Everyone in my family gets books from me for their birthdays and Christmas. It used to be because I had a pretty big discount as a bookseller, and I also, as a bookseller, made very little money. But now I figure that they are sometimes the only books that members of my family read in the course of a year, even if they're just trying to be polite.

My Dad's always the toughest when it comes to books. He won't read fiction ("Why would I want to read something that's made up?") and so I usually send him a picture book about baseball. This year, for Father's Day, I went to Bailey/Coy and shipped a copy of Obama's memoir, Dreams of my Father, to my dad. I did this because a few years ago he got cable and started watching Fox News and I'm, quite frankly, sick of hearing him talk about politics. I'll tell him that if he wants to talk politics with me, he'll have to read this book first. Plus, I figure my mom--who jumped on the Obama train a while back--will read it.

I don't usually do this, but it sounds too neat to pass up--if you're still looking for something for a gift for Father's Day, Powell's has a new subscription club. Every six weeks, they ship subscribers a couple new hardcover novels (primarily from independent presses) that the staff recommends. Also, they throw DVDs and CDs and/or chocolate in there, too, to keep things interesting.

Closer to home, Elliott Bay Book Company has something called Maiden Voyage, where subscribers get a different first-edition novel by a first-time novelist in the mail, six times a year.

If you're lucky enough to have dad who reads fiction, maybe you should think about signing him up for one of these. If you have a dad who vomits Bill O'Reilly all over you, maybe you should think about Dreams of my Father.

Apparently, the Rowling-penned (and handwritten!) Harry Potter prequel is available for you to read online. Potter-lovers, you can't say I never gave you anything.

There are so many readings tonight, including a couple open mics, a book about a day in the life of a hospital, a book of poetry, a book about populism, and a book about one of the "least understood rivers in the world."

And also Salman Rushdie is reading at two places today. He's at Elliott Bay Book Company at noon for a free reading and signing, and then he's at Town Hall this evening. His new novel, The Enchantress of Florence, is getting great reviews in some places, and terrible reviews in other places. Generally, the reviewers that I trust have loved it. I happened across USA Today's review of the book:

The best thing about Salman Rushdie's tiresome and confusing new novel The Enchantress of Florence is its lovely gold and orange cover.

At the bookstore, admire the cover, then move on.

Such wit, from USA Today, no less! Dorothy Parker, is that you? Why are you writing under the pen name Dierdre Donahue? Also, in the comments section to the above review, a commenter named U.S. Patriot has this to say about Rushdie:

Non of books ever cast any spells. His books were the ravings of a mind on LSD.

That settles that. Moving on, at the University Book Store, Lou Rowan reads from My Last Days. It's a book about Superman, kind of in the style of the great novel Super Folks, by Robert Mayer, only a little vaguer.

And at the Richard Hugo House, their writer in residence, Wendy Call, is leaving, and they're throwing a reading/party to celebrate her two years in office. Cienna Madrid starts as writer in residence there this fall. Call has done--and will continue to do--some important work on globalization, and I haven't had the time to write about her yet, but she deserves your attention, and possibly the honor of your attendance this evening.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is updated and ready for you.

Well, that headline is a little misleading. Three female British poets have refused the title of Poet Laureate. One refused it because it's archaic, one likes her quiet life, and then I love this quote, by Fleur Adcock:

"It's terribly hard work for very little pay," she said. "The poet laureate is fine as an institution, as long as I don't have to do it."

The job pays five thousand pounds a year and 630 bottles of Spanish sherry. Poet Laureate used to be a lifetime position in the U.K., until Ted Hughes died, whereupon it was lessened to a ten-year stretch, which still seems like an awful long time to be laureating.

Via Bookninja.

Over on Amazon's Omnivoracious blog, Stranger contributor Tom Nissley snapped a photo of a woman he nominates for Reader of the Year. I wonder what she'd say if she was forced to choose between her cigarette and her book.

