Village Books will offer a special Saturday story time for 2 1/2 - 5-year-old kids and the adults in their lives in our Readings Gallery. Bring your favorite small, stuffed animal and enjoy animal stories read by Barbara Snow, longtime parent and childhood education director. Special guest, Renay Daniels, will read her new book, Ten Little Bulldogs. Join us!

In this new collection of personal essays, Nick Jans explores the rain forests and tidal fiords of Southeast Alaska, where he’s lived for the past 10 of his 30 Alaska years.  Part a chronicle of personal discovery, and part story of this mountain-and-glacier-rimmed seascape, the book is ultimately about the wildlife and people making their homes there.

The truly remarkable story of Romeo, Juneau’s “celebrity” black wolf, is the central strand around which the rest of the book is woven. Stories of wildlife encounters combine you-are-there personal experience with informative natural history, human bonding with injured or orphan wild creatures, tales of adventure and wilderness travel, along with pieces that describe the flavor of everyday life.  On this journey, Jans invites longtime Alaskans to first-time visitors; armchair or wilderness travelers; animal lovers; and folks who just love a good story told in a conversational, reader-friendly, yet carefully crafted voice.

Nick Jans is one of Alaska’s most recognized and prolific writers. A contributing editor to Alaska Magazine and a member of USA Today’s board of editorial contributors, he’s written 9 books and hundreds of magazine articles, and contributed to many anthologies. His range includes poetry, short fiction, literary essays, natural history, outdoor adventure, fishing, and political commentary. In addition, Jans is a professional nature photographer, specializing in wildlife and landscapes in remote locations. He has been the recipient of numerous writing awards, most recently the co-winner of two Ben Franklin Medals (2007 and 2008) and a Rasmuson Foundation artist grant (2009). He currently lives in Juneau with his wife, Sherrie, and travels widely in Alaska. He returns each year to Ambler, the arctic Inupiaq Eskimo village in which he lived for 20 years, and the place he still calls home.

Village Books invites everyone to enjoy local talents as they share their written words. Not published?  No worries.  Feel free to share some of your own writing!  Sign up at our main counter on the first floor. 

Village Books will be closed for Thanksgiving Day so our staff can gather with family and friends for the holiday. 

Join world-class chef, Daniel Orr, at the Community Food Co-op Connection Building as part of Bellingham Farmer's Market's "Chefs at the Market" series.

Talk, demonstration, and sampling from FARMfood. Space is limited, so arrive early! Please park on the street (not in the Co-op lot) for this event.

For renowned chef Daniel Orr, simplicity is beauty. In his latest book, Orr advocates using locally grown, wholesome ingredients and features a diverse assortment of recipes influenced by his Midwestern roots as well as a stellar global culinary career.

Daniel Orr is a graduate of Johnson & Wales University and chef/owner of FARMbloomington restaurant. He has worked in France’s most elite restaurants and been executive chef at New York’s famed La Grenouille and Guastavino’s, as well as the CuisinArt Resort & Spa in Anguilla, British West Indies. He’s appeared on The Food Channel, PBS, Discovery Channel, and has been profiled in countless publications including Conde Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, and Food & Wine Magazine.
Join us for one or both of these great opportunities to meet world class chef, Daniel Orr!

Co-sponsored by the Bellingham Farmers Market,  the Community Food Co-op, and Sustainable Connections

Chef Daniel will share a slideshow and talk about his passion for making delicious food using locally grown, wholesome ingredients.

For renowned chef Daniel Orr, simplicity is beauty. In his latest book, Orr advocates using locally grown, wholesome ingredients and features a diverse assortment of recipes influenced by his Midwestern roots as well as a stellar global culinary career.

Daniel Orr is a graduate of Johnson & Wales University and chef/owner of FARMbloomington restaurant. He has worked in France’s most elite restaurants and been executive chef at New York’s famed La Grenouille and Guastavino’s, as well as the CuisinArt Resort & Spa in Anguilla, British West Indies. He’s appeared on The Food Channel, PBS, Discovery Channel, and has been profiled in countless publications including Conde Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, and Food & Wine Magazine.
Join us for one or both of these great opportunities to meet world class chef, Daniel Orr!

