Don't miss out on this special Labor Day surprise. The internationally revered Kennedy shares with us her comedic repertoire. “Her stand-up is startlingly good. She works the audience and makes the most of her cleverness with words, her knack for seeing things freshly. She has a great riff about people scraping moss off each other every morning in Scotland, but the audience seems most to enjoy the material about pubic hair." - The Guardian
She's assertive, well-timed, and she will be at McNally Jackson Books for one night only.
News of Note
Staff Picks
Dune
Written by David
By Frank Herbert (Ace Books, $7.99)
If you're a science fiction fan, I'm sure you've already read Frank Herbert's classic. But if you're not, and are okay with a little fantasy, don't be afraid--read this book! I'd be very surprised if you didn't love it. I know sci-fi mass markets with cheese-ball covers can be a little scary, and that the movie really wasn't inspiration enough to devote yourself to a reading assignment of 535 pages--I know, because I felt the same way. Please take this one on faith (like I had to when I let my father-in-law force-feed it to me for fear of offending his tastes.) You'll be surprised at how good it is, and will wish, once you've finished it, that you could start it all over again.
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth
Written by Sandy
By Kevin Wilson (Harper Perennial, $13.99)
The stories themselves are of a ridiculous nature--the curator at the Museum of What Not; the man whose job it is to pick out all the Qs at a scrabble tile factory--but the ideas behind them are all relevant. The author uses the outrageous so that the reader is more able to focus on the themes that howl at you. There issues are so very real that by the end you question even the absurdity of whether these people really do exist.
An Elegy for Easterly
Written by Sohaila
By Petina Gappah (Faber and Faber, $14.00)
These short stories are set in Zimbabwe in the doubly awful age of AIDS and Mugabe. They are deep and sad, and I came away with intense images of colour and survival--flashes of bright fabric in a township, a determined face at an immigration counter. Each tale deals with individual tragedies that make a national one slightly more comprehensible.
If you're a science fiction fan, I'm sure you've already read Frank Herbert's classic. But if you're not, and are okay with a little fantasy, don't be afraid--read this book! I'd be very surprised if you didn't love it. I know sci-fi mass markets with cheese-ball covers can be a little scary, and that the movie really wasn't inspiration enough to devote yourself to a reading assignment of 535 pages--I know, because I felt the same way. Please take this one on faith (like I had to when I let my father-in-law force-feed it to me for fear of offending his tastes.) You'll be surprised at how good it is, and will wish, once you've finished it, that you could start it all over again.
The stories themselves are of a ridiculous nature--the curator at the Museum of What Not; the man whose job it is to pick out all the Qs at a scrabble tile factory--but the ideas behind them are all relevant. The author uses the outrageous so that the reader is more able to focus on the themes that howl at you. There issues are so very real that by the end you question even the absurdity of whether these people really do exist.
These short stories are set in Zimbabwe in the doubly awful age of AIDS and Mugabe. They are deep and sad, and I came away with intense images of colour and survival--flashes of bright fabric in a township, a determined face at an immigration counter. Each tale deals with individual tragedies that make a national one slightly more comprehensible.