Books Reading Tonight
posted by on August 12 at 10:03 AM
We’ve got a couple of genreriffic readings tonight.
First, at the Richard Hugo House, there will be a group reading celebrating the release of How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel, which is an anthology of true tales involving travel with children. I hope that there will be a car seat and a camel in attendance. Otherwise, they’re just teasing with no payoff.
Up at the University Book Store, Greg Bear reads from his newest book, City at the End of Time. It’s about a group of people who are “born with the ability to skip like stones across the surface of the fifth dimension.” They’ve all been dreaming of a city that exists, um, at the end of time. Bear writes solid sci-fi, and so if you’re in that late summer I-wanna-read-a-sci-fi-paperback mood, you should head up to the U District tonight.
At the Barnes and Noble in the University Village, John Saul is reading. John Saul, if you’re unfamiliar, is like an untalented tracing of Dean Koontz, who is like a poor man’s Stephen King. So you know you’re in for a good time. His newest novel, Faces of Fear, is about…wait for it…plastic surgery! (Mu-hu-hu-ha-ha-haaaa!) Publisher’s Weekly has this to say about it: “The motive for the killings and the eventual outcome will surprise few readers. The basic premise has a plot hole big enough to fit a truck, but Saul fans may not notice or care if they do.” I don’t know if you notice this, but Publisher’s Weekly is basically calling John Saul fans a bunch of morons.
The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.
I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE John Saul...Back in the day, (meaning the 80's, when it was oool to read Stephen King and other horror writers) I read a couple of Saul's books...they were all variations of some kind of kiddie torture porn.
A slimy, untalented and very rich hack.
I hear we have the car seat, but still working out the camel thing. Our insurance is balking on the coverage. What a bunch of humps!
Greg Bear is a great author, and has a way with words in person as well - highly recommended.
Plus, he's fun at parties. Not as out there as Bill Gibson, but very interesting participant and unassuming as well.
John Saul is openly gay. Not that that makes his books any better -- and probably his type of reader doesn't know (or care) the first thing about him, biographically -- but I couldn't think of another "brand name" mass market genre writer of whom that's true.
From a 2001 interview with The Advocate:
"Saul, a struggling writer, was in Seattle working for Stonewall, one of the first rehab centers tailored to gay and lesbian clients....Having delved into the gay scene in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the 1960s and '70s, he even wrote a semiautobiographical gay novel, later published as A Fairy Tale under the pseudonym S. Steinberg." "Faggots" as written by a Dean Koontz knockoff? I'd almost be curious to read that!
David @4
Clive Barker - but that's the only one I come up with.
There are more.
I find Rita Mae Brown's cat mysteries to be truly terrifying...
ADW,
That's true but even Clive Barker is on the "artsier" end of genre writers compared to what I was thinking of. I meant the kind of writers that professionally churn out their familiar kind of product, whose books you find in supermarkets, airports, Walgreens -- Danielle Steel, Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz, Terry Brooks, Harlequin romances, etc.
"Bear writes solid sci-fi"
Guess it depends on your definition of "solid" and "sci-fi".
I have this sudden alarming feeling that Greg Bear may be a lot of people's first and last exposure to "sci-fi". [shudder]
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