Co-sponsored by the Bellingham Farmers Market,  the Community Food Co-op, and Sustainable Connections

Discuss and explore feminism in a fun, empowering environment. Learn how equal treatment of women in society will (obviously) better women’s lives, and men's as well. 
Open to anyone that wants to explore feminism. 
Meet with Jen the LAST SUNDAY
of every month at 2pm 
(Authors do not usually attend VB Reads)

This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor 
by Susan Wicklund        

Dr. Wicklund chronicles her emotional and dramatic 20-year career on the front lines of the abortion war. Through her intimate, complicated, and inspiring accounts, Wicklund reveals the truth about the womens clinics and the lives of her patients.

INCLUDES SLIDESHOW!

Impressions of the North Cascades was originally published in 1996 by Mountaineers Books, but eventually fell out-of-print. We are thrilled to bring the book back into print through our Espresso Book Machine®. Thanks to this new technology, we will be able to make hundreds of public domain, out-of-print, and self-published books available to you!

The North Cascades mountains are "a home for the spirits," "the biggest fence in the West," and a "landscape of potential" as some of the essays in Impressions of the North Cascades: Essays about a Northwest Landscape attest. The book, edited by John Miles, examines the past, present, and future of the North Cascades, backdrop and back yard to the Puget Sound lowlands. Editor John Miles, Professor of Environmental Studies at WWU, solicited contributions from friends versed in geology, archaeology, anthropology, history, natural history, and conservation to write about the past, present and future of this magnificent mountain region. The text is enhanced by the sketches of Dale Hamilton and "vignettes" from the field journal of artist/naturalist Libby Mills.

When we have too much, we savor nothing. When we choose less, we regain our life and can think and feel deeply. Throughout history wise people have argued that we need to live more simply – that only by limiting outer wealth can we have inner wealth. Less is More is a compelling collection of essays by people who have been writing about Simplicity for decades –including Bill McKibben, Duane Elgin, Juliet Schor, Ernest Callenbach, John de Graaf, and more. They bring us a new vision of Less: less stuff, less work, less stress, less debt. A life with Less becomes a life of More: more time, more satisfaction, more balance, more security.

Cecile Andrews is the author of Circle of Simplicity and Slow is Beautiful and cofounder of Phinney EcoVillage, in Seattle.. She has her doctorate in education from Stanford.
Co-sponsored by Transition Whatcom.

Join Janet Ott the 1st Wednesday of each month (12:00-1:00pm). Meetings are in the Readings Gallery.  Brown bag lunches are encouraged.
*Authors DO NOT attend.
Leading From Within:Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead
by Sam Intrator, Megan Scribner, & David Whyte
“Leading from Within makes brilliant use of the world’s great poets to inspire us to lead with our hearts as well as our heads. It calls to the deeper purpose and meaning within all of us to use our gifts to serve others.” –Bill George, author, True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership

In On the Move, Martin traces his family’s movement west, beginning with his great-grandparent’s marriage and settlement in East Texas not long after Emancipation.  From that foothold, and driven by some of the same forces that moved other Americans, white and black — misfortune, wanderlust, economic necessity and world wars, and by some quite unique ones like racial injustice and fundamentalist evangelical religion — Martin’s later ancestors and nuclear family continued moving westward until they reached the shining sea. 

In his lifetime, Martin’s family detoured by way of a Wyoming dude ranch and a Shoshone River bottom log cabin, a Montana railroad nexus, a Kansas war boom town and the Heart Mountain “relocation center.” They fell into a San Francisco Bay Area melting pot bubbling over with the excitement and activity of World War II and landed for good on the Monterey Peninsula at the height of its wartime productivity and fluidity.  In the process, his family became western African Americans — changed people.  “We and other black folk who had similar experiences tended to end up more like the people we settled among than those from whom we sprang.  We’re still Africans and we still bear the marks of our birth, but we’re different from our kinfolk who stayed ‘back home.’” 

