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Feb. 19, 2015
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Hello Readers!

I hope you are enjoying the sneak peek of this springtime weather--it's beautiful out there. 

This week we have Dr. Yuval Noah Harari's fascinating
Sapiens in hardcover, plus Peter Stark's lauded
Astoria in paperback. Great music has come along with the latest from Putumayo and Steve Earle--but those are just a few highlights, so read on for more, like our upcoming events around town (and a new kids' bedtime story display!).  

See you soon!

~Jenny
New HardcoversNHardcovers

by Dr. Yuval Noah Harari
[Nonfiction]
 
"It's not often that a book offers readers the possibility to reconsider, well, everything. But that's what Harari does in this sweeping look at the history of humans. Beginning before the beginning of Homo sapiens, the book introduces the other members of the genus Homo, who have lived on the planet for millions of years, and shows how sapiens endured while others died out. Then, with both wit and intellectual heft, Harari moves briskly through the important stages of human development: the harnessing of fire, the emergence of language, the agricultural revolution, the ongoing development of religion. . . He then discusses where humans are today and where (if anywhere) they may be tomorrow. . ." - Booklist, starred review


Hardcover; $29.99

Publisher: Harper; ISBN: 9780062316097

by Janina Matthewson
[Fiction]
 
"In London, people suddenly, inexplicably begin to lose things both physical (the wall of a house, piano keys) and intangible (their way, their status).This novel breathes life into the cracks of everyday existence, creating a world in which even metaphorical loss creates a physical absence. Jake, whose mother has recently died, serves most closely as a central character as he begins to collect lost things, displaying an uncanny ability to understand the story of each thing he finds. His relationship with his father, however, begins to literally disappear at the same time, and his father's girlfriend, Delia, who has lost direction in her own life, must fight to bring them back together. . ." - Kirkus Reviews

 

Hardcover; $19.99

Publisher: Friday Project; ISBN: 9780007562473

by Michael S. Gazzaniga
[Nonfiction]
 
"Gazzaniga may not be a household name, but he is considered one of the most important neuroscientists of our time. In this fascinating memoir, this pioneer in cognitive research offers a behind-the-scenes examination of the work he and his fellow scientists did to uncover the mysteries of the right and left brain specifically, split-brain research aimed at discovering whether each hemisphere of the brain could learn independently of the other. Gazzaniga is a charmer. Consequently, this is not a dry scientific tome. On the contrary, the personable Gazzaniga, his warmth and good humor virtually jump off the page, recalls his life as a scientist at Caltech, Dartmouth, Cornell, and other institutions, and the ups and downs that came with it. . ." -Booklist, starred review


Hardcover; $28.99

Publisher: Ecco Press; ISBN: 9780062228802

by Joakim Zander
[Fiction]
 
"A CIA agent, burned out by three decades of lies, betrayals, and disastrous Agency cross-purposes. A Swedish Muslim with a shadowy past writing a PhD dissertation on private security companies in the Middle East. An ethically challenged lobbyist working in the EU capital of Brussels. And a beautiful Swedish aide to an EU parliamentarian. . .[Moving through three decades and locales in Syria, Brussels, D.C., Paris, and Stockholm. . .their lives will variously intersect, reconnect, or collide, and some lives will end.] First-novelist Zander has written a truly polished and compelling thriller that nods at all the standard thriller tropes. . ." - Booklist, starred review

 

Hardcover; $27.99

Publisher: Harper; ISBN: 9780062337245

New PaperbacksNPaperbacks

by Kurt D. Fausch
[Nonfiction]

In For the Love of Rivers, stream ecologist Kurt Fausch draws readers across the reflective surface of streams to view and ponder what is beneath, and how they work. While celebrating their beauty and mystery, he uses his many years of experience as a field biologist to explain the underlying science connecting these aquatic ecosystems to their streamside forests and the organisms found there -- including humans. More than a book about stream ecology, For the Love of Rivers is a celebration of the interconnectedness of life.


