February 2011 - Vol 5, Issue 7
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February is for book lovers at M&Q. Whether you're looking to meet a new crush or want to rekindle an old flame, we've got just the thing to keep you warm until spring.

In this month's newsletter:

  • M&Q is bringing authors to the Food & Wine Experience
  • New memoirs from Joyce Carol Oates and Andre Dubus
  • TR Reid comes to M&Q to talk about health care
  • Calendars and day planners are still available.
...and much, much more. Read on.

Magers & Quinn is pleased to be the official bookseller for the 17th annual Minnesota Monthly Food & Wine Experience. We'll be at Target Field on March 5 and 6--along with some of the Twin Cities top restaurants, brewers, and wineries.


Sample fine wines, specialty beers, and gourmet cuisine at the largest food and wine show in Minnesota. With more than 200 companies showcasing wine, beer, and food samples from the Midwest and across the country, you're sure to find a variety of tastes to delight your palette.

You can also meet authors at Magers & Quinn's booth. Stop by, say hello, and meet

Details and tickets are available now at www.foodwineshow.com. See you there.

M&Q is unpacking all kinds of wonderful books for the new year. Here are a couple of them.

West of Here by Jonathan Evison

In the store: $22.45
Online: $18.71 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $24.95
Available Now
Set in the fictional town of Port Bonita, on Washington's rugged Pacific coast, West of Here is propelled by a story that both re-creates and celebrates the American experience--it is storytelling on the grandest scale. With one segment of the narrative focused on the town's founders circa 1890 and another showing the lives of their descendants in 2006, the novel develops as a kind of conversation between two epochs, one rushing blindly toward the future and the other struggling to undo the damage of the past.

An exposition on the effects of time, on how something said or done in one generation keeps echoing through all the years that follow, and how mistakes keep happening and people keep on trying to be strong and brave and, most important, just and right, West of Here harks back to the work of such masters of Americana as Bret Harte, Edna Ferber, and Larry McMurtry, writers whose fiction turned history into myth and myth into a nation's shared experience. It is a bold novel by a writer destined to become a major force in American literature.

A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates

In the store: $24.99
Online: $20.99 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $27.99
Available February 15
On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Both Joyce and Ray expected him to be released in a day or two. But in less than a week, even as Joyce was preparing for his discharge, Ray died from a virulent hospital-acquired infection, and Joyce was suddenly faced--totally unprepared--with the stunning reality of widowhood.

A Widow's Story illuminates one woman's struggle to comprehend a life without the partnership that had sustained and defined her for nearly half a century. As never before, Joyce Carol Oates shares the derangement of denial, the anguish of loss, the disorientation of the survivor amid a nightmare of "death-duties," and the solace of friendship. She writes unflinchingly of the experience of grief--the almost unbearable suspense of the hospital vigil, the treacherous "pools" of memory that surround us, the vocabulary of illness, the absurdities of commercialized forms of mourning. Here is a frank acknowledgment of the widow's desperation--only gradually yielding to the recognition that "this is my life now."

Joyce Carol Oates comes to the Minneapolis Central Library as part of their "Talk of the Stacks" program. She'll be in town Wednesday, March 30, 2011, at 7:00pm. Details are .

Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus

In the store: $23.35
Online: $19.46 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $25.95
Available February 28
An acclaimed novelist reflects on his violent past and a lifestyle that threatened to destroy him--until he was saved by writing.

"I've never read a better or more serious meditation on violence, its sources, consequences, and, especially, its terrifying pleasures, than Townie. It's a brutal and, yes, thrilling memoir that sheds real light on the creative process of two of our best writers, Andre Dubus III and his famous, much revered father. You'll never read the work of either man in quite the same way afterward. You may not view the world in quite the same way either."--Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls

"Whatever it cost Dubus to bare his soul and write this brutally honest and life-affirming memoir, it is an extraordinary gift to his readers."--Wally Lamb, author of The Hour I First Believed

Andre Dubus III is the author of The Garden of Last Days and House of Sand and Fog (an Oprah Book Club pick and a finalist for the National Book Award). He lives with his family north of Boston.


We've got the right book for every reader. Stop in today and get yours.

Impress your sweetie with a brainy night out at your favorite bookstore. Dig out of your snowbank and get to M&Q for these great February events.

