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Sunday, March 2, 2008

Reading Today

posted by on March 2 at 10:00 AM

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Three readings going on today, and at least one of them should be good.

Firstly, at Third Place Books, Kim Harrison reads from The Outlaw Demon Wails, “the sixth book in her Rachel Morgan series,” a series that includes other bad Clint-Eastwoody titles like For a Few Demons More. I think this is one of those Anita Blake-y romance horror series. There’s also an elf politician in the book: Insert Dennis Kucinich joke here, I’m sure.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Alice Rothchild reads from Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: The Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience. Rothchild “has sought to build alliances between Israelis and Palestinians in opposition to Israeli policies of occupation and to promote a more honest dialogue within the Jewish community in the United States.” It seems to me that if you want to build alliances, you shouldn’t name your website “www.brokenpromisesbrokendreams.com”.

Also at Elliott Bay, Gin Phillips reads from her debut novel, The Well and the Mine, a book set in the deep south that begins with a nine-year-old witnessing a woman throwing a baby down a well. I just read this last week, and it’s a pretty goddamned good book. It’s a southern novel, it’s totally a southern novel written by a southern author, but it avoids most of the southern clichees: there’s no inbreeding or still-running or all that old-timey religion with a hypocritical preacher or anything like that, just decent people trying to do the right thing. It’s probably my favorite new southern novel since Bastard Out of Carolina, and though it’s not as good as Bastard, it’s seriously pretty goddamned good. If you like southern fiction, you should defnitely go.

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

RSS icon Comments

1

I'm going to be honest here: I've read all the Harrison books so far and they are staying at a quality level far higher than recent Anita Blake books. For one, all the characters aren't fucking each other in various permutations instead of, you know, actually forwarding the plot.

Posted by Jessica | March 2, 2008 10:38 AM
2

Those have to be the worst book titles I've ever seen. Jesus.

Posted by Brian | March 2, 2008 11:00 AM
3

The covers are awful, too, but yeah, naming your books after goth-horror puns on Clint Eastwood movies is powerfully, dreadfully lame.

Posted by Fnarf | March 2, 2008 1:00 PM
4

Paul....

I'm a growing fan of your pre- and post-reading reviews. Thanks for doing these!

Posted by JME | March 3, 2008 1:10 AM
5

I lover her books! Into the gray!

Posted by subwlf | March 3, 2008 1:52 PM

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