Grass Roots Books and Music — 227 SW 2nd Street, Corvallis OR 97339 — 541-754-7668
June 6, 2014
Contents
Newest Books
New in Paperback
Featured Books for Young Readers
Music
Events
News
This Week's Puzzle
Reading Group Selection
On Our Nightstands
Grass Roots Online — Contact Us
 
 

ANNOUNCEMENT: Grass Roots has a new shipment of T-shirts in! We're so excited about this we are offering 20% off ALL SHIRTS now through Thursday, June 12. We even have our super-comfortable organic cotton as an option for those of us interested in high quality fibers. This is a great way to proudly support your local, indie bookstore and be stylish at the same time.

Now then.

Summer is hurtling towards us and if you are looking for sun-lounging suggestions, we've got great titles on both of our new release tables. Looking for stories? Check out David Guterson's Problems with People: Stories. Additionally, there's David Sedaris's most recent collection, Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls out in paperback if you love delightful and humorous autobiographical essays. We also have the latest from Francine Prose and Isabel Allende. Feels like we've got it all. Take a look for more below.

Two other highlights this week: Father's Day is coming up Sunday, June 15 (we've got a display in the store for some neat gift ideas), AND our collection of unique sand blends (featured on our Sand Pictures display) are fully stocked. Grass Roots is perfect for some of your gift shopping, so we encourage you to come down this weekend!

Until next time,

Jenny

 
Newest Books

Problems With People: Stories

David Guterson

"Whether it's the utter disdain a successful son feels for his nattering mother or the unavoidable anguish an elderly father experiences at not being able to reunite with his peripatetic son, missed connections often take center stage in award-winning novelist Guterson's (Ed King, 2011) second short story collection. In 10 perceptive tales, he explores the monumental and circumstantial episodes that form the underpinnings of daily life. . . Through them all, Guterson's protagonists confront life's challenges with something like aplomb, if not outright skill, and in doing so, often uncover unsuspected silver linings in otherwise darkly cloudy situations. . . " -Booklist

Hardcover, $25.95

Publisher: Knopf Publishing; ISBN: 9780385351485

Convictions: Passing on What's Most Important

Marcus J. Borg

Reflecting on what matters most, both for the church and for Americans, leading biblical scholar and premiere teacher for Protestant churches, Marcus Borg surveys the most significant conversations and personalities that shaped his life, and presents his convictions about the faith and it's role in the twenty-first century. Meditating on what makes us feel at home, he calls all American Christians to reject divisiveness and exclusivity and create communities that celebrate joy, possibility, and renewal. Throughout, he reflects on what matters most, bringing to earth the kingdom of God Jesus talked about and transforming our relationships with one another.

Hardcover, $25.99

Publisher: HarperOne; ISBN: 9780062269973

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

Francine Prose

“Artistically and intellectually adventurous, Prose presents a house-of-mirrors historical novel built around a famous photograph by Brassai of two women at a table in a Paris nightclub. The one wearing a tuxedo is athlete, race-car driver, and Nazi collaborator Violette Morris. . . Gabor, a Hungarian photographer enthralled by Paris after dark, photographs two weary lovers: Arlette, an opportunistic performer, and Lou Villars, a tux-clad athlete. The women are regulars at the Chameleon Club, a safe haven for lesbians, gays, cross-dressers, and others who must change their stripes to survive. . . A dark and glorious tour de force.” –Booklist, Starred Review

Hardcover, $26.99

Publisher: Harper; ISBN: 9780061713781

Fourth of July Creek

Smith Henderson

“Dedicated social worker Pete Snow lives in remote, impoverished Tenmile, Montana, in part because he's hiding out from the fallout of his own fractious divorce and in part because he knows that poverty breeds dysfunctional families, and there are plenty of kids who need his care. When he is summoned to open a file on Benjamin Pearl, a nearly feral 11-year-old boy who is suffering from malnutrition, he comes into contact with the boy's father, Jeremiah, a paranoid survivalist who mints his own money and is convinced that the end-time is near. . . Dark, gritty, and oh so good.” –Booklist, Starred Review

