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| Jan. 8, 2015 |
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Hello, Grass Roots Readers!
Welcome to 2015! We are shuttling in the new year with an updated buyer's reward system. The GR 5 Point Plan will take over the Independence Card, and here's the skinny:
1. Sign-up for $5.00, get 25 points. Program begins Monday, Jan. 12th (save this weekend's receipts)
2. Earn 5 points for every dollar spent at Retail.*
3. Receive $5.00 credit on your next purchase for every 500 points.
4. Double points for one purchase on your birthday!
5. Double points on monthly specials. January = Health Special (details soon!).
*Points are awarded based on purchases at normal retail (no promotions, short discounts or service charges). Only one membership is needed for each family.
For holders of last year's Independence Card, we will transfer all of your stamps over 5 and half of your stamps if 5 and under (at $10 per stamp).
Our intention is to recognize a broader range of our frequent shoppers and to make it easier for you to participate and to receive rewards for your support.
No more lost or forgotten stamps!
Our new plan is half the cost of our earlier INDEPENDENCE CARD, rewards you twice as fast, and automatically credits your purchases without requiring you to carry or present your card - all we will need is your phone number at the beginning of the transaction! Plus, you will now receive credit for all of your retail purchases (not just every $10.00).
THANKS FOR SHOPPING LOCALLY!
Have a great weekend,
Jenny
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New Hardcovers
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[Fiction]
 "Scotton's accomplished debut is the story of Kevin Gillooly, a 14-year-old boy who moves to coal country and learns about courage and violence, beauty and danger, from his wise, weathered grandfather and a best friend well versed in backwoods survival. Kevin's mother brings him to her hometown of Medgar, Ky., after the death of Kevin's three-year-old brother. Kevin's grandfather Pops is a large-animal veterinarian and hires Kevin as an assistant. Pops also introduces him to books like Treasure Island and gives him time off to explore the surrounding mountains with his friend and confidant Buzzy Fink. . . The coming-of-age story is enriched by depictions of the earth's healing and redemptive power. . ." -Publishers Weekly
Hardcover; $26.00
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; ISBN: 9781455551927
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[Fiction]
 "Every so often a work of fiction engages the reader immediately and resonates long after the book is finished. Such a work is this marvelous collection of stories about remarkable people whose lives had been reduced to mere footnotes. . . [E]mpathetic Bergman (Birds of a Lesser Paradise) embellishes select moments in their history. While the stories themselves are unequivocally fictitious, the characters are not. We meet a member of the first all-female integrated swing band and Allegra, Lord Byron's illegitimate daughter. We also meet a cigar-smoking speedboat racer who calls herself Joe; Dolly, Oscar Wilde's disturbed niece; and Norma, the sister of Edna St. Vincent Millay, to name but a few. . ." -Library Journal
Hardcover; $25.00
Publisher: Scribner Book Company; ISBN: 9781476786568
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[Non-Fiction]
 "Gorokhova, the author of A Mountain of Crumbs a memoir of growing up in Soviet Russia, recreates, in this engaging new work, her first experience of America in 1980 as a 20-something teacher who hastily married an American academic. She admits she was simply eager to get away from the controlling clutches of her motherland and her mother. With wry, unswervingly honest observer's eye, Gorokhova chronicles the increasing strangeness of her new country as she is overwhelmed by choices at the shoe store and the supermarket in Austin, Tex., where she lives with her husband Robert. . . This work from a young immigrant's point of view is both wondrous and stinging." -Publishers Weekly
Hardcover; $26.00
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; ISBN: 9781451689822
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[Non-Fiction]
