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| April 16, 2015 |
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Hello, Readers,
It's been another lovely week at Grass Roots -- flowers are blooming, birds are singing, the Farmer's Market is back downtown this weekend -- and the newest books are stacking up. J.K. Rowling's celebrated Harvard commencement speech is in print now, as well as other character-building titles by Christopher McDougall and David Brooks. Award-winning novels are in paperback, along with memoirs of space exploration and botany with Chris Hadfield and Jane Goodall, respectively.
Mother's Day is May 10 -- don't forget to pick up just the right card! We have a great selection of these and a variety of gorgeous gifts.
We're cultivating some pretty awe-inspiring moments here in the bookstore. Yours awaits!
~ Marissa
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New Hardcovers
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by J.K. Rowling
[Non-Fiction]
J.K. Rowling, one of the world's most inspiring writers, shares her wisdom and advice for anyone at a turning point in life. In 2008, Rowling delivered a deeply affecting commencement speech at Harvard University drawing from stories of her own post-graduate years, now published for the first time in book form. How can we embrace failure? And how can we use our imagination to better both ourselves and others? Sales of Very Good Lives will benefit both Lumos, a charity organization founded by Rowling, which works to transform the lives of disadvantaged children, and university-wide financial aid at Harvard University.
Hardcover; $15.00
Publisher: Little Brown and Company; ISBN: 9780316369152
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by Christopher McDougall
[Non-Fiction]
 The bestselling author of Born to Run now travels to the Mediterranean, where he discovers that the secrets of ancient Greek heroes are still alive and well on the island of Crete, and ready to be unleashed in the muscles and minds of casual athletes and aspiring heroes everywhere. McDougall attempts to retrace the steps of Resistance fighters, experiencing firsthand their extreme physical challenges and discovering the tools of the hero -- natural movement, extraordinary endurance, and efficient nutrition. Natural Born Heroes will inspire readers to climb, swim, throw, and jump their way to their own heroic feats.
Hardcover; $26.95
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group; ISBN: 9780307594969
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by Elizabeth Berg
[Fiction]
 "Berg's latest novel is about the iconoclastic French writer born as Aurore Dupin but better known as George Sand. The story begins in 1831, when Aurore leaves her loveless marriage for a bohemian life in Paris. . .Though it means financial uncertainty and separation from her two children, [it] lets her authentic, creative, androgynous self emerge. Notoriety, bestsellerdom, and a place in glittering literary, political, and artistic circles follow; though she has relationships with myriad men, including Frederic Chopin, Berg suggests that it was a woman, the actress Marie Dorval, who most deeply captured her heart. . ." - Publishers Weekly
Hardcover; $28.00
Publisher: Random House; ISBN: 9780812993158
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by David Brooks
[Non-Fiction]
"The road to exceptional character may be unpaved and a bit rocky, yet it is still worth the struggle. This is the basic thesis of Brooks's engrossing treatise on personal morality in today's materialistic, proud world. Brooks ( The Social Animal) draws on the dichotomy in human nature proposed by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchick in his 1965 essay 'The Lonely Man of Faith,' which divides humanity between the external, social-based 'Adam I,' and internal, moral 'Adam II.' On this basis. . .[he] formulates a 'Humility Code' as a pathway to a secular type of holiness. . ." - Publishers Weekly
Hardcover; $28.00
Publisher: Random House; ISBN: 9780812993257
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by Sandy Tolan
[Non-Fiction]
 "Tolan. . .portrays the multigenerational Israeli-Palestinian conflict by focusing on the life and musical abilities of one youngster, Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan. . .Ramzi dreams of building a music school in the Al Amari refugee camp. . .Though his life is torn by the conflict, it is also touched by music and fortune. . . Ramzi attends school in France, travels with his own musical group, and finds instruments, funds, and teachers for his own music school . . .touching many lives and demonstrating the transformative power of music in a land of brutality, beauty, and confinement. . ." - Booklist, Starred Review
Hardcover; $28.00
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; ISBN: 9781608198139
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New Paperbacks
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by Richard Flanagan
[Fiction]
Winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize
 August, 1943: Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. His life, in a brutal Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma Death Railway, is a daily struggle to save the men under his command. . .until he receives a letter that will change him forever. A savagely beautiful novel about the many forms of good and evil, of truth and transcendence, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.
"A supple meditation on memory, trauma, and empathy that is also a sublime war novel . . ." - Publishers Weekly
Paperback; $15.95
Publisher: Vintage; ISBN: 9780804171472
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by Chris Hadfield
[Non-Fiction]
 Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4,000 hours in space. During this time, he has broken into a space station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. His vivid and refreshing insights will teach you how to think like an astronaut, and will change, completely, the way you view life on Earth -- especially your own.
