A little while ago, I wrote about David Ebershoff's amazing debut novel, The Danish Girl:

In early 2001, David Ebershoff released a short, beautiful book called The Danish Girl. The novel, set in the 1920s and '30s, is about a painter named Einar Wegener who, with the tentative blessing of his wife, Greta, becomes the first man to successfully undergo a sex-change operation. The writing is a revelation from the very first page, as Einar, relaxing with Greta in their Copenhagen apartment, paints a roiling black sea:

The neighbor below was a sailor, a man with a bullet-shaped head who cursed his wife. When Einar painted the gray curl of each wave, he imagined the sailor drowning, a desperate hand raised, his potato-vodka voice still calling his wife a port whore. It was how Einar knew just how dark to mix his paints: gray enough to swallow a man like that, to fold over like batter his sinking growl.

In just that half paragraph, the work that Ebershoff does is tremendous: establishing Einar's all-consuming interior doubts, his confusion about gender and marriage, and his worldview. It's ornate and sorrowful, just as one would imagine Einar's paintings to be. It's Ebershoff's portraiture of Einar and Greta's marriage—a partnership in every sense of the word, and a true friendship, as they both transform in new and unexpected ways—that makes The Danish Girl truly exceptional. Most readers don't understand until the end of the novel that the story of the Wegeners is based on real life; Einar was the first successful MTF transsexual in the world, and Greta willingly sacrificed her marital status out of love for her husband.

Word comes from The Vulture Blog that Nicole Kidman has agreed to play Einar Wegener, with Charlize Theron as Greta, in the film version of The Danish Girl. On the one hand, it's probably a good thing for transsexual awareness that Nicole Kidman is playing a MTF in a film, with Charlize Theron as the supportive wife. On the other hand, the appealing thing about The Danish Girl is the writing. Without that, it's just another biopic about overcoming adversity. I want this movie to succeed, and I hope it retains even a quarter of the literary value of the book.

Everything Tom Robbins gets credit for being, Brautigan was. And though I'm more fond of his novels—especially Confederate General in Big Sur and In Watermelon Sugar and The Abortion—Best American Poetry put this poem, "Catfish Friend," on their blog. It's one of my all-time favorite sappy romantic poems, and I'm going to run it here just for you:

Awww. Now to get the cloying taste out of your mouth, here's some writing Charles D'Ambrosio did that references Brautigan. He's a big Brautigan fan—I just accidentally typed "Brautifan," which is oddly appropriate—and the essay he did on Brautigan for Swink Magazine was excellent, although it's currently out of print.

I'm a big fan of Second Coming novels—Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow is a particular favorite, and this one looks cheesily delicious. If any used bookstores in town have this on their shelf right now and available for purchase, please let me know. I will love you forever.

UPDATE: Bookstoregirl, in the comments, found the book and had it put on hold for me at Twice Sold Tales. I just dragged my lazy ass to the bookstore and bought it. In conclusion, I will love both Bookstoregirl and Twice Sold Tales Forever.

Tuesday • November 11 • 7pm Allison Amend Things that Pass for Love

OV Books—an affiliate of the wonderful indie Dzanc Books—presents a collection of short stories by relative newcomer Allison Amend. Allison Lurie, author of the novel Foreign Affairs, says of Amend that she is, "...a gifted storyteller, whose view of contemporary life is often wonderfully acute, original, and surprising."

I have it on good authority that the book is "not terrible," and that you should go to this reading and not the beer one listed earlier. Apologies to Ms. Amend and the University Book Store for the error. Next week's reading calendar is fucking perfect.

(Once or twice a week, I take a new book with me to lunch and give it a half an hour or so to grab my attention. Lunch Date is my judgment on that speed-dating experience.)

Who's your date today? The Lagoon, by Lilli Carré.

Where'd you go? Pizza Fusion, across the street from La Spiga.

What'd you eat? Personal meat pizza ($7.95).