I've seen some other hardcore readers who might be up for the title, though. I wrote about one in Constant Reader a while back: She was a young lady who was so engrossed in a copy of The Idiot that she didn't even notice a fistfight that broke out literally right in front of her. This wasn't "Oh, God, I'm going to ignore these crazy people" reading; she was making passionate love to Dostoevsky's words with her eyes. And I saw a man reading a business management book while driving on I-5 a few weeks ago (memo to aforementioned man: fucking stop it!) Not to mention people who read while they walk on the sidewalk, who are my personal heroes when they're not running directly into me.

Susie Bright brings news of a new book deal:

Devoted wife, Charla Muller, wanted to give her husband an unforgettable present for his 40th Birthday. This is what she came up with: sex, every single night, for 365 days.

And she wrote a book about it. Muller is reportedly Christian, has children, and describes her sex life thusly: "My cheese was every so slowly slipping off my cracker."

Her book, 365 Nights, comes out later this month. I'm trying to figure out if I actually want to read it or not.

(Thanks to Slog tipper Bethany.)

Last week, David Sedaris said that his essays were 97% true and 3% embellishment. This week, Barnes and Noble shelves Sedaris' newest book under fiction.

This is ridiculous.

I think there are lots of allegedly non-fiction books--biographies and journalism and historical narratives--that are at least 3% made up, either accidentally or on purpose. This supposedly razor-thin line of fact and fiction, and the repeated attempts of bookstores and libraries to keep the one from tampering with the other, is out of control. Is Oprah going to yell at David Sedaris now?* Are booksellers and librarians trying to protect the reader from fraud? Is there anyone who seriously worries about this kind of thing?

Continue reading "The 3% Solution" »

Over at the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg has an interview with McCain on the Middle East. Parts of it are completely terrifying when you consider they're coming from someone who wants to be president:

JG: What do you think motivates Iran?

JM: Hatred. I don’t try to divine people’s motives. I look at their actions and what they say.

Also, the part where he comes out solidly against genocide, but only if it's a fight that we can win, is pretty illuminating.

But since I'm the book guy, here's what caught my attention:

JG: A final question: Senator Obama talked about how his life was influenced by Jewish writers, Philip Roth, Leon Uris. How about you?

JM: There’s Elie Wiesel, and Victor Frankl. I think about Frankl all the time. “Man’s Search for Meaning” is one of the most profound things I’ve ever read in my life. And maybe on a little lighter note, “War and Remembrance” and “Winds of War” are my two absolute favorite books. I can tell you that one of my life’s ambitions is to meet Herman Wouk. “War and Remembrance” for me, it’s the whole thing.

Then there’s Joe Lieberman, who lives a life of his religion, and who does it in the most humble way.

JG: Not a big Philip Roth fan?

JM: No, I’m not. Leon Uris I enjoyed.

First of all, and not just from this interview: I get the sense that McCain is seriously considering Lieberman for vice president. Second of all: Leon Uris over Phillip Roth? Talk about an old man's taste for books...

Only four readings tonight.

Up at Third Place in Lake Forest Park, Jana Kohl reads from A Rare Breed of Love: The True Story of Baby and the Mission She Inspired to Help Dogs Everywhere. It's about puppy mills, and it features a three-legged dog, which is always about the saddest, sweetest thing on the face of the planet. I especially have a soft spot for three-legged dogs named Tripod.

At the Seattle Public Library, Robert Thurman reads from Why the Dalai Lama Matters. I'm not a big fan of magazine articles titled "Why X Matters," and a book with that title--especially one about somebody who hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people obviously care about--is way down low on my list of things to read. However, if you're a weird fame tracker, Bob Thurman is the father of Uma. I doubt that Uma will be there, but you'd at least be one step closer to fame than you were yesterday.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Jen Sookfong Lee reads from The End of East, about a family of Chinese immigrants getting used to Vancouver. That's all I got on this one.