Paperback; $17.00
Publisher: Back Bay Books; ISBN: 9780316253031
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by Jane Goodall
[Non-Fiction]
 Seeds Of Hope takes us to Africa, deep inside the Gombe forest, where Goodall and the chimpanzees are enchanted by the fig and plum trees they encounter. She introduces us to botanists around the world, as well as places where hope for plants can be found, such as The Millennium Seed Bank. As an adventurer, scientist, and devotee of sustainable foods and gardening -- and setting forth simple goals we can all take to protect the plants around us -- Goodall shows us the secret world of plants with all their mysteries and potential for healing our bodies as well as planet Earth.
Paperback; $17.00
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; ISBN: 9781455513208
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by Tom Robbins
[Non-Fiction]
 "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
Paperback; $15.99
Publisher: Ecco Press; ISBN: 9780062267412
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by Lily King
[Fiction]
Winner of the 2014 New England Book Award and Kirkus Prize
 English anthropologist Andrew Bankson has been alone in the field for several years, studying the Kiona river tribe in New Guinea. Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues, the controversial Nell Stone and her wry and mercurial husband Fen, pulls him back from the brink. Nell and Fen have just fled the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo and are hungry for a new discovery. When Bankson finds them a new tribe nearby, the artistic, female-dominated Tam, he ignites an intellectual and romantic firestorm between the three of them that burns out of anyone's control.
Paperback; $16.00
Publisher: Grove Press; ISBN: 9780802123701
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New For Young Readers
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Star Wars Epic Yarns Series
by Jack and Holman Wang
[Fiction]
Ages 2 to 5
Using handcrafted felt puppets, the authors of Cozy Classics recreate the story of Luke Skywalker, who
 embarks on a quest to save the galaxy from the Death Star (A New Hope), as he meets Yoda and learns about the Force (The Empire Strikes Back), and the final chapter of the original trilogy, as Luke and Leia rescue Han and confront Darth Vader (Return of the Jedi) in thisseries for all ages!
Board Books; $9.95 (each) Publisher: Chronicle Books A New Hope ISBN: 9781452133935 The Empire Strikes Back ISBN: 9781452134994 Return of the Jedi ISBN: 9781452135007 |
 "Burgess's first picture book introduces readers to E.E. Cummings, exploring his development as a poet from the verse he dictated to his mother as a child through to his adulthood. Befitting the subject, Burgess experiments with language, punctuation, and form. . .Di Giacomo's capricious collages create a lively interplay between pictures and words, and visual motifs such as birds and elephants intermingle with samples of Cummings's work. Burgess delivers a thorough and lovingly crafted homage to a writer whose poems were alive with experimentation and surprise!" - Publishers Weekly
Hardcover; $17.95
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books; ISBN: 9781592701711
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by Holly Black
[Fiction]
Ages 8 to 12
Winner of the 2015 Newbery Honor
 Zach, Poppy, and Alice have been friends forever. And for almost as long, they've been playing one continuous, ever-changing game of pirates and thieves, mermaids and warriors. Ruling over all is the Great Queen, a bone-china doll cursing those who displease her. But they are in middle school now. Zach's father pushes him to give up make-believe, and Zach quits the game. Their friendship might be over, until Poppy declares she's been having dreams about the Queen -- and the ghost of a girl who will not rest until the bone-china doll is buried in her empty grave.
Paperback; $7.99
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books; ISBN: 9781416963998
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New Music
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Events at Grass Roots
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Elizabeth Heineman
Friday, April 17, at 7:00 p.m.
Grass Roots Books and Music
227 SW 2nd St.
Corvallis, OR
Ghostbelly is Elizabeth Heineman's personal account of a home birth that goes tragically wrong -- ending in a stillbirth -- and the harrowing process of grief and questioning that follows. In this courageous and deeply intimate memoir, Heineman and her partner learn to live in a new world: a world in which they face each day with the understanding of the fragility of the present.
Elizabeth Heineman is a professor of history and of gender, women's, and sexuality studies at the University of Iowa. Her other books include Before Porn was Legal, Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones, and What Difference Does a Husband Make?
Douglas Perry
Thursday, April 23, at 7:00 p.m.
Grass Roots Books and Music
227 SW 2nd St.
Corvallis, OR
When Al Capone was finally sent to prison in 1931, much of the credit fell to a 28-year-old Prohibition Agent named Eliot Ness, the unlikely leader of the famous Untouchables squad. Updated for paperback based on newly discovered archival material, Perry's critically acclaimed book reveals that Ness's true legacy is something much more profound, and Capone is only the beginning.
Douglas Perry is the author of The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago. Perry is an award-winning writer and editor whose work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, The San Jose Mercury News, The Oregonian, Tennis, and many other publications. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Thor Hanson
Friday, April 24, at 7:00 p.m.
