached the end of volume two, Son of a Witch, Ithought the two first volumes sat together on the shelf very handsomely. Like,say, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, or the original publications about thoseMarch girls, Little Women and Good Wives (which eventually were publishedtogether as the Little Women we know so well today). But it is true that, inorder to lend the fantasy novels in Oz a great sense of verisimilitude—ofgrittiness, of sordor as well as glamour—I had left a lot of plot strandsdangling. Face it, that is how most of our lives are lived, with less thanadequate knowledge about how our friends and enemies, our children and ourparents, actually lived before we came along or will live after we die. Thismeant that the starting material, the yeast as it were of the final two books,were entirely in place when it came time to draft A Lion Among Men and Out of Oz.

Zack Ruskin :The final installment in the Wicked Years is titled Out of Oz. Is there intent on your end to expand the world of the series, or does the“out” refer more to the book’s place as a closing chapter?

Gregory Maguire: I don’t want to give anything away, but I will say that Out of Oz is a title that has many different overtones. For one thing, it hearkensback to an archaic way of talking about the news from a dark and distant land:“What’s the news out of Africa? What’s thenews out of Indochina?” “What’s the news outof the dugout, the PTA High Command,” etc. It also, of course, implies theworld beyond Oz, and that world involves a girl we have met before, namedDorothy. Since Dorothy would make a return visit to Oz, she would have to comethere from “out of Oz,” and that is how the novel opens. Finally, or nearlyfinally, I was happy in coming up on that phrase because all the original Oznovels ended in “of Oz.” Think about it. The Wizard of Oz. The Marvelous Land of Oz. Dorthy and the Wizard of Oz. The Emerald City of Oz. So I liked that affinity, too, of phrases.

Zack Ruskin :From a technical standpoint, with a 519 page book like Out of Oz, when do you know you’ve finished? Does the page count simply reflect howlong it took you to tell the final story, or did you want the last book to havea more substantial impact?

Gregory Maguire: I began the book knowing what the last scene was going to belike—indeed, I wrote a version of the last few pages about 15 years ago, when Idrafted an aborted sequel to Wicked called The Education of Tin and Straw. Butit is true that much of the novel had to be written in order for me tounderstand what it was about. There are a lot of characters to give tendermercies to, and a lot of mysteries to resolve, and I was resolved not to rushit, or it would feel like rushing around the landscape of Oz with a Zamboni,smoothing out bumps without regard to which bumps needed to remain…

Zack Ruskin :What’s the bigger challenge: reducing your story to the fewwords of a children’s book or filling the pages of an adult novel?

Gregory Maguire: I think that writing for children is much harder for thereason you suggest. Indeed, I am not a proficient writer of short stories orpicture books, and while I love poetry I am not compressed, concise enough.Look at how long my answers are to your questions! Still, the best ofchildren’s writing is strong, compact, revelatory. I think of books like Charlotte's Web and Tuck Everlasting, books that don’t have an extra sentence in them. Or stories slimand strong as Horton Hears a Who, Where The Wild Things Are, or Millions of Cats. Those books work as deftly as poetry. I’m in awe of writers who can dothat. (M. B. Goffstein, picture book writer, is one who excels at it. Herlittle books are like haiku.)

Zack Ruskin: What does Oz exemplify to you? What facets of the settingafforded you the chance to set four novels there?

Gregory Maguire: I had always loved the countries of Narnia, Neverland, evenWonderland. I came a bit later to Prydain and to Earthsea and Middle-earth, andliked them too though they were less clear in my mind. What five of the six ofthose countries mentioned above, however, have in common is their essentialBritishness. They were discovered and invented either by Englishmen or by anAmerican in homage to those same books. The one exception is Ursula Le Guin’sEarthsea books, which is more like The Odyssey than anything else.

This is to say, the only truly American magical landscape isOz. When I thought about it (sixteen, eighteen, twenty years ago), I realizedthat Oz had length and breadth and complexity, even in L. Frank Baum’s fairlysimple and comic tales, that matched the ladscape and cultural differences ofthe different parts of our country. I began to see it was a metaphor largeenough for US. Narnia was too small, the Shire in the Tolkien books toocozy-villagey for us. It would take a broad, disassociated landscape to dealwith what we have to deal with in this country, and Oz presented itself for myuse. Luckily, the copyright on Oz had just lapsed when I began…. (I say luckilybecause I knew nothing of copyright law when I began. I just began.)

Zack Ruskin :When you’re working in a setting outside of reality, whatkind of parameters do you set to ensure readers never feel (unintentionally)lost or confused?

Gregory Maguire: I am a great admirer of maps, and I have drawn all the mapsfor my four books myself. (They are beautifully redrawn by Douglas Smith, butevery particular of them, including even how the borders are drawn, how themountains and streets and marshlands are indicated, are my design.) I also, inthe later two books, supply time lines, genealogies, and summaries of recenthistory—a kind of “Our story so far” summary—for those who have been so movedas to read other fiction in the years in between I supply them installments. Isall this extra armature useful? It is hard to say. It is certainly useful tome, because I don’t want to get things wrong. (And in the first two books I didget a few things wrong, and had to bend over backwards to find a way to makethings right.)

Zack Ruskin: Some of your novels take a familiar folk tale or piece ofpopular fiction as their inspiration, but with the Wicked Years, the territoryis more uncharted. As you approached your fourth book in the series, did youstill feel some kind of distant allegiance to L. Frank Baum and his vision?

Gregory Maguire: It is interesting to note that Baum wrote 14 novels aboutOz, and then after his death “sanctioned” authors wrote several dozen more. AsI grew up, only Baum’s first two novels were available in my public library. Iknew there were lots of other books out there, but I couldn’t find them. Ithink in some ways their absence provided me with some of the urgency to findout what Oz was like, and some of the license to my imagination to invent it.When, a seasoned adult writer, I finally did begin to find copies and readthem, I was less than impressed. My own belief that Oz had a history the wayNarnia and Middle-earth did was rudely snapped when I did find the later books.They unraveled in scarcely-recognizable chronological order, being moreinterchangeable, like episodes in “The Simpsons” viewable in any which order.So I felt Baum himself had, in a funny way, given me dispensation to be moreconcrete about history, about how our actions shape the actions of people whowill come after us, by choosing not to do that himself. Finally, for those whoknow the Baum books well, there are many sly tips of the hat to the inventionsof Baum in some of the minor characters in my novels.

Set of the original Oz books by L. Frank Baum

Zack Ruskin: There’s a definite resurgence of folk tales being used assource material. What qualities of the “fairy tale” lend itself so naturally tobeing reinterpreted over and over again?

Gregory Maguire: The traditional fairy tale is like a trunk that has beenhanded down through the generations. The lock is smashed, the interior compartmentis missing, the name painted on the top is illegible, the braces have beenreplaced three times and don’t match anything else. This is to say that thevery oldest tales very often betray, through missing bits and unmatchedsymbols, both evidence of their age and also an invitation to the inventivemind. I’ll give you an example. Why, in Cinderella, is her coach made from apumpkin? Why not a rutabaga, a bird’s nest, a scuttle of coal, a lemon meringuepie? There is probably an answer—some storyteller in a North European farmsteadhad a big pumpkin on the hearth that night, and the image held. But why, then,glass slippers? Glass slippers have nothing to do with farming life. And theyhave nothing to do with the story, I mean, that they are glass—except perhapsthat they are unique, one of a kind (so when the Prince brings out one slipperand Cinderella its match, she proves in her grime and lowliness to be thesplendid woman he fell in love with.) But why not slippers made ofhummingbird’s wings? Of pumpkin rinds? The facts of those inconsistenciesbetween images, of the unexplained reasons for why things are as they are,provide the handholds and the openings for a writer wanting to work with thematerial. Then again, fairy tales come with their built-in audience. Much moreappealing to the reader browsing in the library or bookstore to pick up a booktelling secrets about Cinderella than to risk spending time and money on astory about Pizzarina, the crusty daughter of the wizard’s pizza chef.

Zack Ruskin: Did the smash success of the Broadway adaptation of Wickedhave any bearing on your choice to revisit the Wicked saga? Have you a found a new audience of readersfrom fans of the musical?

Gregory Maguire: In a word, yes. Wicked had sold three quarters of a millioncopies before the play opened, and a few years later it had sold four timesthat amount. (The Wicked Years sequence has sold 7.5 million copies worldwideto date.) With the surge in readership came a surge in reader mail, and thebarrage of questions from readers who wanted to know more became a force I hadto deflect or drown under.

Still from the Broadway musical adaption of Wicked

Zack Ruskin: With the final book in the Wicked Series now behind you,what’s coming next? More novels in the vein of stand-alone titles like Mirror,Mirror and Lost?

Gregory Maguire: I am not sure. Any ideas? Maybe it is time for Pizzarina…

Zack Ruskin: Your stories tend to be rich in story, dark in subjectand wholly original. Are there certain elements or traits to your storytellingthat you make a conscious effort to include, or are the themes of your workmore organic in nature?

Gregory Maguire: I love fantasy novels. My favorite is T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, the retelling of the King Arthur cycle that inspired themusical “Camelot.” What I loved best about that erudite work is that it waspoetic, comic, romantic, adventurous, magical, without ever losing sight ofbeing morally serious. Indeed, without that final component, I would never findmyself much interested in all the rest. So I try to make sure to pose a moralquestion to myself in the writing of a novel, even if readers never notice, orever seem to be able to put their finger on what it is that is motivating themto turn the pages. I believe the understanding that our choices haveconsequences, even in worlds in which magic has some sway, is the signal most importantelement to include in any novel.

Zack Ruskin: My new go-to question is to ask about the potential fora series to be rendered as graphic novels. Do you see your Wicked Years booksas potential candidates for that medium?

Gregory Maguire: Interesting you should ask that—I have just begun to readgraphic novels myself. Just this past weekend I finally read Chris Ware’smagnificent Jimmy Corrigan, and before that I read David Small’s Stitches,Craig Thompson’s Blankets, and I’m deep inside the wonderful Wonderstruck by BrianSelznick, which is part prose drama and part silent film on quickly turnedpages. So I will be tussling with your question quite a bit in the months tocome.

Zack Ruskin: You’ve stated before that the idea for Wicked came fromyour desire to explore the idea of whether people are truly ever inherentlyevil. Would say you’ve satisfied your curiosity on the subject?

Gregory Maguire: Do you mean have I come to a conclusion if people are evertruly inherently evil? No. But I have concluded, anecdotally, that I believethe roots of human demonstrations of evil—when they are individual andspecific, not cultural or institutional—lie deeply in something I would callself-hatred. I believe that the biological imperative not to kill or main one’sself runs so deeply (even if ultimately breachable) that self-disgust is thenturned outward, into contempt, into violence, into the dismissal of others asless than human, and therefore less deserving of justice, mercy, and tolerance.

Zack Ruskin: What, if any, elements of the classic 1939 film "The Wizardof Oz" influenced your Wicked Years series?

Gregory Maguire: I knew the film before I knew the books—I think this storyis the only one in my childhood (except maybe "Peter Pan") of which this can besaid. Well, I didn’t see much TV or many films as a child. But the film isstill under copyright so I had to tread carefully, evoking my Oz throughinference rather than direct quote. (No one can sing “Over the Rainbow” in theWicked Years, though I can and did suggest that Elphaba sing a song of longingthat dissolved like a rainbow after a storm… ) I found Judy Garland’s slightly gluey, over-earnest depiction of Dorothyboth attractive and a little off, and it was amusing to build on that for mydepiction of Dorothy in Out of Oz rather than in the far more sober andsomewhat humorless stout little Dorothy in the original novel.

Still from the 1939 classic "The Wizard of Oz"

Zack Ruskin: When a reader finishes Out of Oz, what are you hopingthey’ve taken away from your series as a whole?

Gregory Maguire: I think I could make a statement about the series on awhole, about its themes taken all together, like this: Most of us are notstuffed with extraordinary looks, gifts, powers; yet the world we have to livein requires extraordinary intervention. If we are not magically powerful, thenwe must find other ways to use our lesser powers to the good of the world, forif we do not, we are condemned to founder in darkness. Heroes and heroines(like Harry Potter, like Elphaba Thropp) can give us courage, but us lessmagnificent mortals must work together to make magic happen.

What Are We Reading? Ashes by Ilsa Bick

2011-10-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

Ashes $17.99

It could happen tomorrow . . .

An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device, wiping out every computerized system, and killing billions.

Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. Now desperate to find out what happened after the pulse crushes her to the ground, Alex meets up with Tom—a young soldier—and Ellie, a girl whose grandfather was killed by the EMP.

For this improvised family and the others who are spared, it’s now a question of who can be trusted and who is no longer human.

Author Ilsa J. Bick crafts a terrifying and thrilling novel about a world that could be ours at any moment, where those left standing must learn what it means not just to survive, but to live amidst the devastation.

Ilsa J. Bick is a child psychiatrist, as well as a film scholar, former Air Force major, and now a full-time author. Her critically acclaimed first YA novel, Draw the Dark, won the 2011 Westchester Fiction Award and was named a Bank Street College 2011 Best Book. Ilsa currently lives with her family and several furry creatures in rural Wisconsin, near a Hebrew cemetery. One thing she loves about the neighbors: they’re very quiet and only come around for sugar once in a blue moon. You can visit her online at www.ilsajbick.com.

