JULY BOOK GROUP

We have chosen Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov for our next book group meeting. The books are available behind the counter for a 10% discount and our next meeting will be July 12th at 5:30 here at Northtown Books.

Here are some links to augment your reading experience or help you make a more informed decision about your participation:

Random House's official site for the book.

Martin Amis on Lolita.

The Lit Lover's guide to Lolita.

A video interview from Canadian television with Vladimir Nabokov about Lolita:

RAY RAPHAEL AND JAIMAL YOGIS

This weekend brings two author events to Northtown Books.

Ray Raphael will present his new book, Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation, at Northtown Books on Friday, June 12 at 7 pm.

Founders is Raphael’s largest and most ambitious book, a daring attempt to recreate an “honest history” of our nation’s founding by skipping over nineteenth century distortions and returning to primary sources from Revolutionary times. It’s a sweeping narrative, starting with the beginnings of unrest in 1761 and ending with the ratification of the Bill of Rights thirty years later. To keep his rendition intimate, Raphael focuses of seven lead characters — not the usual cast, but a far more diverse lot. For the first time, Raphael interweaves the new bottom-up approach, the favorite of social historians in recent years, with traditional top-down history, moving back and forth between leading figures inside chambers and the people “out-of-doors.”

Ray Raphael has written many books, several of which are about local Humboldt history. His first book, An Everyday History of Somewhere, won the Commonwealth Club award for the best book of the year about California. He recently collaborated with Freeman House on the first part of a projected multi-volume history of Humboldt County, Two Peoples, One Place.

For more info on Ray Raphael, go here.

On the very next night, author Jaimal Yogis presents his new book, Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea, Saturday, June 13th at 7:30 at Northtown Books.

Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say about it:

A journalist, photographer, surfer and Zen Master, Yogis began the life of a roving seeker his junior year of high school, when he ran away from his Sacramento, Calif. home to learn how to surf in Hawaii. His subsequent travels include a handful of prime surfing spots, but Yogis’s more arresting journey is spiritual, taking him to monasteries in France and Berkley, Calif., and deep into the living tradition of Zen Buddhism. Captured here in short chapters and wonderful, visual prose, Yogis’s coming-of-age odyssey also takes readers into the culture of indigenous Hawaiians, who believe the gods were surfers. Yogis’s long-time surfing mentor Rom provides insight into the science of surfing, ocean swells, the bathymetry of the continental shelf, deep water canyons and sea mounts. Even land lovers will find Yogis’s lessons resonant and entertaining, but surfers will find this a quick, surprisingly deep tribute to the quest for surf and serenity.

Here's a short film on Jaimal and the book:

Max and Mandy at the Beach

For those who wonder what Max is up to when he's not behind the counter at Northtown, here he is in action on Trinidad State Beach with his pal Mandy in a video filmed by Dante and edited by Ric.

WICKED PLANTS

Local author Amy Stewart will discuss and sign her new book Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities at Northtown Books May 17th at 3 pm.

A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. Stewart takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature's most appalling creations in an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend.

Menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard. Drawing on history, medicine, science, and legend, this compendium of bloodcurdling botany will entertain, alarm, and enlighten even the most intrepid gardeners and nature lovers.

Here's a video preview of the book:

Please help us welcome Amy back to Northtown Books.

For much more information on this and Amy's other books and articles, go to her own website.

UPDATE: The New York Times comes to visit Amy in Eureka. (link via NCJ Blogthing)

BARBARA KERLEY

Friday, May 8th at 6 pm, Northtown Books welcomes local author Barbara Kerley.

A former Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, and a one-time resident of Guam, she brings a unique life experience to her work.

She's written a wide variety of books for young people, on subjects as various as Walt Whitman, the artist who introduced dinosaurs to the world, and the importance of water in the world.

Her new book from National Geographic Books, One World, One Day, follows children around the world as they get up, wash up, and start a new day. It's an elegant picture book with contributions from top international photographers.

Her book What to Do About Alice? was recently reviewed in the New York Times, and you can read an interview with her here.

NORTHTOWN BOOKS READING GROUP

We have copies of our next selection for the Northtown Books Reading Group, The Persian Boy by Mary Renault, behind the counter for a 10% discounted price.

