read. booksellers - coming events

Bookstore events are always an interesting proposition. Will the public react? Will people come and support authors and the store? Will the audience have questions and be engaged? Will the author have some passion and be able to pass that on to the crowd?
Something that has been very consistent in our personal history of over 25 years in bookstores, is that serious authors are, with very few exceptions, pretty interesting people. Meeting these creative folks, up close and personal, often makes for some fascinating conversation, and chances are very high that you will come away from one of these meetings with, maybe a new opinion, and definitely knowing something new. Every event has the potential to be entertaining ... learning ... and/or laughing ... and/or enlightening experience. All for the price of showing up. It's a good deal, you should try one out.

Quick Links to event info or just scroll on down

MAY ▬ 5.27 read. book club

JUNE ▬ 6.1 younger kid's reading/crafts - 6.6 book signing w/ Elaine Schmitz - 6.8 younger kid's reading/crafts

6.15 younger kid's reading/crafts - 6.17 older kid's reading/crafts - 6.17 Mexico travel slide show w/ Bruce Whipperman

6.19 LaQ toy demonstration - 6.22 younger kid's reading/crafts - 6.24 older kid's reading/crafts - 6.24 read. book club

6.27 Writing Mama's salon - 6.29 kid's reading/crafts

JULY ▬ 7.29 read. book club w/ John Lescroart - 7.31 book signing w/ Karen Benke

► MAY 27 - Thursday @7pm

EVENT

My Abandonment by Peter Rock is a fantastic book (this was one of the best books of 2009, as picked by three of us working here at read. booksellers - take a look here) and is the book for May's meeting of the read. Book Club.

A thirteen-year-old girl and her father live in Forest Park, the enormous nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. There they inhabit an elaborate cave shelter, bathe in a nearby creek, store perishables at the water's edge, use a makeshift septic system, tend a garden, even keep a library of sorts. Once a week, they go to the city to buy groceries and otherwise merge with the civilized world. But one small mistake allows a backcountry jogger to discover them, which derails their entire existence, ultimately provoking a deeper flight. Inspired by a true story and told through the startlingly sincere voice of a young narrator, Caroline, Peter Rock's My Abandonment is a riveting journey into life at the margins, and a mesmerizing tale of survival and hope.

"Peter Rock's My Abandonment is an electrically charged, bone-deep and tender tale of loss and partial redemption. Surreal, haunting, elegiac."
-- James Ellroy

"This beautiful, strange novel takes us into the foreign country where those called homeless are at home, the city is wilderness, and the greater wilderness lies beyond. Fascinating and moving, it tells with great tenderness how human love goes wrong."
-- Ursula K. Le Guin

the peter rock project site

more about the book club

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► JUNE 1 - Tuesday @11am - for ages 3 and up

It's Children's Time every Tuesday at 11am.
Bring your child for a story time with some favorite kids books or some fun activity designed just for kids.

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► JUNE 6 - Sunday @2pm

Author Elaine Schmitz will be in the bookstore for a signing of her book RECIPES & RECOLLECTIONS OF MY GREEK-AMERICAN FAMILY. Elaine will also answer questions and talk about how to write memoirs and, of course, cookbooks.

Elaine Schmitz’s Recipes and Recollections of My Greek American Family is a warm and charming account of the generations of Greek Americans that informed the author’s childhood and adult life. Tracing her roots back on both sides to the “old country,” Elaine recounts how her grandmothers, aunts, uncles, mother, and father infused her sense of food and family. Filled with traditional and updated recipes, Elaine brings people, places, and food alive, all around a big Greek table. - Kathleen Taggart - Director, Draeger’s Home and Cooking School

about her book
her website

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► JUNE 8 - Tuesday @11am - for ages 3 and up

It's Children's Time every Tuesday at 11am.
Bring your child for a story time with some favorite kids books or some fun activity designed just for kids.

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► JUNE 15 - Tuesday @11am - for ages 3 to 5

It's Children's Time every Tuesday at 11am.
Bring your child for a story time with some favorite kids books or some fun activity designed just for kids.

