Sands Hall on Scientology memoir 'Flunk. Start.' - March 20th

Time Tested Books

is proud to present

Sands Hall

reading & discussing

Flunk. Start.

Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology

Tuesday, March 20th, 7:00pm

“It is a triumph, a work of great honesty and insight. It is a necessary book for our time.” —Karen E. Bender, author of Refund, a finalist for the National Book Award

In Flunk. Start., Sands Hall chronicles her slow yet willing absorption into the Church of Scientology. Her time in the Church, the late 1970s, includes the secretive illness and death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and the ascension of David Miscavige. Hall compellingly reveals what drew her into the religion—what she found intriguing and useful—and how she came to confront its darker sides.
      As a young woman from a literary family striving to discover her own way as an artist, Hall ricochets between the worlds of Shakespeare, avant-garde theater, and soap opera, until her brilliant elder brother, playwright Oakley Hall III, falls from a bridge and suffers permanent brain damage. In the secluded canyons of Hollywood, she finds herself increasingly drawn toward the certainty that Scientology appears to offer.
      In this candid and nuanced memoir, Hall recounts her spiritual and artistic journey with a visceral affection for language, delighting in the way words can create a shared world. However, as Hall begins to grasp how purposefully Hubbard has created the unique language of Scientology—in the process isolating and indoctrinating its practitioners—she confronts how language can also be used as a tool of authoritarianism.
      Hall is a captivating guide, and Flunk. Start. explores how she has found meaning and purpose within that decade that for so long she thought of as lost; how she has faced the “flunk” represented by those years, and has embraced a way to “start” anew.

SANDS HALL is the author of the novel, Catching Heaven, a Willa Award Finalist for Best Contemporary Fiction, and a Random House Reader’s Circle selection; and of a book of writing essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. She teaches at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, the Community of Writers, Squaw Valley, and is a Teaching Professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. Hall lives in Nevada City.

This event is FREE and everyone is invited.

Poetry with Eileen G'Sell & JoAnna Novak - March 14th

 Time Tested Books

 is thrilled to present 

  Eileen G'Sell: Life After Rugby  

&

 JoAnna Novak: Noirmania

               Wednesday, March 14th, 7:00pm

 

Eileen G’Sell received an MA from the University of Rochester and an MFA in creative writing from Washington University in St. Louis. Features Editor of pop culture at The Rumpus, her cultural criticism and poetry can be found in Salon, VICE, BostonReview, Hyperallergic, DIAGRAM, Conduit, Ninth Letter, and the Denver Quarterly, among other publications. Her chapbooks are available from Dancing Girl and BOAAT Press, and her first full length poetry collection, Life After Rugby, is available from Gold Wake Books early 2018. She currently teaches rhetoric and poetry at Washington University, and creative writing for the Prison Education Project at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center. She lives in St. Louis and New York.

 

 
JoAnna Novak is the author of the novel I Must Have You and the book-length poem Noirmania. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon, BOMB, Guernica, and other publications. She is a founding editor of Tammy, a literary journal and chapbook press.
 

This event is FREE and all are welcome!

Joe Rodota reading/signing new book 'The Watergate' - March 8th

Time Tested Books

is proud to present

Joseph Rodota

Reading & Discussing

The Watergate:
Inside America's Most Infamous Address

Thursday, March 8th, at 7:00pm

A new book by Sacramento author Joseph Rodota reveals the secrets behind the mid-century masterpiece that became synonymous with scandal. The Watergate: Inside America’s Most Infamous Address is an absorbing and meticulously researched history with a remarkable cast of characters, from Monica Lewinsky and Senator Bob Dole to Martha Mitchell and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Please join us for a talk by the author and learn more about the Californians who helped saved the Watergate. Books will be available for purchase.

                                                                         Photo by Steven Ainsworth

The Watergate is one of the most infamous structures in America.  As references to Nixon and impeachment flood the news cycle, the nation is reminded anew of the events that rocked this most exclusive Washington, D.C. address.  But the Watergate complex is so much more than the scandal that shares its name.  For over 50 years, this legendary structure has been an integral part of the Beltway’s daily business. Joseph Rodota unveils its full history for the first time in THE WATERGATE: Inside America’s Most Infamous Address.

This absorbing and meticulously-researched history features a remarkable cast of politicians, journalists, socialites and spies.  Rodota introduces us to these movers and shakers--from Monica Lewinsky and Senator Bob Dole to Martha Mitchell and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg--and presents an entirely new way of looking at the Watergate, one that unpacks its full political, social, and cultural influence. Rodota digs into everything from the building’s fraught design and construction process, the ins and outs of the scandal, and the numerous people of intrigue and import that have called the Watergate their home base. The book is full of Watergate facts and stories that have never before been revealed, including:

*The conflicts over the innovative design for the Watergate -- and why it almost wasn’t built; 

*The role of the Vatican in building the Watergate, and how a scandal in Rome affected the Watergate’s fortunes;

*How the Watergate almost escaped being the site of the 1972 break-in;

*How a Hungarian-born financier and a French chef sought to rescue the Watergate’s reputation; and

*A surprising link between the coal miners of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain and President Ronald Reagan that involves the Watergate.

THE WATERGATE offers an insider’s history of our nation’s capital, through the lens of one of its most famous and consequential buildings.

Joseph Rodota is a writer and consultant who divides his time between California and Washington, DC. He is the author of CHESSMAN, a play about the final days of Caryl Chessman, the “Red Light Bandit,” as seen through the eyes of Governor Pat Brown and his family. Rodota has worked at the highest levels of federal, state, and local politics for more than 30 years. He served as a writer and communications manager in the Reagan White House and as a top campaign and government aide to California Governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In October 2008, as part of a team of bipartisan political consultants who managed the campaign against Proposition 8, Rodota ran the rapid-response “war room.” He has written columns under his own byline for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post and other publications. He is a graduate in history, with honors and distinction, from Stanford University. He is a member of the board of directors of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation in Santa Monica, California, and a former trustee of the Crocker Museum of Art in Sacramento, California.

This event is FREE and everyone is invited.