Our next meeting will be May 10th (Mother's Day!--let us know if anyone has a conflict with this date) at 5:30 here at Northtown Books.

In the meantime, here are some links to peruse.

STENCIL NATION

Friday, April 10 at 7:30 pm, Russell Howze presents a slide show at Northtown Books from his book "Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community, and Art", which features over 500 full-color photographs.

The book presents work by more than 350 artists from 28 countries, including Iran, Australia, Japan, Canada, Spain, Lebanon, Israel, and the United States. Featured artists include: Banksy, Jef Aerosol, Logan Hicks, Adam5100, Arofish, M-City, SWOON, Hao, John Fekner, Peat Wollaeger, Klutch, and others.

Russell Howze saw his first stencil in 1990, which was J. R. "Bob" Dobbs on an apartment wall in Clemson, SC. In 1995, Russell saw an amazing sight on the exterior wall of the Reichstag in Berlin: a huge stenciled Bertolt Brecht poem. He snapped a photo of that stencil, then found one in Budapest, Hungary. Then a few more stencils appeared in Basel, Switzerland. When he landed in San Francisco in 1997, he found dozens on the sidewalks of the Mission and Haight neighborhoods. He's never stopped photographing the sometimes temporary, always intriguing art form.

In 2002, Russell created the first version of Stencil Archive, thinking that he would have time to scan and upload his own collection before anyone discovered the site and submitted their own work. He was gladly mistaken, so Stencil Archive took off and ended up becoming a site with over 10,000 uploaded photographs. At the time of its inception, Stencil Archive was the only international stencil site out there (for a few months). Now there are dozens of sites with tens of thousands of photographs. Russell continues to curate his site, posting stencils from around the world and featuring dozens of amazing artists.

When not photographing, making, painting, and uploading stencils, Russell fills his time by doing one or more of the following fun things: being a carny for the Sustainable Living Roadshow, riding his bike, writing for his blog, cooking healthy food, creating vector art and putting it on stickers and buttons, producing events, puppeteering, listening to good music, traveling, and volunteering/protesting to make the world a better place.

He currently lives in San Francisco's Mission District, and is usually seen on his bike with his camera slung around his shoulder.

A "vibrant exploration of a sub-sub-genre.... [T]his volume crosses the globe for a swift tour of the world's best artists, making it a handsome and insightful introduction to the form." - Publishers Weekly, 10/16/2008

UPDATE: We had a packed house here at Northtown, and Russell enjoyed kicking off his tour here.

JJ SEMPLE

In his latest book The Backward-Flowing Method: The Secret of Life and Death, JJ Semple examines the meditation techniques for activating the Kundalini-Life Force.

His previous book, Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time, told the story of his Kundalini awakening.

In The Backward-Flowing Method, he examines the meditation techniques that led to his awakening, analyzes meditation practices across cultures and throughout the ages, and offers a method that has the following real world results:

Triggering autonomic self-healing mechanisms capable of correcting defects related to neural degeneration;
Rejuvenating the body, retarding the aging process, stimulating neuroplastic activity; Reversing self-destructive and addictive behavior;
Heightening and enhancing consciousness to effect release from Karmic bondage;
Facing death without fear and facilitating the transition into the next state of being.

Join JJ Semple Friday March 27th at 7 pm for this event.

For more information, go here.

ANNE IGOU

On Friday March 13th AT 7 PM , local artist Anne Igou presents her new book I Can't Believe I'm Creating Millefiore, and shares her techniques for creating polymer clay jewelry.

Millefiore means "a thousand flowers" and imitates the look of intricate Italian glass art.

Anne has taught workshops all over the country, and has made appearances on several national television shows. At Northtown, she'll do a demonstration of how she creates her pieces.

Please join us this Friday.

GROUP PORTRAIT

(l-r) Erik Syverson, Monika Zerzan, Jay Herzog, Dante Digenova, Deric Mendes, and standing in for Simone Goldenberg, Max (in front).


The staff at Northtown recently was asked, along with several other local independent bookstores, to help judge the North Coast Journal's flash fiction contest.

The group picture above was taken for the paper by Bob Doran.