Dinner and Reading Gatherings on the fourth Monday of each month
Join us around UPB’s great table, where we will eat and talk about reading in the slow lane. We will enjoy wine and edibles prepared by the Musical Offering’s genius chef Erick Balbuena, featuring many ingredients gathered from the Berkeley Hills. We ask everyone to bring a paragraph or a few words you love that must be read carefully, and savored slowly. Martin Holden and Bill McClung, hosts
6 to 8 on March 22 and April 26
$40 per person, wine, tax, and gratuity included
($15 for students and starving artists)
Reservations please at outreach@universitypressbooks.com
Or at the UPB Front Counter, or reply to this posting.
UNIVERSITY PRESS BOOKS/BERKELEY
2430 BANCROFT WAY 548-0585
Juan Garcia reading from "Soil and Civilization, January 2010
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“We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavenly and the earthly world.”
That’s Emerson on Goethe in Richardson, First We Read, Then We Write (Iowa, 2009), which I am nominating for UPB’s Best Gift Book of the Year.
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“You should start,” he told his young friend, “with no skeleton or plan. The natural one will grow as you work. Knock away all scaffolding. Neither have exordium or peroration. What is it you are writing for, anyway? Because you have something new to say? It is the test of the universities and I am glad you have made it yours.”
From Richardson, First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson’s Creative Process, page 25, “Practical Hints” (University of Iowa Press, 2009)
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• • •
- Kaja Silverman reads Flesh of My Flesh, in conversation with Judith Butler and Anne Wagner.
From the description of Flesh of My Flesh (Stanford University Press):
What is a woman? What is a man? How do they—and how should they—relate to each other? Does our yearning for “wholeness” refer to something real, and if there is a Whole, what is it, and why do we feel so estranged from it? For centuries now, art and literature have increasingly valorized uniqueness and self-sufficiency. The theoreticians who loom so large within contemporary thought also privilege difference over similarity. Silverman reminds us that this is but half the story, and a dangerous half at that, for if we are all individuals, we are doomed to be rivals and enemies. A much older story, one that prevailed through the early modern era, held that likeness or resemblance was what organized the universe, and that everything emerges out of the same flesh.
From the book:
“All of our stories really are part of the same great volume: the Book of Life. And unlike the logos, the words in this book do not have to become flesh in order to save us. They are flesh.” Introduction, page 14.
Some 125 people crowded into the Musical Offering Cafe on October 29 to hear a riveting discussion of this new book.
From the discussion:
“I never write about books I don’t love.” Kaja Silverman
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• • •
We are often told by customers that they love our bookstore. We do, too. It is a wonderful place full of interesting books and people. We sit around the Great Table in the tranquil back room and hear proud authors tell us what they have learned. We talk to customers at the front desk. We read some of the books we sell, and we are better for that.
Yet, we suffer, as so many other book places have, decline. When Cody’s went down a few years ago, The Express wrote that it had died the “death of a thousand cuts.” We know some of those cuts and these are difficult times for bookstores, but we also know there is much to keep us going, including the great publishers we represent, the many hundreds of local authors we want to support, and the pleasures of being in Berkeley and next door to our sister business, the Musical Offering & Cafe.
We ask you to Become a Friend of UPB.
UPB Conversation with Phyllis Faber and Elisabeth Ptak of Marin Agricultural Land Trust and Marty Knapp, Pt. Reyes photographer, on HOW ART HELPS TO PRESERVE & PROTECT THE LANDSCAPE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
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• • •
Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan, $11 paper, Penguin Books, 2009
Eating wisdom from a Berkeley sage in bite-sized morsels we can enjoy every day. May save our lives, or at least make them better. William McClung, UPB
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