Tag: Books

Book Swap Sunday at Shine

Book Folk. by Orin Zebest. Flickr

Need a place to beat the apocalyptic beatdown we are getting from the weather? (I guess Father Sky’s furious anger has subsided a bit from earlier in the week when I started writing this post, but still.) One of Sacramento’s best alternative library blogs, alt+library, is putting on a book swap and meet & greet Sunday at Shine, a unique coffee house/restaurant/arts venue in Downtown that is just about to celebrate its 2nd anniversary.

If you’re the kind of person who would want to attend a book swap, it seems like a gathering of alt+library devotees and Shine patrons would be your ideal combination of people. If you don’t know all these people already, what better way to get to know them. Continue reading “Book Swap Sunday at Shine”

Sacramento Book Review publishers moving to Midtown

Meredith Greene tipped me that 1776 Productions, publishers of the San Francisco Book Review and the Sacramento Book Review (and one in Portland as well) are moving their headquarters to Midtown. According to co-publisher Ross Rojek, the move could start as early as next week.

“We’re looking forward to living and working in Sacramento,” Rojek told me. “Particularly having an office in Midtown near so many good restaurants and things to do after work.”

1776 also created GoLocalApps, a framework that helps small businesses roll out apps for iDevices. It’s good to hear about a business actually moving to Sacramento in this economic climate!

Sac City Superintendent’s reading challenge aims high

Not.

Join Superintendent Raymond’s SUMMER READING challenge and Get Caught Reading a great book!

Read two or more books this summer and record the titles on a Reading Log. (Emphasis mine)

Two books! In just one calendar season?! “Get caught reading”?! Not to mention, judging at least by the 1st-2nd grade suggested list, the reading level is not exactly reaching for the stars either. It includes mostly picture books and “easy reader” type books.

Fortunately the Sacramento Public Library offers several literacy programs this summer. The Make a Splash reading contest aims to get kids to complete at least 5 literacy related activities. They also have a program with Fresh Choice that I believe encourages kids to read 5 books with a free meal as a reward. I cannot find anything about it online but it definitely is a thing — ask your librarian!

Cool family events coming up at Central Library

And chances are, if you give a Pesci a gambling license... (read on, it makes sense)
Several interesting events are coming up at the Central Library downtown:

  • Sunday, March 7: Family Concert with the Camellia Symphony Orchestra. On Sunday the Camellia Symphony Orchestra holds a free concert in the Library Galleria at 2 pm. But the coolest part happens before the concert, when the orchestra will present an “instrument petting zoo” to allow the kiddies to get up close to different instruments. I’m not sure how much actually petting they will allow but there will definitely be a chance to get up close and personal and “see how the instruments are played.”

    • Continue reading “Cool family events coming up at Central Library”

Farm City: Tales from an Urban Farmer

FoodNov09 458Novella Carpenter compares herself to the witch in Hansel and Grettle, “I fatten things up so I can eat them.” A more apt description might be Charlie from the Chocolate Factory: she’s found a golden ticket to building community through urban farming, and she sure is ecstatic! Carpenter recently spoke about her new book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op as part of a fundraiser for Soil Born Farms.

Carpenter embodies the passionate social movement surrounding locally grown, sustainable food practices. She’s sharp as a tack, yet laid-back, and comes dressed in her jeans and work boots. She opens by cheering about her afternoon class on backyard chicken farming, “I felt like I was part of the resistance movement. Yeah!” She declares with fist raised, earnest but laughing.

Carpenter takes this work seriously. She lives Continue reading “Farm City: Tales from an Urban Farmer”

Adventure Cyclist Shares Globe Travel Tales Tonight

Weir's new book: Travels with Willie
Weir's new book: Travels with Willie

Ever picture yourself traveling across the globe?—by bicycle? Sacramento native Willie Weir has done it, and done it cheaply. Across the United States, Canada, and even through far-flung places like South Africa and Laos, Willie has put his pedal to the road. He shares his travel tales tonight at REI in Sacramento at 7:00pm.

Weir is a cycling columnist for Adventure Cyclist magazine and a public radio cycling commentator. He’s experienced it all, and done so on a tight budget. He’ll go so far as to call himself “cheap.” In fact, one five-month journey cost him only $400. Find out how he does it tonight for a cheap $5, which benefits the Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates.

If you can’t make the event, his adventures can also be found in his new book Travels with Willie: Adventure Cyclist.

Start the Presses! Local Publication Celebrates One Year Anniversary

Heidi Komlofske and Ross Rojek in final edits of their anniversary issue of Sacramento Book Review
Heidi Komlofske and Ross Rojek in final edits of their anniversary issue of Sacramento Book Review

One year ago, as newspapers across the country were stopping the presses, one brave couple dove in head-first. That’s when Heidi Komlofske and Ross Rojek started a little publication called Sacramento Book Review. Just as the LA Times was closing their book review, this Sacramento couple was starting theirs.

Crazy? Perhaps. As Rojek reached out to publishing companies in search of books to review, one publicist bellowed, “What idiot starts a book review in this economy?” The idiot savants went on to publish 115 reviews in that first September 2008 issue. Today, the company boasts 100 book reviewers, and this month they started their second publication, San Francisco Book Review.

Continue reading “Start the Presses! Local Publication Celebrates One Year Anniversary”

There’s Only One Book for Sacramento

Oprah sent Lisa Ling to investigate it. Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. star in a film about it. Kevin Johnson camped out to highlight it. Now the Sacramento Public Library is asking you to read about it with its One Book Sacramento campaign.

I’m talking about homelessness. Just because Tent City has folded doesn’t mean the problem has. And reading about the crisis was never this… well, fun.

In the moving book, The Soloist, by Los Angeles Times columnist and best-selling author Steve Lopez, you’ll read the true account of Lopez’s unusual friendship with a homeless man, Nathaniel Ayers. You’ll find a Sacramento familiar, Darrell Steinberg, whom Lopez reaches out to for support as he experiences mental illness first-hand through Nathaniel. This homeless musician’s talent and his hard life on the street rocks Lopez to the core. Join their incredible journey through this grabbing, real-life page turner.

Continue reading “There’s Only One Book for Sacramento”

Library cash story brings out good comments on SacBee

cold hard cashI expend a lot of hot air trashing the Bee’s comment feature, but today I have to eat my words. (It appears I must also attend mixed metaphor college.) From today’s Bee story about two library branches no longer accepting cash after the branches have experienced thefts.

Commenter “kevinakin1950” smartly questions the legality of refusing to accept American currency, and goes on to point out that a no-cash policy would discriminate against the poor, who presumably don’t have credit cards. (Let’s not get started on all the people out there who are poor because of their credit cards…)

Continue reading “Library cash story brings out good comments on SacBee”

“Find at SPL” bookmarklet

All this talk of the liberry reminded me of a cool tool that I found on the Sac Public Library’s blog. It is a “Find it at the SPL” bookmarklet (those little “unsafe” bookmark links that run JavaScript in your browser, like “Translate this website into Shizzle-ese” or whathaveyou.) If you’re on a web page, any web page, that lists an ISBN number, this bookmarklet will search the SPL’s catalog for that book. It’s amazing to me that such a task could be so easy, for a site that is as impossible to use as the SPL’s.

Best results for the bookmarklet are found in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, version 6. 🙂 YMMV.