How was the food? It was fine, thin-crust pizza, although the sauce and cheese could both use a little more pep. The cheese was a little on the bland side and the sauce, although peppery, required a whole lot of garlic salt to make the pizza memorable. As a side note, I know I can be an idiot sometimes, but it honestly didn't occur to me until I looked it up just now that Pizza Fusion is a coast-to-coast franchised restaurant. When I thought it was just a start-up, locally-owned restaurant, the slogan ("Saving the World...One Pizza At a Time") seemed annoying, but Seattle-earnest and tolerable. Now that I know they have branches in Kansas, it's flat-out obnoxious. I feel vaguely manipulated, although I have nobody to blame but myself.

What does your date say about itself? "Each member of a family reacts differently to the seductive siren song that can be heard down by the water after dark in Lilli Carré's haunting and lyrical debut graphic novel. Rhythms—Grandpa's taps, the ticking of a metronome—are punctuated by silences in this "sound"-driven story. Readers are invited to imagine an enigmatic creature's haunting, ever-shifting tune as it reverberates through weedy waters, eventually escaping the lagoon to waft through the windows at night..."

Is there a representative quote?

Will you two end up in bed together? Well, we would've, except for I read the whole thing at lunch, twice. It's a really nice story, about a lagoon monster and his relationship with a family. The art, to me, resembles Richard Sala and Charles Burns making sweet, sweet love. I reviewed Carré's short work in the Best American Comics 2008 here, and I was charmed but not blown away. As a first long-form work, though, this is phenomenal.

LAURA Bush is lining up a multimillion-dollar deal to write her memoirs - but the first lady's lame-duck hubby may have to wait years before cashing in on a tell-all about his two troubled terms as president.

"Laura is interviewing publishers who are bidding on her memoirs," one biographer told Page Six. "The publishers are coming to the White House to meet with her and discuss the book."

This is kind of weird, because the great Laura Bush memoir has already been written, as a novel, by Curtis Sittenfeld. It's called American Wife and I reviewed it here. It's obviously going to be more honest than anything the lame duck first lady is ever going to produce:

At first glance, Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife appears to be...a thoughtless, election-year cash grab. (But i)t's a novel about how a thinly veiled analogue for Laura Bush, who by all accounts isn't overly religious or conservative or for the Iraq war, can manage to love a man idolized by only the most right-wing and evangelical wingnuts in the land. The icky truth of it is that, like everyone in a relatively healthy lifelong partnership, she's wildly sexually attracted to him.

If you're at all interested in reading about Laura Bush, the Sittenfeld novel is clearly the way to go.

There is one reading tonight. Brian Yaeger, who is the author of Red, White and Brew: An American Beer Odyssey, reads at the Elysian Brewery's Elysian Fields restaurant, which is in Sodo by Safeco. This blogger at the Barley Vine says this about the book:

Brian's writing style brings out the good and the bad. The good is that its so conversational, and comfortable that you feel as if you're in the car driving cross country with him. The bad is that at times when writing about the local pub scene he can come across a little frat boyish (she didn't know much about beer, but good thing she was cute, that kind of thing). It's a minor knock on my part I know, and it doesn't keep this book from being thoroughly enjoyable, and making me incredible envious of Brian and his trip.

I think you should be able to correctly gauge your interest in the reading based on that writeup.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

Are you doing National Novel Writing Month? Are you having a hard time keeping up? Try Write or Die ("Putting the 'Prod' in Productivity"). Write or Die is a widget that lets you enter a specific time that you need to write for. If you stop writing continuously, the widget will make an obnoxious sound to alert you that you've stopped writing. On the Kamikaze mode, if you stop writing for a certain amount of time, the widget will start deleting words until you start typing again. It's certainly a way to ensure that writers will stay productive.

If you're doing Nanowrimo this month, you should have roughly 17,000 words by now, and you're a third of the way done. If you've successfully made it this far, congratulations. If not, well, write or die.

There are three readings tonight.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Gary Zebrun reads from Only the Lonely, in which a young gay Egyptian-American's dad dies and his brother wants to join an Afghanistani training camp.

At the library, William Least Heat-Moon, who everybody knows as the Blue Highways guy, returns with Roads to Quoz, wherein he follows a historical road trip. This paragraph, from B&N.com, really might signify what the book is like:

What is Quoz? Is it a question or a quibble, quiddity or quintessence? It's foremost a nonce word, a found word, which Least Heat-Moon picked up like a fossil-bearing rock to carry on his journeys, noting that it rhymes with Oz, that troubled realm conjured by the mind of another fevered plainsman.

