Events
Ingrid Law, whose book Savvy received a Newbery Honor Award and is a nominee for the Land of Enchantment Book Award, discusses and signs her follow-up to the novel, Scumble (Dial, $16.99).
Nine years after Mibs's Savvy journey, her cousin Ledge has just turned thirteen...
This event is back on. Mr. Baca's students won't be attending, but he'll be here - same time, same place.
Award-winning memoirist, poet, and activist, Jimmy Santiago Baca has established himself as an inspiring and important spokesperson for the Chicano experience, continually giving voice to the voiceless. He returns to Bookworks to discuss and sign new book Stories from the Edge(Heinemann, $12.44)and A Glass of Water (Grove, $14.00), now in paperback.
Feminist poet, writer, photographer, and social activist Margaret Randall discusses and signs her newest book My Town: A Memoir of Albuquerque, New Mexico in Poems, Prose and Photographs(Wings Press, $16.00)
Billy Upski Wimsatt discusses his latest book, Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs: A Mid-term Report on My Generation and The Future of Our Super Movement (Akashic, $14.95). Following up on the '90s underground classic, Bomb the Suburbs, William Upski Wimsatt's sequel, Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs takes on the theme of the Super Movement: a theory that predicts the long-term convergence of progressive social and political movements around a shared vision, using a 21st Century operating system, as part of the fabric of everyday life.
David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (for which he received the international Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction), discusses and signs his new book Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Pantheon, $26.95)
Enjoy live music at Bookworks from local band Felix Y Los Gatos, in celebration of their new CDGreen Chile Gumbo! The new cd features John Popper of Blues Traveler on the track "Hot Damn."
The core of the band is composed of Felix Peralta on guitar, lead vocals and harmonica; David Barclay on button accordion and keyboard, Tim McDaniel on bass; and Melvin Crisp on drums.
Marcia Keegan presents a slideshow of photographs and discusses the reissued Taos Pueblo and Its Sacred Blue Lake (Clearlight, $24.95), which commemorates in words and photos the return of Blue Lake to the Taos People.
Judy Pasternak discusses and signs Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed (Free Press, $26.00), a journalistic account of the US government's treatment of the Navajo as it raced to build nuclear weapons.
Slideshow - Sacred Feminine: Images of Women in Santero Art
Former Santa Fe resident Judith McLaughlin discusses and signs her award-winning book Sacred Feminine (LPD, $17.95).
From the time of the settlement and colonization of New Mexico in the late-1500s, the territory was Spanish Catholic in tradition, laws, art, and culture; therefore, the role that The Blessed Mother and female saints played in New Mexican artwork was significant. Their roles in art and liturgy gave women a model, or ideal, of the perfect woman and motherhood. The saints were, and are, admired and glorified in these roles, and Santero art beautifully portrays the feminine both in nature and spirit.
Sacred Feminine examines the roles that culture, religion, sociology, art and gender played in the development of the religious Santero art, and images of women in particular. The book received the National Federation of Press Women 2010 Award, a 2009 New Mexico Book Award, and the New Mexico Press Women's Award in 2010.
"A fascinating look at this artistic tradition that both scholars and art fans will appreciate."-New Mexico Magazine
The concluding mission of our Top Secret Summer Reading Program is assigned today! We'll make friendship bracelets, have refreshments, and a top secret present will be awarded in the festivities!
Storytime: Paloma and the Dust Devil at the Balloon Festival
Santa Fe author Marcy Heller reads and signs her new book Paloma and the Dust Devil at the Balloon Festival (Azro Press, $19.95) at a morning storytime!
Today is a big day for Paloma! She and her father are going up in a hot air balloon with their friend Gilbert, who is a real balloon pilot. Their ride starts out quite peacefully. They rise from the field surrounded by hundreds of other colorful balloons. Suddenly they find themselves in the middle of a dust devil. What will happen? They are swept out to the west side of the city where they land in a field, and they find themselves transported back in time!
This book contains the exciting story of Paloma and her family as well as an author's note, a diagram of balloon parts, and a brief history of hot air ballooning.