Purchase a copy of Ashes

Lost Angel Walkabout

2011-10-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

By Dick Jordan
Adventure travel writer Linda Ballou knows how to bring home a great story when she goes on a trip: Get into trouble. For her, the deeper the water, the fouler the weather, the more hazards underfoot and overhead, the better the story will be to tell.

Think about the alternative. You come back from your journey and tell your friends and family that you encountered no flights delays, no bad meals, no lost or stolen personal items, no bed bugs at your hotel, and not a drop of rain fell on your head. How do they respond to this tale of no-woe-at-all? By yawning.

There is no danger that you will nod off reading Ballou’s Lost Angel Walkabout: One Traveler’s Tales. Instead, you want to yell “No, Linda don’t go there!’ or “Linda, whatever we’re you thinking?”, or “Watch out, Linda! Watch out!”

Linda’s travels have taken her on a wide path across much of the globe. One of the reason I enjoyed her book such much is that I have actually ventured—albeit as a less adventurous traveler—to several of the places she writes about in Alaska, Arizona, the British Virgin Islands, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, and Wyoming.

In “Irish Mist” Ballou is—as often as the case in Lost Angel Walkabout—on horseback. She says “The Irish ride like they drive—with cheerful abandon!” Then she throws caution to the wind in the willows and goes on the equestrian equivalent of “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.”

While arm-chair travelers may deem Ballou possessed by a devil-may-care approach to danger on the road, to me her stories express a confident “What’s the big deal? I can do this!” attitude that probably comes from growing up in Southeast Alaska where self-sufficiency is an essential trait.

For example, when on a walk in a marshy area frequented by bears near Glacier Bay, Alaska, she found the tide beginning to rise rapidly and herself at risk of spending a cold night far from the comfort of her lodgings. She obviously lived to tell about her escape, so I’m not giving too much away be quoting from the penultimate paragraph of her story, “Bird Walk on the Wild Side,” while leaving you, the reader, to enjoy the final, humorous conclusion to it:

“My panic rose at the sight of matted areas of grass where large animals had bedded down the night before. I was over-heating from exertion and lectured myself out loud to stay focused, to mind each step, and to not hurry—twisting an ankle now would spell disaster. Keeping my center of gravity low, knees bent for balance on the boulders, I made a Groucho Marx exit through the marsh to the forest trailhead.”

Not all of Ballou’s travels involved risk of life and limb; some were emotionally challenging. In “Water Dogs,” she recounts a sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands with her mother. It was not their first trip together, and she writes:

“Traveling with Mom is like swimming in embryonic soup. It’s as though the cells that once divided and multiplied seek to rejoin themselves. A calm feeling, like being rocked in the lap of creation, fills me when I hold her hand. Our hearts beat in perfect rhythm. I feel grounded in the presence of my eternal witness, the only person who has been waiting for me at the end of all of my twisted adventures.”

But this time, it was stress, not calm, that both mother and daughter encountered. Her mother, who had wanted for years to make this trip, became frustrated when neither swim fins nor mask fit properly, thwarting her initial attempts at snorkeling. The story has a happy ending in the water that involves food—hot dogs— but you will have to buy the book to learn how this humble American wiener saved the day and the trip.

Here’s what Michael Shapiro, author of A Sense of Place and Guatemala: A Journey Through the Land of the Maya, and faculty member for the Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference says about Lost Angel Walkabout:

“Whether river rafting in the vast wilderness of her Alaska homeland or trekking through the emerald hills of New Zealand, Ballou's evocative writing takes you there. She reminds us that in a frenetic world connecting with nature's beauty can serve as our salvation.

Legendary travel writer, Tim Cahill, another member of the Book Passage conference faculty, calls Linda’s book

“a spirited collection of travel narratives recounting … haps, mishaps, and serendipitous adventures … Some of the stories might make you glad you stayed home, while others will inspire you to toss the TV clicker out the window and get up off the couch to explore our beautiful planet. All of these tales let you share the sensual experience of being there without straining one muscle, getting altitude sickness, or tipping your canoe."

“Lost Angel” in the book’s title comes from her place of residence—Los Angeles, the City of Angels, not from Ballou being constantly lost when away from home. And the “Walkabout” part? Well, if I lived in L.A., I’d be wanting to head for remote parts of the world as often as possible to get away from the press of humanity in that city, too.

(From time to time travel writer Dick Jordan posts book reviews under the “Armchair Travel” and “Book Review” sections of his blog, Tales Told From The Road. His last post to the Book(ed) Passage blog was about Living Abroad in Costa Rica, and the iPhone/iPad app, Costa Rica Trip Ideas, by travel writer Erin Van Rheenen. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

When Dick isn’t traveling, you can usually find him hanging out with other members of Left Coast Writers at the Book Passage store in Corte Madera on the evening of the first Monday of each month. He thanks Linda Ballou for providing him with a complimentary copy of Lost Angel Walkabout for review'; you can You can buy the book through the Book Passage Web site.).

Jeffrey Eugenides visits Book Passage October 15

2011-10-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

Jeffrey Eugenides, the author of two beloved and truly great novels, Middlesex (winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize) and the now-classic The Virgin Suicides (made into a haunting film by Sofia Coppola), returns with one of the most anticipated novels of the year — a story about modern love.

And what's more, Jeffrey Eugenides will be reading from and discussing his new book at Book Passage on Saturday, October 15th at 4 pm. It's a rare West Coast appearance by the celebrated author, and an event not to be missed.

It's the early 1980s — the country is in a deep recession (sound familiar), and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafes on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to the Talking Heads ~~Foster the People~~. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.

Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, pre-nups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

About the Author

Jeffrey Eugenides grew up in metro Detroit and attended Brown and Stanford Universities. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published by FSG to great acclaim in 1993. He has received numerous awards for his work. In 2003, Eugenides received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (FSG, 2002), which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and France’s Prix Médicis.

blogged by thomas gladysz

Interview with Bill Bryson - Author of At Home

2011-10-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

Bill Bryson is the prolific, hilarious mind behind such cherished classics as A Walk in the Woods and A Short History of Nearly Everything. On Monday, October 24^th at 7;00pm, Bill Bryson will discuss At Home: A Short History of Private Life ($15.95 paperback) at Dominican University of California (Angelico Hall) in San Rafael, California. Please join us at this special Book Passage sponsored event. More info and tickets here.

In At Home, Bryson takes readers on a room-by-room tour through his own house, using each room as a jumping off point into the vast history of the domestic artifacts we take for granted. Book Passage contributing blogger Zack Ruskin spoke with Bryson about his newest book. Their conversation follows.

Author Bill Bryson

Zack Ruskin: Your newest book, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, takes the domestic home as its subject. Given the places you’ve traveled and the expansive nature of works like A Short History of Nearly Everything, what inspired you to write on your house?

Bill Bryson: I was struck by how little I knew about the history of the objects that surround us in our daily lives and thought it might be interesting to look into all the things we take for granted -- the things most immediately around us.

Zack Ruskin: You’ve made a wonderful habit out of tracing the roots of things we pretty much take for granted. When did you first discover how engrossing the histories of refrigerators and chimneys could be?

Bill Bryson: I have always taken the view that almost everything is fascinating if you just take the trouble to look at it with an open mind.

Zack Ruskin: Of all the minutiae you put to the microscope in At Home, is there any one tidbit that you find most astonishing?

Bill Bryson: What surprised me most was how long it took us, as beings, to get comfortable. You would think that comfort is something we would naturally strive for, but actually for most of history most people -- even well off people -- lived in conditions that were cold and damp and woefully ill-lit. As I say in the book, the history of private life is really a history of getting comfortable slowly.

Zack Ruskin: Many readers know you primarily through your travel narratives. Do you see At Home as a travel narrative of sorts, in addition to its qualities as a history text?

Bill Bryson: I suppose so, but in that sense all books are a journey of some sort, aren't they? The main difference between this one and my travel books is that not once in At Home do I get drunk and make a fool of myself.

Zack Ruskin: If you were living, say, a thousand years ago, what aspect of your home do you think you’d miss the most? For me, I’m pretty partial to indoor plumbing.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Bill Bryson: For me it would be lighting. Something that everyone should do sometime is sit with a single candle in an otherwise completely dark and see how you would like to spend all your evenings like that. It would drive you crazy. Yet for much of history a single candle was all the light that most most households would have burning at any one time.

Zack Ruskin: I want to thank you for your Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors. I keep in on my writing desk and consult it more often than I care to admit. What was your initial intention with that book? Were you seeing writers and editors make egregious mistakes, and wanting to straighten them out?

Bill Bryson: Thank you for those kind words. English is a tough language and, like most people, I am often uncertain about matters of usage and spelling. Is the word for a rough patch of skin callus or callous? What is the difference between imply and infer? Do I write gantlet or gauntlet, and does it matter? My idea was to provide a quick, concise guide to all the things (or at least all the ones I could think of) that commonly cause problems in English.

Zack Ruskin: Many writers struggle to make the all-important first dent on the blank page or screen. As an immensely prolific writer, I’d love to know your approach for beginning a new book or article.

Bill Bryson: It is the hardest thing in the world, and I can tell you it doesn't get any easier. I don't have any special trick, I'm afraid. It's just a question of sitting down at a keyboard and making your fingers move.

Zack Ruskin: I’m not sure why, but I have often thought about how amazing it would be to read a book by you set in Antarctica. Have you been there? Would you ever consider it?

Bill Bryson: I would love to go to Antarctica. Unfortunately, I recently gave my wife a solemn vow that I would stop wandering off all the time and instead spend my twilight years following her around the garden with a wheelbarrow. So Antarctica is not a realistic proposition for me at least in the short term.

Zack Ruskin: The element of humor is an integral part of your works. Do you ever feel obligated to be funny? How do you integrate humor into your prose?

Bill Bryson: For me, humor is always really hard work, and using humor when you are making a serious point is the hardest of all, but I do think it can make a world of difference to the accessibility of text at times.

Zack Ruskin: Before I let you go, I’d love it if you’d share with us a couple of your favorite word origins. Etymology is such an awesome subject area, especially in the archaic land of the English language.

Bill Bryson: I love the way the meanings of words change and slosh about over time. The example that spring to mind for me is toilet. Originally it was a piece of linen fabric, then it became a ladies' dressing table, then the act of dressing, then the dressing room itself, then any small private room. The result is that today toilet has lots of meanings that range from lavatorial to fragrant -- which is why there is a world of difference between "toilet" and "toiletries."

Interview with Adam Mansbach - Author of Go the F*ck to Sleep

2011-10-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

Adam Mansbach's spoof children's book, Go the F*ck to Sleep, has been flying off bookshelves and delighting exhausted parents since it was published this spring. Profane, affectionate, and radically honest, California Book Award-winning author Mansbach’s verses perfectly capture the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. On Monday, October 17th at 7:00 pm, Adam will read and discuss his new book at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA. Please join us, but leave the kids at home!

Recently, Book Passage contributing blogger Zack Ruskin spoke with Adam about his new book. Their conversation follows.

Zack Ruskin: What was the process that took place between you having the idea for your book and it being parlayed into an actual published title?

Adam Mansbach: I thought of the book one night after putting my daughter to bed, and I jokingly posted on my Facebook: “be on the lookout for my upcoming children’s book, Go the F*ck to Sleep”. I was just kidding around, but in writing that, I realized, yeah, I know how to write that book, that might be a funny book to write. So it started percolating in my mind, and then a week or so later, I actually sat down and wrote it. From then on, it was conceptualized as something that would be a book, never on the web. I think some people have written or been mistaken in thinking that the book was first posted on Facebook, verse by verse. I had the initial idea while fucking around on Facebook, but then I sat down and wrote the book. Then, much later in the process - the book originally was supposed to be published in October, a couple weeks from now -in late April, I did a reading of the book, in Philadelphia at an art salon, and it went over really well. People started buying the book, pre-ordering the book online, and that sent the book skyrocketing to number one on Amazon. A week after that, a PDF of the book leaked. We had sent an early PDF of the book to booksellers, basically to try to get some support from them, blurbs and so forth. That PDF got leaked and started ricocheting around the internet, so at that point there was this pirated copy. We didn’t do that. We were actually sort of terrified. We thought it meant no one was going to buy the book. Luckily though, it’s bad form to show up at a baby shower with like a low-resolution, printed-out PDF that you pasted together.

Zack Ruskin: Once you’d written the text for the book, did you find that publishers were pretty skeptical of it as an idea, or did they think it was pretty sure-fire once you pitched it to them?

Adam Mansbach: I didn’t send it out to publishers. I really only sent it to Akashic. It wasn’t something I submitted broadly. I only took it there, both because I thought it might appeal to them, and also because I like the work they do, and Johnny Temple is a good friend of mine. I’ve done some things with them in the past. I remember the selection of people who saw the book. Johnny was the only person in the publishing world who got a look at it and he jumped on it. He thought he might be crazy to jump on it; it was somewhat uncharted territory for all of us. He did some research, showed it around to people: a distributor, bookstores. We got really good feedback, so we decided we should go ahead and take a shot at it.

Zack Ruskin: Were you guys pretty committed from the outset that you were going to keep all the profanity and not change any of that to try to cater to a larger audience?