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► JUNE 17 - Thursday @11am - a little older - for ages 6 to 8 - NEW EVENT

For the Summer we are expanding our offerings for kids by having the regular Children's Time on Tuesdays for the younger children (ages 3 to 5) and then we're adding a Children's Time for kids who are a little older (ages 6 to 8) every Thursday at 11am.
Bring your child for a story time with some favorite kids books or some fun activity designed just for kids.

Also for the Summer we are planning a fun children's reading program/contest - details to be coming this way soon.

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► JUNE 17 - Thursday @7pm - NEW EVENT

axaca bruce

Join us for a slideshow on Mexican travel with an author of many travel guides, Bruce Whipperman.

In 1980, the lure of travel brought Bruce Whipperman away from a 20-year career teaching physics to Kenya for a total eclipse and photography safari. He hasn't stopped traveling since. In 1993, after scores of published newspaper and magazine features, Bruce' started writing his five Mexico guidebooks: the Moon Handbooks Pacific Mexico, the Moon Handbooks Puerto Vallarta, the Moon Handbooks Oaxaca, the Moon Handbooks Guadalajara, Moon Handbooks Ixtapa & Zihuatanejo, and the Moon Handbooks Acapulco.

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► JUNE 19 - Saturday 2 - 4pm

Let's Play with LaQ
We are going to be hosting a demonstration of these very clever building sets. This should be a lot of fun and LaQ is very special.

If your children are tired of the ho-hum stacking blocks, they are ready for LaQ. The Q in LaQ stands for the Japanese word for sphere, and a sphere is just one of countless shapes that can be made by this revolutionary construction kit. Brand new to the USA, LaQ kits include seven very different, very tiny, types of blocks in a myriad of child-pleasing colors that click together to form unlimited models. These seven unique shapes mean that nearly anything your child can envision he can create, from flat designs and three-dimensional simple shapes to complex animals and vehicles, even something practical like a pencil holder.

LaQ is a innovative construction set from Japan consisting of seven different shaped blocks in 10 different colors. The blocks make fun snaps! and clicks! when piecing the parts together so the child knows when the pieces are firmly connected. The clever angles on the joint block pieces can create flat, two-dimensions, three-dimensional and spherical objects. LaQ is an educational toy that teaches concentration through play. Test results show that playing with LaQ will aid the growth of a child's brain by stimulating both the left and right spheres of the brain.

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► JUNE 22 - Tuesday @11am - for ages 3 and up

It's Children's Time every Tuesday at 11am.
Bring your child for a story time with some favorite kids books or some fun activity designed just for kids.

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► JUNE 24 - Thursday @11am - a little older - for ages 6 to 8 - NEW EVENT

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► JUNE 24 - Thursday @7pm - NEW EVENT

read. book club tracy Tracy Kidder on his latest book -

Strength in What Remains is the story of Deogratias, a young medical student from the central African nation of Burundi. Through no fault of his own, he was forced onto a terrifying journey, a journey that split his life in two. First there was a six-months-long escape on foot from ethnic violence in Burundi and from genocide in Rwanda. Almost by accident he ended up in New York City, where he lived for a time in Central Park. When I first heard Deo’s story, I had one simple thought: I would not have survived. I hoped in part to reproduce that feeling in recounting what seems to me a rich tale: an adventure story, a survival story, an immigrant’s story, a story of despair and determination, of evil and kindness. I also hoped to humanize what, to most westerners anyway, is a mysterious, little-known part of the world. But above all, I wanted to address the question of how one survives the torment of memories like Deo’s, memories with a distinctly ungovernable quality.

Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. The author of Strength in What Remains, Mountains Beyond Mountains, My Detachment, Home Town, Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine, Kidder lives in Massachusetts and Maine.

check out his website - www.tracykidder.com

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► JUNE 27 - Sunday 6-8pm - NEW EVENT

writing

The Writing Mamas will be holding their second meeting, as they get the Blackhawk chapter going here at the bookstore.