February's Events
Wednesday, February 16
Paul Harding reads from Tinkers, 7:00pm at the Southdale Library

Wednesday, February 16
Craig Neal discusses The Art of Convening, 7:30pm

Tuesday, February 22
TR Reid discusses The Healing of America, 7:30pm

Friday, February 25
TC Boyle reads from When the Killing's Done, 7:00pm at the Minneapolis Central Library

Thursday, March 3
Scott Edelstein discusses Sex and the Spiritual Teacher, 7:30pm

Visit www.magersandquinn.com
for details on all our upcoming events.

Wednesday, February 16, 7:30pm--Craig Neal discusses The Art of Convening: Authentic Engagement in Meetings, Gatherings, and Conversations

In the store: $17.99
Online: $19.95 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $19.95
Available February 7
"Meetings are a waste of time" is a sentiment many of us share, which is tragic because meetings bring us together as human beings. To achieve the kind of meaning or breakthrough results most of us really yearn for when we gather, the key quality needed is authentic engagement: a genuine expression of what is true for us, and an attentive listening to what is true for others. Why it so often eludes us can be a matter of habit, distrust, lack of attention, or fear.

As cofounders of Heartland Inc., Craig and Patricia Neal have led over 170 of their acclaimed Thought Leader Gatherings with leaders from over 800 diverse organizations. Their new book shares for the first time the unique and powerful Art of Convening model, developed in these gatherings and refined over six years of intensive trainings, which brings authentic engagement and meaning to any group that comes together for any purpose.

Convening goes beyond facilitating. Convening creates an environment in which all voices are heard, profound exchanges take place, and transformative action results.

Convening works in any setting and can be adapted to virtually any group process. With this book you have all the tools you need to develop this essential life and leadership skill, one that will lead to improved outcomes in your organization, community, family, and relationships.

Craig Neal is a passionate change leader, publishing executive, organizational executive, and guide. From the 70s to the 90s Craig held executive positions with Garden Way, Inc, Rodale Publishing, and as Associate Publisher launched Harrowsmith and Eating Well magazines. He's the founder and former publisher of the Utne Reader.

Tuesday, February 22, 7:30pm--TR Reid discusses The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

In the store: $14.40
Online: $12.60 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $16.00
Available Now
How is it that all other industrialized democracies provide health care for their citizens as a reasonable cost-something the United States has not yet managed to do? In The Healing of America, New York Times bestselling author TR Reid shows how they do it, bringing to bear his talent for explaining complex issues in a clear, engaging way. In his global quest to find a prescription for American health care, Reid finds that it's not all "socialized medicine" out there. Instead, many industrialized democracies rely on free-market models the U.S. could use to cure a health system that has failed us.

"Important and powerful...a rich tour of health care around the world."---Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

"Not many writers... can match T.R. Reid's ability to bring a light, witty touch to really serious topics--like health policy."--New America Foundation

T.R. Reid is a longtime correspondent for The Washington Post and former chief of its Tokyo and London bureaus, as well as a commentator for National Public Radio. His books include The United States of Europe, The Chip and Confucius Lives Next Door. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Thursday, March 3, 7:30pm--Scott Edelstein discusses Sex and the Spiritual Teacher: Why It Happens, When It's a Problem, and What We All Can Do

In the store: $15.25
Online: $12.71 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $16.95
Available March 1
Sex and the Spiritual Teacher: Why It Happens, When It's a Problem, and What We All Can Do looks at the complex of forces that tempt otherwise insightful, compassionate, and well-intentioned teachers to lose their way--and that tempt some of their students to lose their way as well. It analyzes why most of our current efforts to keep spiritual teachers from transgressing usually don't (and in fact can't) work--and, perhaps most importantly, it suggests a set of practices and structures that can build community, encourage healthy student-teacher relationships, increase trust and spiritual intimacy between teachers and their students, and help authentic spiritual teachers stay happily monogamous or celibate. Sex and the Spiritual Teacher is for anyone who is or might become part of a spiritual community: students, teachers, clergy, lay leaders, and even casual visitors. It's a reader-friendly, no-nonsense guide to making spiritual life safer and fuller for all of us--one person, relationship, and community at a time.

"Profound and compassionate. Anyone who has a spiritual teacher--or hopes to have one some day--should read this book."--Natalie Goldberg, bestselling author of Writing Down the Bones

Scott Edelstein has studied happily and productively with several spiritual teachers, including Toni Packer, Dainin Katagiri, Tim McCarthy, and (currently) Steve Hagen. As the friend of several spiritual teachers, he has also spent much time with them "off duty," sometimes serving as confidant. He is a longtime practitioner of both Buddhism and Judaism, and a committed proponent of serious spirituality in all forms and traditions. Scott's short work on spiritual topics has appeared in Shambhala Sun, American Jewish World, The Writer, the anthology What About God?, and elsewhere. He is also the author of 15 other books on a wide range of subjects. Learn more at www.sexandthespiritualteacher.com.




