Watermark Books and Cafe

In this issue:
News and Notes Worthy.
Upcoming Events.
Book of the Week.
Watermark Winner.
First line(s)...
Watermark Bestsellers.
“Dork Diaries: Tales from a NOT-SO-Talented Pop Star” by Rachel Renée Russell, review by Cat Connolly.
"Ancient Grains for Modern Meals: Mediterranean Whole Grain Recipes" by Maria Speck, review by Mark David Bradshaw.
“Amy Barickman’s Vintage Notions: An Inspirational Guide to Needlework, Cooking, Sewing, Fashion and Fun” by Amy Barickman, review by Sarah Bagby

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We have a new Cookbook of the Month: "Ancient Grains for Modern Meals:
Mediterranean Whole Grain Recipes" by Maria Speck. Find our daily pastry and soup menus online, and read Mark's review below!

http://www.watermarkbooks.com/cafe

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Upcoming events...

Friday, August 5. Bruce Ward will play music from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Bruce Ward is a musician who plays guitar and sings songs. His music appeals to a wide audience. He plays favorites in folk music, old standards, cowboy songs, music from the sixties (including the Beatles), and an eclectic mix that is not often heard in live music. Join us in the cafe for a great evening.

Thursday, August 11, 7:00 p.m. Randy Russell book reading and signing for "Dead Rules."

Jana Webster and Michael Haynes were in love. They were destined to be together forever. But Jana's destiny was fatally flawed. And now she's in Dead School, where Mars Dreamcote lurks in the back of the classroom, with his beguiling blue eyes, mysterious smile, and irresistibly warm touch.
Michael and Jana were incomplete without each other. There was no room for Mars in Jana's life—or death—story. Jana was sure Michael would rush to her side soon. But things aren't going according to Jana's plan. So Jana decides to do whatever it takes to make her dreams come true—no matter what rules she has to break.

About the author... Randy Russell believes in ghosts. He conducts an annual ghost seminar for the State of North Carolina and can be found most summers sharing true ghost stories at visitor centers in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He wrote Dead Rules because he believes ghosts should be allowed to share their stories of encounters with humans. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Saturday, August 20, 3:00 p.m. Tom Fry book signing.

Tom Frye will be here to sign copies of "The Mosley Street Melodramas, Volume IV."

Sunday, August 28, 2:00 p.m. Craft Book Trunk Show!

Join us at our Craft Book Trunk Show! Our publisher partners have sent us samples of their newest knitting, quilting, jewelry making, and other craft books. And we'll be on hand to talk about our favorites! Any craft books purchased or pre-ordered on this day will be discounted 20%.

Other author visits on the horizon include Cinda Williams Chima, Jon Scieszka, Candice Millard, Tom Averill, Donia Bijan, Robert Morgan, Deborah Niemann-Boehle, and Tony Horwitz. Stay tuned here or visit our website
here:http://www.watermarkbooks.com/

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The Book of the Week is "Northwest Corner" by John Burnham Schwartz (Random House, ISBN 9781400068456, originally $26.00)

The New York Times Book Review called Reservation Road “a triumph,” and the novel was universally acclaimed. Now, in a brilliant literary performance by one of our most compelling and compassionate writers, John Burnham Schwartz reintroduces us to Reservation Road’s unforgettable characters in a superb new work of fiction that stands magnificently on its own. Northwest Corner is a riveting story about the complex, fierce, ultimately inspiring resilience of families in the face of life’s most difficult and unexpected challenges.

Twelve years after a tragic accident and a cover-up that led to prison time, Dwight Arno, now fifty, is a man who has started over without exactly moving on. Living alone in California, haunted yet keeping his head down, Dwight manages a sporting goods store and dates a woman to whom he hasn’t revealed the truth about his past. Then an unexpected arrival throws his carefully neutralized life into turmoil and exposes all that he’s hidden.

