Three readings today, of very different subjects. At Elliott Bay Book Company, John Graham reads from his memoir Sit Down Young Stranger, a title that I’m pretty sure is supposed to reference a Gordon Lightfoot album. Here’s the writeup for that book:

John Graham shipped out on a freighter when he was sixteen, took part in the first (and only) ascent of Mt. McKinley’s North Wall at twenty, and hitchhiked around the world at twenty-two, covering every war he found along the way as a stringer for the Boston Globe. A Foreign Service Officer for fifteen years, he was in the middle of the revolution in Libya and the war in Vietnam.

What the book description doesn’t tell us is why we should read the book. A very full resume doesn’t make a compelling reading experience.

In more hopeful news, Manil Suri reads at Third Place Books. What can I say? I liked The Death of Vishnu. I’m a little embarrassed that Amy Tan likened it to Anna Karenina, but still: I think he’s a good, solid novelist (not a force of nature or anything) and worth checking out.

And lastly, John W. Marshall a co-owner of Open Books, reads from his first poetry collection, titled Meaning a Cloud. This is worth checking out, especially if you’ve never been to Open Books. I’m thrilled that Seattle can support a bookstore that’s entirely devoted to poetry, and you should be too, even if poetry’s not your thing. It’s the kind of bookstore that makes all these “reading is dead” arguments seem as ridiculous as a pony in roller skates.

Full readings listings, including the next week or so, here.