UPDATE 12/2: THE FEN MONTAIGNE EVENT HAD BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER/TRAVEL ISSUES AND OTHER UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES. We apologize for any inconvenience. (We hope to reschedule.)
Friday, December 3rd. Fen Montaigne presents Fraser’s Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica. 7 pm.
Thursday, October 21st. Kids’ Book Club sessions. Signup required. 6 to 8 pm. Call 549-9010 for details.
Monday, October 25th. Missoula author Andrew Peterson presents The Next Ten Minutes: 51 Absurdly Simple Way to Seize the Moment. 7 pm.
Thurs-Sat, Oct 28-30. Humanities Montana Festival of the Book.
Tuesday, November 16th. Missoula poet John Holbrook reads from his new book of poetry (Foothills Publishing). 7 pm.
Check it out, kids:
It’s been so gratifying this summer to get compliments on the store–on our selection of books, most pointedly–from people who travel here from all over the world. I can only tell them that we ALWAYS try to do our very best (and that, nonetheless, we feel we can always, always do better). Katie is starting a Kids’ Book Club here (initial meeting on Aug. 19!) and as the number of sign-ups grows the club threatens to split into two groups. Our selection of journals and notecards and greeting cards is bigger and better than ever. Staff Picks have gotten rolling here with, now, actual write-ups accompanying the stickers. This has been popular with customers. And popular with staff, too. (It took us a while to come up with a way to do staff picks such that the shelf talkers themselves did not feature too prominently. They are there if you want them, but you can safely and easily ignore them, too.) We are excited about fall releases, and the upcoming Montana Festival of the Book, and you name it:
Jonathan Franzen, James Howard Kunstler …
In times like these politics gets very crazy. The public forgets how misled and confused it is and develops vicious certainties that do not necessarily jibe with reality. The public becomes a mob and democracy turns into a kangaroo court, which is to say: a mockery of the rule of law. I suspect we’ll see a correlation of turbulence in politics and markets as the weeks pound forward toward Halloween. By election day, democracy itself will be in disrepute and the streets will run with mad dogs. When this sucker goes down (to paraphrase a past president) it’s going to be like a fire in a circus tent. Don’t expect much from the clowns’ bucket brigade. We’ll be lucky if they don’t toss gasoline into the grandstands.
– James Howard Kunstler (author of the forthcoming novel The Witch of Hebron), “The Queasy Season”
Monday, August 23rd. 7pm. Rick Bass reads from and signs his new novel, Nashville Chrome.
Rick Bass’s fiction has received O. Henry Awards, numerous Pushcart Prizes, awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. Most recently, his memoir Why I Came West was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award
Friday, September 10th. 7pm. Michael Earl Craig reads from and signs his new book of poetry, Thin Kimono.
Michael Earl Craig is the author of three collections of poetry: Thin Kimono (Wave Books, 2010), Yes, Master (Fence Books, 2006) and Can You Relax in My House (2002, Fence Books). He received a BA in English Literature from the University of Montana, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts. His poems have been published in various print and online journals, including Provincetown Arts, The Iowa Review, The Believer, HoboEye, Octopus Magazine, Fence, jubilat, and Denver Quarterly, as well as anthologized in Isn’t It Romantic: 100 Love Poems (Verse Press, 2004) and Poems About Horses (Everyman’s Library Pocket Series, 2009). He lives in Livingston, Montana, where is a Certified Journeyman Farrier, shoeing horses for a living.
Tuesday, September 14th, David M. Emmons, reads from and takes questions on Beyond the American Pale: The Irish in the West, 1845-1910. 7pm. 
David Emmons was born and raised on the edge of Denver’s Little Italy, the son of distinctly working-class parents, neither of whom–and contrary to expectations–was of Irish descent. Emmons received his degrees from the University of Colorado, Boulder. His Ph.D. was directed by Robert Athearn and was later published as Garden in the Grasslands: The Boomer Literature of the Central Plains (1969). In 1967 he joined the History Department at the University of Montana and is now Professor Emeritus of History. In 1989 Emmons published his second book, The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875–1925. This book was awarded an honorable mention for the James S. Donnelly Award of the American Conference of Irish Studies and won the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Centennial Award, and the Robert G. Athearn Award given by the Western History Association. This last honor would undoubtedly have stunned the man after whom it was named. The book is now in its seventh printing. Beyond the America Pale extends some of the arguments Emmons made in The Butte Irish. Dave lives with his wife Caroline along Rattlesnake Creek just north of downtown Missoula, Montana, and 120 miles northwest and downstream of Butte, the capital of western America’s “Irish Empire.”
The Kids’ Book Club will meet the third Thursday of every month
(September through May), from 7:00 to 8:00 PM, right here at the store. Lively discussion, a craft or activity and snack accompany each meeting. Participants must be entering the fourth through seventh grades in the fall semester to join.
If you are interested in attending a meeting on Thursday, August 19th, from 7:00 to 8:00 PM to vote on book club names, as well as the year’s selection of paperback titles, call the store at 549-9010 or send us an email so that we can add your name to the list.
Space is limited, so sign up today. Tell your friends, and contact Shakespeare & Co. with any questions.
Zach Dundas on bike messenger racing (from his new book, The Renegade Sportsman):
[p. 49] I loved the idea of a sporting event so effervescent that it threatened to disintegrate at any moment. The experimental sketchiness marked a stark contrast from the clockwork predictability of big-time sports. (What, you mean they’re doing the Super Bowl again this year? Dreary.) Even so, I couldn’t discount the messenger-racing scene’s larger achievement. The couriers pull together major championships every year, despite an “organization” that consists of whoever decides to show up. One inclined to overblown political analysis about everything (ahem) could point to the bike messenger racing scene as a fascinating example of natural democracy. As a model for sports revolution, I thought it worked pretty well, in that — absent owners, pro athletes, cash-spinning sponsors, public recognition, a discernible bureaucratic framework, or the blessing of most local authorities — it somehow worked at all.
– Zach Dundas
Zach reads at Shakespeare & Co. Tuesday, June 15th, at 7 pm.
Please join us Tuesday, May 25th, 7 pm.
Montana Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff (Globe Pequot; $15.95)
Slide show; refreshments!
Continuing a series of videos about some of the “underground” sports covered in Missoula native Zach Dundas’s forthcoming book, The Renegade Sportsman: Drunken Runners, Bike Polo Superstars, Roller Derby Rebels, Killer Birds and Other Uncommon Thrills on the Wild Frontier of Sports (Riverhead). Zach reads here June 15th.
