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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Reading Tonight

posted by on February 26 at 10:04 AM

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The Poetry Slam is tonight, along with a book club favorite author, and then there’s a bunch of other things, about which more here:

The Stranger Suggests Box should be popping in at any moment, I’m sure, but this is an additional reminder that tonight is the Ed Lin reading at Elliott Bay Book Company, featuring Anna Marie Hong and Hannah Moon. Lin’s previous book, Waylaid, was a pretty amazing first novel (and it was also made into a movie called The Motel which was also pretty amazing, but you shouldn’t ask questions about that at the reading because readings are usually pretty depressing when all the questions are about movies.)

Speaking of which, Charles Burns is doing a signing and talk at the University Bookstore tonight. I’m sure that there will be a ton of questions about the potential movie adaptation of Burns’ book Black Hole. Expect to hear a lot of clipped “I don’t really know what’s going on with that”s, mixed liberally with some “The movie will be its own thing”s, along with awkward attempts to move on to the next question, which will also be about the movie*.

Jacqueline Winspear is at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop this afternoon and at Third Place Books tonight. I will repeat, one more time, that her mystery is about “a land-buying issue in a picturesque Kent village.” There will be thrills.

And finally, Karen Armstrong is reading from her biography of the Bible at University Temple United Methodist Church. I was flippant about the book in my calendar writeup, but Armstrong does do some decent nonfiction about religion, especially if you don’t know anything about a given religion and you’d like a thorough crash course. There shouldn’t be any proselytizing, hopefully.

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


* Jonah Spangenthal-Lee claims, rather pointedly, that the Fincher Black Hole movie “Is never gonna happen,” and, what with Fincher’s perfectionism, I agree with him. Also, Neil Gaiman on a script is never a good sign anyway: happy endings and oversimplifying will be the order of the day. It’ll probably wind up being directed by Ron Howard and be like American Graffiti meets X-Men. Awesome!

RSS icon Comments

1

Are poetry slams still legal?

Posted by Fnarf | February 26, 2008 10:14 AM
2

I was kind of surprised when I got this job and I realized that the Poetry Slam was still going on. I remember meeting a winner of the slam, almost ten years ago: He'd started to do his hair up like a TV newscaster (his friends informed me that the haircut was new and inspired by the win) and he spent all his time writing poems about writing poetry. I wonder where he is now.

Posted by Paul Constant | February 26, 2008 10:26 AM
3

I went to that poetry slam at Tost once. Beat poetry isn't my favorite, so I haven't made an effort to go back, but the visiting-guest kid the night we went, who had to wait outside until it was time to go on because he was underage, and who had won at some larger beat poetry competition in California or something, was pretty impressive. You know, for a beat poet.

Posted by Aislinn | February 26, 2008 12:12 PM
4

I hope the scowl and 'drop dead' note on his hands are meant to be ironic, or at least a joke. He fails to provoke any fear.

Posted by imagebreaker | February 26, 2008 1:03 PM
5

Is the slam really tonight? The Tost website lists it as every Wednesday. . .

Posted by Ruth | February 26, 2008 1:06 PM
6

It's now on Wednesday nights. Whether it's any good depends on the feature, usually. And as with any open mic format, you're going to have to endure a few painful pieces ("War is bad!") in order to catch flashes of brilliance (Buddy Wakefield, Christa Bell, Danny Sherrard).

@3: Beat poetry? When did you attend, 1967?

Posted by Jeremy | February 26, 2008 3:07 PM
7

@6: No, sometime in the last year. What else would you call it when everyone rants with a specific cadence, or "beat", if you will? It infrequently rhymed, it was often angry... and they all "spit it" in almost the same way. Perhaps I'm using the term too liberally, but it was definitely very "beat"-influenced.

Posted by Aislinn | February 26, 2008 4:45 PM
8

Scowl? That's an ironic smile.

Posted by Ed Lin | February 28, 2008 3:20 PM

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