Hardcover, $26.99

Publisher: Ecco Press; ISBN: 9780062286444

Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life

Tom Robbins

"Insisting that this tome is neither autobiography nor memoir, countercultural icon Robbins (Another Roadside Attraction) covers the significant touchstones of his life. Always marked by his funky orientation and anarchic aesthetic, Robbins has held a lifelong love for the offbeat and for the written word. As a child he won a radio in a raffle and sold it for books. Nothing the human race has ever created, he writes, is more cool than a book. Humorous anecdotes and high jinks fill these pages. . . but it's not until almost page 200 when his life is forever altered by exposure to LSD and the infinite rabbit holes it has led him to. . . " -Booklist, Starred Review

Hardcover, $27.99

Publisher: Ecco Press; ISBN: 9780062267405

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New in Paperback

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Scott Anderson

"Among the many individual stories of World War I that will doubtless be told and retold for the centenary years between 2014 and 2018, that of T.E. Lawrence stands out from all the rest. . . [Anderson's] book could not be better timed. As global attention is drawn to Syria and Egypt, it is arresting to look back 100 years and see a familiar picture. . . The multi-character approach has the great virtue of opening up the story's complexity. Through his large cast, Anderson is able to explore the muddles of the early 20th-century Middle East from several distinct and enlightening perspectives. Furthermore, while he maintains an invigorating pace, his fabulous details are given room to illuminate. . . " -New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice

Paperback, $17.95

Publisher: Anchor Books; ISBN: 9780307476418

And the Mountains Echoed

Khaled Hosseini

"Saboor, a laborer, pulls his young daughter, Pari, and his son, Abdullah, across the desert in a red wagon, leaving their poor village of Shadbagh for Kabul, where his brother-in-law, Nabi, a chauffeur, will introduce them to a wealthy man and his beautiful, despairing poet wife. . . We meet twin sisters, one beautiful, one plain; one an invalid, the other a caretaker. Two male cousins, one a charismatic wheeler-dealer; the other a cautious, introverted doctor. A disfigured girl of great valor and a boy destined to become a plastic surgeon. Kabul falls and struggles to rise. Shadbagh comes under the rule of a drug lord, and the novel's many limbs reach to Paris, San Francisco, and a Greek island. . . " -Booklist, Starred Review

Paperback, $16.00

Publisher: Riverhead Books; ISBN: 9781594632389

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Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

David Sedaris

"Sedaris's latest essay collection possesses all of the wit, charm, and poignancy his readers have come to expect. His usual cast of delightful characters returns, including a flashback of his father in his underpants berating a schoolboy or, more recently, hounding David into getting a colonoscopy. Many pieces involve travel, animals, or both: his sister Gretchen totes around an insect 'kill jar'; in a Denver airport, David engages with a judgmental fellow passenger; and visiting the Australian bush, he has encounters with a kookaburra and a dead wallaby. Seeking a stuffed owl for a Valentine's Day gift leads him to a taxidermist shop where he is shown gruesome oddities and confronts difficult questions about his curiosity. . . " -Publishers Weekly

Paperback, $17.00

Publisher: Back Bay Books; ISBN: 9780316154703

Maya's Notebook

Isabel Allende

Nineteen-year-old Maya, neglected by her parents, was largely raised in California by her grandparents Nini and Popo. Popo’s gentle presence is the centering force of Maya’s turbulent adolescence, so when cancer claims his life Maya’s world spirals out of control. Joining a gang called the Vampires, she takes up dangerous habits of drugs and petty crime, ending up in a seedy Vegas underworld in the midst of a battle between assassins and the FBI. Her one chance to escape may lie within her family heritage as she unravels the mysterious truths of her past in her notebooks while hidden away by Nini on an isolated island of the coast of Chile.

Paperback, $15.99

Publisher: Harper Perennial; ISBN: 9780062105639

Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II

Mitchell Zuckoff

When a cargo plane goes missing over the Greenland ice cap in November 1942, a B-17 is dispatched on a perilous search-and-rescue mission that ends in disaster when the plane crashes into a fogged-out glacier. Almost three weeks later, the U.S. Coast Guard learns that contact has been made with the B-17 crew, who are taking refuge in the plane's broken tail. The Coast Guard begins rescue efforts, successfully extracting two of the B-17 survivors and promising to return for the rest. But as the brutal winter ravages the savage Arctic wilderness, the odds of saving the remaining men rapidly diminish. Out of options, they have no choice but to try and survive alone on the ice cap.

