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Laurel Book Store
1423 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94612
Mon-Th 10-6 Fri-Sat 10-7 Sun 10-4
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Dear Reader,
This week brought us unspeakably sad news from Florida and all the other places around the world where violence took lives. There are many steps our legislators can take to stem violence and make it unacceptable in our country. Please take some time and contact them soon and often and ask them to take steps to save lives. Get involved. If they truly represent us, we must make our voices heard.
Friday night we will welcome Gail Pellett and her memoir Forbidden Fruit, Beijing 1980 and then Saturday night we have Achy Obejas and others to talk all about translations. I know we have several fans of books that are translated- wonderful works from other countries, and this is an evening not to be missed. Did you know that Mills College now has a program in translation? How cool is that? Please come and meet some wonderful translators and delight in world offerings.
We have some suggestions for summer reading for kids and adults. We've marked them with tags and if you take the package home, we will take your email and the tag an enter you in a drawing for prizes in August.
Come on in and see what we think makes a good summer reading group.
I'll be taking next week off to be in the woods learning to paint outdoors.
If you don't know about the
Feather River Art Camp for adults, check it out.
The staff will all be here to help you and I've assured them that it will be a very busy and book filled week! Please make a point to come in and ask them really hard questions. And get a book to read aloud to someone.
Happy reading, Luan
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New and Notable
I'm Just a Person by Tig Notaro $26.99 (signed first editions available)
One of America's most original comedic voices delivers a darkly funny, wryly observed, and emotionally raw account of her year of death, cancer, and epiphany. In the span of four months in 2012, Tig Notaro was hospitalized for a debilitating intestinal disease called C. diff, her mother unexpectedly died, she went through a breakup, and then she was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. Hit with this devastating barrage, Tig took her grief onstage. Days after receiving her cancer diagnosis, she broke new comedic ground, opening an unvarnished set with the words: "Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you? Hi, how are you? Is everybody having a good time? I have cancer." The set went viral instantly and was ultimately released as Tig's sophomore album,Live, which sold one hundred thousand units in just six weeks and was later nominated for a Grammy.
If you've seen her perform live, you know she's an extraordinary comic and this is her story.
The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera $13.99 Casting light on the most serious of problems and at the same time saying not one serious sentence; being fascinated by the reality of the contemporary world and at the same time completely avoiding realism-that's The Festival of Insignificance. Readers who know Milan Kundera's earlier books know that the wish to incorporate an element of the "unserious" in a novel is not at all unexpected of him. In Immortality, Goethe and Hemingway stroll through several chapters together talking and laughing. And in Slowness, Vera, the author's wife, says to her husband: "you've often told me you meant to write a book one day that would have not a single serious word in it...I warn you: watch out. Your enemies are lying in wait."
The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan $15.99 In this compulsively-readable historical novel, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Two Sisters, comes the story of two young women-one in America's Gilded Age, one in scrappy modern-day California-whose lives are linked by a single tragic afternoon in history. Click title for a more complete description. Then call us to reserve one for you.
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The United States of Beer by Dane Huckelbridge $25.99
Huckelbridge shows how beer has evolved along with the country-from a local and regional product (once upon a time every American city has its own brewery and iconic beer brand) to the rise of global mega-brands like Budweiser and Miller that are synonymous with U.S. capitalism.
We learn of George Washington's failed attempt to brew beer at Mount Vernon with molasses instead of barley, of the 19th century "Beer Barons" like Captain Frederick Pabst, Adolphus Busch, and Joseph Schlitz who revolutionized commercial brewing and built lucrative empires-and the American immigrant experience-and of the advances in brewing and bottling technology that allowed beer to flow in the saloons of the Wild West. Throughout, Huckelbridge draws connections between seemingly remote fragments of the American past, and shares his reports from the front lines of today's craft-brewing revolution.
Cheese & Beer by Janet Fletcher $24.99 The booming worlds of artisan cheese and craft beer meet in this first-ever guide, an introduction to two dozen popular craft-beer styles and the cheeses that pair best with them.