S. R. MARTIN JR. was born in Fort Worth, Texas. He is a retired teacher, scholar, and administrator of Evergreen State College in Olympia.

Eloquent scientific muckraker, Elizabeth Grossman, tackles the hazards of consumer products showing that for the sake of convenience, efficiency, and short-term safety, we have created synthetic chemicals that fundamentally change, at a molecular level, the way our bodies work.  The consequences range from diabetes to cancer to reproductive and neurological disorders. The revolutionary field of green chemistry is introducing products that are “benign by design,” developing manufacturing processes that consider health impacts at every stage, and creating new compounds that mimic rather than disrupt natural systems. Through interviews with leading researchers, Grossman offers a first look at this radical transformation.

One of the most troubling aspects of American politics today is the impulse for politicians and the public alike to demonize political adversaries. Although this tendency is nothing new, recently it has veered into unexpected and brutal viciousness from otherwise ordinary, everyday people, nearly all of them political conservatives.  Neiwert identifies this hateful rhetoric as “eliminationism”—the wish to do away with perceived enemies—and asks what effects such toxic talk has on our public discourse and democracy.

The Eliminationists traces the origins of much of this talk to the dank corners of the proto-fascist American right, on which Neiwert spent much of the 1990s reporting.  In the past decade, he has observed ideas, agendas, and, most of all, rhetoric transmitted from these fringes into the mainstream conservatism movement. As he reports, that movement has metastasized into something not truly conservative, but decidedly right-wing, and decidedly dangerous.  Neiwert warns Americans about the likelihood of a re-emergence of the violent domestic terrorism that characterized the far Right in the 1990s now that America has its first African-American president, and that a fascist state is a real threat. He cautiously points out that the situation is not yet irretrievable. How Americans face this challenge, he says, will depend on how well they can repudiate the politics of hate and repair the damage it has wrought.

David Neiwert’s writing has appeared in the Washington Post, on Salon.com, and in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report. The author of three previous books on related topics, Neiwert won the National Press Club Award for Distinguished Online Journalism in 2000. His blog Orcinus, which reports on the crossover between the mainstream and the far right, received the Koufax Award for Best Series in 2003 and 2004. He is also the managing editor of the popular video blog, Crooks and Liars.

Join us for this kids event with Village Books favorite, Kirby Larson!

Nubs, an Iraqi dog of war, never had a home or a person of his own, until he met a US soldier who cared for him.  Then the soldier had to relocate a 70 miles away...without Nubs. So began an incredible journey that would take Nubs through a freezing desert, filled with danger to find his friend, and ultimately to touch the hearts of people around the world.  Featured in national media, including People magazine and The Today Show, Nubs reminds readers about the power of friendship against the odds.

Kirby Larson, is the author of Two Bobbies and of Hattie Big Sky, for which she received a Newbery Honor Medal.

A percentage of the proceeds from the sale of Kirby's books during the event will benefit the event co-sponsor, the Alternative Humane Society.

Stuever turns his unerring eye for the idiosyncrasies of modern life to Frisco, Texas, a suburb at once all-American and completely itself, to tell the story of the nation’s most over-the-top celebration: Christmas. Stuever starts the narrative as so many start the Christmas season: standing in line with the people waiting to purchase flat-screen TVs on Black Friday. From there he follows three of Frisco's true holiday believers as they navigate through the Nativity and all its attendant crises. Tammie Parnell, an eternally optimistic suburban mom, is the proprietor of "Two Elves with a Twist," a company that decorates other people's big houses for Christmas. Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski own that house every town has: the one with the visible-from-space, most awe-inspiring Christmas lights. And single mother Caroll Cavazos just hopes that the life-affirming moments of Christmas might overcome the struggles of the rest of the year. Stuever's portraits of this happy, megachurchy, shopariffic community are at once humane, heartfelt, revealing – and very funny. Tinsel is a compelling tale of our half-trillion-dollar holiday, measuring what we we've become against the ancient rituals of what we've always been.