Grass Roots Books and Music
227 SW 2nd St.
Corvallis, OR
 In his new book, Hanson turns his eye to the ubiquitous seed plants that dominate landscapes and define entire ecosystems. Following the winding path that seeds have paved through evolution, natural history, and human culture, he examines the traits and habits that have allowed seeds -- and the plants that bear them -- to be so successful, and to so thoroughly transform our planet.
Thor Hanson is a conservation biologist, Guggenheim Fellow, and Switzer Environmental Fellow. His previous books include Feathers, which won numerous awards including the 2013 John Burroughs Medal and the 2012 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Writing, and The Impenetrable Forest, which won the 2008 USA Book News Award for nature writing.
Greg Warburton
Saturday, May 2, at 3:00 p.m.
Grass Roots Books & Music
227 SW 2nd St.
Corvallis, OR
Warburton's Winning System gives you powerful techniques to quickly and effortlessly focus your mind and control your emotions so you can consistently perform at your best under the pressure of competition. Take advantage of the latest in brain science and energy psychology by applying this comprehensive and innovative set of training tools for mental and emotional self-management.
Greg Warburton grew up living and breathing sports. A traumatic leg amputation at age 27 didn't slow him down-he remains a lifelong athlete. His own life experience and a 30-year counseling career enabled him to develop a training system that transforms athletes into champions.
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Community Events
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Darkside Show Times for 4/17-4/23
-Wild Tales -R Wickedly hilarious and delightfully deranged, Wild Tales is a subversive satire that doubles as a uniformly entertaining anthology film. Subtitled Spanish.
-The Imitation Game -PG-13 During World War II, mathematician Alan Turing tries to crack the enigma code with help from fellow mathematicians.
-Monsters: Dark Continent -R Ten years on from the events of Monsters, and the "Infected Zones" have now spread worldwide. FUN!
-Riot Club -R Using dark humor and a talented cast to offer a scathing indictment of unearned privilege. The British cousin to The Wolf of Wall Street...
-What We Do in The Shadows -NR Smarter, fresher, and funnier than a modern vampire movie has any right to be, What We Do in the Shadows is bloody good fun.
Arts/Literary Events
Thursday, April 16, at 7:00 p.m.
Taylor Street Ovens
1025 Northwest 9th St.
Corvallis, OR
Charles Goodrich, poet, writer, and director of Oregon State University's Spring Creek Project, will read selections from his collection of poems, Insects of South Corvallis (Cloudbank Books, 2003), during the PopUp Exhibition at Taylor Street Ovens. Part of the inVISIBLE arts festival, celebrating inclusion in the arts throughout Corvallis in spring 2015.
The Poetry Is Political: CALYX Poetry Reading
Thursday, April 23, at 7:00 p.m.
IMAGINE Coffee
5460 SW Philomath Blvd.
Corvallis, OR
In honor of National Poetry Month, CALYX, a fine arts journal and local small press, presents a special reading, The Poetry Is Political! The event will feature guest poets: Connie Eggers, Hannah Baggott, Qwo-Li Driskill, Tammy Robacker, and Amy MacLennan. Following the guest reading, CALYX invites poets and writers in the community to sign up for the Open Mic to read their own work. This event is free and open to the public.
Tragedy Full of Joy: Stories By Bernard Malamud
Majestic Reader's Theatre Company
 Saturday, April 25 at 7:00 p.m. & Sunday, April 26 at 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
Majestic Theatre Lab
115 SW 2nd St.
Corvallis, OR
In honor of Bernard Malamud's 101st birthday, The Majestic Reader's Theatre Company and The OSU School of Writing, Literature and Film present Tragedy Full Of Joy: Stories by Bernard Malamud, directed by Robert Leff. Elena Passarello, David Turkel, and Robert Leff have adapted four of his short stories: "Steady Customer," "A Wig," "The Jewbird," and "The Magic Barrel." Malamud, a major mid-twentieth century American writer, was a member of the Oregon State English Department from 1949 to 1961. While living in Corvallis, he wrote the novels The Natural, The Assistant, and the short story collection The Magic Barrel, which won the 1959 National Book Award for Fiction.
Mary Christina Wood
Thursday, April 30, at 7:00 p.m.
LaSells Stewart Center, C&E auditorium
875 SW 26th St.
Corvallis, OR
Environmental law has failed us all. As ecosystems collapse across the globe and the climate crisis intensifies, environmental agencies worldwide use their authority to permit the very harm that they are supposed to prevent. Growing numbers of citizens now realize they must act before it is too late. This book exposes what is wrong with environmental law and offers transformational change based on the public trust doctrine.
