Kevin Michael Connolly
Reading & Signing
Thurs, October 29 7:00 pm
DOUBLE TAKE: A MEMOIR
Kevin Michael Connolly is a twenty-three-year-old who has seen the
world in a way most of us never will. Whether swarmed by Japanese
tourists at Epcot Center as a child or holding court at the X Games on
his mono-ski as a teenager, Kevin has been an object of curiosity since
the day he was born without legs. Growing up in rural Montana, he was
raised him like any other kid (except, that is, for his father’s
MacGyver-like contraptions such as the “butt boot”). As a college
student, Kevin traveled to seventeen countries on his skateboard and,
in an attempt to capture the stares of others, he took more than 30,000
photographs of people staring at him. In this dazzling memoir, Connolly
casts the lens inward to explore how we view ourselves and what it is
to truly see another person. We also get to know his quirky and
unflappable parents and his spunky girlfriend. From the home of his
family in Helena, Montana to the streets of Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur,
Connolly’s remarkable journey will change the way you look at others,
and the way you see yourself.
JESS WALTER
Reading & Signing
Thursday, Nov 5th
7:00 pm
F&F Downtown
THE FINANCIAL LIVES OF POETS
A few years ago, small-time finance journalist Matthew Prior quit his day job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse. When his big idea—and his wife's eBay resale business— ends with a whimper (and a garage full of unwanted figurines), they borrow and borrow, whistling past the graveyard of their uncertain dreams. One morning Matt wakes up to find himself jobless, hobbled with debt, spying on his wife's online flirtation, and six days away from losing his home. Is this really how things were supposed to end up for me, he wonders: staying up all night worried, driving to 7-Eleven in the middle of the night to get milk for his boys, and falling in with two local degenerates after they offer him a hit of high-grade marijuana? Or, he thinks, could this be the solution to all my problems? Following Matt in his weeklong quest to save his marriage, his sanity, and his dreams, The Financial Lives of the Poets is a hysterical, heartfelt novel.
Heather Glenn Vines
Signing
Friday, November 6th 7:00 pm
SCRUFFLES ADVENTURE SERIES
Written by Heather Glenn Vines and illustrated by Joan Ranieri-Certain, this four-part children's series is about an elementary school-age girl Sara, and her Yorkshire terrier, Scruffles. The books follow the trusty but often mischievous dog and his adventures.
Visit their website for more fun and information!
JENNIFER CAREY
Discussion & Signing
Tuesday, Nov 10th
7:00 pm
F&F Downtown
WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT GRANITE?
Even if they don't know much about rocks, most folks can name at least one place they have encountered granite. In everyday life you'll find countertops, headstones, flooring--even whole buildings made of granite. In the natural world it forms random boulders in fields and many of the planet's loftiest peaks. Commonness aside, no two granites are alike; it is a mysterious rock that crystallizes from magma miles and miles below the surface, far beyond the reach of human observation
This lecture series, "Put Your Writing to Work",
will feature three different professionals who use writing in their
various careers. The lectures will take place on the second Thursdays
of October, November, and December.
The talk on November 12th will feature Penny Orwick, a technical writer. Penny is a programmer and writer at Steyer Associates.
Join us as she talks about his career in writing!
Timothy Egan
Reading & Signing
Wednesday, November 18th 7:00 pm
THE BIG BURN
In THE WORST HARD TIME, Timothy Egan put the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl at the center of a rich history, told through characters he brought to indelible life. Now he performs the same alchemy with the Big Burn, the largest-ever forest fire in America and the tragedy that cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy in the land.
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in an eyeblink. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men -- college boys, day-workers, immigrants from mining camps -- to fight the fires. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.
Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, through the eyes of the people who lived it. Equally dramatic, though, is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. The robber barons fought him and the rangers charged with protecting the reserves, but even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by those same rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service with consequences felt in the fires of today.
THE BIG BURN tells an epic story, paints a moving portrait of the people who lived it, and offers a critical cautionary tale for our time.