String Quartet Performance & Multimedia Presentation: Tom Larson Discusses & Signs New Cultural History of Barber's Adagio for Strings - The Saddest Music Ever Written
(Featuring quartet members Yakima Fernandez, Kelly Kuhn, Rafael Howell, and Laura Kuechenmeister)
In The Saddest Music Ever Written (Pegasus, $26.95), the first book to explore Samuel Barber'sAdagio for Strings, music and literary critic (and UNM School of Music alum) Thomas Larson tells the story of the prodigal composer and his seminal masterpiece: from its composition in 1936, when Barber was just twenty-six, to its orchestral premiere two years later, led by the great Arturo Toscanini, and its fascinating history as America's secular hymn for grieving our dead. Older Americans know the Adagio from the funerals and memorials for Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy, Albert Einstein, and Grace Kelly. Younger Americans recall the work as the antiwar theme of the movie Platoon and its basis for the popular DJ Tiesto remix.
A string quartet composed of current and former University of New Mexico students will perform the short work. Information on performers TBA.
Slideshow: Kateri, Native American Saint
Taos artist Giovanna Paponetti presents a slideshow of images featured in her new book Kateri, Native American Saint (Clearlight, $24.95).
Kateri, Native American Saint takes the reader into the world of 17th Century Native Americans and Catholic missionaries. Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680), "The Lily of the Mohawks," was a Native American woman born near the Canadian border in present-day Auriesville, New York. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on June 22, 1980 and, when canonized, will be the first Native American woman to achieve Saintly status.
The book contains twenty-one full-color images from an altar screen that Giovanna was commissioned in 2005 to paint for the Church of St. John the Baptist at Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo in New Mexico, the oldest parish in the United States. These extraordinary paintings feature significant chapters from Kateri's early years, her life as a Christian, and miracles following her death at age twenty-four.
Come Up and Get Me: 102,800 Foot Free-Fall Record Holder Joe Kittinger Discusses & Signs Autobiography
Colonel Joe Kittinger discusses and signs his autobiography Come Up and Get Me (UNM Press, $27.95).
A few years after his release from a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp in 1973 Colonel Joseph Kittinger retired from the Air Force. Restless and unchallenged, he turned to ballooning, a life-long passion as well as a constant diversion for his imagination during his imprisonment. His primary goal was a solitary circumnavigation of the globe, and in its pursuit he set several ballooning distance records, including the first solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1984. But the aeronautical feats that first made him an American hero had occurred a quarter of a century earlier.
By the time Kittinger was shot down in Vietnam in 1972, his Air Force career was already legendary. He had made a name for himself at Holloman Air Force base near Alamagordo, New Mexico, as a test pilot who helped demonstrate that egress survival for pilots at high altitudes was possible in emergency situations. Ironically, Kittinger and his pre-astronaut colleagues would help propel Americans into space using the world's oldest flying machine - the balloon. Kittinger's work on Project Excelsior - which involved daring high-altitude bailout tests - earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross long before he earned a collection of medals in Vietnam.
Unlearning Meditation: Mini-Workshop with Buddhist Teacher Jason Siff
When we meditate, our minds often want to do something other than the meditation instructions we've been taught. When that happens repeatedly, we may feel frustrated to the point of abandoning meditation altogether. Jason Siff will discuss and sign his new book Unlearning Meditation: What to Do When the Instructions Get in the Way (Shambhala, $16.95), which invites us to approach meditation in a new way. He teaches us how to become more tolerant of intense emotions, sleepiness, compelling thoughts, fantasies-the whole array of inner experiences that are usually considered hindrances to meditation. The meditation practice he presents in Unlearning Meditation is gentle, flexible, permissive, and honest, and it's been wonderfully effective for opening up meditation for people who thought they could never meditate, as well as for injecting a renewed energy for practice into the lives of seasoned practitioners.
Inside the Hunt for El Chapo The World's Most Wanted Drug Lord
Mexico City-based Newsweek journalist Malcolm Beith presents his book, The Last Narco: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo, the Worlds' Most Wanted Drug Lord (Grove, $24.00). Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is the world's most powerful, feared, and charismatic drug lord, at large since he escaped from prison in 2001 after bribing guards to wheel him out in a laundry cart. His cartel is accused of moving thousands of tons of cocaine, marijuana and heroin into the US each year using tunnels, planes and submarines. He has made an estimated $20 billion, and appeared on Forbes magazine's Global Power List in 2009. He allegedly bribes or kills politicians, police, soldiers and those who betray him, and is hailed by locals as a folk hero. But the net is closing. Who will make the final move? The Last Narco traces El Chapo's life and the struggle to bring him to justice, through reportage and interviews with rival narcos, police and DEA sources.