In the months ahead, M&Q will be hosting great authors including
  • Joshua Foer (March 24)
  • Tiphanie Yanique (April 3)
  • Phillip Connors (April 6)
  • Sam Lipsyte (April 8)
  • Catherine Friend (May 12)
  • John Sayles (May 31)
A complete listing of all our events is available at www.magersandquinn.com.

In the store: $22.50
Online: $18.75 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $25.00
Available March 8
"T�a Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years."--Colum McCann

The youngest author on last year's "20 Under 40" list from The New Yorker comes to Minneapolis. Meet Tea Obreht at M&Q Monday, March 14, at 7:30pm.

"A marvel of beauty and imagination. T�a Obreht is a tremendously talented writer."--Ann Patchett

The Tiger's Wife begins in a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, when Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Z�ra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather's recent death. After telling her grandmother that he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone. A famed physician, her grandfather must have known that he was too ill to travel. Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel.

"A novel of surpassing beauty, exquisitely wrought and magical. T�a Obreht is a towering new talent."--T. C. Boyle

T�a Obreht was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She was named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation's list of 5 Under 35. She lives in New York.

The Big Bang Book Club is a science book club for non-scientists. Our next meeting will be 7:00pm, Tuesday, February 22, at duplex restaurant.bar, 2516 Hennepin Ave S, in Minneapolis. February's book is You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall by Colin Ellard.

In the store: $13.50
Online: $11.25 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $15.00
Available Now
A homing pigeon can be driven halfway across a continent in a lightproof box and then, on release, find its way unerringly back to its loft. What is truly amazing, though, is that humans, the only animal that has come close to understanding how some of these magnificent navigational feats are performed, are rendered helpless by dense bush or even an unexpected turn in a maze of cubicles. Ellard illuminates this disconnect from our world with great clarity and explains what it means, not just for our forays into the wilderness but for how we construct our cities, our workplaces, and even our homes and virtual worlds.

The Big Bang Book Club mixes arts and science into a heady brew. It is sponsored by

Several recent bestsellers are out now in paperback. Check out our front table for these and many, many more good books.

Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert

In the store: $14.40
Online: $12.00 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $16.00
Available Now
At the end of her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian living in Indonesia. The couple swore eternal love, but also swore (as skittish divorce survivors) never to marry. However, providence intervened in the form of a U.S. government ultimatum: get married, or Felipe could never enter America again. Committed is a fascinating meditation on compatibility and fidelity chronicles Gilbert's complex and sometimes frightening journey into second marriage.

You can meet Elizabeth Gilbert on Friday, February 11, 2011, 7:00pm, at the Burnsville Performing Arts Center. Details are at www.clubbook.org

Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich

In the store: $13.49
Online: $11.24 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $14.99
Available Now
When Irene America discovers that her artist husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe-deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and marriage, while turning her Red Diary--hidden where Gil will find it--into a manipulative charade. As Irene and Gil fight to keep up appearances for their three children, their home becomes a place of increasing violence and secrecy. And Irene drifts into alcoholism, moving ever closer to the ultimate destruction of a relationship filled with shadowy need and strange ironies. Alternating between Irene's twin journals and an unflinching third-person narrative, Shadow Tag fearlessly explores the complex nature of love, the fluid boundaries of identity, and the anatomy of one family's struggle for survival and redemption.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

In the store: $14.35
Online: $11.96 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $15.95
Available Now
"No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis....[he] does a nimble job of using his subjects' stories to explicate the greed, idiocies and hypocrisies of a system notably lacking in grown-up supervision....Writing in faintly Tom Wolfe-ian prose, Mr. Lewis does a colorful job of introducing the lay reader to the Darwinian world of the bond market."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

The Big Short is a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor out of a handful of really unlikely heroes--bond and real estate derivative markets.

"Devastatingly funny."--New York magazine


There's much more good winter reading just waiting for you on our shelves. Just ask us to show you where.

Central Connecticut State University's annual study ranking the most literate cities in the United States has been released, and the results are good for the Twin Cities. Statisticians compiled numbers for newspaper circulation, bookstore sales, magazines subscriptions, educational attainment, library usage, and the Internet availability.

