Reading is such a solitary pastime; the only beings you share it with are the book’s characters, running through your head. I think one of the reasons people like book groups is that it’s such fun to talk with others about books we’ve read on our separate couches, deck chairs, and beds. Take that idea county wide, fold in various events related to that book, and you’ve got One Book, One Marin. Every year, the San Rafael-based organization of that name selects a novel by a Bay Area author and plans several months’ worth of programs at local libraries and bookstores, culminating in an onstage …

If you’ve ever taken a class or been in a book group that’s met in the larger room of the Book Passage annex, you’ve been in the store’s gallery. Bet you haven’t spent a lot of time looking at the artwork on the walls, though. We tend to think of bookstores as being about words, not images, unless the images are in books, of course. But may I recommend seriously browsing the BP Gallery before the end of the month? The 10 framed prints are by Tom Killion, a Marin-born and based artist who makes unforgettable Japanese-style woodblock prints. While he’s created images of sites in Europe and …

  Last summer, I wrote about jazzman Noel Jewkes, who lives in downtown Larkspur and performs at the Sausalito Seahorse restaurant with a quartet most Tuesday evenings, when he isn’t recording or performing with the likes of John Hendricks, Wesla Whitfield, and Paula West. A lush and lyrical tenor sax player who also swings on soprano sax, clarinet, and occasionally bass, Jewkes is considered “one of the godfathers of Bay Area jazz,” in the words of the late San Francisco Examiner jazz critic Phil Elwood, who knew the scene better than anyone. Elwood said of Jewkes, “I don’t know of a better …

I met a fascinating man a couple of weeks ago, at the ICB Artists Winter Open Studios. Every artist whose workspace we visited was spiffed up for visitors, with paintings on walls or sculptures on shelves but no sign of any work-in-progress. David Ludwig’s big L-shaped studio was an exception.Ludwig, who lives in an Airstream in (most of the time) Larkspur, creates vibrant, intricate works on silk, from shawls and dancing veils to theater backdrops. My friend Jay Gilman and I were wending our way out that day, but when we spotted Ludwig’s colorful designs on a high wall as we walked past his …

If you were inclined to make crass commercial comparisons, you might say that this weekend, the ICB Arts Center in Sausalito is like a shopping mall for arts and crafts lovers. That is to say, the 80-some artists who share space in this four-decade-old artists’ colony are opening their studios for browsing and buying. The ICB Winter Open Studios — so popular even the Chronicle highlighted this year’s event, in last Sunday’s Datebook — features visual, digital, and fiber art, sculpture, prints, photography, fashion, and jewelry.I like open studios because you can see the surroundings in which …

Every time I drive past the marquee at the Lark Theater, I’m tickled by the lineup for this weekend. Brad Pitt as Billy Beane; George Clooney as a presidential contender; plus a special appearance by Gandhi. It’s very guy-centric, this lineup, but still … sports, politics and money, with music for one of the 20th century’s most renowned figures by today’s most famous composer—what a mix!Moneyball, of course, stars Pitt as Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who, using computer analysis to draft players, put together a team of contenders in 2002. Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald calls …

I think most of us know about the high-powered literary couples in our midst, in which both husband and wife are known for their novels and other writing. Those that come most immediately to mind include Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida; Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman; Daniel Handler and Lisa Brown (also an illustrator); and Alice Sebold and Glen David Gold. (I can’t think of any same-sex couples at the moment.)All of these authors have read at Book Passage, where you can’t walk into the Corte Madera branch without noticing the works of the store’s favorite author, Isabel Allende, lined up …

If you’re serious about becoming a stage actor, you go to New York. Patrick Jones, Redwood High class of ’95, did that six years ago, and even achieved a measure of success. But he’s here to tell you that you can go home again, and sometimes you should. In other words, he’s found the “more sustainable and satisfying life” he sought when he came back to the Bay Area about two years ago. Just since May, he’s been in three plays: Metamorphosis, an adaptation of Kafka’s famed story, at the Aurora Theatre, in Berkeley; Exit, Pursued by a Bear, at Crowded Fire Theater, in the city; and the world …

Pamela Feinsilber leads a book group at Book Passage. Her opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Larkspur-Corte Madera Patch. If Patch ever starts handing out awards to local treasures, Book Passage should receive one immediately. This independent bookstore in Corte Madera has defied the odds by staying in business so long, even as chains such as Borders — not to mention far too many non-chain stores — meet their demise. It’s not simply because Book Passage is such a good, reader-oriented store (unlike, in my opinion, its neighbor Barnes & Noble). It’s not only because of its special …

People tend to see Marin as a rock’n’roll county, thinking we’re more into rock here than, say, jazz or classical music. And that may be true, but tell it to the folks at Marin Symphony, or to those who book the entertainment at places like Horizons and the Sausalito Seahorse restaurant. The Seahorse has regular Tuesday night jazz (free) with the Seahorse Quartet. And Horizons, at the other end of Sausalito, has a kind of jazz summit this coming Wednesday night “with Scott Hamilton and Friends,” upstairs in its event space, Ondine. That show sold out so quickly, Hamilton and friends will also…