Hank Stuever is an award-winning pop culture writer for the Washington Post's Style section, where he has worked for the past decade. He has also been a reporter for newspapers in Albuquerque and Austin, and has twice been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. He is the author of Off Ramp, an essay collection, and Tinsel, a nonfiction book about Christmas. He has appeared on Today, The View, The Early Show, MSNBC and National Public Radio. He lives in Washington, D.C.

(photo credit: fairhaven.com)

Village Books and our sister store, Paper Dreams, will hold a Holiday Gala from 2pm to 7pm.  KAFE 104.3 radio will be on hand 2-5pm, and there will be refreshments, drawings, music, and demonstrations and samplings of products.  Holiday books, cards, and decor will all be 20% off.  Join us for this fun, festive event!

FREE SAMPLE TASTING! 

Join Christine Turnbaugh and Friends as they share their adventures of creating Garden Street Cooks, a cookbook of favorite recipes of the members and friends of Bellingham’s Garden Street United Methodist Church.  Learn how your organization might create a similar project, and expand the fundraising possibilities by creating related greeting cards, recipe cards, and note pads.  Join us for this informative and tasty event!

Enhanced with original art work by a friend of the church living in Provence, France, Christine Jamet, the Garden Street Cooks contains almost 300 delicious recipes.  The art is a key ingredient to the success of this one of a kind cookbook, which is a very personal expression of the sense of community that has developed over the years at Garden Street UMC around cooking and sharing a common meal.  Sales of the book will support the Church’s lively missions program, giving funds locally and around the world.

Join Cindi to discuss books from a variety of genres the 1st Monday of each month at 7pm.

Authors DO NOT attend.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Olive Kitteridge is a set of linked stories about a gruff, 60-something retired school teacher in a coastal town in Maine.

A ticketed, off-site event at Sehome High School, 2700 Bill McDonald Pkwy, Bellingham

Tickets are $5 and are available at Village Books or on-line at www.brownpapertickets.com

Proceeds to benefit Lummi Headstart

In this diverse, tender, witty, and soulful collection of poems and stories, Alexie considers modern relationships from the most diverse angles, and takes us to the heart of what it means to be human.  He exposes the new beginnings, successes, mistakes, and regrets that make up our daily lives in this wide-ranging and provocative new work that is Alexie at the height of his powers.  Poet, author, and filmmaker, Sherman Alexie, has penned numerous books including The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, for which he won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

Author of the New York Times & IndieBound bestseller, The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein will be our special guest for the December taping of the Chuckanut Radio Hour. In this heart-wrenching but deeply funny and ultimately uplifting story of family, love, loyalty, and hope, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a beautifully crafted and captivating look at the wonders and absurdities of human life...as only a dog could tell it. With live music by The Walrus & poetry by Carlos Martinez. Tickets are $7.50 and are available at Village Books and online at Brown Paper Tickets.

Co-sponsored by The Leopold Retirement Residence

VB-sponsored book group…open to all.  Join the "chatter"!  Bring your tea or latte, and come discuss contemporary lit. with Sittrea and the Afternoon Book Chat on the 2nd Wednesday of each month at 1pm.

Authors DO NOT attend.

We will be choosing books to read next year, so bring your title suggestions and be ready to make a pitch for them!

Based on a large collection of letters written in 1890 by Dr. Will Gray who, broke and in love, had left his fiancé "Anna" in Iowa while he came west to establish a medical practice, the book tells the story of Boom-time Fairhaven and the cultural legacy that he left here ending with his only daughter Margaret, an iconic and adored local drama teacher.  Gray arrived in Fairhaven at the height of the Boom, was the first tenant in the Mason Building, and watched the completion of the Fairhaven Hotel.  Join us for an evening of local history.
 

To order the book online, click "Add to Cart" for more information click on the title below.

Each year Village Books customers purchase books here and donate them to area children in need through our Giving Tree project.  Customers can take an angel book-request tag off the Giving Tree and purchase a book to match it. Customers receive 20% off for these books.  We also accept reader rewards and cash donations to purchase books for the program.  We have 2,000 needy kids in our area who need a book for the holidays.  Tonight we will wrap donated books and enjoy treats from our good friends at the Colophon Cafe.  Join us!  We always have a good time at this annual event.  Can't come tonight?  We'll be wrapping again for the Giving Tree on Tuesday, December 15th.

