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- In Playing: A
Novel, first-time novelist Melanie
Abrams explores the mind of a woman who
enjoys being beaten and dominated physically. It’s a complex story
of sex and psychology and of a protagonist coming to terms with her
past. Melanie Abrams lives in Oakland with her husband, Vikram
Chandra, and teaches writing at UC Berkeley.
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- Pulitzer Prize winner
John
Adams has turned from writing musical notes to
writing words. His memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an
American Life, describes the process of composing, rehearsing,
and performing his operatic works, including Nixon in China
and Doctor Atomic. We are delighted to
have John Adams as the Honorary Chair of this year’s Authors Dinner. Watch
a video here.
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- Bruce
Aidells’s Complete
Book of Pork: A Guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World’s
Favorite Meat is a brief history of the pig and of pork’s
versatility as a food favored in many cultures. The Bay Area’s
“meat maven,” Aidells also holds a PhD in biology from
the University of California.
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- Robert
Mailer Anderson’s Boonville: A Novel,
describes life in a community inhabited by “an eclectic knot of
hippies, rednecks, marijuana growers, assorted eccentrics, and Miami
expatriates,” according to Publishers Weekly. Anderson, who
grew up in Boonville, is also co-owner of Quotidian Art Gallery in
San Francisco.
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- In The Guernsey
Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, an epistolary novel, we
learn the little-known history of the German occupation of the
British island of Guernsey. It reflects the insights of author Mary
Ann Shaffer (an editor, librarian, and bookshop worker) and her
niece, Annie Barrows,
a children’s author who completed the book when her aunt became too
ill to do so.
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- The twenty-fifth
anniversary of the publication of Kate
Braverman’s first novel Lithium for
Medea prompted its republication in 2006. It’s still a timely
take on drug addiction and dysfunctional family relationships with a
sharp look at living in Los Angeles in the ‘70s. The book’s
lyrical language reflects Braverman’s skills as a poet.
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- Sacred Games by
Vikram
Chandra, the heftiest read on this year’s
list, is a 900-page epic of organized crime in Mumbai. It covers
everything from the meaning of life and death, to the caste system
in India, to corruption everywhere. Vikram Chandra lives in Oakland
with his wife, Melanie Abrams, and teaches creative writing at UC
Berkeley.
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- The essays in Total
Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop examine hip-hop’s
origins and how hip-hop has transformed theater, dance, poetry,
literature, fashion, and arts worldwide. Author Jeff
Chang considers
hip-hop the most important cultural movement of our time. Chang
graduated from UC Berkeley where, he says, “I became politicized
by the anti-apartheid and anti-racist movements.”
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- Gennifer
Choldenko’s sixth book, If a Tree Falls at
Lunch Period, follows two seventh graders—Kirsten, who is
white, and Walk, who is black—as they deal with the issues of
race, class, and self-esteem in the funny and brutal world of junior
high school. Choldenko’s novel, Al Capone Does My Shirts,
was a 2005 Newbery Honor Book.
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- Blood of Paradise
by David
Corbett is a novel of Third World corruption and
personal betrayal as Americans attempt to navigate the perilous
waters of El Salvador. Nominated for multiple awards, the book has
been called “a fast-paced, blood-drenched, political thriller.”
David Corbett spent 15 years working for Palladino & Sutherland,
a San Francisco investigation firm.
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- Kelly
Corrigan was a happily married mother of two when
a cancerous breast lump was discovered. While still undergoing
treatment for her cancer, she learned that her beloved father had
bladder cancer. Her story of being someone’s child while also
having children covers “that sliver of time when parenthood and
childhood overlap” and makes up The Middle Place. It’s an
absorbing, witty, heart-wrenching memoir. Watch
a video here.
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- In Where To Invade
Next, editor Stephen
Elliott and a host of McSweeney writers outline
why countries like Iran and Venezuela should be invaded and
eliminated. It’s a satire that reads like truth, making it all the
more chilling. Fiction writer Elliott also writes about politics.
He’s a Stanford University Stegner Fellow.
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- Many of us enjoy Leah
Garchik’s daily San Francisco Chronicle column
over our morning coffee; she’s been writing the column
since 1984. In Real Life Romance: Everyday Wisdom on Love,
Sex, and Relationships, Garchik has gathered from her column the
quotes and stories that reveal her love of the unintentionally funny
and the weirdly profound.
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- In Japan: True
Stories of Life on the Road, Donald
W. George has gathered together a rich variety of
essays by voyagers who have experienced Japan. The writings range
from the whimsical to the reflective and cover topics like Japan’s
indoor ski slopes, love hotels, Sumo wrestling, and the significance
of cherry blossoms during spring time.
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- The Cartoon History
of the Modern World: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution is
Larry
Gonick’s latest hilarious and informative comic
guide to big topics. Since 1971, Gonick has been tackling things
like tax reform, science, genetics, and history with wit and humor.
A staff cartoonist for Muse magazine, he lives in San
Francisco.
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- Since the 1950s, Anna
Halprin has been one of this country’s most
important innovators in modern dance, performance art, and
post-modern dance. Moving Toward Life: Five Decades of
Transformational Dance brings together her essays, interviews,
and manifestos. Now in her eighties, Halprin continues to perform,
travel, and teach.
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- Lawrence
Halprin is a prolific and accomplished American
landscape architect who has worked on projects like the FDR Memorial
and the UN and Levi plazas in San Francisco.
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His book The
Sea Ranch…Diary of an Idea documents his thought process and is
full of his sketches for this Pacific Coast planned community.
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- Wendy
Johnson is one of the founders of the
Organic Farm and Garden Program of the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center
in Marin County. Her book, Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate,
distills her lifetime of experience as a gardener who gives to the
earth and receives much in return. She is also an advisor to the
Edible School Yard program of the Chez Panisse Foundation.
