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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,
We're now open on Sundays from 10-4!
There is free parking in the Clay St. garage all day Saturday and free street parking all day Sunday all around us so we'll see you here!
The Oakland Book Festival is on Sunday, May 22 and there will be amazing
panels all day at City Hall, children's programming
on the plaza, and
here at the store.
We have some wonderful authors coming to visit, so please join us to make the welcome! See below for details.
Luan
5-12-16
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New and Notable
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LaRose by Louise Erdrich $27.95
North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence-but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he's hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich.
The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with Landreaux's five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have always been close, sharing food, clothing, and rides into town; their children played together despite going to different schools; and Landreaux's wife, Emmaline, is half sister to Dusty's mother, Nola. Horrified at what he's done, the recovered alcoholic turns to tradition-the sweat lodge-for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and Emmaline will give LaRose to the grieving Peter and Nola. "Our son will be your son now," they tell them.
Collected Poems 1974 - 2004 by Rita Dove $39.95
Three decades of powerful lyric poetry from a virtuoso of the English language in one unabridged volume. Great graduation gift.
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? $27.95
What separates your mind from an animal's? Maybe you think it's your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future-all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet's preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have been eroded, or even disproven, by a revolution in the study of animal cognition: take the octopuses that use coconut shells as tools; the elephants that classify humans by age, gender, and language; or Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame. Based on research involving crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and of course chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal demonstrates that we have grossly underestimated both the scope and the depth of animal intelligence. He offers a firsthand account of how science has stood traditional behaviorism on its head by revealing how smart animals really are.
Paper by Mark Kurlansky $27.95
Paper is one of the simplest and most essential pieces of human technology. For the past two millennia, the ability to produce it in ever more efficient ways has supported the proliferation of literacy, media, religion, education, commerce, and art. It has created civilizations, fostering the fomenting of revolutions and the stabilizing of regimes. Witness history's greatest press run, which produced 6.5 billion copies of Máo zhuˇ xí yuˇ lu, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Zedong), or the fact that Leonardo da Vinci left behind only 15 paintings but 4,000 w
orks on paper. Now, on the cusp of "going paperless"-and amid rampant speculation about the effects of a digitally dependent society-we've come to a world-historic juncture to examine what paper means to civilization.
The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over the Place $14.95 by Jennifer McCartney
The anti-clutter movement is having a moment. You may have heard about a book-an entire book-written on the topic of tidiness and how "magical" and "life-changing" it is to neaten up and THROW AWAYYOUR BELONGINGS. Yes, you read that correctly. It's time to fight that ridiculousness and start buying even more stuff and leaving it any place you want. Guess what, neatniks? Science shows that messy people are more creative.*Being a slob is an art, and there's a fine line between being a consumer and being a hoarder. Don't cross that line.
Now in Paperback
Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore $15.99
In San Francisco, the souls of the dead are mysteriously disappearing-and you know that can't be good-inNew York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore's delightfully funny sequel toA Dirty Job.
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee $15.99
Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch-"Scout"-returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town, and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt.
Adult Onset by Anne-Marie MacDonald $16.95
Mary Rose MacKinnon is a successful author of YA fiction doing a tour of duty as stay-at-home mom while her partner
, Hilary, takes a turn focusing on her career. She tries valiantly to balance the (mostly) solo parenting of two young children with the relentless needs of her aging parents. But amid the hilarities of full-on domesticity arises a sense of dread. Do other people notice the dents in the expensive refrigerator? How long will it take Mary Rose to realize that the car alarm that has been going off all morning is hers, and how on earth did the sharpest pair of scissors in the house wind up in her toddler's hands?
300 Days of Sun by Deborah Lawrenson $15.99 Traveling to Faro, Portugal, journalist Joanna Millard hopes to escape an unsatisfying relationship and a stalled career. Faro is an enchanting town, and the seaside views are enhanced by the company of Nathan Emberlin, a charismatic younger man. But behind the crumbling facades of Moorish buildings, Joanna soon realizes, Faro has a seedy underbelly, its economy compromised by corruption and wartime spoils. And Nathan has an ulterior motive for seeking her company: he is determined to discover the truth involving a child's kidnapping that may have taken place on this dramatic coastline over two decades ago.
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Younger Readers
Thunder Boy Jr. by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Yuyi Morales $17.99 Thunder Boy Jr. is named after his dad, but he wants a name that's all his own. Just because people call his dad Big Thunder doesn't mean he wants to be Little Thunder. He wants a name that celebrates something cool he's done, like Touch the Clouds, Not Afraid of Ten Thousand Teeth, or Full of Wonder.
But just when Thunder Boy Jr. thinks all hope is lost, he and his dad pick the perfect name...a name that is sure to light up the sky.
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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, May 19, 6:15. Gary Shteyngart's memoir, Little Failure is our choice.
Little Failure is the all too true story of an immigrant family betting its future on America, as told by a lifelong misfit who finally finds a place for himself in the world through books and words. In 1979, a little boy dragging a ginormous fur hat and an overcoat made from the skin of some Soviet woodland creature steps off the plane at New York's JFK International Airport and into his new American life. His troubles are just beginning. For the former Igor Shteyngart, coming to the United States from the Soviet Union is like stumbling off a monochromatic cliff and landing in a pool of Technicolor. Careening between his Soviet home life and his American aspirations, he finds himself living in two contradictory worlds, wishing for a real home in one. He becomes so strange to his parents that his mother stops bickering with his father long enough to coin the phrasefailurchka-"little failure"-which she applies to her once-promising son. With affection. Mostly.
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Events
Join us to meet authors in person.
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June's Featured Artist
will be
Lynne Prather
First Friday reception on June 3 from 6-9pm
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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