Writers and Moms!

Announcing the Writing Mamas © Danville

A new writing community dedicated to nurturing the mother and the writer.

Are you a mother?

Do you write, or want to write?

What would it take to make that possible?

Time away from responsibilities to focus

A quiet and inspiring place

Inspiration

Support and feedback

A glass of wine

Meetings will normally be every 3rd Sunday ongoing - but for when holidays conflict.

Yearly dues $100 - A Bay Area Writing Resource Bargain!

For more information, or to sign up to attend a meeting,

please contact: Kirsten Branch, Managing Editor Kirsten.E.Branch@gmail.com

call the bookstore at 925-736-909 or email Vicky at read. booksellers at vicky@readbooksellers.com

Learn more www.writingmamas.com

A website for the Danville Writing Mamas chapter will be coming.

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► JUNE 29 - Tuesday @11am - for ages 3 and up

It's Children's Time every Tuesday at 11am.
Bring your child for a story time with some favorite kids books or some fun activity designed just for kids.

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► JULY 29 - Thursday @7pm - NEW EVENT

book club plague john lescroart

This meeting of the read. book club will include a LIVE author who is no stranger to the national bestsellers lists, and a long-time friend of the bookstore's managers, Vicky and John. JOHN LESCROART will be with us to talk about this month's book club book, John's A Plague of Secrets, AND our author will also be explaining about the process of getting successfully published. We have hosted John for many different types of events over the years, and it's always a given that he will be VERY charming, amusing, and informative. He's not to be missed.

John Lescroart (pronounced "less-kwah") is a big believer in hard work and single-minded dedication, although he'll acknowledge that a little luck never hurts. Now a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into 16 languages in more than 75 countries, John wrote his first novel in college and the second one a year after he graduated from Cal Berkeley in 1970.

A Plague of Secrets

In a multiple murder case plagued by lies and deception, there is one terrible secret that defense attorney Dismas Hardy is duty-bound to protect. Even if the price is his client's life. When Dylan Vogler, the charming manager of the popular Bay Beans West coffee shop in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, is gunned down near the store, inspectors are shocked to discover that his knapsack is overflowing with high-grade marijuana.

check out John's website

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► JULY 31 - Saturday @2pm

Author Karen Benke will join us to discuss the creative writing process, young minds, and her book Rip the Page!

RIP THE PAGE! Adventures in Creative Writing by Karen Benke
Kids are wild, wacky, and wise—and those are precisely the traits that creative writers and thinkers need. Yet as kids move through the school system with its tests and grades, they too often lose their innate ability to simply have fun playing with words. Rip the Page! Adventures in Creative Writing invites children (ages eight to twelve) to pick up a pen and find out for themselves all the ways that creative writing can be their friend. This interactive book offers experiments to strengthen the “write-side” of their brains—with wordplay, open-ended experiments, do-it-yourself definitions, double-dares, word lists galore, and enough blank pages to roam—and rip!—on their journey of discovering that playing with words is precisely what creative writers do to warm up to the page. Rip the Page! empowers kids to play with words simply for the sake of playing and it endows budding writers with confidence about finding the words they need to use to express what they mean. Kids discover their own words on their own terms. On the page, no one can argue with you, disagree with you . . . or tell you that you’re wrong. The book includes encouragement from acclaimed poets and writers, including Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler), Naomi Shihab Nye, Gary Soto, Annie Barrows, Lucille Clifton, Karen Cushman, Patricia Polacco, and others.

Karen Benke has inspired children in the art of creative writing for sixteen years as a freewrite facilitator, creative writing coach, and poet-teacher in the California Poets in the Schools program, where she specializes in leading creative writing workshops for children seven to fourteen years old. Her writing has appeared in many anthologies and national literary journals. She is the recipient of two teaching grants from Poets & Writers and is a four-time grant recipient from the Marin Arts Council Fund for Artists.

the book will be released in late July
more info @ www.karenbenke.com