Kathleen Hill's Irish-American Family Memoir: Who Occupies This House
Kathleen Hill discusses and signs her new novel Who Occupies This House (TriQuarterly, $26.95),the story of a house and the uncanny silences that fill it. The novelconcerns the fate of an Irish-American family that inhabits a single house for almost a century. The narrator, a member of the fourth and last generation, has from childhood been haunted by the unseen presence of the dead who once occupied the same spaces.
Structured primarily in short sections, the story uses photographs, artifacts (illustrations of which appear in the novel), journal entries, and the narrator's own imagination to "create characters out of these long-ago people..." Hill's unconventional approach is a rewarding, memorable portrait of a family's identity.
Santa Fe Author Jo-Ann Mapson's New Novel Solomon's Oak
Jo-Ann Mapson, the author of the beloved Hank & Chloe, discusses and signs her new novelSolomon's Oak (Bloomsbury, $25.00), the story of three people who have suffered losses that changed their lives forever:
Glory Solomon, a young widow, holds tight to her memories while she struggles to hold on to her Central California farm. She makes ends meet by hosting weddings in the chapel her husband had built under their two-hundred-year-old white oak tree, known locally as Solomon's Oak. Fourteen-year-old Juniper McGuire is the lone survivor of a family decimated by her sister's disappearance. She arrives on Glory's doorstep, pierced, tattooed, angry, and homeless. When Glory's husband Dan was alive, they took in foster children, but Juniper may be more than she can handle alone. Joseph Vigil is a former Albuquerque police officer and crime lab photographer who was shot during a meth lab bust that took the life of his best friend. Now disabled and in constant pain, he arrives in California to fulfill his dream of photographing the state's giant trees, including Solomon's Oak.
Thomas Covenant Chronicles Launch Party
Stephen Donaldson Discusses & Signs Penultimate Against All Things Ending
Stephen Donaldson is the Albuquerque-based author of the Thomas Covenant Chronicles, one of the most beloved fantasy series of all times. On its launch date, he discusses and signs the penultimate chapter, Against All Things Ending (Putnam, $29.95), the long-awaited sequel to The Runes of the Earth and Fatal Revenant.
Against All Things Ending returns readers to the Land - and unravels some of the mysteries haunting Covenant and Linden Avery. Thomas Covenant is alive again, resurrected despite warnings from mortals and immortals that unleashing this much power would destroy the world. The world seems at peace, but the truth is inescapable: The thunderclap of power has awakened the Worm of the World's End, and all are forfeit to its devouring. If there is any chance to save the Land, it will come from unlikely sources, including the mysterious boy Jeremiah, Linden's adopted son, whose secrets are only beginning to come to light.
Slideshow: Alluring New Mexico: Engineered Enchantment 1821-2001
Marta Weigle presents a slideshow and signs her new book Alluring New Mexico: Engineered Enchantment, 1821-2001 (Museum of New Mexico Press, $39.95), which examines the many identities of New Mexico. Today officially known as the Land of Enchantment, it has also been the Land without Law, the Land of Heart's Desire, the Land of the Well Country, the Land of Pueblos, and the Land of Sunshine. Since statehood in 1912 it has been dubbed the Colorful State, the Volcano State, the Science State, the Space State, and the Atomic State. Weigle explores all these and more between the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1821 and the Diamond Jubilee of Route 66 in 2001.
Gritty Novel Reveals Ruthless World of Academic Medicine
UNM School of Medicine Faculty James Fleming discusses and signs his new novel Tengo Sed (UNM Press, $16.95).
Against the backdrop of a trauma-surgical ICU, James Fleming recounts a day in the life of a hapless, chain-smoking, middle-aged intern in emergency medicine who refers to himself as Hovercraft because of his tendency to hover around the other doctors and on the periphery of the work in the ER. Philosophical with a tendency toward mysticism, Hovercraft is doing his best to navigate the treacherous terrain of medical education and practice with an increasing sense of dread that his career may be doomed. Through his sleep-deprived eyes readers catch intimate glimpses of patients and their families, doctors, and nurses, and share Hovercraft's own nightmarish perceptions of a world in which things are not going right.
A Small Furry Prayer: Tales from a Chimayo Rescue Shelter
Steven Kotler, founder of the Chimayo-based rescue shelter Rancho de Chihuahua, discusses and signs his new book A Small Furry Prayer (Bloomsbury, $24.00).