And up at the University Book Store, Nisi Shawl is reading from her new book, Filter House. Nisi is a local author who writes science fiction and also reviews books for The Seattle Times. She has turned me on to lots of books, and she's a smart, pleasant, and lovely lady. Unless you're fundamentally drawn to puppies or Uma Thurman, this should be the reading to attend tonight.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is somewhere out there.

So I wrote about Dungeons & Dragons in last week's Constant Reader because the 4th Edition was coming out. I also said on Saturday that I would go to Worldwide D&D Day at Neumo's and report back on how it was.

This is how it was: Wizards of the Coast rented out Neumo's from 9 to 5 on Saturday so that anybody could come and play Dungeons & Dragons. I walked into Neumo's, got a wristband, walked into the main room, and saw that Neumo's was packed with hundreds of people at tables playing Dungeons & Dragons. There were men and women. There was a giant Beholder statue. There were bags of Doritos. Because of the Doritos smell, I had a flashback to those six or seven times I played Dungeons & Dragons as a teenager.

I immediately left Neumo's and didn't return.

We have a mystery, a novel about a woman becoming a barista, an open mic night, and a couple other events going on tonight.

Up at Third Place Books, Megan Chance reads from The Spiritualist, which is about death at a séance. I haven't read it, and so I can't endorse it. I did read a book a few years ago on the same subject, called Inamorata, which was pretty good. So, you know, if this sounds like something you're interested in, go and listen to the reading to check it out and if it doesn't work for you, pick up Inamorata. Reading problems solved!

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Dalia Sofer celebrates the paperback release of The Septembers of Shiraz. This is another one that I didn't read, because it struck me as one of those Kite Runner-y books, intended to show book club members that people in Iran are just like us, you know, weighed down with conflicted feelings and melodramatic situations and whatnot. But then I met people who read the book and liked it and hated The Kite Runner. So now I don't know what to think.

Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone, is at Town Hall, reading from Panic in Level 4. There are stories about men with two noses, and stories about finding the Ebola Patient Zero. If you want to up your paranoia levels, be sure to attend.

Lastly, and bestly, at Seattle Public Library, Russell Banks reads from his new nonfiction collection, Dreaming Up in America. I feel as though Russell Banks never gets the respect that he deserves. The man wrote The Sweet Hereafter, which is one of the best books written last century, and a book that I read right after September 11th. It kept me from going apeshit. True, he wrote some bad, early books, but I will follow him forever just for that one book. And you should, too.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is up for your edification.

Two readings today, which is pretty good for a Sunday.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, we have Myrna Capp and Kristin Capp. They will be reading from Keeping the Embers Alive. It's a book of photographs and interviews and all sorts of things like that about the musicians of Zimbabwe.

Later this afternoon, up at Third Place Books, there'll be a party in celebration of Spindrift. Spindrift is the Shoreline Community College Art and Literary Journal. There will be an open mic in addition to the celebration. celebrates a new issue's release with an open mic. There will be refreshments, too.

Here is a poem from Spindrift's website:

Wedding Dress
by Jerimiah Rice

Rogue demons haunt the dress you wore
On a wedding night
Painfully clear in your memory
The day “I do” became the ultimate pitch
And lips with a kiss, transparent
Slipped clean through
All the jagged smiles like ripped canvas now
Hushed, blotted out by a soft spring rain
That dress, staring through button eyes,
Beady and wretched
Trying with infinite might to force a tear,
But tears wash away on days like this
And sad memories are nothing more than a
Tattered cloth with faded colors
Forgotten by time and replaced

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

We have an open mic, a book about a painter, and a thriller about fighting terrorists today, as well as a few other readings of interest.

There are two readings at Elliott Bay Book Company: Jenny Block, who the press notes describes as a "a suburban wife and mother," reads from her new book Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage. We might be running a review of this one in upcoming weeks. Here's a question: Do people still have key parties? I never found one in two and a half years of Party Crashing, so perhaps the time has come and gone.

