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Dear Friend of Rakestraw Books, What a fun summer we have had here at the bookshop! Our grand finale party for Where's Waldo in Danville was two days ago and it was our best ever! So many happy kids and families telling us how much they enjoyed re-connecting (and connecting!) with our community. Looking ahead we are excited to announce two terrific author visits: one with Forrest Leo and another with our old friend Andrew Sean Greer. Come enjoy a glass of wine, a nice cool bookshop, and a terrifc writer. Read on for details! As always we have some good books to recommend and news from our book groups (including a new teen book club!). With school starting in not quite two weeks, we are asking for your help. We are collecting backpacks and school supplies for foster kids around Contra Costa County. I think that's all for now. Thanks -- as always -- for your support of the bookstore. Come see us soon and, until then, Happy Reading!
Michael Barnard & the book-loving staff at Rakestraw Books
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Writers Reading -- August 2017
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 | Forrest Leo, author of The Gentleman (Penguin, $16). |
| 8/3 at 7 PM Forrest Leo
Who: Debut novelist Forrest Leo.
What: Reading and discussing his marvelously comic first novel, The Gentleman.
When: Thursday, 3 August at 7 PM.
Where: Rakestraw Books. How much: This is a FREE event. Let us know you're coming by calling the shop at (925) 837-7337.
Why you should care: A funny, fantastically entertaining debut novel, in the spirit of Wodehouse and Monty Python, about a famous poet who inadvertently sells his wife to the devil--then recruits a band of adventurers to rescue her.
When Lionel Savage, a popular poet in Victorian London, learns from his butler that they're broke, he marries the beautiful Vivien Lancaster for her money, only to find that his muse has abandoned him. Distraught and contemplating suicide, Savage accidentally conjures the Devil -- the polite "Gentleman" of the title -- who appears at one of the society parties Savage abhors. The two hit it off: the Devil talks about his home, where he employs Dante as a gardener; Savage lends him a volume of Tennyson. But when the party's over and Vivien has disappeared, the poet concludes in horror that he must have inadvertently sold his wife to the dark lord.
Newly in love with Vivien, Savage plans a rescue mission to Hell that includes Simmons, the butler; Tompkins, the bookseller; Ashley Lancaster, swashbuckling Buddhist; Will Kensington, inventor of a flying machine; and Savage's spirited kid sister, Lizzie, freshly booted from boarding school for a "dalliance." Throughout, his cousin's quibbling footnotes to the text push the story into comedy nirvana. Lionel and his friends encounter trapdoors, duels, anarchist-fearing bobbies, the social pressure of not knowing enough about art history, and the poisonous wit of his poetical archenemy.
Fresh, action-packed and very, very funny, The Gentleman is a giddy farce that recalls the masterful confections of P.G. Wodehouse and Herge's beautifully detailed Tintin adventures. We're thrilled to welcome the wildly talented Forrest Leo to Rakestraw Books on Thursday, 3 August 2017 at 7 PM. Please join us. "Leo bolsters it all with a wickedly funny plot and a series of characters who seem both wholly original yet clearly carved out of the page of a thumping good potboiler. It’s a marriage of old and new that’s never tiring, and it makes for a delightful page-turner." (Bookpage)
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 | Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less (Lee Boudreaux Books / Little Brown, $28). |
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8/10 at 7 PMAndrew Sean Greer
Who: Bestselling novelist Andrew Sean Greer.
What: Reading and discussing his charming, witty, and brilliant new novel, Less.
When: Thursday, 10 August at 7 PM.
Where: Rakestraw Books. How much: This is a FREE event. Let us know you're coming by calling the shop at (925) 837-7337. Why you should care: I could not love LESS more."--Ron Charles, Washington Post "Andrew Sean Greer's Less is excellent company. It's no less than bedazzling, bewitching and be-wonderful."--Christopher Buckley, New York Times Book Review
Who says you can't run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes--it would be too awkward--and you can't say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. QUESTION How do you arrange to skip town? ANSWER You accept them all. What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last. Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story. A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy. In the two weeks since its publication Less has jumped to the top of our bestseller propelled not only by the enthusiastic support of the staff, but also by phenomenal reviews in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Please join us on Thursday, 10 April 2017 at 7 PM to welcome Andrew Sean Greer back to Rakestraw Books.