Adam Mansbach: Yeah. That was the book, and that was the fun of the it. We were always very clear on that. There was never any question of cutting the cursing out or anything like that.

Zack Ruskin: I read recently that you’re doing a new version of it that doesn’t have cursing in it, a version that could actually be read to kids.

Adam Mansbach: We’re doing a kind of companion volume that’s actually intended for kids in the spring. It’s called, Seriously, Just Go To Sleep. It’s in no way meant to replace the original -- it’s a different book. It has different illustrations, and different verses. It’s very much related to the original, but it’s not a replacement.

Zack Ruskin: Was Seriously, Just Go to Sleep based on feedback from people saying to you or Akashic, “God, I wish I could to read this book to my kid, but I’d be a bad parent if I did”?

Adam Mansbach: That’s exactly right. It was also a lot of people saying, I do read this to my kid, but I have to censor it as I go. We figured, let’s give them something where they don’t have to do that, and they can read the words as they actually stand, the way they’re intended to, and kids can enjoy it.

Zack Ruskin: As far as the illustrations go, was there a type of kid’s book, or a specific book that you drew inspiration from?

Adam Mansbach: No, it was really more that I knew Ricardo would be a great illustrator for it, and I just reached out to him. He’s an old friend of mine, and I liked his work and admired his work for years. We’d actually worked together in the past, way back in the day, when we were back in college on a hip-hop magazine that I started called Elementary. Ricardo was the art director for it. I had a conception of what the illustrations should be like, that they should essentially play the straight man. The verses were going to be where the humor lay, and so it became clear that Ricardo’s job was to play counter-point to the words. We wanted each illustration and verse to have a unique relationship to one another, so that it wasn’t too predictable, so that we would keep readers guessing a little bit about how it might play out. Ricardo’s style is so beautiful; in a way I think the book gave him liberties to be as cloyingly sweet as he wanted to in places, because the verses were going to counter-punch that. The illustrations were sometimes straightforward, sometimes a bit subversive. They have little touches, and in the children’s version, there’s even more of that, because now we get to play off the original book. Readers of the original book might get a little kick out of seeing how we flipped it up.

Zack Ruskin: You’ve found out Go the F*ck to Sleep is going to published. Do you have any sort of inkling that people are going to crazy for it, that it’s going to become a de-facto baby shower gift?

Adam Mansbach: I didn’t have many expectations. I was just tickled that the book was going to be published at all, because it was wacky. It didn’t fit into any genre. It was this crazy thing that I’d written for my own amusement, so really I was excited that it was being published at all. It’s funny - it was exactly a year ago that I sent Johnny my initial email. The other day he dug it up, the original email I sent him to pitch the book, and in that email, I’d completely forgotten about this, I said something to him like, “I think every parent in the world can relate to this”. Partly that was me pitching a publisher, but I think I did believe that too. I didn’t have any expectations, but I guess I thought that at most, it would become this kind of cult classic/niche thing. I never dreamed it would have the mainstream encouragement it’s had, or that we’d sell the number of copies we’ve sold. That definitely never entered into my mind. I’d have to be some kind of asshole to have anticipated this level of success.

Zack Ruskin: That’s true. There’s only one way to answer the question. You can’t be like, “of course I thought it would be huge!".

Adam Mansbach: (laughs) Oh yeah, I knew this was coming. I bought a Bentley in anticipation of this happening.

Zack Ruskin: Now that you have this under your belt, and soon the kid’s adaptation too, are you pretty well set in the genre? Is Akashic maybe hoping that you’re going to think of something else that would sit comfortably on a shelf next to Go the F*ck to Sleep?

Adam Mansbach: I wouldn’t rule out doing something in a similar vein at some point, but I’m certainly not in a rush. I don’t want to be the guy who takes a good idea and beats it into the ground, and does successively less funny books until everybody is like, “oh, give me a fucking break, you’re such a cheeseball”. I was writing novels before this, and I’ll continue to write novels after this. I have a bunch of other projects coming out, and they are not obscene, fake children’s’ books. I have a new novel coming out, a graphic novel on the way, a couple thrillers I just did a deal for and I just sold a TV show. So I have a bunch of other shit on my plate.

Zack Ruskin: Is your graphic novel an original work?

Adam Mansbach: Yes it is. It’s called Nature of the Beast. I’m really psyched about it. It’s kind of an action-adventure-sci-fi thing, and it’s pretty crazy.

Zack Ruskin: Is it a self-contained thing or is it the first volume of something larger?

Adam Mansbach: It’s a self-contained story. It’s like 235 pages, so it’s a pretty substantial piece. It’s full-color and beautifully illustrated by Owen Brozman. I wrote it with a buddy of mine named Douglas McGowan. Doing that much art takes a long time, so this has been in process for years at this point, and I think we’re ready to let it out into the world.

Zack Ruskin: I want to make sure I ask you about the audio version of Go the F*ck to Sleep, which is amazing. I’m curious if before Sam Jackson came on-board, if you had a little hit-list of names, like “if it could be any of these five people, I’d just die”?

Adam Mansbach: They asked us for suggestions, so we put a list together, and we totally had our dream list of people. Sam was one of them. So was Christopher Walken. Werner Herzog, who ended-up recording a version for us, was on there. Then I had some more whimsical choices of my own. I would like to hear Slick Rick do the audio version, for instance. That would mean a lot to me personally…probably not to anyone else.

Zack Ruskin: I’ll keep my fingers crossed for that to happen.

Adam Mansbach: Thanks!

Zack Ruskin: What was it like when you first heard Samuel Jackson read your book?

Adam Mansbach: Actually, the first time I heard him do it was the day the book was published. We had our launch party at the New York Public Library and a friend of mine played it for me and took photos of my reaction to hearing it for the first time.

Zack Ruskin: I’d love to see those photos.

Adam Mansbach: My face made expressions I didn’t even know were possible.

Faculty Addition - Carl Lennertz: Mystery Writers Conference

2011-10-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

Carl Lennertz

We are happy to announce the addition of Carl Lennertz, Executive Director, World Book Night U.S., book marketing specialist, independent bookselling advocate, and author of Cursed by a Happy Childhood, to the faculty of the 2012 Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, July 19-22 at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California. Former Vice President of Retailing at HarperCollins Publishers, Carl brings more than 20 years of experience in both bookselling and publishing. His biography on the blog Publisher Insider, which he founded, states:

I am fascinated by how and why books sell. What are the intrinsic qualities as well as the hype that makes a book catch on? Word of mouth especially intrigues me, and not just for books. Movies? Music? Theater? Art? All of it; what is it about each creative work that makes us pay attention. I think of myself as a student of the business of books vis a vis the business of movies, music and art. But even bigger than that, I think it is safe to say that we book readers are also music, movie and art lovers, and that we, especially, revel in seeing and hearing all that in public spaces as well as in solitude. We need and crave both, yes? I hope to write about such bigger picture issues here, in long pieces as well as short blips.

My background: Worked in bookstores in the 70s, worked at Random House thru the mid-90s and then helped launch the Book Sense program for independent bookstores. I am now with HarperCollins, working on various aspects of marketing with some very talented people on every kind of book imaginable. I will mention books from all sorts of publishing houses and also plug some movies and music, as well as some of my favorite small art museums. My main desires here are to learn more about this thing called word of mouth, about books in the larger society, and, most specifically, to promote the experience of getting out to hear authors and musicians and actors do their thing live.

Carl is also the editor of The Great Lakes Reader and The Pacific Northwest Reader, collections of essays by booksellers and librarians in specific regions of the U.S.

Read an interview with Carl Lennertz (from the website Creative Writing Now)

Read more about the 2012 Mystery Writers Conference >>

John Huston: Courage and Art

2011-09-29T17:24:00.000-07:00

We booksellers at Book Passage — especially those who love the movies — are excited about our September 30th event with acclaimed biographer and independent scholar Jeffrey Meyers. Why are we excited? Here's why . . . .

John Huston: Courage and Art

From the acclaimed biographer of Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart, and Errol Flynn comes the first complete biography of the legendary John Huston, the extraordinary director, writer, actor, and bon vivant who made iconic films such as The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, and The African Queen — and lived one of the most vibrant, eventful lives in Hollywood history.

An actor in the 1920s and scriptwriter in the 1930s, John Huston made his dazzling directorial debut in 1941 with The Maltese Falcon. His career as a filmmaker spanned some fifty-seven years and yielded thirty-seven feature films. He made most of his movies abroad, spent much of his life in Ireland and Mexico, and remains one of the most intelligent and influential filmmakers in history. With equal attention given to Huston’s impressive artistic output and tempestuous personal relationships, biographer Jeffrey Meyers presents a vivid narrative of Huston’s remarkably rich creative life.

The son of the famous stage and screen actor Walter Huston, John Huston was born in Nevada City, Missouri, and suffered from a weak heart that forced him to live as an invalid for much of his childhood. One day, however, he impulsively left his sickbed, dove over a waterfall, swam into a raging river and began to lead a strenuous life. He became an expert sportsman as well as a boxer, bullfighter, hunter, soldier, gambler and adventurer. Though he didn’t finish high school, he was a man of true genius: a serious painter and amusing raconteur, playwright and story writer, stage and screen actor, director of plays on Broadway and operas at La Scala, autobiographer and political activist who crusaded against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist witch hunts in Hollywood. He was a discerning collector of art and connoisseur of literature, food and wine. Passionate about horses and women, he had five successively younger wives.

In John Huston: Courage and Art, Meyers chronicles Huston’s extraordinarily peripatetic life and examines his rise as a great masculine artist in the formidable tradition of Melville, Conrad and Hemingway, whose persona, ethos, prose style and virile code had a powerful influence on his life and work. Thirty-four of Huston’s thirty-seven films adapted important novels, stories and plays, and Meyers perceptively describes how Huston brilliantly transformed the written word into the cinematic image. Huston’s dominant theme is the almost impossible quest, tempered by detachment and irony. His heroes sacrifice honor in pursuit of wealth but fail in that venture, are mocked by cruel fate and remain defiant in the face of defeat. Based on research in Huston’s personal and professional archives, and interviews with his children, friends and colleagues, this is the dramatic story of a courageous artist who, Meyers persuasively argues, is “one of the most fascinating men who ever lived.”

About the author: Jeffrey Meyers, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has recently been given an Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Thirty of his books have been translated into fourteen languages and seven alphabets, and published on six continents. He lives in Berkeley, California. More about the author and his new book can be found at Thomas Gladysz's article on the San Francisco Chronicle website.

If you can't attend our September 30th event with acclaimed biographer Jeffrey Meyers and would like to order a signed copy of John Huston: Courage and Art (hardback, $30.00), please visit this link.

We Read Banned Books!

2011-09-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

Celebrating Banned Books Week 2011

Banned Books Week - Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, the annual event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.

Readers from across the United States and around the world are demonstrating their support for free speech by participating in a virtual read-out of banned and challenged books that will culminate during the 30th annual Banned Books Week (Sept. 24-Oct. 1), the only national celebration of the freedom to read. Individuals, libraries and bookstores are uploading videos to a Banned Books Week YouTube Channel, submitting either a reading of up to two minutes or a description of a local book challenge of up to three minutes.

Map Showing Book Challenges 2007 - 2011

View Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2011 in a larger map. This map is drawn from cases documented by ALA and the Kids' Right to Read Project, a collaboration of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

Readers from across the United States and around the world are demonstrating their support for free speech by participating in a virtual read-out of banned and challenged books that will culminate during the 30th annual Banned Books Week (Sept. 24-Oct. 1), the only national celebration of the freedom to read. Individuals, libraries and bookstores are uploading videos to a special channel on YouTube, submitting either a reading of up to two minutes or a description of a local book challenge of up to three minutes.

The virtual read-out is the centerpiece of an expanded Banned Books Week, which focuses attention on the censorship of books in schools and libraries. The American Library Association reported 348 challenges and bans in 2010. The most challenged book was And Tango Makes Three, an award-winning children’s picture book, based on an actual incident, that tells the story of two male penguins who hatch an abandoned egg and parent the chick. The book has been on the list of most frequently challenged books for five years. Other titles frequently challenged last year include Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and books in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. ALA publishes a Top Ten Banned Books list annually.

Read Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood,
an article by banned author Sherman Alexie (from the Wall Street Journal)

The authors of challenged books are also participating in the read-out. Videos of frequently censored authors Judy Blume and Lauren Myracle have recently been posted. Other highly acclaimed and/or frequently challenged authors, including Chris Crutcher, Paolo Bacigalupi, Sarah Dessen, William Joyce, Andrea Davis Pinkney, Jay Asher, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, have also recorded videos that will be posted in coming days. Check the Banned Books Week YouTube Channel daily for new videos.

To support an expanded Banned Books Week, the sponsors have launched a redesigned website, http://bannedbooksweek.org/. In addition to providing information about the virtual read-out, it includes an interactive map that shows the location of book challenges in recent years as well as a listing of featured events and a state-by-state listing of libraries, bookstores and other groups that are participating in Banned Books Week.

To provide additional organizational support for Banned Books Week, the current sponsors–the ALA, ABFFE, the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and the National Association of College Stores (NACS)—recruited several new sponsors this year: NCAC, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and PEN American Center (PEN). Project Censored has joined the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress as an endorser of Banned Books Week.

