Authors’ Sala Reading Cathi and Steven House Joseph E. Persico Fri, Mar 6, 5pm St Paul’s Church  Calle Cardo 7 50 pesos

Light, embrace and the writing life
By Kimberly Kinser

The San Miguel Author’s Sala presents an evening of architectural movement and light plus the reflections of a bestselling historian and biographer.

Cathi and Steven House met in their first year of the Virginia Tech architecture program, and have been perfecting their unique method of creating homes for 30 years. They will show slides from their recently published monograph, Houses in the Sun: light movement embrace, which details 20 of their projects north and south of the Mexican/US border. 

The Houses have spent years studying small villages, “keeping grounded in the fullness of architecture.” Cathi House describes the process she and Steven have created for designing or remodeling a home as “intimate.” They use extensive questionnaires to identify how their clients will interact with the dwelling, and diagrams to explore how the dwelling will interact with the land. “We wait as long as possible before the building appears,” Cathi explains. 

The Houses focus on both physical movement—of a body walking from room to room—and the emotional, mental and spiritual movement of their clients. The end product is both an embrace and a sculpted space.

Joseph E. Persico speaks on The Writing Life: The Stories Behind My Books. “From the beginning, I was struck by certain inevitabilities in writing nonfiction,” Persico says. For example, “the impossibly of achieving total objectivity, of getting the entire story; the pitfalls of interviewing; and the recognition that in a few hundred pages we can never capture completely any person’s life or any era in history. We do our best, but only achieve an incomplete mosaic. I’ll illustrate how one author dealt with these challenges.” 

Eric Sevaried described Persico’s biography, Edward R. Murrow: An American Original, as “definitive.” Persico’s Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial was adapted by Turner Network Television as a miniseries that won two Emmy Awards. Persico was the collaborator on former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey, which spent 20 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. His latest book is Franklin and Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd and the Other Remarkable Women in His Life.

Rare Book Sale Thu, Mar 5, 12, 19 & 26, 10am–1pm Biblioteca patio Insurgentes 25

Super-Bodega sale

In March, the Bodega adds a special section of rare and collectible books, valued from 50 pesos to 5,000. The books are from the many donations the library receives. On February 23, the library received a literal truck-load of donated books, which will enhance the rare book section and boost the regular Bodega book offerings by 50 percent. The wise book scout will be waiting outside the main door well before the 10am opening on March 5.

Each Thursday, 10am–1pm, more volumes will be added to the special section on the Biblioteca patio. This sale provides additional funds for the library. The Bodega de Sorpresas has helped fund the Biblioteca’s scholarship programs for decades through weekly sales of books and other items.