Paperback; $22.95

Publisher: Oregon State University Press; ISBN: 9780870717703

by Peter Stark
[Nonfiction]

"At the dawn of the 19th century, America's Eastern coast had largely been settled, but the West remained largely uncharted and undeveloped. In 1810, entrepreneur John Jacob Astor proposed to Thomas Jefferson that Astor start a trading colony in what is now Oregon. In a page-turning tale of ambition, greed, politics, survival, and loss, historian Stark (The Last Empty Spaces) chronicles Astor's mad dash to establish a fur-trading company, Astoria, which would capture the territory's wealth and allow Jefferson to inaugurate his vision of a democracy from sea to shining sea. . . altering the shape of the American nation." - Publishers Weekly


Paperback; $15.99

Publisher: Ecco Press; ISBN: 9780062218308

by Alexander McCall Smith
[Fiction]

"Bertie Pollock may be the most desperately overscheduled, overmanaged almost-seven-year-old in Edinburgh. He yearns for escape from the rounds of psychotherapy, Italian, and yoga to which his well-meaning but overbearing mother subjects him. Bertie's idea of a guide is anything that hints of freedom, like a Swiss Army knife, a fishing pole, a Cub Scout camping trip, and Glasgow -- definitely Glasgow, where he dreams of going when he finally turns 18 and can live away. Readers can start [the 44 Scotland Street series] here and feel the warmth of McCall Smith's wit, deft characterization, and overarching theme of kindness. . ." - Booklist, starred review


Paperback; $15.00

Publisher: Anchor Books; ISBN: 9780804170000

by Michio Kaku
[Nonfiction]

"In this expansive, illuminating journey through the mind, theoretical physicist Kaku (Physics of the Future) explores fantastical realms of science fiction that may soon become our reality. His futurist framework merges physics with neuroscience to model how our brains construct the future, and is loosely applied to demonstrations that 'show proof-of-principle' in accomplishing what was previously fictional: that minds can be read, memories can be digitally stored, and intelligences can be improved to great extents. The discussion, while heavily scientific, is engaging, clear, and replete with cinematic references. . ." - Publishers Weekly

Paperback; $16.00

Publisher: Anchor Books; ISBN: 9780307473349

New For Young ReadersYReaders

by Tom Chapin and John Forster
[Fiction]
Ages 4 to 8

Have a happy birthday -- the backwards way! Full of fun and based on the hit song from Tom Chapin and John Forster, this is a celebratory birthday bash like no other. Put your clothes on inside out, heat up the ice cream, and hang on to your party hats -- because everything's out of whack at the backwards birthday party! From beloved, three-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Tom Chapin, four-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter John Forster, and with stunning illustrations from Chuck Groenink comes the zaniest birthday party you'll "ever" attend.

 

Hardcover; $17.99

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers; ISBN: 9781442467989

New MusicNMusic


 Steve Earle
Terraplane
Genre: Pop/Folk

With his longtime band the Dukes, Earle assembled this record under the inspiration of traditional blues music. The results are thoroughly contemporary, though they bear the definite stamp of early blues in song structure and lyrics.
($15.98)

Genre: Pop/Folk

Whitehorse is the stage name of Canadian husband and wife Melissa McLelland and Luke Doucet. While both have established themselves as solo acts, together they make music inspired by everything from spaghetti westerns to alternative country.
($16.99)

Ibeyi
Ibeyi
Genre: World

Ibeyi features music created by twins Lisa-Kainde and Naomi Diaz, whose father was a member of Buena Vista Social Club. Ibeyi's music is sung in both English and Yoruba, with music drawing from Latin, African and indie folk genres.
($14.98)

 Putumayo Artists
Celtic Cafe
Genre: Celtic/Irish

Putumayo's new sampler features a selection of traditional and contemporary Celtic singer-songwriters. Contributors range from Dougie Maclean and Battlefield Band to Capercaillie and Old Blind Dogs.
($15.98)

 Pops Staples
Don't Lose This
Genre: Jazz

As heard on NPR, "The legendary gospel figure was working on this collection at the time of his passing in 2000. His daughter, Mavis Staples enlisted the assistance of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy to complete the sessions." 
($15.98)
Events at Grass RootsEventsGRR

LBCC Writers' Workroom 10th Anniversary Celebration

Thursday, February 19, at 7 p.m.
Grass Roots Books and Music
227 SW 2nd St.
Corvallis, OR 
 
Since the inception of Linn-Benton Community College's (LBCC) Writers' Workroom in 2004, many stories critiqued in the class held at The Benton Center in Corvallis are now award-winning and/or published. LBCC Instructor C. Lill Ahrens is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the class by emceeing a gala reading by several of the award-winning, published authors including: 

Lois Jean Bousquet, Lisa Burchett, Michael Coolen, Harry Demarest, Gary Gibson, Linda Elin Hamner, Ken Holt, Valerie Lake, Genny Lynch, Lois Rosen, Dee Roy, Patricia Smith, Nancy Weber, and Dick Weinman.

In addition, Lill will read from one of her own award-winning stories, recently published in the anthology Chance Encounters: Travel Tales from Around the World (World Traveler Press Dec '14).

