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Monday, May 5, 2008

Reading Tonight

posted by on May 5 at 10:12 AM

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Two open mics and three readings tonight.

Way up at Third Place Books, there’s a book called How to Raise Your Parents. It’s for teenagers. It’s kind of a field-guidey-type book (Example: A chapter that identifies certain types of parents, with examples like “The Hippie” or “The Schoolmarm” or “The Yuppie.”) It looks like the kind of book that will prepare children for a life of reading The Worst Case Scenario Handbook series.

At Town Hall, Daniel Brook reads from The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All-America. Here is the first line of the Publishers Weekly review of the book:

Twenty-something journalist Brook sees the best minds of his generation scrivening away as corporate lawyers and accountants, and he’s furious about it.

They gain a point for “scrivening,” which makes me think of Bartleby, which automatically gets you a point, but they lose it for using the hyphenate “twenty-something” and they burrow into the negatives for evoking “Howl.” Poorly played, PW.

And, saving the best for last, at Elliott Bay Book Company, Portland author Willy Vlautin (who performs in the band Richmond Fontaine) reads from Northline, his second novel. It comes with a CD. Here’s a link to the title track, which is really very nice. It’s about a woman fleeing a boyfriend. She winds up as a waitress in Reno, as all of us do from time to time.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is on our Books page.

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