 "With forceful arguments and compelling prose, Jordan. . . turns conventional wisdom on the postwar world upside down by showing that poverty, alcoholism, sickness, mental illness, public neglect, and even contempt marked the lives of returning Union soldiers. Jordan argues that rather than understanding veterans' needs, too many civilians insisted they get on with their lives. Civilians rushed toward reconciliation with Southerners to patch up the Union and focus on 'progress,' while Union veterans insisted the nation not forget the causes and costs of the war and give soldiers and emancipated slaves their due. . . " -Library Journal
Hardcover; $28.95
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation; ISBN: 9780871407818
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[Non-Fiction]
 "Memoir meets self-help in Knobler's enjoyable account of life as an adoptive father. Knobler and his wife had two 'perfectly good' biological children, ages four and six, when, moved by an article about AIDS orphans in Africa, they decided to adopt. After the couple spent months navigating through government red tape, they took in five-year-old Nati, whose mother was HIV positive. Nati instantly upended stay-at-home dad Knobler's feeling of being in control of his household. Through this experience, he learned to think more about what was right for his own kids, and less about what American middle-class consumer culture says is best. . ." -Publishers Weekly
Hardcover; $25.95
Publisher: Tarcher; ISBN: 9780399167959
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New Paperbacks
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[Non-Fiction]
 "Five watershed events in the deep past decimated life on earth, hence the designation Sixth Extinction for today's human-propelled crisis. To lay the groundwork for understanding this massive die-off, Kolbert crisply tells the stories of such earlier losses as the American mastodon and the great auk and provides an orienting overview of evolutionary and ecological science. She then chronicles her adventures in the field with biologists, botanists, and geologists investigating the threats against amphibians, bats, coral, and rhinos. Intrepid and astute, Kolbert combines vivid, informed, and awestruck descriptions of natural wonders. . . [E]ach dispatch is laced with running explanations of urgent scientific inquiries and disquieting findings. . ." -Booklist, Starred Review
Paperback; $16.00
Publisher: Picador USA; ISBN: 9781250062185
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[Non-Fiction]
 "Plato lives! Brilliantly re-creating Plato's philosophic dialogues, Goldstein transports the ancient Greek philosopher to the twenty-first-century headquarters of Google, where his probing voice engages three modern hosts in exploring what knowledge means in an age of computerized crowd sourcing. Further dialogues put Plato into conversation with an advice columnist fielding questions about love and sex, with a child psychologist arguing with an obsessive mother, with a television broadcaster trying to score political points, and with a neuroscientist certain he can resolve all intellectual questions with brain scans. Though Goldstein's gifts as a novelist animate these dialogues, her scholarly erudition gives them substance, evident in the many citations from Plato's writings seamlessly embedded in the conversational give-and-take. . ." - Booklist, Starred Review
Paperback; $16.95
Publisher: Vintage; ISBN: 9780307456724
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[Fiction]
 "Stuck in a nightmare of unpaid bills, dwindling bank accounts, and leaky roofs, unemployed art-history professor Kit Noonan needs a jolt. Convinced that deep-seated identity issues are fueling Kit's inertia-inducing depression, his wife urges him to find the identity of his biological father, a fact his otherwise loving mother refuses to divulge. To solve the mystery, Kit embarks on a journey that takes him across the northeastern U.S., starting with a visit to his gruff and outdoorsy stepfather's home, and ending with a revelation that transforms his life in ways he could never imagine. . ." - Booklist, Starred Review
Paperback; $15.95
Publisher: Anchor Books; ISBN: 9780307456113
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[Fiction]
Named as One of the Best Books of the Year by the likes of the Guardian, New Statesman, Independent, Observer, All the Birds, Singing is a character study of intriguing Jake Whyte, protector of a small flock of sheep on a remote British island. Suddenly, sheep are disappearing one by one, and Whyte doesn't know why. Foxes? Mysterious strangers in the woods? An unknown animal prowling the premises at night? As the intrigue develops, so do our questions for Jake's past and why her back is literally scarred from whatever she has run away from.