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- Bridget
Kinsella is both a literary agent and a freelance
journalist who often contributes to Publishers Weekly. In
Visiting Life: Women Doing Time on the Outside she tells the
story of her befriending Rory Mehan, a convicted murderer doing life
without parole at a maximum-security prison in Northern
California…and then what happens when the friendship becomes a
romantic relationship.
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- Joanne
Kyger has been a leading figure in San Francisco
poetry circles since the late ‘50s. She was part of the Robert
Duncan–Jack Spicer circle and traveled with Gary Snyder. Her
themes include Buddhism, American Indian myth, travel, and the
importance of place. As Ever: Selected Poems collects the
best poems from her twenty-plus books of poetry.
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- William
Poy Lee’s memoir of growing up in San
Francisco’s Chinatown in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, The
Eighth Promise: An American Son’s Tribute to His Toisanese
Mother, is told by mother and son, in alternating chapters.
It’s a tale of injustice, racism, power struggles in the Chinese
community, and clan connections. Lee graduated from UC Berkeley with
a degree in architecture, has a law degree from Hastings, and lives
in Berkeley.
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- Caille
Millner is on the editorial board of the San
Francisco Chronicle and has written for Newsweek,
Essence, The Washington Post, and The Fader.
The Golden Road: Notes on My Gentrification is her
memoir. It chronicles her experience studying at Harvard, traveling
through South Africa, and living in California with all of the
complications of coming of age while confronting race, class, and
culture.
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- Davia
Nelson and
Nikki Silva—the Kitchen Sisters—should be
familiar to any NPR listener. Their Hidden Kitchens catalogs
offbeat kitchens they’ve discovered, from those in NASCAR racing
pits, to Mexican food stands, to Vietnamese nail salons. Silva and
Nelson teach radio commentary at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of
Journalism.
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- The San Francisco
Century: A City Rises from the Ruins of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire chronicles
San Francisco’s phoenix-like emergence from the
earthquake of 1906 and covers its larger-than-life personalities,
the Flower Power era, the fight for Gay Liberation, and the
technical innovations of the twenty-first century. Author Carl
Nolte has been with the San Francisco
Chronicle since 1961; he also lectures in journalism at San
Francisco State University.
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- Nancy
Oakes’ Boulevard restaurant opened its doors in
1993 and Oakes and the restaurant have been winning awards ever
since. Boulevard: The Cookbook features 75 signature recipes
accompanied by photos of the restaurant. Nancy Oakes received the
James Beard Award for Best Chef in California in 2001. She lives in
the Bay Area with her husband, Bruce Aidells.
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- Sharon
O’Connor graduated from UC Berkeley with
degrees in music and sociology. She pairs her musical expertise with
her love of food and writes cookbooks that are accompanied by music
CDs. A Table for Two: Recipes from Celebrated City Restaurants takes
readers on a romantic foodie tour of such noted restaurants as Café Boulud in New York and Yoshi’s
in Oakland; a CD featuring jazz by the Kenny Barron Ensemble is included
with her book.
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- When journalist
Cathryn
Jakobson Ramin began forgetting names and words
she confronted the issue head on and used her skills to explore
memory loss, cognitive problems, and the many remedies suggested to
counteract forgetfulness. Carved in Sand: When Attention
Fails and Memory Fades in Midlife is a memoir of her exploration
and reveals that there are nearly as many reasons for midlife memory
loss as there are people who suffer from it.
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- Mystery writer
Cornelia
Read says she’s a “reformed debutante” who
lives in Berkeley. The Crazy School, the second in her
series of Madeline Dare mysteries, involves a therapeutic boarding
school, an authoritarian headmaster, and the murder of a young
couple by poison. It’s “spellbinding,” says the New York
Times Book Review.
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- Matt
Richtel’s first book, Hooked: A
Thriller About Love and Other Addictions, is set in San
Francisco and Silicon Valley. Richtel also covers technology and
telecommunications for the New York Times San Francisco
Bureau, writes a syndicated daily comic strip called Rudy Park, and
is a teaching fellow at UC’s Graduate School of Journalism.
- Kemble
Scott is the pseudonym of a long-time print and
broadcast journalist. He’s writer and editor of the e-zine SoMa
Literary Review. His novel, SoMa, is a raw, gritty, sexy
look at San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. In the
nonfiction world of television, Scott has won three Emmy awards.
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- Judgment Day is
the sixth of Sheldon
Siegel’s bestselling Mike Daley novels.
Since he’s a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law
and is a practicing attorney, it’s no surprise that Mike Daley is
a criminal defense lawyer and that Siegel’s books are packed with
courtroom drama.
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- Julia
Flynn Siler’s bestseller, The House of
Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, is based
on 500 hours of interviews plus the examination of thousands of documents.
It’s
full of the ambition, betrayal, sibling rivalry, and strife that characterized
the dysfunctional Mondavi family. Siler writes for the Wall Street Journal from
San Francisco.
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- Frances
Townes’ Misadventures of a Scientist’s
Wife is the story of her marriage to Charles H. Townes, winner
of the Nobel Prize for his role in the invention of the laser and
maser. It’s also the story of her own role in starting the Women
Studies program at UC Berkeley, helping to found the docent program
at the Oakland Museum, and advocating for homeless youth in
Berkeley.
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- Richard
A. Walker is professor of geography and chair of
the California Studies Center at UC Berkeley. The Country in the
City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area chronicles the
Bay Area’s diverse environmental political scene and such locally
instrumental organizations as the Sierra Club and Save The Bay. It
is, Walker writes, “the story of how the Bay Area got its green
groove.”
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