| What's new at Green Apple Books
November 2012
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| Greetings! |
 | | (the glamor behind the scenes) |
Fall is here for sure--we can tell when all our nooks and crannies are filled with extra copies of what are soon to be the hottest gifts of the coming season. We hope you can drop in soon, or shop online 24 hours a day--we always offer free shipping for orders over $50.
As it's my duty and passion to tempt you in, here's:
- our Book of the Month, guaranteed to please;
- nine new books we love;
- a stupid promotion for a great book;
- an upcoming Granta event; and
- info about our new eBook partnership with Kobo.
If you can't stop in soon, keep in touch digitally via Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr.
Read on!
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November's Book of the Month
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The Old Ways: a Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane (Viking)
Our November Book of the Month, guaranteed to please, is The Old Ways. Here's Green Appler Nick's shelf-talker:
 If the best books are those that make you itch for something new--or, in this case, something as ancient as walking--Robert Macfarlane's poetic travel memoir is certainly one of the best books I've read in a long time. Tracing his ramblings across moors and seas, up mountains, and along meandering paths, Macfarlane describes in lush, precise prose a natural (and human) world that reveals itself leisurely, step by step. Full of remarkable scenes and a memorable cast of characters, The Old Ways brings to mind recent memoirs like Cheryl Strayed's Wild and classic nature writing a la Peter Matthiessen. I recommend it with only one caveat: read it with your hiking boots on; it'll make you want to get up and go. --Nick Buy the book (or the $14.99 eBook) from Green Apple today!
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Nine New Books We Like
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Underwater Dogs by Seth Casteel (Little, Brown) 
Several Green Applers have already picked this as the go-to gift book of the season for the dog lover in your life. The premise is simple--it turns out dogs go batshit crazy when retrieving items from under water. Stick a camera under water, snap a pic at the right moment, and you've got comedy gold. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper) There are few authors as reliable as Barbara Kingsolver when it comes to delivering the goods. Here's what Booklist had to say about Flight Behavior: Dellarobia Turnbow got  pregnant in high school; now, some 11 years into her unhappy marriage, she's ready for a big change, and she thinks she's found it with a randy young telephone lineman. But on her way to a rendezvous, she is waylaid by the sight of a forest ablaze with millions of butterflies. Their usual migratory route has been disrupted, and what looks to be a stunningly beautiful view is really an ominous sign, for the Appalachian winter could prove to be the demise of the species. The phenomenon draws the whole world to Dellarobia's doorstep: scientists, the media, hordes of tourists, and gives her new and galvanizing insight into her poverty-stricken life on the sheep farm of her disapproving in-laws. Kingsolver, as always a fluent and eloquent writer, skillfully sets the hook of her fascinating story before launching into activist mode with more than a few pointed speeches delivered by an eminent scientist (and Kingsolver stand-in). By that time, though, readers will be well and truly smitten with feisty, funny, red-haired Dellarobia and her determined quest to widen the confines of her world. [eBook here for $17.99] The Republic of Wine by Mo Yan (Arcade)  Has there ever been a novel by a Nobel Prize-winning author as deliriously wild as this? Set in a city called Liquorland (I looked for it on a map, but couldn't find it), Mo Yan's uproarious, slapstick story chronicles special investigator Ding Gou'er's adventures--including, of course, an epic drinking contest with a character called Diamond Jin--in search of answers to a culinary mystery: are the residents of Liquorland eating human children? Or has the booze just gone to the investigator's head? Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit by Joyce Chaplin (Simon and Schuster) 
Round About the Earth is not just a book about the first explorers like Magellan and Cook and their m asted ships. Here are bicyclists and walkers and luxury ocean-liners and astronauts as well. The book is divided into three parts. The first covers the age of Magellan, when round-the-world travel was extremely dangerous. The second covers from the 1780s to the 1920s, when colonialism, and improvements in technology, made circumnavigation less risky. The final part covers from the 1920s to the present, a period in which new modes of transportation took the traveler to new heights, dizzying speeds, and even farther from terra firma. Accessible and well-researched, Round About the Earth offers a concise and compelling history of circumnavigation. [eBook here for $16.99]
The book that Oliver Sacks was born to write. Here Sacks investigates a wide range of hallucinations, from the geometric zigzags of some migraines and the painful c ramps of phantom limbs to florid multi-character melodramas, grotesque phantasms, and mystic trances induced by brain disorders and drugs. He also studies how people live with their hallucinations; some recognize them as just diverting figments while for others they constitute an inescapable unreality as malevolent and terrifying as a horror movie. He even recounts his own entertaining hallucinations, including a drug-induced encounter with a spider who talked to him about Bertrand Russell. As always, Sacks approaches the topic as both a brain scientist and a humanist: he shows how hallucinations elucidate intricate neurological mechanisms (often they are the brain's bizarre attempt to fill in for missing sensory input), and he examines their imprint on folklore and culture. Signed copies available while they last. [$13.99 eBook here] by An  drew Solomon (Scribner) [eBook here for $19.99]
How can a novel that Thomas Mann called "one of the greatest books of the 20th century" have remained untranslated until a decade into the 21st century? Originally published in Germany in 1953 (where it became a bestseller), this long-overdue English-language version is certainly the case of better late than never. Compared to such seminal works of modernism as Musil's The Man Without Qualities and Hermann Broch's Death of Virgil, Thelen's magnum opus is all that high art plus a healthy dose of surreal humor.
