Thursday, May 9, 2013
Present Shock /Douglas Rushkoff
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Song Without Words/Gerald Shea
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Against The Grain: .
Virgin Soul/Judy Juanita
Former Black Panther Judy Hart tells the fictionalized stories of her days as one of the original Black Panther sisters in Oakland and San Francisco. Works as both memoir and novel. Fascianting.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
The Burgess Boys/Elizabeth Strout
The Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olive Kitteridge returns with a novel about two brothers from Maine, dealing with family and societal issues. Extremely readable.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Against The Grain:
Tiger Writing /Gish Jen
The novelist, in a series of lectures given at Harvard University, discusses the ways in which views of the self in Western Europe and America differ from the rest of the world. (50 min).
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Beautiful Ruins/Jess Walter.
Rebroadcast from August 2012.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Against The Grain:
The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend/Glenn Frankel
Fascinating look at the John Ford western in the context of history and myth.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Open Book: Tony Taccone, Artistic Director of Berkeley Rep in Berkeley.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
The Great Movies II/Roger Ebert
Tribute to Roger Ebert (1942-2013). The three volumes of his Great Movies series form a brillliant syllabus for the informed movie goer. Highly recommended.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Against The Grain
Present Shock/Douglas Rushkoff
Media theorist Rushkoff discusses in his book, Present Shock, the difficulty of coping with everything happening at once from Twitter to our e-mails, and that we lose ourselves if we focus too much on trying to keep up.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
The Fun Parts/Sam Lipsyte
Dark humor highlights this collection of short stories by one of literature's more intriguing young talents.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Against The Grain
How Literature Saved My Life/David Shields
Cultural critic David Shields argues that the narrative novel is dead, and because of changes in technology and culture, we should be championing new forms of fiction.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
City of Devi/Manil Suri
A thriller and a gay novel taking place in the near future in Mumbai. Plays out almost as a Bollywood film.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Against The Grain
Song Without Words/Gerald Shea
A memoir about life as a partially deaf man, and an important book for a subset of Americans who use hearing aids and have difficulty hearing.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Against The Grain
The Accursed/Joyce Carol Oates
Daddy Love/Joyce Carol Oates
The Accursed is a hybrid of an historical novel, a gothic, a horror novel and a fantasy about bigotry in 1906 Princeton, New Jersey. Daddy Love is a thriller about a kidnapping. Joyce Carol Oates is in top form for both.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Home Land/Cory Doctorow
Home Land is a young adult novel, a sequel to Little Brother, which imagines a parallel United States, similar in most ways to ours, and a young computer whiz who gets caught up in issues of internet freedom, globalization, and other contemporary issues. Doctorow is an expert on internet freedom and electronic frontiers.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Insane City/Dave Barry
A very funny light thriller from the noted humorist, set in Miami and featuring snakes, orangutans, wedding parties, Hatian refugees, billionaires and assorted crooks and scoundrels.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Against The Grain
Going Clear/Lawrence Wright
Lawrence Wright's extraordinary expose on Scientology, Going Clear, forms a backdrop for his views on the nature of religious belief. His play, Fallaci, recently at Berkeley Rep (March 12-April 2, 2013), looks at belief in the context of journalism and the responses to 9/11.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Tenth of December/George Saunders
An extraordinary collection of short stories by one of America's reigning masters of the form.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Fund Drive program: Amy Wilentz
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Fund Drive program: George Saunders
Friday, February 8, 2013
Open Book: Loretta Greco, Artistic Director of the Magic Theatre and director of Se Llama Cristina, playing through February 24, 2013.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie/Ayana Mathis
This well-reviewed collection of interrelated short stories about an African American family in Philadelphia in the twentieth century has some stunning and visceral moments. Ayana Mathis is a talent to watch.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Farewell, Fred Voodoo/Amy Wilentz
Amy Wilentz writes the Letter from Haiti column, which has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Nation and elsewhere. This book is her story of Haiti after the earthquake three years ago. The style is elliptical, but the images and opinions are striking. An excellent look at Haiti today., .
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The Hummingbird's Daughter/Luis Alberto Urrea
Queen of America/Luis Alberto Urrea
This two volume novel tells the story of Urrea's aunt Teresa who was known as the Joan of Arc of Mexico and has since faded into history.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Any Day Now/Terry Bisson
Science fiction writer Bisson's latest novel is part-memoir and part-alternate history novel, taking place in a United States where Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King are not assassinated.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Open Book: Jasson Minadakis, Artistic Director of Marin Theatre Company and director of Waiting for Godot, playing Jan 24-Feb. 17
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Astray/Emma Donoghue
Room/Emma Donoghue
Room is the story of a kidhapped woman and her young son, from the point of view of the son; unforgettable and impossible to put down. Astray is a collection of short stories based on news items collected over the years.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
The End of Your Life Book Club/Will Schwalbe.
A former editor at William Morrow and other companies, Will Schwalbe and his mother, as she was ill with cancer, devised their own book club. This memoir tells the story of not only the book club, but also of health care, cancer, and loss.