Mary Christina Wood is the Philip H. Knight Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the school's Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program at UO.
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Community Events with Grass Roots
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Kristin Ohlson
Thursday, April 16, at 7:30 p.m.
Methodist Church - Wesley Room
1165 NW Monroe Ave.
Corvallis, OR
Thousands of years of poor farming and ranching practices -- and especially modern industrial agriculture -- have led to the loss of up to 80 percent of carbon from the world's soils. That carbon is now floating in the atmosphere, and even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, it would continue warming the planet.
A freelance journalist, author, essayist and fiction writer, almost no topic escapes Kristin's curiosity. Reading sponsored by Benton Food Freedom, Corvallis 350, Corvallis Citizens Climate Lobby. Grass Roots will be selling books at this event.
Thomas Buergenthal
Tuesday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m.
La Sells Stewart Center
875 SW 26th St.
Corvallis, OR
Thomas Buergenthal will speak to us in a double capacity: first, as a survivor of Auschwitz, whose experiences during the Holocaust are chronicled in his highly acclaimed memoir, A Lucky Child; and second, as a renowned legal scholar who has throughout his career labored to make international law an ever-more-effective tool in combating human rights abuses.
During his academic career, Buergenthal has held a series of chairs in distinguished schools of law and is currently the Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at the George Washington University School of Law. Grass Roots will be selling books at this event.
David Gessner
OSU Visiting Writer Series
Friday, May 8, at 7:30 - 9:30 p.m. Valley Library Main Floor Rotunda
201 Southwest Waldo Place
Corvallis, OR
David Gessner is the author of the forthcoming book, All the Wild that Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West, and eight others including Sick of Nature, The Prophet of Dry Hill, and Return of the Osprey, which was chosen by the Boston Globe as one of the top 10 non-fiction books of the year and the Book-of-the-Month club as one of its top books of the year. Gessner is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and founder of the national literary journal, Ecotone. Grass Roots will be selling books at this event.
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Store News
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Mother's Day gifts and more
Need to pick up a gift with your book? We have rich, handcrafted soaps in
scents like classic almond and malay by Mudlark, and authentic, fair trade-certified Oriental carpet products such as bookmarks, mousepads, coin purses, and more. Come see what's new this week!
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April 16 is Teen Literature Day
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Oregon Book Awards
The winners of the Oregon Book Awards were given April 13, honoring Oregon writers and publishers. Portland author April Henry won the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature for The Body in the Woods; Cari Luna of Portland was awarded the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction for The Revolution of Every Day; and Willy Vlautin of Scappoose received the Readers Choice Award for his novel The Free. The remaining categories are listed on the OBA website.
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Jigsaw
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Reading Group Selection
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Tuesday, May 7 6:30-8:00 p.m.
 Join Kendall as she leads our May Book Group with Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, a New York Times bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.
Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, New Yorker writer Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
Regular Price: $16.00
On sale for: $13.60
Until Tuesday, May 5
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 9781250062185
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Night Stands
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Tiffany
by Anthony Doerr
[Fiction]
 Haunting. Heartbreaking. Human. I nearly never picked up what turns out to be the best book I've read in a very long time. I kept hearing about it but thought I didn't want to read another World War II story. I was wrong. Meticulously crafted in chapters that flow back and forth in time and alternate points of view, All the Light We Cannot See tells the stories of a blind French girl, the daughter of a locksmith for the Paris Museum of Natural History, and an orphaned German boy, mechanically gifted with radios. How Marie-Laure and Werner's lives intersect during the Allied siege of Saint-Malo crystallizes the novel, which reveals the horrors of war but also the glimmers of hope and humanity that remain.
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Claire
by Ann-Marie MacDonald
[Fiction]
 I could not stop laughing when I started this book, and I immediately loved it. However, Adult Onset is much more than comedy. While it reads like a memoir, given the depth and complexity of the characters, this is a novel consisting of one week for a stay at home mom. Mary Rose watches her two children, and as she experiences remembered pain from a childhood illness, she flashes back to her memories of her aging parents. Mary Rose's very real struggles with her daughter expand to her strained relationship with her mother, and she begins to lose control.
Hardcover; $25.95
Publisher: Tin House Books; ISBN: 9781941040058
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Kendall
edited by Lawrence Dorfman
[Non-Fiction]
 Do you have a friend in your life whose words are constantly coated in sarcasm? Who can't help but respond with sass to all situation in life? Are you that friend? Then this book is for you! Spanning topics from war to beauty, literature and libations, enjoy the quizzes, illustrations, charts and quotes (from greats like Meryl Streep, Hemingway, and various presidents) which comprise The Snark Bible. It is a book you cannot put down, and cannot stop reading sections of to whoever may be sitting around you.
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