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Rakestraw's Readers Recommend
In the last moment before the flood of Fall titles starts to arrive, we'd like to recommend these good, new books that are on our shelves now. The Ready-Made Thief by Augustus Rose (Viking, $26). This fiendishly clever debut pits a gritty young heroine against a sinister group of fanatics. Puzzles, paradoxes, and mysteries abound in a page-turner that would make Marcel Duchamp glow with pride. From the epigram “There is no answer because there is no problem.” Highly recommended. Buy this book.
Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys (Penguin, $10.99). Salt to the Sea -- now in paperback -- was one of the hits of 2016. It's the story of four passengers and the ship that they hoped was both refuge and salvation. One of the last tragedies of World War II, the story of the Wilhelm Gustloff still resonates today. Buy this book. The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood (Norton, $15.95). Ava's twenty-five-year marriage has fallen apart, and her two grown children are pursuing their own lives outside of the country. Ava joins a book group, not only for her love of reading but also out of sheer desperation for companionship. The group's goal throughout the year is for each member to present the book that matters most to them. Ava rediscovers a mysterious book from her childhood--one that helped her through the traumas of the untimely deaths of her sister and mother. Buy this book. Beast by Paul Kingsnorth (Graywolf, $16). Beast plunges you into the world of Edward Buckmaster, a man alone on an empty moor in the west of England. What he has left behind we don t yet know. What he faces is an existential battle with himself, the elements, and something he begins to see in the margins of his vision: some creature that is tracking him, the pursuit of which will become an obsession. Buy this book. The Address by Fiona Davis (Viking, $26). Two stories -- separated by a century but braided together in the glamorous Dakota on Central Park West -- drive Fiona Davis's new historial pageturner. Murder, betrayal, madness, love: it's all here. And, it's great fun. Buy this book. The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson (Morrow, $26.99). Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs' weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman. It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She's having a baby boy--an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old's life. Buy this book.
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Book Group News
4th Friday Morning - Julie's Group This group meets on Friday, 25 August 2017 at 10:30 AM to discuss Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. Staff facilitator: Julie. 3rd Tuesday Morning This group meets on Tuesday, 15 August 2017 at 10:30 AM to discuss One-In-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood. 4th Tuesday Evening This group meets on Tuesday, 28 August 2017 at 7 PM to discuss Less by Andrew Sean Greer. ***JUST ADDED! - Teen Group This new group will meet on Saturday, 23 September 2017 at 5:30 PM. During this meeting the group will discuss Jackaby by William Ritter.
Please email Amanda for more information about this new group. These groups are free of charge and open to the whole community. Just read the book and come along to be part of these lively discussions.
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Project Ready-to-Learn (We Need Your Help!)
A frantic “Where’s my backpack??” is a familiar phrase to any parent trying to get children out the door to school in the morning.
What is a backpack? Sure, we know the answer to that question. A bag filled with pencils, pens, paper, and a binder. That is the usual answer, but a backpack to our clients’ children means so much more. It means that they are ready for school and will be prepared with some of the most critical items needed. A backpack is absolute preparedness and organization. It says “I am here, count me in!”
But what happens to our children who attend class totally unprepared? They feel embarrassed, out of place and totally left out. Without the correct tools to begin with, they are behind from the start. We need to encourage our children to succeed by giving them the right tools. Through Project Ready-to-Learn, children are provided with a backpack full of needed supplies according to their grade level. It is critical to provide our children with these essential needs so that they can succeed in life.
A backpack expresses and reflects the child’s personality. A supervisor who handed out backpacks during our program last year, told us how the little children came in with smiles on their little faces, excited to know they would be able to pick out their own personal backpack. These children took their time, examining all their choices before making the big decision. Once they made a decision, they walk out of the office, proud, happy, and ready for school!
How would you like to make a child feel excited and ready for school? You can be a part of supporting children’s education by stuffing a NEW backpack with school supplies. Remember that the children are our future – let’s help them make their futures bright by investing in them today.
If you are interested in filling a backpack for a child in grades Kindergarten thru 12th grade here are some guidelines and the needed contents: Please mark the outside of the backpack with masking tape and label it K-3, 4th-8th, or HS for high school and (if appropriate) if the contents are intended for either a boy or a girl. Thank you! Click HERE to see a complete list of supplies needed. Please deliver to donations to the bookshop by August 10th! Thank you!
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Rakestraw Books "The Bookstore in Danville" 3 Railroad Avenue Danville, CA 94526 (925) 837-7337
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