Wednesday, April 30, 2008

China Survival Guide Feature and Booksigning

The Grand Rapids Press recently ran a feature about Larry and Qin Herzberg, co-authors of the China Survival Guide. Speaking to the Press' Nardy Baeza Bickel about the need for a humorous and detailed travel guide to China, Larry noted:

"There are all sorts of planners that talk about what to see, where to see. But they don't tell you the nitty-gritty."

(read more...)

Larry and Qin will be doing an in-store booksigning at
Schuler Books in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on June 21 from 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. Put it on your calendars! Details TBA.

McCarthy and Sharp at the Barbican and Beyond

The Anime Encyclopedia co-author Helen McCarthy is as busy as ever. Upcoming events include:

May 3: Kihachiro Kawamoto films at the Barbican Cinema in London. McCarthy will be joined by Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film co-author (and Barbican Senior Curator) Jasper Sharp to discuss Kawamoto's work before the third program at 4:15 p.m. (more info...)

May 11: Bristol International Comic Expo. McCarthy leads a panel on Osamu Tezuka's impact on the anime and manga industries. (more info...)

May 31-June 1: McCarthy at A-Kon in Dallas, Texas.

September 11-16: McCarthy curates a film season at the Barbican Cinema devoted to Osamu Tezuka to mark the 80th anniversary of his birth. Screenings will include titles previously unseen in Britain. A further short season in Spring 2009 will continue the celebration.

Wes "Scoop" Nisker on West Coast Live and Green 960

Two more upcoming radio appearances for Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again! author Wes "Scoop" Nisker!

May 11: "The Peter Laufer Show" on Green 960AM, 9 a.m. - 10 a.m., San Francisco

May 24: Sedge Thomson's nationally syndicated "West Coast Live," 10 a.m. - noon, taping at the Ferry Building, San Francisco, followed by a booksigning (you can buy tickets to attend the show and signing)

March/April News & Reviews

In the Spring issue of Film Quarterly, Stephen Prince reviews Teruyo Nogami's Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa. Prince writes:

"This exemplary memoir showcasing Nogami's devotion to Kurosawa and to the art of cinema is a treasure trove filled with passionate, funny, wry, and incisive portraits of a golden age in Japanese film."

Waiting on the Weather was also reviewed in The Asian Reporter, where Mike Street wrote that "Weather is both enjoyable and essential...film students as well as Kurosawa fans will find it revealing and engaging."


Josephine Yun, author of jrock, ink., contributed a four-page feature on the current state of J-Rock to the April issue of Otaku USA.

The new Stone Bridge Classics edition of Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Isabella L. Bird's intrepid 1880 travelogue, was excerpted in the Asia Weekly and reviewed in the April issue of Metropolis, where C.B. Liddell writes:

"The fact that it doesn't try to please a modern audience is one of the book's charms, but its main virtue is that it provides us with a vivid and unforgettable picture of Meiji Japan..."

In the April 27 Japan Times, Gregory Clark reviewed veteran Japanese journalist Fumio Matsuo's Democracy with a Gun: America and the Policy of Force, writing:

"Matsuo is...meticulous in trying to find how the initially democratic and humane aspirations of the early Americans could evolve into the cruelty of today's military interventions around the globe."


Harvard University Press released Eve Zimmerman's new book, Out of the Alleyway: Nakagami Kenji and the Poetics of Outcaste Fiction. Great timing, as Stone Bridge concurrently released a Stone Bridge Fiction edition of Zimmerman's award-winning translation of The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto.

In The Asian Reporter, Josephine Bridges complimented Fumio Shiozawa's "lovely and surreal illustrations" in Divining the Asian Zodiac: Anient Guide to Life and Love.


Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Tonight! Wes "Scoop" Nisker at City Lights

Wes "Scoop" Nisker will be reading and signing at City Lights Books in San Francisco tonight at 7 p.m. to celebrate the release of Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again!. Come on by for Buddhism, humor, "The Evolution Sutra," and maybe even a little song and dance...
(more info...)

Four New Releases from Stone Bridge Press

Out now!

Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again!:
Handbook for a Spiritual Revolution
by Wes "Scoop" Nisker
This seriously funny investigation of religion, evolution, cosmology, and Buddhism -- the second Cody's Book from Stone Bridge Press -- is a self-help book for people interested in helping more than just themselves.


A Wild Haruki Chase:
Reading Murakami Around the World

Compiled and translated by The Japan Foundation
Jay Rubin, Richard Powers, Kim Choon Mie, Inuhiko Yomota, Roland Kelts, Shozo Fujii, Shinya Machida, Ivan Sergeevich Logatchov, Koichi Oi, and Issey Ogata, with a special essay on translation by Haruki Murakami
Novelists, translators, and critics explore novelist Haruki Murakami’s phenomenal international appeal.

Exploring Kyoto:
On Foot in the Ancient Capital

by Judith Clancy
With detailed maps and two new walks, the essential guide to exploring Kyoto on foot is now even better!




The Cape:
and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto

by Kenji Nakagami, trans. Eve Zimmerman
A new Stone Bridge Fiction edition of the award-winning translation of Kenji Nakagami's riveting stories from the Japanese ghetto.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Reminder: Frederik L. Schodt at the LA Times Festival of the Book this weekend!

Frederik L. Schodt, author of The Astro Boy Essays and numerous other books about anime, manga, and Japan, will be at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend. Schodt will appear on the "Reading Manga" panel, which will be moderated by Charles Solomon. Librarians, readers, booksellers, take note -- this is your chance to get a great read on one of the fastest growing industries in the world!

Schodt will be available to sign books after the panel discussion.

Reading Manga: A Japanese Phenomenon Comes to America
Panel 1114
3 p.m.
Saturday, April 26
Location: Humanities A51
(more info...)

Two new interviews with Yoga Poems author Leza Lowitz

The April issue of WOW! Women on Writing features an extensive interview by Suzanne Kamata with Yoga Poems author Leza Lowitz. Read it online here. Kamata notes that Lowitz just published her fifteenth book!

Also, in "The Art of Gentle Surrender," Lee Peau speaks with Lowitz, who runs the Sun and Moon Yoga Studio in Tokyo, about the connection between yoga and writing in Wingspan, All Nippon Airways' in-flight magazine.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements on the BBC

Stone Bridge authors and energetic anime experts Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements appeared on the BBC's Woman's Hour this week to discuss "controversial Japanese comics." The show is archived here.

Tomorrow, 4/20, McCarthy will be on BBC Radio 4's Go4It, discussing anime with children aged 7-11. The show streams from here.

Inspired? Order your copy of The Anime Encyclopedia today!

Monday, April 14, 2008

Tonight! Crazy Wisdom book release at new Cody's Books

Join Wes "Scoop" Nisker and Stone Bridge Press tonight at the new Cody's Books store in downtown Berkeley to celebrate the release of Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again!, Nisker's seriously funny new book on Buddhism and science. Leah Garchik mentions the release in her column for the San Francisco Chronicle today, and Buddhist master Jack Kornfield recently had this to say:

“Brilliant, consciousness expanding, profound, mysterious, and very funny. Ah, the audacious joy of crazy wisdom!”

Tom Robbins, author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, loved Nisker's The Essential Crazy Wisdom:

“Twenty-three times more liberating than the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran combined. It may be crazy to say such a thing but it is also wise.”

Monday, April 14, 2008
7 p.m. in the store
Cody's Books
2201 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley
(more info...)