Paperback; $15.95
Publisher: Vintage; ISBN: 9780345802507
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[Fiction]
 "For classically trained pianist Thomas Greene, 1936 Shanghai couldn't be more different than the segregated American life he knows. As a black man who has arrived to work as a nightclub band leader, Thomas quickly grows to love the city that treats him with reverence and respect. Although he is a skilled piano player and crowd favorite, Thomas's lack of skill at jazz improvisation makes him feel like a fraud. Song Yuhua is drawn to Thomas as both a man and musician, but her circumstances as an indentured servant for a powerful gang leader complicate their growing attraction. . . [Thomas's] love for Song awakens a passion that transfers into his music, and he finally learns how to improvise." - Library Journal
Paperback; $14.95
Publisher: Mariner Books; ISBN: 9780544334458
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New For Young Readers
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by Mary Pope Osborne
[Fiction]
Ages 7-11
 "Jack and Annie are back in the first Magic Tree House Super Edition series title. In this double-sized adventure, our time-traveling siblings are summoned by Teddy to Glastonbury, England, on June 4, 1944. Their mission is to locate Kathleen, who has gone missing behind enemy lines in Vichy France, and give her the magic items she requested via a coded note. The two jump from a plane piloted by Teddy, realizing at the last minute that they do not have the magic items for Kathleen. Undeterred, they make their way through the countryside, becoming personally acquainted with the history they know only vaguely: Nazis, the French Resistance movement, D-Day, and what it meant for everyone living through history's darkest hour. . ." - Booklist
Hardcover; $14.99
Publisher: Random House Books; ISBN: 9780553497724
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New Music
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Back next week--hang in there!
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Events at Grass Roots
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Community Events
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Darkside Show Times for 1/9/-1/15
National Gallery -NR If a picture is worth a thousand words, then there are at least a million things worth talking about in National Gallery.
The Interview -R Yep, we got it. Thanks, Obama! Seth Rogan, James Franco.
Babadook -R Relies on real horror rather than cheap jump scares -- and boasts a heartfelt, genuinely moving story to boot.
Antarctica: A Year On Ice -NR A visually stunning chronicle of what it is like to live in Antarctica for a full year, including winters isolated from the rest of the world, and enduring months of darkness in the coldest place on Earth.
The Homesman -R A squarely traditional yet somewhat progressive Western, another absorbing entry to Tommy Lee Jones' directorial résumé. Hillary Swank.
Arts/Literary Events
- Fairy Tales & Folk Songs with the Servias Piano Duo Sat., January 10, 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, 645 Northwest Monroe Avenue, Corvallis, OR; David and Lauren Servias will be performing a four-hands piano concert that will appeal to the whole family! The program will consist of music based on fairy tales and folk songs, including many tunes that audience members love and will recognize. Come hear Ravel's "Mother Goose Suite," Tchaikovsky's "Sleeping Beauty Waltz," and some familiar folk songs and nursery rhymes as you've never heard them before. Join the Servias Duo for an hour of costumes, audience participation, and wonderful piano music in the main meeting room.
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Lela Fête Sat., January 10, 5:30 p.m. - 10:00 p.m., Whiteside Theatre 361 SW Madison Ave, 361 Southwest Madison Avenue, Corvallis, OR; On Saturday, January 10, the Oregon State University chapter of Engineers Without Borders will present Lela Fête, a concert and cultural event, at the Whiteside Theatre in downtown Corvallis. All proceeds will go directly towards the implementation of sustainable drinking water sources in the rural community of Lela, Kenya.
Lela Fête will feature music by The Unknowns from Corvallis and Simba & the Exceptional Africans from Moscow, Idaho. In addition to performing in the band, Dr. Simba Tirima will speak about his experience as an environmental engineer and humanitarian.
The doors will open at 5:30 p.m., at which time African cuisine will be available for purchase.
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased online or on the OSU campus in Kearney Hall, Room 101. Tickets will be $12 at the door on the night of the event.