Gourmand Awards winner---Beer category, USA.
If you missed meeting Janet on Monday, you missed out! This book is a wonder. I had the pleasure of taking it to BevMo of all places, where we picked out two cheeses and then found beers that she recommended to go with them. What a great thing to do for guests on a warm summer afternoon! Signed copies available.
Love Wins, The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality by Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell $27.99
The fascinating and very moving story of the lovers, lawyers, judges and activists behind the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that led to one of the most important, national civil rights victories in decades-the legalization of same-sex marriage.
In June 2015, the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law in all fifty states in a decision as groundbreaking asRoe v Wade and Brown v Board of Education. Through insider accounts and access to key players, this definitive account reveals the dramatic and previously unreported events behindObergefell v Hodges and the lives at its center. This is a story of law and love-and a promise made to a dying man who wanted to know how he would be remembered.
Love Unites Us, Winning the Freedom to Marry in America edited by Kevin M. Cathcart and Leslie J. Gabel-Brett $27.95 Victory may sometimes look like a sudden revolution when, in truth, it rests on years of struggle. The June 2015 decision inObergefell v. Hodges is a sweeping victory for the freedom to marry, but it was one step in a long process.Love Unites Us is the history of activists' passion and persistence in the struggle for marriage rights for same-sex couples in the United States, told in the words of those who waged the battle.
Launching the fight for the freedom to marry was neither an obvious nor an uncontested strategy. To many activists, achieving marriage equality seemed far-fetched, but the skeptics were proved wrong.
**Please join us to welcome Kate Kendell (National Center for Lesbian Rights) and Jennifer Pizer (Lambda Legal) on Thursday, June 30 for a celebration of this remarkable book.**
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Younger Readers
Dinosaurs, The Grand Tour. Everything Worth Knowing About Dinosaurs From Aardonyx to Zuniceratops by Keiron Pim $18.95
This is the most beautiful, colorful, and informative book on dinosaurs that I've found. If you have a dinosaur fan in the house, or classroom, this is the book to have.
10 to adult
Harry Potter, The Artifact Vault $45 For HP fans, this is a pretty cool book to have. Throughout the making of the eight Harry Potter movies, designers and craftspeople were tasked with creating fabulous chocolate-fantasy feasts, flying brooms, enchanted maps, and much more, in addition to numerous magical items necessary in a wizard's everyday life for example, newspapers with moving photos, vicious textbooks, and Howlers. Harry Potter: The Artifact Vault chronicles the work of the graphics department in creating vibrant and imaginative labels for potions bottles, brooms, and candy; the creation of Quidditch Quaffles, Bludgers, and Golden Snitches, lovingly crafted by the prop making team; and the stunning inventiveness used by the entire crew to create a rich, bewitched filmic universe.
And don't forget that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts 1 & 2, a play, will be released at midnight on July 31. We'll be having a midnight party with plenty of fun, treats, and ... well, you have to be here!
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Book Club
To join, read the book and show up. We would love to have you with us.
Next meeting is Thursday, June 16, 6:15. Katherine Dunn's novel, Geek Love.
Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out-with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes-to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There's Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious-and dangerous-asset.
As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry,Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.
Katherine Dunn passed away on May 11 of this year. Geek Love has enjoyed great popularity since it was published in 1989.
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Events
Join us to meet authors in person.
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June's Featured Artist
will be
Closing reception on Sunday, June 26 from 2-4pm
Hand Made Books Workshop June 11 from 1-3 pm so drop in!
LYNNE PRATHER
ARTIST STATEMENT
My first creative area was ceramics, followed by calligraphy and bookmaking and painting. These last three endeavors have kept circling around in various
combinations since 1977. Last year I studied Printmaking at Laney College which presented me with yet another way to combine words and images.
When I began studying calligraphy, I often warmed up by making gestural marks across a page. This pleasure in movement continues in much of what I do today.
The movement of the pen or brush across the paper of the paper when it is
folded of the pages of a book when they are turned of a mobile in the air.
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