Seth Kantner reads later that evening at Elliott Bay. Kantner wrote a novel called Ordinary Wolves that was really very popular in the Northwest. I didn't read it, because I have a job and can't read everything. But Kantner is back with Shopping for Porcupine, which is a collection of essays and photographs. The buzz for this one was pretty high at Book Expo America; people were excited to read it, and I am, too.

Also, at Neumo's from 9 am to 5 pm, Wizards of the Coast will be celebrating Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day, marking the release of the new fourth edition with sample D&D games. I'm going to go at some point today (most definitely not in the morning), and if you're not going, I'll let you know how it went. I wrote about the new edition of D&D in this week's Constant Reader:

...this month, D&D is releasing a brand-new fourth edition intended to fight the online competitors by cleaning up a lot of the rules—it now takes a matter of minutes to create a new character, rather than a few hours—and D&D itself now has an online component.

Lastly, up at 826 Seattle, a class on comics by young people is having a release party for their book, titled Happiness? I know that David Lasky, who was on The Stranger's Genius shortlist last year, is a teacher of the class, and I know that comics by young people are almost always fascinating. The art above is from one of the stories from the book. The publicist at 826 also says that there will be cupcakes, and "milk in fancy glasses." You won't be getting that at the open marriage reading.

Check the full readings calendar for more information.

We have a student reading, a tough-guy mystery, and a book about utopia today, as well as some other things.

Up at Third Place Books, Jennie Shortridge reads from The Coffee Shop at the Center of the Universe, which is about a woman who finds a new life as a barista. I found a new life as a barista once. The pay and the hours sucked, but having a little tax-free pocket money at the end of the day was really nice. Tip your barista, folks!

At the Seattle Public Library, we have David Guterson, the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, with his new novel The Other. It appears to be about two friends and a web of lies. And it's local, for those of you who enjoy reading about the area of the country in which you live.

At University Village Barnes and Noble, Dale Brown, author of military-type action-fests, reads from his new one, Shadow Command. This one isn't well-received, even from big Brown fans. From Amazon, where the book is receiving a one-star review from readers like odyssey "odyssey," which shows the hope that springs eternal in thriller fans:

Silly characters aside, you can always count on Dale Brown to put you in the cockpit. Until now. Gone are intense and lengthy action sequences of flight. Instead we receive mundane politics set in a predictable mideast upheaval. I can't wait for his next novel. He must be rested and ready to get us all back into flightworthy action. There wasn't any here.

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, James W. Douglas reads from JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. This isn't a nutso conspiracy book, by the way, and I've heard JFK's name being bounced around so many times in comparison with a certain Democratic presidential nominee whose name rhymes with Tarack Bobama that people who are interested should come and check this reading out. Being compared with JFK has its good points and its bad points.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is up and running.

Back in April, Jen read a book called My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy that pissed her right off.

So she wrote this review, which didn't run for a few weeks. It finally came out last week and she's still coming by my desk, saying "I'm very worked up about this."

Behold! The worked-upédness of Jen Graves!

In response to Andrea Askowitz's 237-page complaint memoir called My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy, I'd like to propose another book called I'll Give You Something to Be Miserable About.

In that book, the female protagonist would be forced—no!—to work a paying job. She'd spend her pregnancy worrying about saving money to pay the rent during her maternity leave. She'd spend maternity leave rushing around researching day-care centers.

Instead, as the book begins, Askowitz has been working an all-volunteer job for some five years. Working while pregnant gets rather inconvenient, so she quits the job shortly before the birth. After the birth, she hires a helpful nanny (whose existence is acknowledged only in the thank-you section after the end of the book, along with her bicoastal writing groups).

Somewhere in there, she writes the book, in which she complains about how hard it was to get inseminated (sperm bank, two tries) and have a baby alone and as a lesbian, although all this solitude and alienation turns out to rest on one hell of a support network of family, friends, and, apparently, if you read between the whines, independent wealth.