Community EventsCommunityEvents

Darkside Show Times for 2/20/-2/26

-Somewhere Else Tomorrow - NR 
We believe first-hand-experiences in foreign cultures will contribute to our world becoming more tolerant, understanding and peaceful.

-Leviathan - R Enormously captivating, a study of oppression, human nature and the effect of the two things upon each other. Nominated for Best Foreign Film! (Subtitled Russian)

-Still Alice - PG-13 A gripping performance from Julianne Moore, and a heartfelt drama that honors its delicate themes with bravery and sensitivity. Best Actress Oscar Nom!

-Mr. Turner - R An exploration of the last quarter century of the great, if eccentric, British painter J.M.W. Turner's life. 4 Oscar Noms.

-The Theory Of Everything - PG-13 Five Oscar Noms.


Arts/Literary Events

-Friends of the Library BIG Book Sale Friday, Feb. 20, *6:00 PM-9:00 PM (*Friends members may enter at 4:00PM), Saturday, Feb. 21, 9:00 AM-4:00 PM, Sunday, Feb. 22, 10:00-3:00 PM. The Friends of the Library HUGE annual sale of used books at the Benton County Fairgrounds, with all proceeds benefitting the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library. A wide assortment of books at very affordable prices. Sale continues on Saturday and Sunday. Come early for the best selection! Benton County Fairgrounds, 110 SW 53rd Street, Corvallis. Friends of the Library members will be allowed early entry on Friday Feb 21 at 4 p.m.


Community Events with Grass Roots

Melissa Hart and Elena Passarello
 
Elena Passarello

Sat. Feb. 21, 7:00 p.m.
Corvallis Public Library
645 Northwest Monroe Avenue
Corvallis, OR
 
From Farinelli, the eighteenth century castrato who brought down opera houses with his high C, to the recording of "Johnny B. Goode" affixed to the Voyager spacecraft,
Let Me Clear My Throat dissects the whys and hows of popular voices, making them hum with significance and emotion. There are murders of punk rock crows, impressionists, and rebel yells; Howard Dean's "BYAH!" and Marlon Brando's "Stella!" and a stock film yawp that has made cameos in movies from A Star is Born to Spaceballs. The voice is thought's incarnating instrument and Elena Passarello's essays are a riotous deconstruction of the ways the sounds we make both express and shape who we are-the annotated soundtrack of us giving voice to ourselves.

Melissa Hart, a desperately lonely young divorc�e and L.A. transplant, finds herself stranded in rainy Eugene, Oregon, working from home in the company of her two cats and two large mutts. At the local dog park, she meets a fellow dog owner named Jonathan: a tall, handsome man with a unibrow and hawk-like nose. When he invites her to accompany him on a drive to Portland to retrieve six hundred pounds of frozen rats and a fledgling barred owl, sparks fly!

Their courtship blossoms in a raptor rehabilitation center where wounded owls, eagles, falcons, and other iconic birds of prey take refuge and become ambassadors for their species. Initially, Melissa volunteers here in order to "sink her talons" into her new love interest, but soon she falls hopelessly in love with her fine feathered charges: Archimedes, a gorgeous snowy owl; Lorax, a serene great-horned owl; and Bodhi, a baby barred with a permanently injured wing. Even as human-habituated birds, they retain a wildness that hoodwinks even the most experienced handlers. Overcoming her fears, Melissa bravely suffers some puncture wounds to get closer to these magnificent creatures.

Grass Roots will be selling books at this event.
Edited by Marjorie Sandor

Thursday, Feb. 26 7:30 p.m.
Oddfellows Hall
223 SW 2nd St
Corvallis, Oregon

Join us for the launch of The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows, edited by Marjorie Sandor. Doors open at 7 pm. Uncanny Performances begin at 7:30, followed by dancing. Cash bar, live music, and refreshments. Uncanny attire and masks highly encouraged.

From the deeply unsettling to the possibly supernatural, these thirty-one border-crossing stories from around the world explore the uncanny in literature, and delve into our increasingly unstable sense of self, home, and planet. The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows opens with "The Sand-man," E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1817 tale of doppelgangers and automatons--a tale that inspired generations of writers and thinkers to come. Stories by 19th and 20th century masters of the uncanny--including Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Shirley Jackson--form a foundation for sixteen award-winning contemporary authors, established and new, whose work blurs the boundaries between the familiar and the unknown. These writers come from Egypt, France, Germany, Japan, Poland, Russia, Scotland, England, Sweden, the United States, Uruguay, and Zambia--although their birthplaces are not always the terrains they plumb in their stories, nor do they confine themselves to their own eras. Contemporary authors include: Chris Adrian, Aimee Bender, Kate Bernheimer, Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris, Mansoura Ez-Eldin, Jonathon Carroll, John Herdman, Kelly Link, Steven Millhauser, Joyce Carol Oates, Yoko Ogawa, Dean Paschal, Karen Russell, Namwali Serpell, Steve Stern and Karen Tidbeck.