Sam, Dwight’s estranged college-age son, has shown up without warning, fleeing a devastating incident in his own life. In its way, Sam’s sense of guilt is as crushing as his father’s. As the two men are forced to confront their similar natures and their half-buried hopes for connection, they must also search for redemption and love. In turn, they dramatically transform the lives of the women around them: the ex-wives, mothers, and lovers they have turned to in their desperate attempts to somehow rewrite, outrun, or eradicate the past.

Told in the resonant voices of everyday people gripped in the emotional riptide of lived life, Northwest Corner is at once tough and heart-lifting, an urgent, powerful story about family bonds that can never be broken and the wayward roads that lead us back to those we love.

Shop online or in the store, this week "Northwest Corner" is 30% off.

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This week's winner of a free lunch from Watermark Café is Joyce Taylor.
Thanks for signing up for News & Notes.

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First line(s)...

"You could see the blood. It was darker than you thought. It was all on the ground outside Chicken Joe’s. It just felt crazy."

... From "Pigeon English" by Stephen Kelman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 9780547500607, $24.00)

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Watermark Bestsellers.
1. "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien

2. "Eight Wonders of Kansas" by Marci Penner

3. "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

4. "Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles

5. "Toad Cottages and Shooting Stars" by Sharon Lovejoy

6. "Pretty Boy" by Michael Wallis

7. "My Ruby Slippers" by Tracy Seeley

8. "Wild West: 365 Days" by Michael Wallis

9. "David Crockett: The Lion of the West" by Michael Wallis

10. "Moon Over Manifest" by Clare Vanderpool

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“Dork Diaries: Tales from a NOT-SO-Talented Pop Star” by Rachel Renée Russell (Aladdin, ISBN 9781442411906, $12.99)

I admit: I’m a dork. A geek. A nerd. A “trip over invisible objects and fall face-first into my pile of manga comics” klutz. So, when I picked up the new installment of the “Dork Diaries” by Rachel Renée Russell, I had a cinematic flashback to my own middle school years. The lunch table occupied by an oddball group of friends, the maniacal schemes of the resident Queen Bee, the *shudder* school talent show, and of course, doodle-filled notebooks chronicling my miserable existence as a dorky seventh grader.

Wait, am I talking about myself, or about the book’s protagonist, Nikki Maxwell?

In the third installment of the series, “Dork Diaries: Tales from a NOT-SO-Talented Pop Star,” Nikki is facing yet another gaggle of crises. Her cute crush doesn’t seem to notice her (d’uh, Nikki, he’s an adolescent boy!). Her scholarship to the elite Westchester Country Day prep school is threatened when Nikki inadvertently gets her dad, the school exterminator and lifeline for her scholarship, fired from his job.

And even worse, her nemesis, the beautiful, vain, and über-nasty MacKenzie Hollister has caught Nikki on her camera phone, our heroine singing and dancing like a fool with her little sister on stage at a Chuck-E-Cheese-like establishment. In order to keep the video from going viral and ruining her already-pathetic social life, Nikki has only one option: to compete in the school talent show with the help of her best friends and remove any doubt that she is more than a “Not-So-Talented Pop Star.”

Fans of the first two books in the “Dork Diaries” series will not be disappointed—the third volume is just as hilarious as its previous installments, and Russell’s up-to-date pop culture references (such as Nikki’s grandma doing an impression of Lady Gaga while dressed in a lampshade hat and wrapped in Christmas lights) will inspire many laughs. In addition, “Dork Diaries” does for eccentric girls what “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” did for boys, but the heroine of the former series has a decidedly different take on her unpopular status. She embraces her label as a “dork,” going so far as to proclaim herself “Queen of the Dorks,” which gives her an tone of strength and security in her identity that would make any geeky girl proud to wear her quirkiness like a badge of honor.

So, whenever I find myself battling dust in the middle readers’ section of Watermark’s bookstore, I often hear the excited squeals of eleven year old girls as they spot the “Dork Diaries” display. Pausing in mid-crusade against my dust bunny foes, I smile and give a silent salute to these girls in their Harry Potter tees and gleaming braces. Live long and prosper, and trip proudly over many more invisible objects, aDORKable sisters.