Publishers have increased their support as well. A number of AAP member publishers, including Hachette, Penguin, Random House, Scholastic, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster are providing guidance for the observance through an AAP Banned Books Week Publisher Task Force.

Book Passage is a proud proponent of Banned Books Week. Celebrate with us the freedom to read!

Jane Fonda Shares Her Gospel in Prime Time

2011-09-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

by Anita Jones from the blog The Women's Eye

This lil’ light of mine, I’m gon’ let it shine….everywhere I go…let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

Jane Fonda shoots from the hip. Granted—the hip has been replaced, but that only serves to make it stronger, wiser, more resilient, like Jane. She has taken the tragedies and triumphs of her 73.5 years on the planet and distilled them into a message so powerful, so pristine, so present that as you listen you can’t help but get it, regardless of your personal profile.

I recently attended a lovely Literary Breakfast in August at the Corte Madera Book Passage where Jane talked about her new book, Prime Time: Love Health, Sex, Fitness, Friendship, Spirit—Making the Most of All of Your Life. As soon as she entered the room of 130 seated at tables, her energy spread; she claimed the space with her smile and unmistakable voice...

Continue reading on The Women's Eye >>

Living Abroad In Costa Rica

2011-09-15T16:48:00.000-07:00

By Dick Jordan
Some days, particularly when the mainstream media is flooded with reports on the machinations and misstatements of potential U.S. Presidential candidates, I feel impelled to leave the country permanently (or at least for a long vacation). Fortunately, there’s an app for that: Costa Rica Trip Ideas (iTunes App Store, $1.99, for iPhone and iPad).

But first, let’s look at the book Living Abroad in Costa Rica, by travel writer Erin Van Rheenen, who later created the iPhone app.

World Traveler

When I was a small child growing up in Seattle, the farthest I lived from home was 300 miles away on my grandmother's farm in northern Idaho where I spent summer vacations from school. And my international travel was limited to a single, one-day trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, arriving in the morning on a United Airlines DC-6, spending the day wandering through shops with my mother and a friend of hers, before returning home late in the evening by train.

Erin Van Rheenen, whose personal Website is aptly named Miss Move Abroad, relocated with her parents from Oregon to Nigeria when she was three years old. Since that time, she has lived for extended periods of time in Ireland, Ecuador, Mexico, and, of course, Costa Rica.

Planning Your Escape

Erin says that Living Abroad in Costa Rica “will show you the nitty-gritty of life...working, shopping, banking, buying or building a house, dealing with immigration, and arranging for the best healthcare.” And a quick look at the Table of Contents shows that’s exactly what the book will deliver.

This isn’t a guidebook that merely paints a romantic picture of living cheap in a palapa on the beach. Instead, it’s loaded with lots of practical information about getting yourself, your kids and your pets into the country, finding a place to live, getting a job and and financing your new lifestyle, obtaining TV and Internet service, making phone calls, and receiving and sending mail.

Movie buffs will appreciate the “Suggested Films” list which includes ones familiar to me (such as Endless Summer and Jurassic Park) as well as others that I’ve never seen, like Caribe, a 2004 film which was the first from Costa Rica to be submitted in the Academy Award competition.
If you went to Costa Rica thinking that’s where the “real” Jurassic Park was located, after spending a few days in the capital city of San Jose you might say, as Erin overhead one tourist remark, “I want to get out of the city [and] see the rest of the island.” While the Caribbean lies on the east side of the country, and the Pacific on the west, Costa Rica isn’t an island floating about in the sea—it’s a big chunk of Central America connecting Nicaragua to the north to Panama to the south.

The book divides the country into four “Prime Living Locations”: The Central Valley and Beyond (San Jose is here; several national parks peppered with volcanoes are to the north of it); Guanacaste and The Nicoya Peninsula (“The Wild West” with “the lion’s share of the nation’s beach resort infrastructure”); The Central and Southern Pacific Coast (only a couple hours or so by road from San Jose); and The Caribbean Coast (which Van Rheenen says “seems much more remote and exotic than the west coast”).

For each of the four geographical areas, the author sketches out “The Lay of The Land,” gives the price of housing in various communities, and describes what it is like to live in each. If you never stopped being a kid you’ll be pleased to learn that some expats actually reside in treehouses with Internet access and flush toilets.

Of course, the toughest decision to make about relocating to Costa Rica is whether to do it at all; the second question is where to live. In “Planning Your Fact-Finding Trip,” Erin explains how to prepare for your first exploratory journey, and offers up proposed itineraries that will give you an opportunity to visit different regions of the country on stays of varying duration: 10-days, 2-weeks, and 1-month. So, if you think it’s time for you to say “Via Con Dios, America!”, pack up your belongings, and emigrate Way South of The Border, Living Abroad in Costa Rica looks to be your ticket to live in a banana republic.

iPhoning It South

Costa Rica. Sounds like a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there, so where to do I turn for vacation advice?

Although Erin Van Rheenen’s iPhone and iPad app, Costa Rica Trip Ideas, has a section entitled “Explore Living in Costa Rica” that mentions the Central Valley and the Nicoya Peninsula as possible new homes for émigrés, she intended it to be a vacation travel guide rather than an electronic version of Living Abroad in Costa Rica.

The “Trip Ideas” section offers several possibilities including “He Surfs, She Yogas,” “Hot Spots in 10 days” (San Jose, both coasts, and more), and “Explore Hot Springs & Volcanoes.” There are three separate sections on checking out critters that fly, swim, or walk on land: “For the Birders,” “Sea Turtle Safari,” and “Wildlife Galore.” The app was recently updated and added “Explore Gay Costa Rica” and “Explore Medical Tourism” (the iTunes Preview says “Cut-rate facelifts and bargain bypasses”).

Costa Rica Trip Ideas covers culture, food, history, makes specific lodging recommendations, and contains some of the same practical information for travelers that is found in Living Abroad in Costa Rica. The app will prompt you to buy a plane ticket to Costa Rica by taking you on a virtual, visual tour of the country with great color photographs of beaches, hotels, jungles, mountains, and wildlife.

Fish or Cut Bait?

After reading Living Abroad in Costa Rica and trying out Costa Rica Trip Ideas app on my iPhone, I only face one dilemma: Is my roll-aboard suitcase big enough to carry all that I will need for the trip, or do I need a shipping container, too?

Erin Van Rheenen provided Dick Jordan with a complimentary review copy of the paperback edition of Living Abroad in Costa Rica; he purchased the Costa Rica Trip Ideas iPhone app.

Dick Jordan publishes the travel blog, Tales Told From The Road. His last post to the Book(ed) Passage blog was about legendary travel writer Tim Cahill. When Dick isn’t traveling, you can usually find him hanging out with other members of Left Coast Writers at the Book Passage Corte Madera store on the evening of the first Monday of each month.

Interview with Erin Morgenstern - Author of The Night Circus

2011-09-15T13:42:00.001-07:00

Erin Morgenstern's debut novel, The Night Circus, is just out. It promises to be one of the big books of the Fall - we're excited, and so is just about everyone else! On Sunday, September 18th at 1:00 pm, Erin will read from and discuss her new book at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California. Please join us for this special event. The first 100 attendees who purchase a copy of The Night Circus from Book Passage will receive a free signed limited edition Night Circus keepsake featuring artwork by Erin Morgenstern!

Recently, Book Passage contributing blogger Zack Ruskin spoke with Erin about her new book. Their conversation follows.

Zack Ruskin: Your novel’s been described as a fairy tale of sorts, and on your website, you list fairy tales as a major source of creative inspiration. What defines a fairy tale for you?

Erin Morgenstern: Oh, people ask me that and I tell them I don’t really have a good, specific answer. I think there’s something in that “once-upon-a-time” quality, where it has a really strong sense of story, and seems sort of timeless. I think with my writing in particular, I like the quality of those really graphic, pre-Disney fairy tales, dark and bloody, grim stuff that’s gotten a little polished over time – the old school fairy tale stuff.

Zack Ruskin: Is there any particular fairy tale you consider to be a favorite?

Erin Morgenstern: I have a lot of favorites. Probably my very favorite is "The Snow Queen." That might even partially be why there is so much ice and snow in The Night Circus. It’s such a different feel to a lot of the classic fairy tales.

Zack Ruskin: Are there any contemporary fairy tale writers you like? Kelly Link comes to mind.

Erin Morgenstern: I love Kelly Link. I like her stories. I can’t really write short stories – my stuff is either epic or very, very short. I can’t do that perfect short story, which she does so, so well. She can create a complete world in such a succinct way.

Zack Ruskin: Your novel is filled with fantastic descriptions: of clocks, magic and even a few kittens. As a painter, are descriptions the element of prose that most closely resembles painting to you?

Erin Morgenstern: That’s an interesting way of putting it. I think it is probably where I get to be the most visual. I’m a very visual person in general. I see everything in my head. A lot of the time when I’m describing something in my writing, I’m just transcribing a picture that’s in my head and taking out details to mark down to try to translate that image into words. But I do it with not just visual things; I kind of picture everything in my head. I also have a background in theater, so I end-up directing scenes in my head, everything from where people are standing to the lighting design. I do think the fact that I have a background in art means I’m more concerned with what things look like than some writers.

Zack Ruskin: That makes sense. Do you ever paint out elements of your story or characters to help your writing process?

Erin Morgenstern: I don’t really. I like to say I write what I can’t paint, and I paint what I can’t write. So really there’s not a whole lot of overlap. I’ve done paintings that are evocative of some of the circusy things, but I haven’t really tried to draw them. I did make paper models of a couple of tents when I was trying to figure out logistics, in particular on the Stargazer, because I wanted to make sure it was conceivable from the way I was picturing it in my head.

Zack Ruskin: That sounds like a fun project to take on.

Erin Morgenstern: The kittens were not helpful with that project.

Zack Ruskin: I know this is your first novel. Have you been painting longer than you’ve been writing?

Erin Morgenstern: I have been. I’ve painted since I was very little – I took art classes starting in elementary school, and later, I was a studio art minor in college. I thought about writing way more than I ever wrote. It was always something I thought I might like to try, but I didn’t really start writing seriously until I was in my twenties. I took playwriting classes in college but never finished any plays.

Zack Ruskin: I know The Night Circus is brand new, but have you considered or been approached about a possible graphic novel adaptation?

Erin Morgenstern: I’ve heard whisperings of a possible graphic novel. I would just want someone else to do it. I would love to see what someone who actually does that type of art would do. I don’t know if I’d really want to do any circusy art for myself, but I would love to see other peoples’ interpretation of it.

Zack Ruskin: I feel like the vignette quality of your novel works in a way where you could have different artists doing different pieces of it.

Erin Morgenstern: Ooh, that would be marvelous.

Zack Ruskin: I’ve seen it done before. The story definitely has to lend itself to that format, which I think yours does. Getting into the content of your book, your story follows two magicians: Celia and Marco. While you were writing, did you do any research on magicians?

Erin Morgenstern: I didn’t do a whole lot of research. I had a flavor of the era’s stage magic, from books and movies and that sort of thing. I didn’t want it to seem particularly historical, so I made things up that seemed right to me and then occasionally I’d check to make sure I wasn’t being too terribly anachronistic. Hopefully no little things snuck in there that are inappropriate. I wanted it to be its own thing – a different sort of magic, influenced by those great stage magic shows, and to have maybe a hint of The Prestige in there, but to be something else.

Zack Ruskin: Did you go to the circus as a kid?

Erin Morgenstern: I don’t even really like the circus. Like, the actual circus-circus, with the clowns. No one likes clowns, and anyone who says they do, I’m a little skeptical of. I like the idea of an entertainment venue that’s an active thing, which you go to experience, rather than just watch. I think the circus atmosphere has that sort of quality, where you go in, and you get to decide what you’re going to look at and how your evening is going to unfold. That was the feel I wanted with my circus setting, although it’s not really a traditional circus. I went to the circus many, many years ago. I’ve yet to see Cirque de Solei, but I’d love to. I think that’s a little more my scene, circus-wise.

Zack Ruskin: I think it’s fair to say we’re both too young to have seen the original incarnation of the circus that perhaps you’re more closely channeling in your book.

Erin Morgenstern: Yes.

Zack Ruskin: Earlier you mentioned your theatre background. I recently read an interview with you where you talk about the production Sleep No More.

Erin Morgenstern: It’s phenomenal. I’ve seen it 7 times. Their first production they did up here in Boston, about two years ago, and I actually went by accident. I was in the middle of revising the book, it was October, it was raining, and I needed to get out of the house. I got a postcard for Sleep No More and it sounded so intriguing, I just had to go. It was instant art love. It’s hard to even describe. It’s the closest experience I’ve had in real life to what I think the experience of going to the circus would be, where you’re being completely immersed in that world.

Zack Ruskin: Do you see a correlation between that production’s avant-garde approach to theater and your approach to your novel?

Erin Morgenstern: I do. I saw it when I was rewriting, so I was kind of amazed because I thought things like that only existed in my head, so the fact that someone had actually put together this amazingly detailed, completely absorbing experience was absolutely mind-blowing to me. I took a few little elements from that production and worked them into the circus itself. It definitely had an influence on the tone of the circus. It already seemed circusy to me, but then I added a few extra elements as an homage to Sleep No More.