Paperback, $15.99

Publisher: Harper Perennial; ISBN: 9780062133403

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Neil Gaiman

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse where she once lived, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Paperback, $14.99

Publisher: William Morrow & Company; ISBN: 9780062255662

 
Featured Books for Young Readers

The Little Dump Truck

Margery Cuyler

Ages 1 to 4

Meet Hard Hat Pete and his little dump truck as they haul stones and rocks, carry debris, and unload at the landfill. It's hard work, but the Little Dump Truck is always ready for action! Preschool children will revel in the day-to-day activities of this happy dump truck. The lyrical text and bright pictures are just right for budding truck enthusiasts. Perfect for reading or even singing out loud at bedtime or any time.

Board Book, $7.99

Publisher: Henry Holt & Company; ISBN: 9780805099904

My New Friend Is So Fun! (Elephant and Piggie Book)

Mo Willems

Ages 4 to 8

"Gerald is careful. Piggie is not. Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can. Gerald worries so that Piggie does not have to. Gerald and Piggie are best friends." With simple sentences and classic conundrums that arise within close friendships, the latest from Mo Williams highlights the small jealousies we harbor when our best friend makes a new friend. We've all been there, and now Gerald is feeling the effects of replacement. Universal and sympathetic, My New Friend Is So Fun touches a nerve, but illuminates social dynamics smartly for beginner readers in ways they can relate.

Hardcover, $8.99

Publisher: Disney Press; ISBN: 9781423179580

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Music

Dave & Phil Alvin

Common Ground

Genre: Pop/Folk

The Alvin Brothers played a huge part in developing the roots rock movement that would come out of Southern California in the 1980s, giving us bands from Los Lobos to Dave and Phil's Blasters. This marks the brothers' first full LP collaboration since their split. Common Ground finds them paying tribute to a bluesmaster who influenced them both: Big Bill Broonzy.
($16.95)


Although we specialize in new releases, Grass Roots can usually get you any album that's still available.

 

 

Ask at the the store!

 
Events

Saturday, June 7, 1:00 p.m.

Grass Roots Books & Music

227 SW 2nd St.
Corvallis, OR

Judith Bender

Back to Health: the Twenty Minute Workout

"The key to developing a better quality of life can be found in this simple exercise program, which only takes twenty minutes per day. Timely and practical, Back to Health, the Twenty-Minute Workout contains an illustrated, step by step exercise program to treat and prevent back and neck pain and provides information on anatomy and body mechanics to help you understand why these exercises are important. Written by a physical therapist with years of experience treating patients with orthopedic problems, this book is full of medical knowledge, presented in a practical and easy to use manner, and will benefit anyone who has experienced back or neck pain or wants to avoid these problems." -Booklist

Tuesday, June 17, 7:00 p.m.

Grass Roots Books & Music

227 SW 2nd St.
Corvallis, OR

Kelly Kittel

Breathe: A Memoir of Motherhood, Grief, and Family Conflict

A mother’s heartbreaking account of losing two sons in the span of nine months—and of learning how to embrace love, honesty, and joy even in the face of tragedy.
This is the story of a girl who dreamed of having a large, loving family, and it’s the story of the struggles she survived as a woman to realize that dream. It’s also the universal tale of the forces that can tear a family apart.
Kelly Kittel tells the story of her sons, not always pleasant but not without moments of joy. This book is proof that truth is stranger than fiction.

Kelly Kittel is a fish biologist by profession; this is her first book. She is married with five living children. She lives with her husband and their two youngest children in Rhode Island but her favorite writing space is in their yurts on the coast of Oregon. She has been published in magazines and anthologies and has written many notes to teachers, but this is her first book.

Tuesday, June 24, 7:00 p.m.

Grass Roots Books & Music

227 SW 2nd St.
Corvallis, OR

Jana Zvibleman, Rick Borsten, Ann Staley

The Knotted Bond: Oregon Poets Speak of Their Sisters

Sisters are sometimes born into the same family; they can be also be chosen over time and space. In this anthology, sisters of all types share or withhold nurturing and secrets; they celebrate and miss each other; they witness each other’s moods, successes, and deaths. Most of the poets in this anthology are, naturally, women, yet Kim Stafford and other brothers reveal relationships with their sisters. The laughing toddlers, knobby kneed girls, defiant teens, regretful adults, and proud elders in this book can touch us all.

