The Avid Reader - Events Feed

First of Hearts with Max Byrd and William Wood (Davis)

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:04:08 -0400

Start: 05/18/2012 - 7:30pm

End: 05/18/2012 - 7:30pm

A woman of not so very long ago speaks to us today, with a new introduction by a leading woman of our day.

Marian Hooper—known from childhood as "Clover"—was one of the most remarkable American women of the nineteenth century. She and her husband, the celebrated historian Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, resided for the last part of her life in a magnificent Washington house next door to President McKinley's Secretary of State, John Hay (the two structures later became the Hays-Adams Hotel). Here Clover practiced her art of photography—one of the first American women to enter that field—and held a salon for politicians and writers of every stripe: Henry James came to visit often, as did General Sherman, McKinley, Clarence King, Oscar Wilde, and dozens of others. And for a period of seven years Clover wrote to her father in Boston a series of warm, chatty, hilariously perceptive letters about those salons and about Washington life and politics in the Gilded Age—an age that resembles, in many disturbing ways, our own time.

These letters, first selected and published by Ward Thoron in 1937, constitute one of the forgotten gems of American history. The distinguished Emmy-award winning journalist and historian Cokie Roberts has written a brilliant new introduction to this fascinating and delightful collection. Herself a member of a great American political family, Roberts has long lived and worked in Washington. She is the most insightful and eloquent commentator on Washington life and politics since . . . Clover Adams.

Read the favorable review in the Wall Street Journal here.

Launch Party (Davis) -- Gilt with Katherine Longshore

Tue, 01 May 2012 21:54:46 -0400

Start: 05/19/2012 - 5:00pm

End: 05/19/2012 - 5:00pm

Few periods in history were as full of scandal, intrigue, and deceit as the rule of England’s King Henry VIII. Known for his six wives, several of whom met untimely ends, Henry’s court was a cutthroat world of gossip and wealth, a complex game of social hierarchies rife with jealousy and backstabbing. Players armed themselves with rumors, secrets and lies, and friends switched loyalties and betrayed one another simply to win favor with those in power.

Sounds a lot like high school, doesn’t it? Minus the beheadings, of course.

In fact Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, is thought to have been only a teenager when she became queen. Katherine Longshore’s hopelessly addictive debut novel, GILT, brings Catherine’s brief reign vividly to life.

At GILT’s heart lies not the relationship between Cat and the king, nor the liaisons with other men that proved her undoing; but her friendship with one Kitty Tylney, her childhood confidant who follows her to court. Catherine is the ultimate mean girl, and Kitty, who has no family or connections, her loyal sidekick. Teens who have navigated the turbulent waters of high school cliques will find Kitty a sympathetic narrator and understand her conflicted emotions about her supposed best friend, who rules their flock of girls with an iron fist even before she is queen. Kitty watches as Cat climbs to the very highest position in the kingdom, knowing that if and when Cat falls, she’ll pull Kitty down with her. And in Henry VIII’s Tudor Court, losing popularity can mean your very head.

“I find history riveting,” says Ms. Longshore, and GILT’s readers will be hard-pressed to disagree. In a market saturated with dystopias, GILT is a reminder that history is also full of drama, heady romance, and rigid social rules that demand to be broken. With lush descriptions of jewels and fashions, a page-turning plot, and a cast of dangerously handsome noblemen, GILT is certain to hook not only teens, but adult readers as well.

Meet & Greet (Sacramento) -- Rail Tales with Brian Green

Sat, 05 May 2012 20:31:27 -0400

Start: 05/20/2012 - 4:00pm

End: 05/20/2012 - 4:00pm

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Author Event (Davis) -- 2312 with Kim Stanley Robinson

Sat, 05 May 2012 20:49:58 -0400

Start: 05/26/2012 - 7:30pm

End: 05/26/2012 - 7:30pm

Please join us as Kim Stanley Robinson, the "writer whose work will set the standard for science fiction in the future", discusses his new book 2312.

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

Author Event (Davis) -- Time's Shadow with Arnold Bauer

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:22:47 -0400

Start: 06/01/2012 - 7:30pm

End: 06/01/2012 - 7:30pm

Arnold Bauer grew up on his family’s 160-acre farm in Goshen Township in Clay County, Kansas, amidst a land of prairie grass and rich creek-bottom soil. His meditative and moving account of those years depicts a century-long narrative of struggle, survival, and demise. A coming-of-age memoir set in the 1930s to 50s, Time’s Shadow blends local history with personal reflection to paint a realistic picture of farm life and families from a now-lost world.