Zack Ruskin: You have an on-going flash fiction project called flaxgolden. I just started one where I write a story on a Post-It Note everyday. I find it immensely helpful for getting ideas out of my head. What prompted you to begin yours?

Erin Morgenstern: It actually began as two separate problems I had. I was starting to revise the book, and I knew that all of my descriptions were way too long, so I wanted an exercise to teach myself to write more succinctly. I also wanted my blog to look more like I was a writer, instead of just being all pictures of kittens. I was like, “what can I do that would make my site seem a little more writerly?”. I decided I’d do little, tiny stories. I’d had the idea to do something with pictures for a while. I was a little bit inspired by Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.

Zack Ruskin: That book is amazing.

Erin Morgenstern: I love how it’s just the image and one little line. It has such a curiosity factor to it. My friend Carrey takes gorgeous photographs, and I didn’t want to work with my own images because I felt they would influence me too much. It ended-up being a great project. Actually, I thought I was going to end it after a year but she had so many photographs that it’s been two years now.

Zack Ruskin: I’m so happy that you’re referencing Harris Burdick as an inspiration. I feel the same way about it.

Erin Morgenstern: NPR recently asked to me to recommend a book to their readers, and I choose Harris Burdick.

Zack Ruskin: You’re collaborator takes the photos that you write on. Is she looking for story-caliber shots, or are you just choosing from a big pile of photographs that she’s taken?

Erin Morgenstern: I’m mostly choosing from a pool of photographs. I started doing it when she had a big backlog of photos, so there’s a lot of ones that are photographs she’d taken years ago, but since we’ve been doing it for a while, she says now when she’s taking photos, she wonders “is this one Erin will use?”.

Zack Ruskin: Are there any flash fiction writers you’d recommend to readers?

Erin Morgenstern: I haven’t actually read that much flash fiction. I didn’t think of my stories as flash fiction when I first started, but that’s exactly what they are. I’d like to read some more though, so if you have recommendations, I’d love to hear them.

Zack Ruskin: There’s a guy named Etgar Keret that I think is one of the best. An Israeli writer.

Erin Morgenstern: Right. Someone else told me I should read him.

Zack Ruskin: Going back to The Night Circus, it seems like anybody who types your book’s title into Google is going to get a lot of results back on the potential film version in the works. I’m not going to ask who you would cast in the movie or anything, but I would like to know if it were up to you, what bands or music would you use to soundtrack the movie?

Erin Morgenstern: Ooh, very nice. Since the production company is the same one that did the Twilight films, I do have a secret wish that we could get a Florence + the Machine song. I’d be very, very happy because I love them so much and I think they have a good sound for the circus, an ethereal quality. Soundtrack wise, I hope it’s very evocative, because people have told me my book really captures things like the smell of the circus. I tried to get a lot of sensory information into the experience of the circus itself. Music is one of the things I couldn’t get across, so I’d be interested to hear what they come up with.

Zack Ruskin: You recently released a soundtrack online for the book.

Erin Morgenstern: I did. It was one of my marketing people’s ideas. It’s mostly things I was listening to while I was writing, and then a few tracks that feel like they sound like the circus.

Zack Ruskin: Good call on the Andrew Bird. I think he fits well.

Erin Morgenstern: Funny thing about Andrew Bird, Carrey is big in folk circles, and Andrew used to play shows in her living room. It was only a couple years ago that I found out he was a big deal. She’s known him for years. I was like, “wait, that’s Carrey’s friend!”.

Zack Ruskin: Can you see The Night Circus being the first book of a series?

Erin Morgenstern: I never intended it to be a series. I don’t think it’s structurally something that lends itself to a series. I think the best series are always intended, that that’s the form they’re going to be told in, a serial manner. This was always its own story, just one book.

Zack Ruskin: Why do you think so many people want your novel to be the first part of something longer?

Erin Morgenstern: I think people maybe want it to be a series because they like the world. There’s a quality about books that you enjoy escaping into, where you want to return, and it’s always nice when there’s more – additional books to have that experience in a new way. I don’t anticipate or intend to write a direct sequel. I think there’s enough other material, between back stories and side characters, that I could maybe do a collection of short stories. I don’t think it will be a true series though.

Zack Ruskin: Before I let you go, I want to ask you about the publicity and promotion that’s being done for your book. Bookstores are hiring jugglers and contortionists and planning big, circus-themed release parties for when your book is published next week. Is all this hoopla overwhelming? Did you ever imagine you’d get this kind of response to your book?

Erin Morgenstern: I never imagined. We surpassed wildest dreams territory a while ago. I just wanted to have a book that you could pick-up and read. That was as high as I was hoping. The fact that people are embracing it in such an enthusiastic way: it’s humbling and flattering, but still a little bit overwhelming, the scale it’s taken on.

Interview with Khaled Hosseini - Author of The Kite Runner

2011-09-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini's bestselling novel, The Kite Runner, revealed the beauty and agony of a tormented Afghanistan as it brought this little-known part of the world to the attention of readers. Now, in a richly illustrated graphic novel adaption (with text by the author), Hosseini brings his spellbinding story to a new generation of readers. It is a beautiful rendering of a story loved around the world.

On Thursday, September 15th at 7:00 pm, Khaled Hosseini will discusses The Kite Runner Graphic Novel ($19.00 paperback) at Dominican University of California (Angelico Hall) in San Rafael, California. Please join us at this special Book Passage sponsored event. More info and tickets here.

Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and moved to the United States in 1980. He is also the author of A Thousand Splendid Suns, and has been named a United States goodwill envoy to the United National Refugee Agency. Recently, Book Passage contributing blogger Zack Ruskin spoke with Hosseini about his new book. Their conversation follows.

Zack Ruskin: How did the idea to adapt The Kite Runner into a graphic novel come about?

Khaled Hosseini: I was approached to do it by my Italian publisher, Piemme. It was their idea, but it really caught my fancy as I have been a fan of comic books since childhood. I gave my go ahead and the search began for a set of artists to bring the story to visual life.

Zack Ruskin: What was the collaborative process with illustrators Fabio Celoni and Mirka Andolfo like? Did you ever meet?

Khaled Hosseini: I did not meet with them. Fabio and I did exchange an e-mail or two, but it was my intention to step out of the way and let his artistic instincts take over. He did send me pages as he progressed, both in black and white and some color samples as well. It was really exciting to see the sketches and to see the story shaping up visually.

The Kite Runner Graphic Novel

Zack Ruskin: While we’re talking about the art of the graphic novel, was it odd to see visible forms of characters you’d created solely in words? I know there was a film version of The Kite Runner, but the film features actors playing your creations, whereas the illustrated figures in the graphic novel are your characters. How did that transformation resonate with you?

Khaled Hosseini: It is always odd to see another person’s interpretation of your thoughts, ideas, characters. For me there is always an element of curiosity, which existed in the film as well. I am curious as to what form the images that I tried to convey through words have taken in a reader’s mind. If that reader is an artist and can then translate his or her thoughts into drawings – or film or music or stage performance for that matter- then I am interested. It gives you a chance to see your own creation from a different angle, in a novel way.

Zack Ruskin: In paring down the bulk of your prose into speech bubbles and short boxes of narration, how did you decide what to keep? Did some scenes just naturally lend themselves to visual alternatives while others clearly required dialogue to function? Did you find it necessary to draw storyboards as you went through the plot?

Khaled Hosseini: I did not draw story boards. The aim was to use the existing dialogue in the novel to advance the story, complemented of course by Fabio’s artwork. Some of the dialogue has become familiar to readers of the book, and is essential to the story. Baba’s speech about sin, for instance, Rahim Khan’s ‘way to be good again’ line. In other instances, there were scenes that naturally lent themselves, as you note, to visual interpretation. For those, we did not need dialogue or narration at all and relied on imagery. I spent pages in the novel describing the kite fighting scenes, for instance, but Fabio did such a wonderful job of capturing the energy and excitement of the tournament, that there was no need there for much dialogue at all.

Zack Ruskin: Were you a graphic novel reader before you adapted The Kite Runner? Are you one now?

Khaled Hosseini: Yes, I read comics when I was a boy. I began with Marvel and DC, read a lot of Batman, Daredevil, Spiderman, Iron Man, etc. Later on, I read most of Alan Moore’s work, Watchmen, From Hell, his take on the Swamp Thing. I read Frank Miller, especially his iconic take on the dark knight and also his terrific stint with Daredevil. I liked also Garth Ennis’ Preacher series. I read more ‘serious’ graphic novels as well, like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis books, both of which are among my favorite novels, graphic or not.

Zack Ruskin: Is your graphic novel intended to lure in readers who didn’t read the original release of your book? Will those that read your novel still gleam something new from the graphic version?

Khaled Hosseini: The graphic novel is intended for a wide spectrum of readers. This includes readers of the novel who may be curious to see the story depicted in a visual, artistic form. It includes younger readers who may not have read the novel but may pick up the graphic novel. Of course, it is also intended for fans of graphic novels, whether they have read the original novel or not. My hope is that this graphic novel, and Fabio and Mirka’s terrific artwork enhances the story for the readers and lends an additional dimension to the reading experience to readers both familiar and not with the original novel.

Zack Ruskin: Are you considering adapting A Thousand Splendid Suns next, or were there particular reasons you felt The Kite Runner would benefit from a graphic retelling?

Khaled Hosseini: At this time, there are no plans afoot to adapt A Thousand Splendid Suns into a graphic novel. I thought The Kite Runner would benefit from a graphic retelling because it is a very visual story, from the setting in Kabul, both pre and post conflict, to the kite fighting, etc. I thought that in the right artistic hands, it could turn into a beautiful visual retelling, and I believe Fabio and Mirka’s work has truly achieved that.

Zack Ruskin: The concept of turning fiction prose into graphic novels is quite popular at the moment. In addition to modern authors like you, publishers are taking classics by writers like Austen and Dostoevsky and putting out comic versions. Why do you think graphic novel versions of works are so popular at the moment? Do you see any downside to offering “masterpieces” in altered forms?

Khaled Hosseini: I don’t see any downsides. The graphic novel does not negate or taint the original work. The original work is always there, ready to be picked, and enjoyed in its original form and intention. The graphic novel is merely another way of experiencing the story. And I do think that people are interested today in experiences stories through many different formats, be it film, traditional comic books, mobile comics, webisodes, etc. There are now more options available today to readers than ever before and more readers who are open to different forms of reading experiences.

Zack Ruskin: Having adapted a novel into graphic form, do you have any interest in writing a wholly original graphic novel? Can you think of some ideas for fiction you have that might best be told in that medium?

Khaled Hosseini: At this point, that is not something that I have given much thought to, though my initial instinct is that it is an appealing idea and something that I would love considering doing down the line.

Signed 1st edition copies of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner Graphic Novel ($19.00 paperback) will be available through Book Passage following the author's September 15th event. Click on the above link to purchase a copy.

The Schizophrenic Search For My Nutbar

2011-09-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

Reflections from a Book Passage Travel and Food Writing & Photography Conference Newbie

by Diane Susan Petty

I used to be wealthy and successful—number one in my industry.

Now I sit on a bench contemplating a “No Barking” sign, the “P” graffitied over with a “B”. I observe the cars are indeed parked in front and the dogs are quiet. I notice a sign saying an 18-pound male cat named PhiPhi has run away and wonder if it was because the other kitties were teasing him about his name.

Diane (far right) with Don George

I recently became an unemployed, broke mortgage banker. After announcing my desire to make a major life change and become an unemployed, broke travel writer, a mutual friend introduced me to travel writing guru, Don George.

Don’s advice? “Come to the Book Passage Travel and Food Writing & Photography Conference. Meet Spud. It’ll be life changing.”

Down to our last $1000, my husband suggested we might want to use that money for groceries; why not wait and go next year? Groceries be damned; I could drop a few pounds anyway. I’m going to the conference.

One minute I’m excited and hopeful for the future; the former confident me has returned. The next I’m petrified about attending, convinced I’m grasping at straws out of pure desperation. What do I know about travel writing?

When you tell your family you’ve spent your last dime on a travel writer’s conference, their faces go blank and they ask why.

When you read The Paris Wife about Hemingway’s brilliant mind and tortured soul, you momentarily wish you had a drinking problem; it might help you become a better writer.

When a stranger in the airport asks where you are off to and you tell her a San Francisco writer’s conference, her face lights up. “Oh, you’re a writer!” she beams with yearning eyes. “You’re so lucky.” I don’t bother to correct her and spend the next hour strutting around the Toronto airport, imagining I am a writer waiting for my flight.

When I’m unexpectedly bumped to first class, I take it as a sign … even the United Airlines gods know I am destined to be a travel writer, jet-setting around the world with my laptop in a beat up leather bag. I wonder if duty-free sells beat up leather bags?

It’s the morning of Don’s pre-conference field trip to Point Reyes Station. Feeling exhilarated and freaked out, I focus my attention on the superficial, worrying about wearing the right clothes, trying to forget I have the wrong degree. Too dressed up and I’ll look uppity. Too casual and I’ll look like a slob who doesn’t care. I wish I knew what that Linda Watanabe McFerrin was wearing.

Guess what? Wear tattered jeans or a ball gown; it doesn’t matter.