- Lecture Series: Gearing Up for Gardening Tue, January 13, 12 p.m. - 1 p.m. Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, 645 Northwest Monroe Avenue, Corvallis, OR; This lecture series is free and open to the public, presented by Owen Dell and Associates, and co-sponsored by the Master Gardeners, the LBCC Benton Center, and the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library.
Topic: Sensational Seeds: What's New in the Seed World with Aaron Jeschke of Territorial Seed Company.
- Rage, Rage, Against the Dying: Global Warming, Extinction, and the Call to Life Wed. Jan. 21, 7:30-9:00 p.m. A Duet of Music and Words -- The truths of our time are deeply challenging - the on-rushing extinctions, the coming storms, and the call to safeguard Earth's abundance of lives. Words alone cannot express the urgency for a moral response. And so we turn to music.
In this program, concert pianist Rachelle McCabe will play Rachmaninoff's "Variations on a Theme from Corelli," whose outpouring of descending chords gives voice to both the grief and the ferocious hope in the human heart. Creating a "duet" of music and words, writer Kathleen Dean Moore will speak of the call to save Earth's astonishing lives -- a sacred trust, a great and glorious gift, to be honored and protected for all time.
- Willamette Writer's On the River "The Prose Poem: Thinking Inside the Box" with Jennifer Richter, TUESDAY, January 20th (the day after MLK Day), 6:30-8:30 p.m. First Presbyterian Church, 114 SW 8th Street (enter Dennis Hall at 9th & Monroe), Corvallis, Oregon; The prose poem, called a "veritable literary hybrid" by Charles Simic (winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for his book of prose poems The World Doesn't End), can be very practically useful for tackling those slippery, unruly subjects that may have eluded you. Focusing on the form's brevity, energy, and limitless possibilities, Jennifer Richter will share some of her own published prose poetry and then lead the group in a related writing exercise, asking each writer to consider the question: How will your poems be liberated when unconstrained by lineation?
Opportunities
-Random Review: Wild Ones
Wednesday,
Sponsored by the Friends of the Library
-St. Petersburg Review Poetry Contest Deadline: March 1, 2015
St. Petersburg Review is an independent, international, nonprofit, annual review of contemporary literature that seeks to foster and promote global connections and affinities through the annual publication of quality fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama from all countries. Our poetry contest, which has a 5% or better publication rate, will be accepting submissions September 1, 2014 - March 1, 2015. Details here.
-Willow Springs Fiction Prize 2015 $2,000 plus publication. Submission deadline: March 15, 2015. Original, unpublished work only; no word limit for submissions. $15 entry fee. All entrants receive a one-year subscription to Willow Springs. Submit a story online here.
-Prospero Prizes for Poetry and Flash Fiction Deadline: March 15, 2015
Attend, Leviathan. SHARKPACK Poetry Review Annual seeks poetry and very short fiction of unusual philosophical and/or imaginative power for our second issue, themed 'Cities, Sites.' The Prospero Prizes include a cash award of $150 and feature publication; winners will be chosen from general (free!) submissions. 1-3 prizes will be awarded. Find details here.
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Community Events with Grass Roots
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Discovery Lecture Series at Oregon State University featuring Cheryl Strayed
"A Wild Life"
Cheryl Strayed
New York Times Best-selling author
Thursday, January 15, 2015
7:30-8:30 P.M.
LaSells Stewart Center Austin Auditorium
875 SW 26th Street, Corvallis, OR
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
 Shattered by her mother's sudden death and the end of her marriage, Cheryl Strayed decided to confront her emotional pain by trekking more than 1,000 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail. In her best-selling memoir, Wild, Strayed tells the amateur hiker's tale with grit and humor, peppered with the colorful characters she encounters as she struggles to find inner peace and stability.
Grass Roots will be selling books at this event.
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Tracy Daugherty and Wayne Harrison
Friday, January 30, 7:30 p.m.