Grass Roots will be selling books at this event.
 

Oregon Small Farms Conference

Saturday, Feb. 28
LaSells Stewart Center
875 SW 26th St
Corvallis, Oregon

This daylong event is geared toward farmers, agriculture professsionals, food policy advocates, students and managers of farmers markets.

Twenty-four sessions will be offered on a variety of topics relevant to Oregon small farmers including small farm profitability, meat processing, orcharding and much more! This year will also include a track in Spanish.

Speakers will include farmers, OSU Extension faculty, agribusiness representatives and more. 


 

Register for the event online here

 

Grass Roots will be selling books at this event.  

Ava Helen & Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture for World Peace
Roxanne Dunbar-Ort�z 

Wednesday, March 4, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
Austin Auditorium
Event Sponsor: OSU - School of History, Philosophy & Religion

Professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ort�z will be the 32nd annual lecturer in this series. She will speak about her book An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, revealing how Native Americans actively resisted expansion of the U.S. empire for centuries.

 

Grass Roots will be selling books at this event.  

Jenny Boully
Friday, March 6, 7:30 p.m.
Valley Library Rotunda

Jenny Boully's work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry, The Next American Essay, Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, and other places. 
Her other books include not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them (Tarpaulin Sky Press), [one love affair]* (Tarpaulin Sky Press), and The Body: An Essay (Essay Press, first published by Slope Editions). Her chapbook of prose, Moveable Types, was released by Noemi Press.

Grass Roots will be selling books at this event.  

Store NewsStoreNews


 
What better way to tuck in your little ones than with a brand new bedtime story? On display in our kids' section is a selection of classic favorites and fresh picks like the local and lovingly illustrated Where Do I Sleep?: A Pacific Northwest Lullaby, Edgar Gets Ready for Bed featuring Poe's tiny restless raven, and the sing-along story Bedtime for Chickies. Come and cuddle up with a book that beats counting sheep!
JigsawJigsaw

Due to technical difficulties, this week's puzzle will not be featured -- our apologies! Stay tuned for the next Reader.
Reading Group SelectionReadingGroup

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
by Ann Patchett
Tuesday, March 3 6:30-8:00 p.m.

Join Tiffany as she leads our March Book Group with Ann Patchett's This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage.

"This is the story of how best-selling novelist Patchett (State of Wonder, 2011) became a writer. As a young child in California and, after her parents' divorce, Nashville, she knew she had to write, and she was fortunate, as she so warmly and vividly explains, in her writing teachers Allan Gurganus, Grace Paley, and Russell Banks, and in her success supporting herself by writing nonfiction for magazines and newspapers, beginning with Seventeen and extending to the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vogue, and Gourmet. Patchett now assembles a retrospective set of 22 sterling personal essays to form an episodic, piquant, instructive, and entertaining self-portrait. . ."-Booklist, Starred Review

 

Regular Price: $15.99
On sale for:$13.59
Until Tuesday, March 3


Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 9780062236685

Night StandsNightStands

Claire

by George Lakoff
[Nonfiction]

If I tell you not to think of an elephant, what immediately runs through your mind? One of the most crucial aspects of all levels of politics is the use of rhetoric to convey a campaign message. In this New York Times Bestseller, Lakoff takes on how conservatives and progressives frame the debate, and what each are successful at. He uses the "don't think of an elephant" messaging to illustrate just how susceptible we are to messages we don't intend to listen to.

 

Paperback; $15.00

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company; ISBN: 9781603585941

Tiffany

by Ann Patchett
[Fiction]

Best known for her novels (Bel Canto, State of Wonder, and others), Ann Patchett began her writing career as a freelancer of nonfiction -- first for Seventeen, then moving her way up to GQ, Vogue, Gourmet, and the New York Times Magazine. Collected here are 22 of her engaging essays, which together chronicle the story of her writing life and her personal life with wit, insight, and warmth. (Emergent writers will especially appreciate her tips on grad school, agents, and submissions, in the midst of her other illuminating pieces.)

 

Paperback; $15.99

Publisher: Harper Perennial; ISBN: 9780062236685

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