• ANGELO SAMORA-VARGAS
• Thousands of Tucsonans have made it out to the Tucson Festival of Books.

The Tucson Festival of Books hits its third year at the University of Arizona campus. Thousands of Tucsonans are at the festival for workshops, book signings, panels and games.

For the schedule, visit Tucson Festival of Books.

• ANGELO SAMORA-VARGAS
• Books and food on a Saturday afternoon. What else is there?

Local author Lisa Espich's new book, Soaring Above Co-Addiction, has been published by Twin Feather Publishing ($14.95, 176 pages).

Book Summary:

In Soaring Above Co-Addiction, the author shares her own experience of overcoming codependency by utilizing tools such as affirmations and visualization. In this memoir-style self-help book, the reader learns all of the traditional methods of recovery, like detachment and tough love, while also learning to master the power of the mind. This book goes beyond teaching the tools of recovery - it shows readers how to create the life of their dreams.

Local author Terese Graham Brett's new book, Parenting for Social Change, has been published by Social Change Press ($18.95, 147 pages).

Book Synopsis:

Parenting for Social Change is a powerful parenting book that is not about children, but about the harmful cultural messages adults perpetuate in their relationships with children. In this compelling call for change, Teresa Graham Brett addresses the work parents must do to free themselves, the children who share their lives, and the world from these harmful messages. Using current research, she debunks the myth that controlling children is necessary to ensure that they grow into healthy and responsible adults. She also shares her own parenting journey away from controlling and dominating children and provides strategies for letting go of harmful control. Through her experiences as a social justice educator, she demonstrates how changing our parent-child relationships plays a critical role in creating social change.

On Jan. 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger explosed after launch, killing all seven astronauts on board.

One of those astronauts was Commander Dick Scobee, a graduate of the UA College of Engineering.

Now 25 years years later, the Challenger Center for Space Science Education (CCSSE) celebrates its use of science and math to teach students decision-making, problem-solving, teamwork and communication. The Challenger Learning Center has since grown to 48 locations across the U.S. and other nations. They serve over four million students to date.

Here to celebrate the 25th anniversary is Dr. June Scobee Rodgers, the founder of CCSSE.

Rodgers will be signing copies of her new book, Silver Linings, on Saturday, Feb. 26 from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at the UA Bookstore, 1209 E. University Blvd.

There isn't a modern author that means more to me than David Foster Wallace, so even seeing a reminder on Facebook this morning that today would have been his 49th birthday is still weird and disconcerting. I guess it's still a little strange to me that he's gone, but there's still a lot to appreciate in the work he left behind (and an unfinished novel to be released in April).

With his work, there's a lot I would consider among my "favorites", but the graduation speech he gave at Kenyon College (published in 2009 as This Is Water) is what sticks in my head:

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line — maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept. who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness.

Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible — it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important — if you want to operate on your default-setting — then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars — compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.

[WSJ]

While Navin Johnson was awfully excited about the new phone books, I end up walking them from my front door directly to the recycle bin these days. That would be wasteful enough with one phone book, but for some reason, a new one seems to come every few months now, wrapped in a non-recyclable yellow plastic bag that I have to take inside.

I'm aware this is a wildly privileged complaint, verging on white whine, and that some people have real problems, but the reason I mention it is to mention that there's finally a solution: Yellowpagesoptout.com.

The site makes you jump through some hoops, but in about five minutes, you should theoretically be off the delivery route for the various phone book companies, although time will tell. I'll just be happy if I get fewer giant blocks of paper that I have no intention of using.

[HT: Planet Money]

La Paloma Academy will be celebrating books during their Love of Reading Week, Monday, Feb. 7 through Friday, Feb. 11.

Through author readings, special presentations and other fun activities, kids and adults alike celebrate their love of literature and reading. There was a good turnout last year, with many community members participating by reading a book of their choice to one of the school's kindergarten through fifth grade classes.

To learn more about Love of Reading week, or to schedule a time to read to the students, call Alejandra Cardenas at 882-6262.

Ummm, this is disturbing:

I found it in an old stack of children's books we had in storage. It's from a book published in 1981 called Tortillitas Para Mama and Other Nursery Rhymes. From the introduction:

These familiar rhymes, which kindle feelings of warmth, security and love, are gathered in this book to both preserve them for the Spanish community and to acquaint others with their charm.

Another poem explains that good tortillas go to papa, while the burnt ones go to mama. Were things really that fucked up in 1981?

A new cookbook, Eat Mesquite!, from the nonprofit, volunteer-run group Desert Harvesters has just been published. It features more than 150 mesquite-based recipes celebrating desert life. The book is available locally for $20.

Tucson Weekly arts editor Margaret Regan will be signing the new paperback version of her book, The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands, at the Arizona Historical Society's 35th Annual Holiday Bookfair this weekend.

She and two dozen other local authors (Tom Miller, Bernard L. Fontana, Lydia Otero, etc.) will be offering their tomes at a holiday-friendly 20 percent off. The historical society benefits, too. The literary fun goes from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 10, and from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11. Discounts will be offered in the Arizona Mercantile gift shop. Activities for the kiddies take place on Saturday.

Arizona Historical Society, 949 E. Second St., 628-5774; www.ArizonaHistoricalSociety.org
Free parking one block west in the UA parking garage at the corner of Second Street and Euclid Avenue.