Join us for an evening of poetry in translation!

*Winner of India's prestigious Sahitya Akademi prize and author of numerous books of poetry and prose, Bengali poet Sarat Kumar Mukhopadhyay is among the most important poets of his generation. Poet and translator of Mukhopadhyay's The Cat Under the Stairs Robert McNamara is the author of two books and teaches at the UW.

*Majestic Nights: Love Poems of Bengali Women reveals Bengali women’s truths of heart and mind in a changing society. Carolyne Wright has published eight award-winning books and chapbooks of her own poetry, and three other volumes of poetry in translation. She lives in Seattle and is teaching this year in North Carolina.

BOOK LAUNCH! 

Margaret Kroftis is a writer, living alone.  A personal tragedy propels the narrative forward in an emotionally coherent manner that exists separately from linear time.  As themes of loss and grief cycle, repeat, and build upon each other, they create a complex structure of cross hatched narratives within narratives, which mirror each other while also telling their own unique stories of loss that are both separate from Margaret's as well as deeply intertwined. 

Mark Gluth's writing has previously appeared in Userlands and Ellipses Magazine. He lives in Bellingham.

New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance returns with a new novel in the spine-tingling suspense series featuring ex-television journalist Ali Reynolds, who has joined the Yavapai County Police Department in a media relations position that is sure to put her reporting (and crime-solving) skills to the test.  When a new subdivision goes up in flames, everyone prays the unfinished, unoccupied homes will yield no victims. But one woman is found barely alive and burned beyond recognition.  Jane Doe finally awakens from a drug-induced sleep months later—with no clue who she is or where she came from.  When Sister Anselm, the injured woman’s hospital-assigned advocate, asks her for help, Ali finds herself drawn into a deadly family drama, decades in the making. As she struggles to uncover Jane Doe’s identity, Ali realizes that locating the missing relatives may expose the victim once more to a remorseless killer determined to finish the job. 

With more than 25 million copies of her books in print, J.A. Jance once again delivers a heart-stopping yet utterly believable tale of suspense that will keep readers intrigued from first page to last.  J.A. Jance is the New York Times bestselling author of the Ali Reynolds series, the J.P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, and three inter-related thrillers featuring the Walker family. Born in South Dakota and raised in Bisbee, Arizona, she lives with her husband, splitting their time between Seattle, Washington and Tucson, Arizona.

GIVING TREE WRAPPiNG PARTY CANCELLED:

There is still a great need for donated books for the giving tree.  This wrapping party was cancelled because the requesting agencies want to be able to individually match donated books with the children who will receive them, so in these cases having books unwrapped makes this easier.  Also, it's greener!  We thank all of those who helped on Thursday, December 10th, and look forward to next year!

Each year Village Books customers purchase books here and donate them to area children in need through our Giving Tree project. Customers can take an angel book-request tag off the Giving Tree and purchase a book to match it. Customers receive 20% off for these books. We also accept reader rewards and cash donations to purchase books for the program. We have 2,000 needy kids in our area who need a book for the holidays. Tonight we will wrap donated books and enjoy treats from our good friends at the Colophon Cafe. Join us! We always have a good time at this annual event.

Authors DO NOT attend.

Join Mary Dumas in the Readings Gallery on the 3rd Wednesday of each month to discuss books exploring how to create a more civil and engaged community. Brown bag lunches encouraged. Anyone interested in exploring their role as an engaged citizen is welcome.

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It by Joshua Cooper Ramos
Drawing upon history, economics, complexity theory, human immunology, psychology, and his own extraordinary experiences, Ramo delivers a brilliant new paradigm for understanding the dangerous--and dangerously unpredictable–new global order.

To help you with those last minute purchases, Village Books will be open extra hours this evening.  Instead of our usual Sunday closing time of 7pm, we'll be open til 9pm.  Stop by and let us help you check off a few items on your list!  We offer free gift-wrapping so your presents will be under-the-tree-ready!