Minneapolis ranked third on the list, and St Paul was number 7. Washington, DC, was in first place. New York City didn't crack the top ten. Details are here.

For a roundup of good news from indie booksellers in the Twin Cities, read "Local independent booksellers are still fighting the good fight--and winning", in the Pioneer Press.

Club Book brings best-selling and award-winning national and regional authors to library communities throughout the seven-county metropolitan region. All events are free and open to the public. February has two readings you won't want to miss.

Wednesday, February 16, 7:00pm, at Southdale Library, 7001 York Ave. S, Edina--Paul Harding reads from Tinkers

In the store: $13.50
Online: $11.21 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $15.00
Available Now
Musician and author Paul Harding's debut novel, Tinkers, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers. Tinkers has been recognized as one of the best debut fiction books of 2009 on the lists of The New Yorker, National Public Radio, San Francisco Chronicle, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and the Star Tribune. His short stories have appeared in Shakepainter and The Harvard Review. Harding has taught at the University of Iowa and Harvard. His second novel, which will be published in the summer of 2012, returns to some of the characters in Tinkers.

Friday, February 25, 7:00pm, at the Minneapolis Central Library--TC Boyle reads from When the Killing's Done

In the store: $24.25
Online: $20.21 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $26.95
Available February 22
Visionary novelist T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of more than twenty books, including After the Plague, The Women, and The Road to Welville, which was made into a movie starring John Cusack and Anthony Hopkins. His award-winning work has been translated into more than two dozen languages. His newest book, When the Killing's Done, portrays a showdown between two factions of environmentalists, each utterly convinced of their beliefs in preserving the natural world.

Club Book, a program of Metropolitan Library Service Agency, coordinated by the Library Foundation of Hennepin County, is funded with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008 which dedicated funding to preserve Minnesota's art and cultural heritage. For more information about the series, visit their website, www.clubbook.org or call 952-847-8107.

We still have a few calendars and planners to keep you organized throughout 2011. Wall calendars are now 50% off. Dayplanners are 25% off--including Moleskines.


Get yours while they last.

A kind Facebook fan pointed out an excellent blog: Forgotten Bookmarks displays the weird and wonderful things you can find in a used book. The unidentified owner photographs not only the bookmark, picture, of other foundling, but also the book in which it was located.


See all the entries at www.forgottenbookmarks.com, and visit www.facebook.com/magersandquinnbooksellers for more news and conversation.

Books & Bars meets twice a month--at Bryant-Lake Bowl in Uptown and at the Aster Cafe in St Anthony Main. Attend either meeting or come to both for a double dose of literary merriment.

6:30pm, Tuesday, February 11, 2011, at Bryant-Lake Bowl

In the store: $12.60
Online: $10.50 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $14.00
Available Now
February's first book is The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott. The author will join the discussion via Skype. In his gripping memoir, Stephen Elliott pursues parallel investigations: a gripping account of a notorious San Francisco murder trial, and an electric exploration of the self. Destined to be a classic, The Adderall Diaries was described by the Washington Post as "a serious literary work designed to make you see the world as you've never quite seen it before."

6:30pm, Tuesday, February 22, 2011, at Aster Cafe

In the store: $13.45
Online: $11.21 (plus S/H)
Publisher's price: $14.95
Available Now
February's second book is One Day by David Nicholls. It's 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. They both know that the next day, after college graduation, they must go their separate ways. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. As the years go by, Dex and Em begin to lead separate lives--lives very different from the people they once dreamed they'd become. And yet, unable to let go of that special something that grabbed onto them that first night, an extraordinary relationship develops between the two. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day--July 15th--of each year. Dex and Em face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed, they must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself.

Books & Bars is not your typical book club. We provide a unique atmosphere for a lively discussion of interesting authors, fun people, good food and drinks. You're welcome even if you haven't read the book.

Books & Bars is presented by Jeff Kamin and Magers & Quinn Booksellers, sponsored by Bryant-Lake Bowl, Aster Cafe, Metro Magazine and Surly Brewing.


Magers & Quinn is the largest independent bookstore in the Twin Cities. Stop in today or check our inventory on our website any time.

We'll be back next month with more great book news.

Until then,


David Enyeart
Magers and Quinn Booksellers

Write us: [email protected]
Call us: 612/822-4611
Or visit our website: http://www.magersandquinn.com