Bauer’s was typical of true family farms, where wives supplemented family income by
selling butter and eggs and children provided unpaid labor. These hardworking farmers
were not particularly heroic or virtuous. They had their debts and doubts; but at the same
time their struggles for a kind of moral economy offer valuable lessons that merit our
attention today.

Among Bauer’s vivid recollections: driving a team of huge, clomping work horses;
his father’s daybreak call to long days in the field at age 12; and surviving eight years
of education in a one-room schoolhouse (with one teacher determined to have all
her students learn the harmonica). He shares the trials of Depression and drought,
experiences the coming of electricity—which prompted his father to take on a sideline as
an electrician—and reveals the vital importance of the local blacksmith. Throughout the
book, he finds wonder in the commonplace, like going to town on a Saturday night for a
black walnut ice cream cone.

“Bauer thoughtfully and gracefully examines a way of life that has disappeared. . . . On
a small, 160-acre farm, the family was an economic unit; and the mutual goal of keeping
the operation running and profitable superseded affection in binding husband, wife, and
children together. Although the community was well-peopled with other families, many
of which were cousins, a keen and somewhat melancholy sense of isolation pervades
this memoir. It arises in part from the endless open landscape itself, and in part from the
knowledge that the world it describes is long lost, but also, more prosaically, from the
extreme self-sufficiency of the farmers, who needed regularly from town only ‘coffee,
sugar, shoes and overalls.’” --The Atlantic

Here is a childhood that few in the United States will ever know. More than that, it is a
key to understanding the tragedy that befell the smaller family farms on the Great Plains
as sweeping changes after the mid-1950s—falling grain and livestock prices, adverse
terms of trade for agricultural products—turned out to be more devastating than tornados
or dust storms.

Gracefully written with a keen eye for the telling detail, Time’s Shadow eloquently captures the events of an era and the meaning it held for one boy and those around him.
It is a refreshingly unsentimental “Little House on the Prairie” that will resonate not only
with older compatriots but with anyone whose curiosity leads them to wonder about a
world we have lost.

Arnold Bauer went from his family farm to study in Mexico and Berkeley and to teach
Latin American Studies at the University of California at Davis. In 2005 he received
the “Order of Merit Gabriela Mistral,” the highest recognition the Chilean government
awards for contributions to education and culture. He lives in Davis.

Author Event (Sacramento) -- A Spiritual Renegade's Guide to the Good Life with Lama Marut

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:29:14 -0400

Start: 06/02/2012 - 12:00pm

End: 06/02/2012 - 12:00pm

A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life is an honest, brave, and playful guide. It offers a practical and achievable—if not revolutionary—blueprint for creating and sustaining happiness in a modern age of consumerism, self-absorption, and stress. Through a series of meditations, exercises, and useful insights, Lama Marut offers a fresh take on our quest for happiness and the good life. Each chapter ends with an action plan designed to incite happiness and forge a clear path toward fulfillment. Microsoft tags throughout the book link to videos in which Lama Marut discusses each step in depth. The book is designed to help readers transform problems into opportunities, set themselves free from fear and anxiety, unburden past resentments, and create an action plan for true happiness.

"A Spiritual Renegade's Guide to the Good Life is so good I wish I had written it myself! Seriously, you really should try to overcome your fear of bliss and start living the way Lama Marut suggests. I recommend this delightful book that should accompany your day to day from now on."
—Robert A. F. "Tenzin" Thurman, Je Tsongkapa professor of Buddhist Studies, Columbia University, cofounder of Tibet House US, and author of Why The Dalai Lama Matters

As a surfer, motorcycle enthusiast, ordained Buddhist monk, and university professor, Marut is accessible to a broad audience—spiritual and irreverent alike. His unique background and easy, down-to-earth style has attracted thousands of followers around the world of all ages and walks of life who gather to hear his call for a revolution of true and lasting happiness. He uses Western cultural signposts, pop references, and humor to help remove cross-cultural hurdles. A perfect combination of warmth and wit, Lama Marut makes even the most esoteric brain-busters of Eastern philosophy work as practical tools for immediate transformation. Marut pulls no punches in his hardcore presentation of timeless spiritual truths and their profound relevance to our modern Western world. Ruthlessly compassionate, he insists that the goals of the spiritual life are totally realizable—here and now.

A Spiritual Renegade’s Guide to the Good Life aims to disrupt your suffering, disturb your dissatisfaction, and elicit a deep-seated contentment.