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan (Free Press)
Most memoirs are, of course, based on memories. Susannah Calahan's memoir, however, is based on a lack of memory. A chronicle of a young woman's harrowing descent into madness, Brain on Fire is as much a piecing together of a life ripped inexplicably apart as it is an account of a medical mystery. A riveting and deeply touching book. [eBook here for $11.99]
How to Tell if Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You by The Oatmeal (Andrews McMeel)
From The Oatmeal, the folks who brought you 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth, comes this hilarious, somewhat deranged collection of cat comics with a dark side. Filled with useful information such as: if your cat is kneading you, that's not a sign of affection, your cat is actually checking your internal organs for weakness. Or this: if your cat brings you a dead animal, this isn't a gift. It's a warning.
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Giveaway alert, or a Stupid Promo for a Great Book
| Yes, Giants fever swept San Francisco and the nation. And Life Among Giants fever
is sweeping Green Apple. 
What is Life Among Giants, you ask? Why, it's a fine novel by Bill Roorbach that tells the story of David "Lizard" Hochmeyer, an enormous (nearly seven feet tall) high school senior, and his sister. The football star is headed to Princeton, and then likely on to an NFL career, when his parents are murdered.
So even though this novel, fine though it is, has absolutely nothing to do with baseball or the San Francisco Giants, on Tuesday November 13, Green Apple will be giving away a free copy to the first twelve people who can answer a (fairly simple) trivia question regarding the San Francisco Giants. So if you are finding yourself with a baseball-sized hole in your life, come on down to Green Apple and fill it with a good book. In-store only!
We love books, we love the Giants, and we love you, and you love books, and you love the Giants, so maybe it does all makes sense!?
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November Author Event with GRANTA
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Wednesday, November 28:
 Who are the writers telling modern Brazil's dynamic story? Join Granta's Saskia Vogel and two young Brazilian novelists to launch the latest issue of the magazine of new writing. Appearing for the first time in English, novelists Cristhiano Aguiar (a Berkeley local), Vinicius Jatobá read from their work, which explores the fissures in a marriage, the emotional aftermath of natural disasters and checking out of one's life by checking into a hotel. They are joined by Katrina Dodson, one of the translators working on the Granta issue. This event is part of an international launch series for Granta 121: The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists. Free. 7pm, here at Green Apple Books
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Shop Local AND Read Digitally
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We recognize that many (or most?) Green Apple customers still love to read books on paper, and most of our time, effort, and energy goes into keeping Green Apple the place where good books and great readers find each other.
That said, more and more people are reading books on devices. And Green Apple wants to connect good eBooks to great e-readers, too! So we've partnered with Kobo to offer you eBook editions of over 3,000,000 titles that you can read on any device (except Kindle).
We are also now selling Kobo e-readers. Drop by to test drive one--Kobo's devices stack up very well against the Kindle and the Nook, with long battery life, a huge memory, bookmarks, a built-in dictionary, and more.
If you're considering an e-reader or already read on your iPad or Android device, we hope Green Apple can be part of your digital world.
Much more info here.
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Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
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Pete et al
Green Apple Books and Music
415-387-2272
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