Review by Cat Connolly

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"Ancient Grains for Modern Meals: Mediterranean Whole Grain Recipes" by Maria Speck (Ten Speed Press, 9781580083546, $29.99)

Do you love whole grains? Would you like to? I have an excellent guidebook for you: it's Maria Speck's new cookbook, which aims to share her gusto for grains and to help us all fall in love with the deliciousness and variety of whole-grain dishes and baking.

Speck's philosophy is simple: whole grains are tasty and endlessly variable. Of German and Greek descent, she offers recipes that sparkle with Mediterranean flavors (spinach, lemon, mint) and gain occasional punch from judicious use of prosciutto, bacon, and cream.

There are comforting breakfast bowls here (fig and pistachio muesli, citrus-apricot oatmeal), sturdy grain salads (oatberries with walnuts and gorgonzola), grill-worthy dishes (lamb and bulgur burgers), and tempting desserts (purple rice pudding!).

Like Kim Boyce, author of my recent favorite baking book "Good to the Grain," Speck jumps into whole-grain baking with both feet: she has recipes for whole-grain pie and tart shells, orange-and-dark-chocolate scones, and great--very doable--breads like olive, bacon, and thyme bread or pine nut and sun-dried tomato bread. Her spelt-flour pizza crust is my new favorite homemade crust: just try it topped with sauteed onions, fennel, and apples!

Will this cookbook send you searching for new whole-grain ingredients? Yes, if you're game. I've found nearly everything--wheatberries, spelt flour, purple rice--in Wichita's larger supermarkets and others items--oatberries, millet--in local health-food stores. This book is a grain-eater's dream because it tells you about these chewy little gems in depth, grain by grain, and it features awesome charts for how long to cook each kind and how much water to use, so you don't have to rely on back-of-the-package instructions.

This is a great book whether your aim is health or hedonism--or both. It boasts a wealth of vegetarian dishes alongside several for confirmed carnivores. It has crunchy-granola grains and recipes for indulgent accompaniments like the one for chocolate-hazelnut butter (homemade Nutella!). It will make you excited about whole grains and help make your pantry an Aladdin's cavern stocked with little pearls of culinary wisdom.

Review by Mark David Bradshaw

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Sarah's book reviews can be heard on alternate Mondays on KMUW 89.1. You can read her most recent review below or listen to it here:
http://www.kmuw.org/index.php/book/august_1_vintage_notions/

“Amy Barickman’s Vintage Notions: An Inspirational Guide to Needlework, Cooking, Sewing, Fashion and Fun” by Amy Barickman (Amy Barickman, Inc., ISBN 9780982627006,
$29.99)

Every year The Kansas Center for the Book releases a list of 15 Kansas Notable Books.

The prettiest book on this year’s list is "Amy Barickman’s Vintage Notions: An Inspirational guide to Needlework, Cooking, Sewing, Fashion, and Fun." Amy Barickman, a graduate of KU and the owner of Indygo Junction and the Vintage Workshop, found a kindred spirit in one time Kansan Mary Brooks Picken. Picken, a pioneering businesswoman and international authority on dressmaking, founded the Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences in Scranton, PA. in 1916. The school, in operation until 1934, educated more than 300,000 women, combining classroom instruction and correspondence courses. Picken published hundreds of newsletters entitled Inspiration and Fashion & Service that Barickman poured through to find the most timeless kernels of wisdom. She has preserved and compiled the material in a beautiful package for enthusiasts of today’s domestic scene.

Arranged by month, “August" includes an essay on how to host a smokin’ bonfire picnic, and fashion advice for the traveler such as how to embellish a hat for vacation needs. Each month also features a vintage pattern and a kimono is perfect to make for weekends away. My thanks to the Kansas Notable book committee for bringing attention to this hidden gem.

Review by Sarah Bagby

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Later.
Beth