I don’t know about you, but I don’t get into San Francisco to stroll the art galleries the way I used to. If you love art, that’s such a fine and worthy way to spend a Saturday, don’t you think? But it’s hard to leave Larkspur when it’s so nice and sunny here, and so cold and foggy there. Then again, not every small town has its own art gallery. Larkspur, however, has a nice spacious one (about 1,000 square feet) in a former grocery store smack in the middle of downtown. Robin Critelli founded the gallery with her late husband, Stephen Berg—hence, Gallery Bergelli—11 years ago. Its mission, …

If Bruce Victor did nothing more than go to work and come home to Larkspur again, he’d still have a more active social life than most of us. A psychiatrist with a practice in San Francisco, Victor is the central axis of Acoustic Vortex, the impresario of the house concert I wrote about last time, when I got to see Ramblin’ Jack Elliott in Victor’s living room. “As a psychiatrist,” he says, “I’m interested in removing that which would impair connection. And I’ve always appreciated community and connection. Listening to music is healing on an individual and a collective level.” Victor, a former…

Let's be frank; a lot of us are not that big on the stadium-concert thing anymore. Too crowded, too crazy, too hard to get to wherever it is, find parking, find a seat, and get home again. For some, it's even a hassle to drive into the city to stand in line at Bimbo's or whatnot. It just got a little harder for me, I must say, now that I've fallen into the Acoustic Vortex. This is what Larkspur physician-musician-impresario Bruce Victor calls the house concerts he puts on every three weeks or so. More on him next time—I want to tell you about seeing Ramblin' Jack Elliott with fewer than 100 …

Looking at Jan Gauthier’s sepia-tone photographs—at, for instance, Larkspur’s Marin/Scapes event this weekend—a person is tempted to wonder about her technique. Gauthier, who lives in Corte Madera, concentrates on floral still life and landscapes, photographing most often in Marin. She has beautiful images in color; but her signature style is in the more labor-intensive sepia tone, which adds a haunting, timeless quality to her work. One example (which you can see in her booth at Marin/Scapes) is the serene “Apple Blossoms”—a lone tree with a gnarly, damaged trunk, its waving, wild branches …

“There are only so many shelves in a person’s house to hold what she makes,” says Larkspur-living sculptor Marcia Dalva, one reason she’s showing her work at the Marin Art Festival this weekend. Dalva, who’s been doing fired and glazed clay work for some 30 years, has long been a part of assorted craft shows and street fairs, but this one is her favorite. This year, 250 artists and craftspeople are showing their work. Dalva are selling pieces ranging from tiny owls to the whimsical, three-foot-high “She Decided to Fill Her Empty Nest with Small Red Cats.” Originally, Dalva liked the idea of …

If there is a heaven, Stephanie Moore surely takes a break from whatever she’s doing up there to look down on a Corte Madera kitchen every other Tuesday night. That’s when one of the many writing groups she led continues her legacy by meeting on their own, as they have since her death from ovarian cancer in 2006. This is no wanna-be group. Tanya Egan Gibson’s first novel, How to Buy a Love of Reading, was published in 2009 and came out in paperback a year later. Chris Cole and Amanda Conran have manuscripts with or on the way to big publishing houses. One of Jill Rosenblum Tidman’s short …

Looking ahead, you could say that Karen West has a super-busy week ahead. And you’d be absolutely right, but you wouldn’t be saying anything new. As director of events and conferences for Book Passage’s two stores — the big mainstay in Corte Madera and the small outpost in the San Francisco Ferry Building — West is in charge of all author appearances, literary luncheons, offsite events, community relations, and three weekend-long summer conferences. A typical week will see 13 author visits in Marin and three in San Francisco, not counting the Saturday-morning Market to Table chef and cookbook…

This article was originally published in Larkspur-Corte Madera Patch on April 9, 2011. Mindy Steiner's documentary "Positive Negatives: The Photography of David Johnson" will be shown at the Smith Rafael Film Center this Sunday, April 15, at 4:15 p.m. Mindy Steiner is having a hell of a weekend. OK, her 30-minute documentary, "Positive Negatives: The Photography of David Johnson," actually premiered at the end of January, at the San Diego Black Film Festival — but Monday night, it’s in the Tiburon International Film Festival.Both Steiner and her subject live in Corte Madera, so “the big one …

If you are at all aware of San Francisco Ballet these days — and how could you not be, what with all the colorful banners you see around the City — then Julie Begley is doing her job. Or actually, doing just one of her many jobs as director of marketing and communications for San Francisco’s venerable ballet company.Under artistic director Helgi Tomasson, San Francisco Ballet has been in rare form for many years. His splendid troupe can dance anything, from the most beloved classical ballets (Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty) to stellar dances by masters such as George Balanchine (“Symphony in C”) …

Onstage in their long black dresses and tuxes, the ladies and gents in a professional orchestra like Marin Symphony would seem to have lives as smooth and well-paced as the music they play. You might assume when they’re not rehearsing, they’re home practicing on their strings or woodwinds, percussion or brass, or listening to beautiful music on their state-of-the-art sound systems. Not to say there’s never a broken string or personal crisis, but you might imagine their daily lives are more serene than average, or at least than your own.But you could be wrong. For instance, in addition to …