While dog rescue is one of the largest underground movements in America, it is also one of the least understood. An insider look at the "cult and culture" of dog rescue, A Small Furry Prayerweaves personal experience, cultural investigation, and scientific inquiry into a fast-paced, fun-filled narrative that explores what it means to devote one's life to the furry and the four-legged. Along the way, Kotler combs through every aspect of canine-human relations, from humans' long history with dogs through brand-new research into the neuroscience of canine companionship, in the end discovering why living in a world made of dog may be the best way to uncover the truth about what it really means to be human.
Muscogee Daughter: My Sojourn to the Miss America Pageant
Susan Supernaw discusses and signs her memoir Muscogee Daughter: My Sojourn to the Miss America Pageant (University of Nebraska Press, $24.95).
How American is Miss America? For Susan Supernaw, a Muscogee (Creek) and Munsee Native American, the question wasn't just academic. Throughout a childhood clouded by poverty, alcoholism, and abuse, Supernaw sought escape in school and dance and the Native American Church. She became a presidential scholar, won a scholarship to college, and was crowned Miss Oklahoma in 1971. Supernaw might not have won the Miss America pageant that year, but she did call attention to the Native peoples living largely invisible lives throughout their own American land. And she did at long last earn her Native American name.
Naturalist, Adventurer, and Desert Ecologist Craig Childs Discusses & Signs Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession at the Main Library
This event is free and open to the public, but for guaranteed priority seating and a place in the signing line, please purchase Finders Keepers at Bookworks in advance (or online). Priority seating will begin at 6pm and at 6:45 all seating will be open to the public.
Presented by Bookworks and ABC Libraries: Bringing Books and People Together
Craig Childs (The Animal Dialogues) intermingles personal experiences as a desert ecologist and adventurer with a journalistic look at scientists, collectors, museum officials, and pot hunters to explore what should happen to ancient artifacts in his new book Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession (Little Brown, $24.99).
Director of the Center for the Southwest's New Biography: The Women Jefferson Loved
Virginia Scharff discusses and signs her new book The Women Jefferson Loved (Harper Collins, $27.99), which, in the tradition of Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello and David McCullough's John Adams, offers a compelling, highly readable multi-generational biography revealing how the women Thomas Jefferson loved shaped the third president's ideas and his vision for the nation.
Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson constructed a seemingly impenetrable wall between his public legacy and his private life, a division maintained by his family and the several traditional biographies written about this founding father. Now Virginia Scharff breaks down the barrier between Jefferson's public and private histories to offer an intriguing new portrait of this complicated and influential figure, as seen through the lives of a remarkable group of women.
This is Getting Old: Zen Thoughts on Aging with Humor and Dignity
Susan Moon discusses and signs her book This is Getting Old: Zen Thoughts on Aging with Humor and Dignity (Shambhala, $14.95).
In this intimate and funny collection of essays on the sometimes confusing, sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious condition of being a woman over sixty, Susan Moon keeps her sense of humor and she keeps her reader fully engaged. Among the pieces she has included here are an essay on the gratitude she feels for her weakening bones; observations on finding herself both an orphan and a matriarch following the death of her mother; musings on her tendency to regret the past; thoughts on how not to be afraid of loneliness; appreciation for the inner tomboy; and celebratory advice on how to regard "senior moments" as opportunities to be in the here and now. Moon uses detail vividly in her determination to make peace with the many failures of brain and body (from forgetting her Social Security number to wondering if she'll ever have sex again), and she reminds us that we are not getting old alone.
Susan Moon is a writer and longtime Zen Buddhist who teaches popular writing workshops, mostly in California. She is the former editor of Turning Wheel: The Journal of Socially Engaged Buddhism. She lives in Berkeley, California.
The Gift of Reading & Fall Festival of Giving
Bookworks is joining with local authors and illustrators of children's and young adult books to spread the word about the benefits and fun of reading! Together with the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators we are encouraging people to donate new and slightly used books for the Metro Detention Center, Barrett House, and Peanut Butter & Jelly Program. Books will be collected through December 6th. We are going to celebrate the Gift of Reading Project on the last day of October.
Treat yourself to a family holiday event at Bookworks on Sunday October 31st at 4 p.m. Start Halloween night off right by first stopping off at Bookworks, in costume if you like. We will have a costume contest.
Categories include the scariest, funniest, most festive, the best book character, the best use of a single color, the best use of lots of colors!