Corvallis poets represented are Rick Borsten, Ann Staley, and Jana Zvibleman; others include outgoing Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen, Dorianne Laux, Penelope Scambly Schott, and Ingrid Wendt.

 

Upcoming Events

We have many more events coming up in the next few months! For a complete list of all of our upcoming events, please visit our website.

 
Community Events

Community Events

Darkside Cinema: Movies showing 6/6 to 6/12, showtimes daily, Darkside Cinema, Corvallis. Visit their website for showtimes.

  • The Grand Budapest Hotel–R Wes Anderson once again using ornate visual environments to explore deeply emotional ideas.
  • Fed Up–PG Compelling and troubling in equal measure, Fed Up is an advocacy documentary that earns its outrage.
  • Fading Gigolo–R A story that pretends to be about sex but is actually focused on revealing the true nature of intimacy. Woody Allen, John Turturro.
  • Cold In July–NR A southern-fried thriller that manages to be greasy and dusty at the same time.
  • The Railway Man–R Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman.



 

Literary Events:

  • Writers on the River: June 16 Summer Reading at 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on June 17; Dennis Hall at the First Presbyterian Church, 114 SW 8th St., Corvallis, OR 97333;
    Readings Guidelines for Readers:
    - Sign up table begins at 6:15 p.m. (recent readings have been packed)
    - First to sign up is first to read
    - Reading is limited to 7 minutes per reader
    - Only one prose piece is allowed during the 7 minute time frame
    - Number of readers is limited to 8 given our one hour program format
    - Please no graphic violence, sex or hate speech
    - Please tell the audience if your piece is fiction or non-fiction, if it is a part or whole
    - Each reader will introduce the next reader on the list
    The event is free and open to the public.
    Visit their website for more information.

Opportunities:

  • Random Reviews Wednesday June 11, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m., Corvallis-Benton Public Library, 645 NW Monroe Ave. Corvallis, OR 97330; The World’s Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne
    Reviewer: Mary Nevin. This event is free and open to the public. Visit the library's website for more information.

Ticket Sales: Grass Roots sells tickets for local music events. Please call or stop by the store to see what's currently available.

 

 

 
News

Father's Day Display

Just a reminder: Father's Day is Sunday, June 15. That's soon! If you happen to be in the market for a gift for Dad, Grass Roots still has an eclectic display up of ideas near our Fiction section! A few of our suggestions include Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes by Jim Holt; Incredible and True!: Fishing Stories by Shaun Morey; and The New York Times Will Shortz Presents A Year of Crosswords: 365 Puzzles to Keep You Sharp. Whether you're looking for history, humor, or puzzles to amuse your father, there are these options, and certainly more on our shelves. Something for a dad of every stripe!

More Sand Pictures Are IN!

Grass Roots is featuring an updated in-store display of our latest shipment of Sand Pictures. These unique sand blends come to us from Austria by artist Klaus B�sch. B�sch has been making his stunning pieces since 1986, and Grass Roots is honored to feature and sell them right here in Corvallis. Coming in a variety of sizes starting as small as 4"x7", to as large as 22"x 32"x 7", they stand out as truly dynamic decorations for the home or workplace. (In fact, one of these would be perfect for a Father's Day gift!)

 
This Week's Puzzle



Solve this week's jigsaw.
 
Reading Group Selection

Tuesday, July 1, 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

Jenny will be leading our July reading group discussion with Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were pupils at Hailsham—an idyllic establishment situated deep in the English countryside. The children there were tenderly sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe they were special, and that their personal welfare was crucial. But for what reason were they really there? It is only years later that Kathy, now aged 31, finally allows herself to yield to the pull of memory. What unfolds is the haunting story of how Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, slowly come to face the truth about their seemingly happy childhoods—and about their futures. Never Let Me Go is a uniquely moving novel, charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of our lives.

Publisher: Vintage Books

ISBN: 9781400078776

Paperback

Regular price: $15.95

On sale for $13.56 until June 30.

 

 

On Our Nightstands

Grass Roots Staff

 

We will be back with our reviews for the June 12 newsletter! Check out some of our staff summer reading lists featured on our homepage if you are looking for something in the meantime!

 

Be back soon!
 
Grass Roots Online — Contact Us