Events

We're pleased to welcome film critic and writer Mick LaSalle for a discussion of his newest book, The Beauty of the Real: What Hollywood Can Learn from Contemporary French Actresses, which intelligently argues that French cinema allows its female characters to be more complex, older, and more "real" than their US counterparts. The Beauty of the Real examines the different ways that France and the US cast and receive their actresses, in addition to profiling some of the French actresses who are doing groundbreaking work in cinema today (but are somewhat unknown on this side of the Atlantic.)

About the Author: Mick LaSalle has been the film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1985. He is the author of Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood and Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man (2002), both of which were named "Book of the Month" by Turner Classic Movies. LaSalle has been a panelist at the Venice and Berlin Film Festivals and has served on the jury for the Cinema for Peace Gala in Berlin.

This is sure to be an engaging discussion of an important book. Don't miss it!

Join Green Apple at The HRC Store on Tuesday, June 19th at 6:00pm to help celebrate the life and legacy of Harvey Milk, and the release of The Harvey Milk Interviews: In His Own Words. The Harvey Milk Interviews, edited by Vince Emery, is a collection of transcripts from 39 never-before published interviews, as well as debates with John Briggs over the notorious 1978 Prop 6. Also included are conversations that reveal Milk as impatient, sarcastic, attention-seeking, short-tempered, confrontational, and courageous. The Harvey Milk Interviews is a ground-breaking treasure trove for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of who Harvey Milk was as a person and how he inspired the world.

To celebrate the book at the HRC Store (which is in the original location of Milk's famed camera shop), we’ve gathered an amazing array of Bay Area talents to read from and discuss sections from The Harvey Milk Interviews - notable participants will include the novelists KM Sohnlein and Alvin Orloff; poet and editor Kevin Killian, cultural arts editor Marke Bieschke, and activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca. A percentage of the evening's book sales will be donated to LYRIC and their support of LGBT youth.

We'll be at Saint James Episcopal Church on June 21st at 7PM for a visit from Colin Dickey, author of a great new book called Afterlives of the Saints, a collection essays on some of the most remarkable -- and strangest -- stories of the Sainthood. The book move through Renaissance anatomy and the Sistine Chapel, Borges’ Library of Babel, the history of spontaneous human combustion, the dangers of masturbation, the pleasures of castration, “and so forth” — each essay focusing on the story of a particular (and particularly strange) saint. With material like that, Dickey's discussion will surely be fascinating.

We're very excited to bring you a reading with Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One, one of our previous Books of the Month and a now longtime bestseller on the Green Apple shelves. Nothing comes closer to summing up this novel than the pitch Green Appler Ashley wrote for the book last fall, so here it goes:

This debut novel from the man who brought us the 2008 film Fanboys delivers the geekdom, and how. To get an idea of what this unique take on a quest novel is like, take one part Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one part 9th level wizard, douse it all heavily with MTV (when MTV actually showed videos), thoroughly mix in every John Hughes movie that features at least three actors from the Brat Pack, add a few dashes of the truck sequence from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and sprinkle with Monty Python, all while listening to your totally 80s mix-tape compilations and then you will begin to comprehend the treasure that is this book.

Intrigued? Confused? Super pumped to read it again? Come check out Ernest Cline's reading in the Granny Smith Room on June 22nd at 7 PM enjoy the fun that is Ready Player One live and in person, just in time for its release in paperback. See you there.

(Update: Cline just called to ask us where to park his Delorean. He's serious.)

Don't miss G. Willow Wilson, who will be appearing in the Granny Smith Room to read from her new book, Alif the Unseen, a fantastic thriller about a computer hacker's elaborate attempt to disappear into anonymity during the Arab Spring. Wilson's debut novel (a departure from he previous work as a graphic novelist) is being met by rave reviews both in the New York Times and among our own staff. Green Appler Martin says: "There are some books that come to you out of left field, that are so unlike anything you've read, that just leave you slack jawed in admiration. Alif the Unseen is an incredible fiction debut from an author I know we'll be enjoying for decades to come, and one of the best books written about the Arab Spring." So pick up a copy today, and come by on Tuesday, July 10th at 7PM to meet the author and get it signed. See you there.

Dave Eggers has long been a favorite of Green Apple's owners, staff, and customers.  Who else has the range to help create MIGHT magazine, the Believer, and Lucky Peach, while writing unique novels like Zeitoun and his latest, A Hologram for the King.  All while creating a non-profit with 8 locations that nurtures young writers. Oh, and the Voice of Witness series.  And ScholarMatch.  And so on. 

We're pleased as punch to offer you a chance to meet Mr. Eggers, say hello, and get his signature on the new novel (which, we assume, you'll buy here, at the store that brings you such wonderful opportunities). 

Note the time (noon)!

And if you can't make it, call the store (415-387-2272).  You can pre-purchase the book, and we'll have it inscribed for you to pick up or be shipped to you after the event.  

Here's more about A Hologram for the King:

In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter’s college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy’s gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment — and a moving story of how we got here.

If you've got kiddos home for the summer, you want all the activities on the calendar you can get, so here's one: Green Apple will be presenting a special story time reading at the Toy Boat Desert Cafe on Tuesday, 7/24 at 3PM. Come get an ice cream, hear a story (read by our very own excellent reader-aloud, Ashley), and help celebrate Toy Boat's 30th anniversary!(Then, maybe, mosey down the street to Green Apple while the kids are contentedly full of ice cream.)