At Cowgirl Creamery, we sit with Don and plot our day. Walk. Observe. Write. Eat. Repeat. Share what you wrote at the end of the day.

My confidence is back; I can walk and talk and gawk. And I love to eat.

I feel the need to be more brilliant, interesting, and observant than anyone else in our group. I want to stand out and be noticed. I can’t possibly share my ideas or observations lest someone steals them; they are that brilliant.

Don tells us to put ourselves in the shoes of a travel writer. I sit on a bench and try hard to observe new, unique things. The only thing I observe is that I want another one of those new, unique cookies from Bovine Bakery across the street and that the dogs in Point Reyes Station seem to be able to read.

It’s the end of our field trip, time to share what we wrote.

Someone commented on the painful juxtaposition of signs about the future of Point Reyes Station posted on an abandoned red brick building.

Damn. I didn’t even see the building, let alone the juxtaposition.

Another mentions a dialogue about a 45 lb marlin, overheard between a pedestrian and someone in a car stopped in the middle of the road.

Damn. The only dialogue I heard was someone yelling, “We don’t want you travel writers here; we don’t want to become another Carmel.”

Don asks if anyone has written a piece.

Diane with "Gold Shoes"

She is a stunning journalist from Chile with an exotic Spanish accent and totally cool gold shoes. I hate her already. On two scrunched up yellow Post-It notes, she has managed to scribble a brilliant story, complete and ready for publication. She asks for criticism; there is none.

Blogger, Kylethevagabond volunteers to read his piece. When he pulls out his 32” flatscreen laptop, everyone ooohs and aaahs as if he has just invented the wheel.

Damn. Why didn’t I bring my laptop?

A silence hangs over the group after he reads his work. He apologizes; this was just a rough draft. He works for Gadling. He has published 45 articles. Someone says his lede is brilliant and natural. I think his nut bar is perfect until a colleague gently explains it is called a nutgraf.

I want to go eat a nut bar at Toby’s Feed Barn across the street.

The drive back to Book Passage is much less animated. Some of us are feeling we should not be here. Why didn’t I go to journalism school? Stupid, useless, law degree.

Back at the store, feeling completely inadequate, I look at all the courses I can take throughout the year to hone my craft. That’s what I need to do, despite the fact that I don’t yet have a craft and I have nothing to hone. I don’t even know what hone means. Take more courses, then write something. That’s my new plan.

Guess what? It is far easier to pay $350 for another course than it is to write something and risk rejection. Janis Cooke Newman tells us, “Your immediate goal should be ten rejection letters.” Genius.

At the intro dinner, I maneuver to sit with my idol from the San Francisco Chronicle, Spud Hilton. He actually buys articles. He tells our table of newbies exactly what he wants … lede-nutgraf-scene-scene-scene-walkaway. That‘s it. This is what I came for. I have a roadmap. I’ve cracked the code. I already feel the conference was worth it, and it hasn’t even started. I don’t care if I have to live on nut bars for the rest of my life; I’m going to be a travel writer.

*****

Diane Susan Petty

Diane Susan Petty is a former mortgage banker and accepts full responsibility for the current state of the US economy. She recently attended her first Book Passage Travel and Food Writing & Photography Conference, and she is hooked. When not out seeking new adventures, she lives in the redwoods of Larkspur, California, with her husband, two children and their golden retriever, Buster.

Photos and story by Diane Susan Petty

Interview with Samuel Park - Author of This Burns My Heart

2011-09-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

One of our Book Passage Signed First Editions Club members, Jaime Boler of Laurel, Mississippi, shared with us an interview she conducted with author Samuel Park for his book This Burns My Heart. Jaime is a history instructor and she reviews books on her blog Book Magnet.

It Will Burn Your Heart, Too

By Jaime Boler

This Burns My Heart ($25.00)

Some of my favorite literary characters are Elinor Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility), Pi Patel (Life of Pi), Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games), and Annie Fang (The Family Fang). Now, I can add another character to the list: Soo-Ja Choi, the heroine of Samuel Park's debut novel This Burns My Heart. Employing such themes as tradition, love, and sacrifice, Park captivated and transported me to a different time and place. I never wanted to return from the vivid world of his creation.

South Korea in the early 1960s is a country slowly recovering from the ravages of war. Tradition is of utmost importance. Soo-Ja, a young woman, yearns to become a diplomat, even though her father forbids it. Marriage to a man she can bend to her will is the answer, Soo-Ja thinks. If she marries Min, then she can fulfill her dream. The two become engaged after a brief courtship. Before their marriage, she meets a young, handsome medical student named Yul. Sparks fly. She must sense that she and Yul could experience a deeper love, a love that would overpower her ambition, and this scares Soo-Ja. Even if she wanted to run away with Yul, she cannot do it; she has already given her word.

Out of obligation, then, Soo-Ja marries Min. She soon learns that she does not really know the man she married. Min was never captivated by her beauty or wit, he did not enjoy spending time with her, and he indulged her talk of going to Seoul. He tricked her, seeking her out only at the urging of his own father. Familial ties and tradition win out over Soo-Ja's dreams. Her marriage is something she will have to endure. Later, Soo-Ja stays with Min because of their daughter, Hana. Over and over again, though, Yul turns up in her life. He is always a looming shadow even when he is not present in her life. The best parts of the novel are the soulful, yearning-filled scenes between Soo-Ja and Yul. Will she ever leave Min for Yul? That is a question you must find out yourself.

Park has a gift for language, and his use of beautiful prose will leave you breathless. His rich and memorable characters lingered on in my mind long after I finished the novel. In fact, I loved this novel so much that I sought out Park for an interview. He accepted. The following is used with his permission.

Jaime Boler: What was it like growing up Korean in Brazil?

Samuel Park: Hi Jaime, just wanted to start by saying what a delight it is to be featured in your blog. I hope I can do justice to the wonderful questions you came up with. So, to answer the first question, growing up Korean in Brazil was really fun–there were a lot of other Asian students in my middle school, so I never really felt that “different.” There’s a surprisingly large Asian population in South America!

JB: When did you first know you wanted to be an author?

SP: When I was eight years old–as soon as I could read, I wanted to write. I’d watch American movies from the 50s every afternoon and then I’d write my “little novels” in my notebooks–which were just my kid versions of those fantasy and adventure stories.

JB: I see you are a Jane Austen fan. I read that after I finished the novel, and I suddenly saw Soo-Ja as a Korean Dashwood sister. How has Austen influenced your writing?

SP: Soo-Ja is very much like Elinor in that she’s too principled to try to steal Edward back from Lucy Steele. And just because she doesn’t say it out loud, doesn’t mean her heart isn’t in terrific pain. I suppose my intense love for Austen has influenced my writing in the sense that it very much shaped my awareness of the different and complex ways we can love–in Soo-Ja and Elinor’s case, silently, honorably, but not at all less passionately and intensely as Marianne. I also have a lot of admiration for Lizzie Bennet of Pride and Prejudice. She’s really strong and bold, but prone to making mistakes and has one particularly big flaw–her prejudice; Soo-Ja too is held back by an enormous blind spot early on in her love life.

JB: You say this is your mother’s story. How so?

SP: It is and it isn’t. It was inspired by her experience as a woman living in a Confucian-dominated society as that society moved from very traditional to more modern. But the novel is a work of fiction, with made up characters and situations.

JB: Do you have a favorite character in the book? If so, who and why?

SP: You know, I actually *love* Eun-Mee, the villain. She was unbelievably fun to write, because she says all these outrageous things. To continue the Austen analogy, Eun-Mee is a mixture of Darcy’s haughty aunt Lady Catherine deBourgh and Lizzie’s frivolous sister Lydia. Villains are fun to write because often times, they drive the story, and can be very charming.

JB: Did you, like Hana, dream of coming to the United States?

SP: I did! I think the United States attracts dreamers, and Hana is definitely a dreamer.

JB: Is any character based on you? If so, which character? Did you find it difficult to write for that particular character?

SP: None of the characters are directly based on me, but I’ve felt or am able to imagine feeling everything that the characters feel. Emotion-wise, the characters take after me–I went through an emotional journey with them, and tried to make their emotions as truthful as possible by thinking of times that I was in a similar situation, or feeling the same way about someone.

JB: I have to tell you that my favorite scene in the book is the drawing scene with Yul and Soo-Ja. It was so beautiful that I read and re-read it. Do you have a favorite part? If so, please do tell us about it!

SP: I’m so glad you liked that scene! It’s a pivotal scene in the book, and I rewrote it many, many times. The first time, they weren’t even drawing! But early on, I realized that these two people would never vocalize their feelings–they had to use their gestures to express their love. Neither Soo-Ja nor Yul are allowed to say what they feel, because it goes against their customs. But they’re in absolute sync–in spirit and mind–and their drawing together allows you to see that.

JB: Do you have a favorite line from the book? If so, will you share it with us?

SP: The first line is my favorite line: “You tricked me.” How do you make a life with someone who deceived you? And yet, so many of us do, or have to.

JB: Some themes that stood out for me while reading the book were family obligations versus true love and communal needs versus those of the individual. What do you want readers to take from This Burns My Heart?

SP: I guess I want people to consider what it means to live a life of duty, where you can’t just undo a mistake. That’s the way it was for women of that generation, women who could not get divorces–you were stuck, but you made the best of it. I hope I show in my novel what it’s actually like to be in that kind of situation. Maybe that’s the question I want readers to take away: “Would you turn away true love if it came knocking a second (and possibly last) time?”

JB: I noticed the importance of both saving “face” and losing “face” in your novel. Can you tell us more about that concept?

SP: Soo-Ja can’t really make her own choices because those choices deeply implicate her parents. For instance, she can’t get divorced. She just can’t. It’d bring enormous shame to her family. That’s a tremendous responsibility–to live not only for yourself, but also for those you love. They would lose “face,” and Soo-Ja cannot bear to cause pain to those she loves.

JB: At the beginning of This Burns My Heart, I saw Min as a villain. Yet, at the end of the novel, I had ceased to think of him as such. In my eyes, he was just as much a victim as Soo-Ja. He redeems himself in the end. The true villain was Min’s father. But who do you see as the “bad” guy?

SP: I’m glad you think of Min that way, since I took pains to explain why he does the things he does. Min’s father definitely comes off as the “bad” guy, but I don’t really think of him as such. I’m very forgiving and understanding of all my characters, even when they’re acting up and causing havoc in the story!
JB: Do you think, in Soo-Ja’s heart and in Yul’s, that Hana is his daughter?

SP: Oh, that’s such an intriguing question! It certainly does feel like she could be theirs, doesn’t it?

JB: It’s interesting how Soo-Ja helps Jae-Hwa escape a bad marriage; yet, she is not ready to do this herself because she does not want Min to take Hana away from her. Is Hana the only thing that keeps Soo-Ja with Min? What else keeps Soo-Ja in her loveless marriage?

SP: I guess that’s one of the mysteries of the book… But it is really ironic, isn’t it? Soo-Ja is so completely firm and sure of herself when she goes free Jae-Hwa, yet she can’t figure out how to free herself. It’s strange the bonds that keep people together, and even stranger the bonds we use on our own selves! Personally, I think her sense of honor and duty are what keep her in the marriage. In her mind, if you pick X, you have to live with the consequences of picking X. You can’t just say the next day, You know what, I think I’d like Y better so I’m gonna go with Y.

JB: Father-daughter relationships seem stronger here than mother-daughter, mother-son, or even father-son. For example, Soo-Ja and Mr. Choi have an unbreakable bond. Min is also very close to Hana. Was that deliberate?

SP: Oh, that’s a great question. I actually thought of Soo-Ja and Hana a lot as I wrote the book, but you’re absolutely right that in spite of all her sacrifices for her, ultimately Hana may like her father better. Isn’t that odd, how that happens, sometimes? I think that’s often the case in real life. We like the people who are similar to us even more so than the ones who truly love us.

JB: If Soo-Ja had gone to Seoul to become a diplomat, as was her dream, what would have happened to her then?

SP: My guess is that she probably would’ve lived for a long time in Europe or in the United States, and then returned to South Korea in her 30s. She probably loves her father too much to live apart from him out of her own volition. She also might’ve found a man who was a better match for her, in terms of her temperament and personality. Just like choosing Min had a domino effect, I feel that her being a diplomat would’ve led to very different choices and experiences.

JB: In the course of This Burns My Heart, the reader cannot fail to notice how much South Korea has grown. We first see a country recovering from a devastating war to a nation on the cusp of becoming a superpower. What kind of future do you see for both North and South Korea?

SP: The germs of democracy are spreading so quickly through the world–almost like a virus–it’ll have to reach North Korea eventually. As for South Korea, I see it becoming more and more socially progressive, especially in terms of opportunities for young women. I also see it as continuing to have strong ties with America, a country that has been a deep part of its history, having fought a war together.

JB: I want to congratulate you for writing some of the best prose I’ve read in years. How long did it take you to write this novel?

SP: Thank you! What’s the emoticom for cheeks blushing and writer taking a little bow? Actually, it’s very gratifying to hear that because I decided early on not to take any shortcuts. If I thought in the back of my head that a scene could be better, I would make it better. Sometimes it’s tempting to just write something and hope that it’s “good enough,” and I’m very proud that I did not take that bait. I have a lot of respect for the reader’s time and options–I absolutely do not take it for granted. But to answer your question, it took me about nine months to write it, and then I spent another three years or so revising it.