Um...okay.

And up in Lake Forest Park, they're having a big party to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Third Place Books. Here is a list of authors who will be in attendance: Matt Ruff, Brian Herbert, Julie Paschkis, Ivan Doig, Ann Rule, Ciscoe Morris, Jeffrey Deaver, Jack Prelutsky, Kat Richardson, and I have sources who are "90% certain JA Jance will be there too." This is clearly the books event to attend: where else are you going to get a chance to be in a room with so much literary talent and literary schlock, all at the same time?

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.

In this week's books section, I review four comic books. There's an alcoholic's memoir, a collection of Get Your War On cartoons, this year's edition of the Best American Comics anthology, and a graphic novel interpretation of the Constitution.

Go and learn what's going on in the wide world of funnybooks, won't you?

Joel Magnuson is reading at Elliott Bay Book Company from Mindful Economics: How the U.S. Economy Works, Why It Matters, and How It Could Be Different. A few months ago, you'd probably be all like "Doo-doo-doo, whatever," as you rolled around in your real-estate millions, but now you're all like "O rly?" Welcome to the new economy.

And at the Seattle Public Library, Douglas Smith reads from The Pearl: A True Tale of Forbidden Love in Catherine the Great's Russia. It's about an opera singer's tormented secret marriage. Which sounds interesting, and also sounds like it'll be neutered into an Oscarbait movie in two years, starring Ellen Page in her first serious career misstep.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

In the books section this week, I write about idolizing the most realistic super-hero I've ever encountered:

...like me, Herbie had a heroic side his parents couldn't see. Frankenstein's monster feared him. Movie stars wanted to be him, and mermaids and other beautiful women thought he was dreamy, in part for his marvelous flamenco-dancing skills. Leaders like John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill sought him out for counsel and assistance. George Washington was a fan. With his wit and skills, Herbie made fools out of enemies of America like Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, and even Satan. He traveled through time in a grandfather clock and battled evil cowboys and giant mutated ants. And if a bulldog bit Herbie on the ass, he'd bite that bulldog's ass right back.

Read the whole thing, won't you please?

First off, we have three events going on at the Elliott Bay Book Company today. In the early afternoon, Bucky Sinister reads from Get Up: A 12-Step Guide to Recovery for Misfits, Freaks and Weirdos. This is a book about recovering from drugs and alcohol, not recovering from being a misfit, freak or weirdo. Then, Stephen Botek reads from Song on My Lips: Jazz Greats Were My Mentors, which is a memoir about being mentored by jazz greats. And then, in the evening, John Keeble reads from his "almost Faulknerian portrait of the Pacific Northwest," Yellowfish, which has recently been republished. I have not read it, but I think this would be the reading of the night, just in terms of the stories this man has to be able to tell.

And then, at the Fantagraphics store in Georgetown, JimBill Griffith*, who is the creator of Zippy the Pinhead, will be signing his books. I kind of forgot about Zippy the Pinhead. Back when I read the newspaper every day, it was really nice to read, there at the bottom of the comics page, but I've never really enjoyed entire books of his stuff. Still and all, you've got to respect the guy for holding down his corner of weird for so long in such a sterile environment.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

*I could explain how I pulled up Jim Griffith, but it's a very long story that involves associations with Andy Griffith, a childhood memory, and a not-very-funny story. Apologies to Bill Griffith and to everyone else who read Reading Tonight before I realized my error.

I was really pleased in this week's book section to host David Schmader writing about his long and complex relationship with Nancy.

At the core of every story: the lonely, homely little freak-girl Nancy, who looks like the mutant spawn of Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, and who slogs through her ugly life like Charlie Brown without the crushing self-pity. Nancy's situation could hardly be drearier: Lacking parents of her own (their absence is never addressed), Nancy lives in a loveless arrangement with her single-and-sexy Aunt Fritzi, who offers nothing but scolding and spoonfuls of cod-liver oil. (The one moment of tenderness documented in my well-worn Nancy compilation: Aunt Fritzi's warm feelings upon claiming the $600 tax exemption her annoying dependent affords her.)

You should read the whole thing.