OSU Valley Library Rotunda, Corvallis, OR
 Tracy Daugherty was born and raised in Midland, Texas. He is the author of four novels, four short story collections, a book of personal essays, as well as biographies of Donald Barthelme and Joseph Heller. His stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Paris Review online, McSweeney's, Boulevard, Chelsea, The Georgia Review, Triquarterly, The Southern Review, and many other journals. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf, and the Vermont Studio Center. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and PEN, he is a four-time winner of the Oregon Book Award. At Oregon State University, he helped found the Masters of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing, and is now Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing.  Before working as a corrections officer in Rutland, Vermont, Wayne Harrison was an auto mechanic for six years in Waterbury, Connecticut. A first-generation college student, he began in his mid twenties as a criminal justice major before getting turned on to creative writing by mentor and friend Jeffrey Greene. He later received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His fiction has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered. His short stories appear in Best American Short Stories 2010, The Atlantic, Narrative Magazine, McSweeney's, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, The Sun, Salon.com, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, FiveChapters, New Letters and other magazines. One story was Notable in Best American 2009 and one received special mention in Pushcart Prizes 2012. His fiction has earned a Maytag fellowship, an Oregon Literary fellowship and a Fishtrap Writing Fellowship. He teaches writing at Oregon State University.
Grass Roots will be selling books at this event.
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Store News
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PNBA Awards
The winners of the 2015 Pacific Northwest Book Awards have been announced! They are:
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Jigsaw
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Reading Group Selection
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[Fiction]
Tuesday, February 3 6:30-8:00 p.m.
 Join Neé as she leads the February Book Group with Sarah Jio's The Look of Love. "Seattle florist Jane is doing work she loves and has a close set of friends and a faithful canine companion named Sam. But her quiet life changes when she receives a card in the mail from a mysterious woman named Colette, who claims not only to have been present at Jane's birth but also to know the source of Jane's lifelong vision problems. When Jane pays Colette a visit, she is given a task: discover the six forms of love by the full moon following her thirtieth birthday. If she fails to do so, Jane will be immune from love for the rest of her life. When she meets Cam, a science writer for Time, they instantly click. But when Cam's writing takes a deeply personal turn, Jane questions her ability to recognize any kind of love at
all. . ." -Booklist
Regular Price: $16.00
On sale for: $13.60
Until Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2015
Publisher: Plume Books
ISBN: 9780142180532
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Night Stands
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Kendall
by Philippa Rice
[Fiction]
What's black, white, and red all over? The cutest comic you have ever seen! Soppy chronicles a couple's journey from meeting, to falling in love, to moving in together (inspired by real events with the author's boyfriend). The snit-bits of an intimate relationship are touchingly accurate -- from sleeping positions, to fighting, and everything in between -- it will have you giggling with how relatable it is! The perfect housewarming gift for your favorite long-term couple.
Hardcover; Price: $14.99
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing; ISBN: 9781449461065
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Claire
by Alice Schertle
[Fiction]
When an arrogant dump truck gets stuck in the mud, who can help but the friendly and generous Little Blue Truck?When Blue helps, all of his friends join in, lending a great message to go along with the presentation. With clever rhymes, colorful illustrations, and plenty of onomatopoeia voicing a variety of animals, this is a fantastic book for kids, particularly those around age 2.
Board Book; Price: $6.99
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; ISBN: 9780547248288
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TIffany
by Charlie Lovett
[Fiction]
Jane Austen devotees and readers who appreciate novels about books will happily immerse themselves in First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen. Alternating chapters span centuries from the 18th century to the present day, interweaving the stories of Jane Austen and Sophie Collington, a literature graduate from Oxford. When her book collector uncle dies mysteriously, Sophie becomes embroiled in a literary mystery involving a rare book that might include the earliest incarnation of Pride and Prejudice, or conversely prove Austen a plagiarist. Although purely fictional, First Impressions was an entertaining diversion, and I enjoyed time spent in the company of both characters.
Hardcover; Price: $27.95
Publisher: Viking Books; ISBN: 9780525427247
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