JB: Are there any plans for a book tour? If so, which lucky cities will you be visiting?

SP: The cities I’ve been to or will be visiting during my tour include Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Milwaukee, and Chicago, where I live. I would love to eventually make my way to the Pacific Northwest and the South.

JB: What’s next for Samuel Park?

SP: I’m working on another novel, which is about a mother-daughter relationship, and that’s all I can say for now! Thank you again for this interview–I love all the questions you asked.

Park proves himself to be a master at storytelling. This Burns My Heart will surely steal your heart, just as it did mine.

***

Interview with Laurie R. King - Author of Pirate King

2011-09-01T17:02:00.000-07:00

Book Passage contributing blogger Zack Ruskin recently spoke with Laurie R. King, the acclaimed Bay Area novelist whose Mary Russell and Kate Martinelli series are beloved by readers around the world. In her latest adventure featuring the intrepid Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, the New York Times bestselling author takes readers into the frenetic world of silent films — where the pirates are real and the shooting isn’t all done with cameras.

Join us for a pirate-themed celebration as King celebrates the publication of her new book, Pirate King ($25.00), at Book Passage in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 6th at 6:00 pm. We are excited, because this is King's first event for her new book! Come in pirate costume & receive free pirate booty! This special event is co-sponsored by 826 Valencia: a percentage of sales will be donated to 826 Valencia.

Zack Ruskin: I’m sure you get this a lot, but I’m curious about how much or little you expose yourself to other Sherlock Holmes media. Clearly you want to stay original with your portrayal of the character, but are you ever tempted to watch, say, the brilliant new BBC series that sets Sherlock in modern day London?

Laurie R. King: Oh, absolutely! Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are such a hoot, and I even love the Robert Downey interpretation. For some reason, films don’t seem to infringe on my own picture of Holmes in the way that books threaten to. I almost never read Holmes pastiches — I think I’m afraid that portions of those adventures might work their way into my subconscious and pop up in a later book, without my realizing that they’re neither mine nor Conan Doyle’s.

Zack Ruskin: How long have you been waiting to release a pirate chapter in the Mary Russell saga? I can almost imagine you starting the whole series as a ploy to get to write a crazy awesome pirate book (because I totally would)!

Laurie R. King: It does seem a perfect match, doesn’t it? The pirate thing came about when I realized how far the series had gone from its original whimsical roots, and I needed to let Russell let fly and have fun again. Embrace your silliness—find your inner pirate! And then when Random House was talking about dates, I looked at the calendar and said, “You know, if you’re going to publish it in the fall, could we maybe center it around International Talk Like a Pirate Day on Sept 19th? Which also just happens to be my birthday?” And they did, so I’m hoping all the bookstores on the tour get their pirate on, with costumes and inflatable parrots and singalongs of “The Major-Criminal’s Song.” (All of which is on the events page of the web site, under the tab, “Ten Weeks of Laurie ARrrgh! King”)

Zack Ruskin: Are you a big fan of early Hollywood films? Regardless, did you sit through a bunch of them to prep for Pirate King, or perhaps read an Errol Flynn tell-all biography?

Laurie R. King: Watching old movies is one of those tough bits of research we academics (and ex-academics) commit to. Some of those early pirate films are mad fun, while others are remarkably gruesome—“The Black Pirate” begins with stripping bodies, gutting a man to get a swallowed ring, then blowing up a whole boatloads of sailors. Not at all the dynamic of Pirate King. The novel is much closer in flavor to Buster Keaton’s superb “Sherlock Jr.,” which I couldn’t resist referring to in the story. Great story and jaw-dropping special effects, what a genius Keaton was.

Zack Ruskin: How do you concoct so many original, compelling mystery plots? Are you constantly plotting out ideas throughout your day, or is there some kind of methodology you employ?

Laurie R. King: Oh, the plot is the hardest part by far. Especially because I don’t outline, so I have to plunge ahead and hope the thing makes some sense. Rewrites often leave me feeling as if I’m playing whack-a-mole with plot elements: I hammer one down, another pops up; I get that one sorted, a third one thumbs its nose at me. Some day I really must learn to outline.

Zack Ruskin: I’m pretty sure you linking-up with 826 Valencia (aka The Pirate Store) to promote Pirate King is the best PR move ever. Have you been a fan of the pirate store for awhile? What do you feel is the most crucial piece of a pirate’s outfit?

Laurie R. King: The 826 storefront in San Francisco does indeed make 826 Valencia the perfect link-up for Pirate King, just as Heifer International’s beekeeping project made that organization a great partner for The Language of Bees.

But that’s such a difficult question: What does the essential pirate wear in order to swashbuckle with the proper panache and absolute confidence? Velvet coats with gold trim are only good in the winter; plumed hats tend to irritate the people in the seat behind; eyepatches and peg-legs make walking tricky; and even Captain de la Rocha (of Pirate King) would find it tough to get his cutlass through a TSA screening. Then there’s the high percentage of would-be pirates who are hormonally challenged when it comes to growing moustaches.

So I’d have to say that the one absolute essential for a pirate outfit is in the attitude. Once a person gets in touch with his or her inner pirate, swashbuckling comes naturally.

Zack Ruskin: One of the things I admire most about you is how connected you are with your fan base. I encourage readers of this interview to visit your website and see all the giveaways, contests, homemade art and more. How much do you allow your readers to influence the choices you make with your books and characters?

Laurie R. King: It’s an interesting shift in the world of a writer, isn’t it? When I first started, in the 90s, I met my readers once a year when I went on tour, and if they wanted to write, they had to put a stamp on an envelope. (I still get some of those — and I still answer them all.) Now, I’m on Facebook every day, give out my email address, post regularly on my blog, put my book list on Goodreads, and via Mary Russell, Tweet.

But how much do readers influence the actual books? Not at all. Hey, I barely have any control over what the characters do. My editor and I make an initial stab at what the next book is going to be about, and then we both sit back and wait to see what happens.

The one thing I do open to fans is naming a character. The last few books, I’ve made the prize for the fund-raiser (this year, 826 Valencia) a chance to name a character in the next book. Fans (or their pets, their mothers, or their grandkids) can become a corpse or a suspect or the person who brings Mary Russell a cup of tea, just by donating to my chosen project.

Zack Ruskin: In addition to Pirate King, 2011 has also seen you publish the e-novella Beekeeping for Beginners. What prompted you to write about the initial encounter between Russell and Holmes from the latter’s point of view?

Laurie R. King: Beekeeping for Beginners started when my editor asked me to do an exclusive e-story, perhaps one that developed a minor character from one of the books. And I thought about how in recent books, although they’re still very much Russell’s first-person memoirs, they’ve started to include portions of other characters’ points of view. So I decided to apply that same shift to the very first scene from The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, to see what actually was going on when Russell first met Holmes in 1915.

Zack Ruskin: I almost hate to ask, but do have an end-game in mind for the Mary Russell series? Are you content to keep offering new installments as long as you can write them and people want to read them?

Laurie R. King: No end game. Which should come as no surprise, since I barely have an end in mind with each individual story. I do have a sense of the series arc, but it’s very flexible, and so far I can see no need to even consider an ending. Yes, Holmes is getting older, but since each book seems to take up about six weeks of their lives, he’s not ageing very fast. And I’m not getting bored.

Zack Ruskin: Any pirate literature (fiction and non-fiction) you encountered while writing Pirate King that voracious readers should look for once they’ve finished your book?

Laurie R. King: Apart from Treasure Island, that is? I loved Daniel Defoe’s A General History of The Pyrates (edited by Manuel Schonhorn) which has some superb stories of piracy. The chapters on Mary Read and Anne Bonny alone make it worth the price of admission.

Zack Ruskin: Do you ever use what you’re writing about as a pretense to do something really fun? For example: did you find it necessary, for research purposes, to go out on a pirate ship and sail around?

Laurie R. King: Of course! I do all the hard research, such as going down to the Point Dana Tall Ships festival and booking a sunset cruise on one of the brigantines, to sail up and down as the sun is setting, and fire cannon and water balloons at each other. And Pirate King is set in two places I traveled last year, Portugal and Morocco.

How I suffer for my art.

Signed 1st edition copies of Pirate King ($25.00) will be available through Book Passage following the author's September 6th event. More about Laurie King and her new novel can be found on her website at http://www.laurierking.com/books/mary-russell/pirate-king-2011

Light Years in the Dark

2011-09-01T15:23:00.000-07:00

by Todd Crawshaw

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. Thereabouts. And through the predominately dark vacuum of space surrounding us, light travels six trillion miles in one year. A light-year. A unit of distance, and time. On average, our planet orbits the sun at a speed of 67,000 mph. Our star circles the galaxy at about 560,000 mph. Concurrently our galaxy, the Milky Way, is moving 80 miles per second toward Andromeda, another galaxy, en route to somewhere. Presumably.

We exist because of this light and function normally, surprisingly, while standing or sitting upon a whirling chunk of rock-liquid-gas hurtling at crazy speeds end-over-end through darkness. And we're not even aware of it—except in concept. We go about our lives, traveling through time, oblivious to these motions. This is what inspired the title of my book, Light-Years in the Dark.

This elusive phenomena fascinates me. As do our dreams. Dreams are as mysterious as the cosmic gears we call solar systems and galaxies. They make us self-aware that we are largely unaware of the internal forces driving our behavior, like the microcosm of moving molecules and cells that operate our autonomic nervous system. For example, the human body has 50-75 trillion cells, and each of these cells does over 6 trillion things per second. Six trillion things—per second! I mean, as a proud member of the thinking race, this makes me think my conscious mind is not really pulling its weight.

The reason I write is to explore the mysteries of life. John Gardner, the novelist, said this about writing, "The organized and intelligent fictional dream that will eventually fill the reader's mind begins as a largely mysterious dream in the writer's mind." These nebulous stars (aka dreams) are found while wandering the subconscious stairwells of our DNA—intertwined strands of chemicals passed on to us like batons from a long line of predecessors. Twisted coding that carry the essence of who we are. And it is when we dream that our psyche enters the world of the subconsciousness, a chaotic river formed from merging streams of our daily experiences that flow into the reservoir of collective unconsciousness, a term Carl Jung coined. It refers to his belief that all humans collectively access, especially during dreams, a repository of primordial myths and symbols.

Assuming this is true, what's the purpose of having a collective unconsciousness? Let's take the Greek myth about a deadly Minotaur who lives inside a labyrinth. The hero uses a ball of golden thread to unwind as he ventures inside the cave, weaving his way through the maze—to hunt down, surprise, and slay the monster— then uses this thread to guide him to safety, back into the light. This myth might symbolize the synaptic link between our consciousness and unconsciousness. The labyrinth could represent the complexity of challenges we face navigating through life, to overcome our fears and gain self-knowledge. Or it could mean nothing. Simply an entertaining tale to pass the time while we whirl about within a ball of light through darkness.

Charles Dickens said this, "An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself." Whether you take his words literally or not, it is my view that, in a sense, dreams amount to conversations with ghosts and serve basically three purposes: 1) To purge the useless clutter from our brains; 2) To connect and formulate solutions by bridging consciousness with subconsciousness, and 3) to prepare us for what comes next. In other words, dreams are rehearsals for death. Which isn't bad. Death is overrated. It isn't the final chapter. Nothing is final. Again, choose to take my words literally or not. Nevertheless, for us to make any sense of our existence within this mysterious place—being alive on a chunk of rock-liquid-gas hurtling end-over-end through space— is like trying to define the nature of light. Wave or particle? It is both. A duality that applies to all objects, includes ourselves. Perhaps we are the ultimate paradox.

Our position in the universe is relative to light. All of us are in motion. Uncertain as to our precise location—like a wave or particle—as to who and what we are. Or where we are going. Being voyeurs, our point of view depends upon our point of reference. And our means of communication, the messages we send each other, and how they are received and understood, will vary. At best, the words we use light up our neurons and provide a warmth of inspiration. Words are complex instruments charged with poetic ambiguity. Like atoms begetting atoms that beget molecules, when uniquely linked, words form a DNA of indelible visions.

Continuing on that vein, Exploits of the Satyr, my novel, is a psychological thriller about artificial intelligence, an epic tale that is structured like a roller coaster ride. By contrast, Light-Years in the Dark is a collection of StoryPoems, a hybrid genre of poetry and short story. Meaning these are tales about a variety of characters, ideas, and emotions distilled into the essence of a few words. And it is structured like a carnival funhouse full of mirrors—the kind that distort reality and expose hidden truths. Alternatively, I like to think of this book as a box of light and dark chocolates. To be ingested slowly, and savored. Try a box.

Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus Comes to Book Passage

2011-08-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus is without doubt one of the most highly anticipated books of the Fall Season. Though a debut novel, it has already received many rave reviews authors whose names you may well know. Consider if you will .....

“A riveting debut. The Night Circus pulls you into a world as dark as it is dazzling, fully-realized but still something out of a dream. You will not want to leave it.”

— Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger’s Wife

“Erin Morgenstern is a gifted, classic storyteller, a tale-teller, a spinner of the charmed and mesmerizing — I had many other things I was supposed to be doing, but the book kept drawing me back in and I tore through it. You can be certain this riveting debut will create a group of rêveurs all its own.”

— Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“‘Dark as soot and bright as sparks,’ The Night Circus still holds me willingly captive in a world of almost unbearable beauty. This is a love story on a grand scale: it creates, it destroys, it ultimately transcends. Take a bow, Erin Morgenstern. This is one of the best books I have ever read.”

— Brunonia Barry, author of The Lace Reader

“The Night Circus is a gorgeously imagined fable poised in the high latitudes of Hans Christian Anderson and Oscar Wilde, with a few degrees toward Hesse’s Steppenwolf for dangerous spice. The tale is masterfully written and invites allegorical interpretations even as its leisurely but persistent suspense gives it compelling charm. An enchanting read.”

— Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love

“The Night Circus made me happy. Playful and intensely imaginative, Erin Morgenstern has created the circus I have always longed for and she has populated it with dueling love-struck magicians, precocious kittens, hyper-elegant displays of beauty and complicated clocks. This is a marvelous book.”

— Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife

expect the unexpected!

ERIN MORGENSTERN WILL BE READING FROM THE NIGHT CIRCUS AT BOOK PASSAGE IN CORTE MADERA ON SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 18TH AT 1 PM. IF YOU LIVE IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, DON'T MISS THIS SPECIAL EVENT!

expect the unexpected!!

IF YOU CAN'T MAKE OUR SPECIAL AFTERNOON EVENT WITH ERIN MORGENSTERN, YOU CAN STILL ORDER A SIGNED 1ST EDITION COPY BY SIMPLY FOLLOWING THIS LINK. NO, NOT THAT LINK, THIS LINK. (AND JUST NOTE SIGNED 1ST IN THE COMMENTS FIELD AND THE TALENTED BOOKSELLER WHO RECEIVES YOUR QUERY WILL TAKE CARE TO SEE YOUR WISH FULFILLED.)

expect the unexpected!!!

THE NIGHT CIRCUS IS ALSO THE SEPTEMBER CHOICE FOR OUR FIRST EDITIONS CLUB. MEMBERS OF THE BOOK PASSAGE FIRST EDITIONS CLUB RECEIVE AN AUTOGRAPHED FIRST PRINTING ONCE EACH MONTH OF A NEW WORK OF FICTION BY AN EMERGING AUTHOR WHO SHOWS EXCEPTIONAL PROMISE. WE THINK THE NIGHT CIRCUS MORE THAN FITS THE BILL.

blogged by thomas gladysz

Interview with Penn Jillette - Author of God, No: Signs You May Already Be An Atheist and Other Magical Tales

2011-08-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

Book Passage contributing blogger Zack Ruskin recently spoke with Penn Jillette, the acclaimed television host and one-half of the magic duo Penn & Teller (who are self-described as "eccentric magicians with a psychotic twist"). Join us as Jillette discusses his new book, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be An Atheist and Other Magical Tales ($24.99), at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Thursday, August 25th at 7:00 pm. Please note: priority seating to this special event is available with purchase of the God, No! from Book Passage.

Zack Ruskin: You must be the only author in history to have a blurb from both Glenn Beck and Richard Dawkins. Your book is about atheism, but clearly you don’t need to be of that opinion to enjoy it?

Penn Jillette: I thought long and hard about putting both of those blurbs on my book. I was afraid that if you drew a Venn Diagram eliminating people who would not ever buy a book enjoyed by Richard Dawkins and also those who would never buy a book enjoyed by Glenn Beck -- there might be no one left. I hope, instead, it shows, that even people who disagree strongly can still have a laugh or two together. I guess we’ll find out.

Zack Ruskin: Between your Vegas magic shows, your upcoming television series on Discovery channel and the numerous appearances you make, where do you find the time to write a book?

Penn Jillette: A change is better than a rest. Everything else I do is in public. I’m out there. They’re all interactive. Yes, the book is out in public now, and I hope a lot of people read it, but I wrote it in quiet moments alone. It’s more personal then the more showbizzy stuff. The time I spent thinking about it and typing, is time I need to spend resting anyway. I love writing, and I find it relaxing and restful. So, I wrote this book as a break from the other stuff.

Zack Ruskin: I assume there won’t be a companion book written by Teller arguing for the existence of God?

Penn Jillette: That would be so cool. But, Teller is more hardcore an atheist than I am. He makes Richard Dawkins look like Glenn Beck.

Zack Ruskin: As someone who is known the world over as being part of a duo, do you see your novels and now God, No! as an outlet for creating apart from that moniker?

Penn Jillette: Not at all. I’m proud to be more than half by weight of Penn & Teller and have no desire to separate from that image at all.

Zack Ruskin: How would you compare your book with say, Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great? Less British?

Penn Jillette: Hitch is an American, so I can’t even claim that. Hitch is smarter than me. He’s better educated than me. He’s better read than me. He’s braver than me. But . . . he didn’t drop his cock in a blow-dryer or get naked with Billy Gibbons in Zero G, and he can’t find a freely selected card in a perfectly ordinary deck -- so fuck him.

Zack Ruskin: Do you see any parallels between religion and magic? Both seem to place an emphasis on believing, and asking participants to disregard logic, although I know your show goes to great lengths to acknowledge the deceptions at hand.

Penn Jillette: Religion and magic are the opposite. Religion is wishful thinking and the artistic willing suspension of disbelief dangerously moved into the real world. Modern theatrical magic is the unwilling suspension of disbelief. You watch magic shows, with a chip on your shoulder and enjoy the collision between what you know isn’t true and how it seems. You leave a magic show, with a sense that you must question everything, you leave church thinking you mustn’t question anything.

Zack Ruskin: On NPR, you clarified the difference between being an atheist and believing there isn’t a God. Why is this distinction important to you?

Penn Jillette: This may be a question better answered in the book. What you believe is not what you know, what you believe is your default setting at this minute. When I wrote this book, I didn’t believe in god. Now, I don’t believe in god. Next book? I have no way of knowing. Atheism is the humility of “I don’t know.” And while I don’t know, I don’t believe. But, if you pushed me, I believe there’s no god. I’m further gone than one needs to be to be an atheist.

Zack Ruskin: The common thread in most of your professional endeavors seems to be skepticism: your Vegas show plays on the conventions of illusion, your brilliant TV show Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t debunked all nature of things, and now your new book. Do you derive pleasure in showing why something like bottled water is a complete scam, or is more an inherent moral obligation you feel you’re fulfilling?

Penn Jillette: Neither. For rhetorical and comedic reasons, my beliefs are stated in the negative, but it’s not the way I feel them in my heart. I feel that an empirical reality that we can share, love, family, friendship, are just wonderful, and all the jive just takes away the pure white light/white heat joy of life. I also believe that everyone should proselytize and play in the marketplace of ideas. That’s what life is and I’m digging it. But, that’s not funny.

Zack Ruskin: Mixing humor in with religious talk is an excellent way to approach the subject, but it also comes with inherited risks. I feel like Bill Maher managed to walk that tightrope in his documentary Religulous. Are there any books, movies etc. you have a particular affinity for that blend faith and funny well?

Penn Jillette: Well, Hitch of course -- he’s a funny guy. Mark Twain is hard to beat. George Carlin, Frank Zappa, Martin Mull, Monty Python, Randy Newman, Michael O’Donahue -- the list goes on and on. I also find Moby Dick to be an atheist book, but . . . I think that might be my own delusion.

Zack Ruskin: Which of the Ten Commandments irks you the most? What would your replacement commandment be?

Penn Jillette: All the ones that put “god” above humans (the first 3) really bug me, but the worst to me right now is the 10th, not because I covet my neighbor’s wife (although some of those MILFs at my children’s school kill me) but because making it a sin to think something seems horrible. It means all believers must fail, and it makes our thoughts not our own, and nothing is worse than that. Not making a separation between what one thinks and what someone does, is insane. There should be no guilt in thinking something wrong, only in doing something wrong. I would suggest “Think what you want, but do good.”

Atlatl Bob Gets His Bison; Tim Cahill Gets His Story

2011-08-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

By Dick Jordan

To Atlatl Bob, what makes humans different from other creatures is the ability to throw things. To his friend, travel writer Tim Cahill, it’s the ability to tell stories.

They are both right. Here’s what I got from Tim's remarks about travel writing, and the story he told about Atlatl Bob at the recently concluded Book Passage Travel and Food Writing & Photography Conference, held each year in August..

Throwing Means Living to Eat Another Day

The atlatl is a stick that you use to throw an arrow-like dart with great force to slay beasts or enemies from afar. Atlatl Bob (whose real name is Bob Perkins) decided to make one as a project for an anthropology course he took while pursuing a degree in engineering at Montana State University.

With fellow MSU student, Paul Leininger, Perkins formed “BPS Engineering” (the “Bob &amp; Paul Show”), and started manufacturing atlatls. They blew away atlatl aficionados when they showed off their modern-day version of this pre-historic weapon at The Fifth Annual World’s Open Atlatl Contest at Saratoga, Wyoming, in 1985. Today BPS can sell you either an “Authentic Replica Atlatl” or a production model “Warrior Atlatl.”

Studying and building atlatls convinced Perkins that Neanderthals couldn’t have used it. First, after noting that Neanderthal remains sometimes contained broken bones, he realized that our Not-So-Distant hominid relatives must have had to belly up close to their movable feasts in order to kill them on the hoof and, by doing so, risked getting stomped into a bag of skin and busted limbs and ribs. (There is some evidence that Neanderthals occasionally stalked less dangerous dinner fixings: Veggies). Secondly, he discovered the reason that Neanderthals could not have stood at a safe distance from a wooly mammoth and dispatched it with a well-placed atlatl chuck, was that they lacked the type of “throwing shoulder” that lets a Major League pitcher bonk batters on the noggin with a flaming fastball.

Bob reasoned that it was only when homo sapiens came along and invented the atlatl that big game hunting became a more reliable method of getting one’s grub and a less fearsome occupation. And as Tim Cahill pointed out in his story, Perfecting Stone Age Technology—The Atlatl: A Great Leap Backward, for at least for a brief time the Aztecs successfully used it to bump off the Cortez’ conquistadors.

But building a working, 20th century atlatl wasn’t enough for Atlatl Bob. He wanted to kill a buffalo with it.

Although Perkins lives less than a two hour drive from Yellowstone National Park, it would have taken a cave-man’s sensibility to wildlife for him to have used an atlatl to fling a deadly dart into a herd of bison in front of thousands of park visitors. And so, Tim Cahill says, Bob’s successful “hunt” took place on an animal farm where the shaggy critter he “bagged” would have eventually been turned into Buffalo Bill Burgers, or maybe even bison and elk Bolognese penne pasta sauce for the Old Faithful Inn Dining Room.

By using his engineer’s mind to figure out the physics, wave mechanics, and aerodynamics behind the design of the atlatl, Bob Perkins not only revived an ancient method of hunting and warfare that differentiates Man from Beast, but according to Tim Cahill, came up with a saleable product that allowed he and his business partner, Leininger, to keep their larders stocked with another staple of modern-day hunters: Beer.

“Bagging The Story”

Tim Cahill bought an atlatl from BPS, and after a little practice, could hurl the dart more than the length of a football field, and hit a “buffalo sized target” at thirty yards without a miss. Although he might have used an atlatl to great advantage if, as the titles to some of his books claim, he actually did have his flesh ripped by jaguars and his leg eaten by a wolverine, Tim apparently does not pack one in his carry-on bag when he travels the world looking for stories to “bag” and bring home.

When Tim does bring home a “trophy” of a story, it’s not anything like those onerous and boring “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” papers that school teachers forced you to write when you were a kid. You won’t find Tim simply saying “I went here, and I did this”, or “I went there, and I did that.” He’s less interested in telling you the story of his trip, than passing on the stories that people he met along the way have told to him.

But as I have found, getting “locals” to talk to you, let alone relate anything personal about their lives, isn’t that easy, especially once they find out you are a writer. Tim uses this trick, learned when he was interviewing Hollywood celebrities years and years ago, to make the other people feel at ease and talkative: Tell a story about yourself to which they can relate, and they’ll respond by telling your their story.

Straight Shooters

If he had a mind to, Atlatl Bob could knock you cold with a well-made, well-flung atlatl. Tim Cahill, who always has a mind to, will blow you away with his well-researched, well-told travel stories. In either case, their aim will be deadly, and right on target.

(Tim Cahill lived in San Francisco and wrote about rock and roll for Rolling Stone. His career as a travel writer began in 1976 when Rolling Stone started publishing Outside magazine and he became a founding editor. His books include Road Fever, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg, and Pecked To Death By Ducks. He resides in Montana and wrote about Yellowstone National Park in Lost In My Own Backyard. Tim regularly serves on the faculty of the Book Passage Travel and Food Writing & Photography Conference).
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(Dick Jordan publishes the travel blog, Tales Told From The Road. His last post to the Book(ed) Passage blog reviewed An Explorers Guide: Yosemite &amp; the Southern Sierra Nevada by travel writer David T. Page.
When Dick isn’t traveling, you can usually find him hanging out with other members of Left Coast Writers at the Book Passage Corte Madera store on the evening of the first Monday of each month. He is an “alumnus” of the 2009 Book Passage Travel Writing &amp; Photography Conference).