It is unfortunate that none of Askowitz's supportive compatriots was supportive enough to tell her to shut the hell up—or to wrestle with the elephant of economics lounging in the middle of her book. What promises to be a warts-and-all account of one woman's struggle, instead makes mock of the real, class-based travails of single parenthood. The fact she thought she could write around money makes the book feel deceitful. For the purposes of today's lesson in Suffering 101, suffice it to say that you can't have your baby, your struggle memoir, and your nanny, too.

See what happens when you whine in print, Askowitz? You've pissed off the wrong lady.

In last week's Constant Reader, I wrote an open letter to Chuck Palahniuk, including a little bit about his fourth novel, Choke:

I liked your first three novels quite a bit—Survivor, Fight Club, and Invisible Monsters, I thought, made kind of a trilogy of ridiculous, and somehow bighearted, American nihilism—and while your next novel, Choke, was a misfire akin to other novelists' sophomore slump, you were clearly trying to struggle free from the cynicism that had enveloped your work. You were trying to grow.

I saw the film adaptation of Choke yesterday, and my review is here. The movie is such a studious adaptation of the novel that people who loved the book are sure to at least find the movie inoffensive, if not great. The weirdest part of the whole thing is the casting: Anjelica Huston seems too young to be a woman suffering from dementia in the present-day bits, but she seems too old to be a mother of a young boy in the flashbacks. And Sam Rockwell looks too old to be a passive young man working at a Colonial Williamsburg-type park.

The person I really feel the worst for in all this is Rockwell; he's finally turned out a bland performance. I've absolutely loved him in everything he's ever done--even Charlie's Angels, for crying out loud--but this role, which should be perfect for him, is a flop.

There are great scenes that will please fans of the book by how closely they hew to the novel. Lascivious male viewers will find all the breasts and sex scenes they could ever want in a mainstream American movie. But it doesn't work, put all together. and the soundtrack--so generic that I can't even describe it, really, it just sounds like every generic independent film of the last ten years--doesn't work at all.

Choke screens tonight and on Saturday afternoon.

It just occurred to me that I should start some sort of a book awards awards. We could call them the Wardies. They would go to the most and least important book awards of the year.

A frontrunner for Most Important Wardie would go to The Believer Book Awards, which just named Tom McCarthy's amazing The Remainder the best book of last year. It wasn't the best book of the year but, it came pretty goddamned close. You can read a sample over at The Believer's website. And if you're interested in buying The Remainder, it'll be relatively painless, too, because it was a paperback original.

And a frontrunner for Least Exciting Wardie has to be The Rose Tremain winning the Orange Broadband Prize. Since my new motto is “is it true, is it kind, is it helpful”, I will say that I have no further comment on the Orange Broadband Prize or Rose Tremain.

I'm not sure why, exactly--though my ancestors are from there, I don't speak the language, and I've never had much desire to travel there--but sometimes I go on huge French novel-reading jags. French writers have a sort of sensibility that I really, really admire. It's impossible for me to articulate exactly what that sensibility is, though. I enjoy Michel Houellebecq's antagonizing just as much as Raymond Queneau's playfulness, and though the two don't seem at all similar, I think that there's a thread that connects them. Could it be their Frenchness? Who can say?

But if you've never read French fiction before, the Seattle Public Library's blog has a lovely post up right now describing some of the greats and why you should read them. I've read most of the authors and books listed, although I'm excited to learn about the existence of a French mystery series by an author who goes by Fred Vargas. The prospect of a French policeman hunting down a French serial killer in a novel seems right up my alley.

(A few times 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? Personal Days, Ed Park's debut novel.

Where'd you go? Peso's, on lower Queen Anne.

What'd you eat? The crab and avocado melt on open-faced English muffins ($11.75.)

How was the food? The reviewers on our review page are less than kind to Peso's, and I can understand why. It's kind of a young urban professionals meat-market. I've gone there twice at night--I had a friend who liked the staff--and it was a miserable experience, unless your ideal bar experience calls for endless shots. But the food, when I go for breakfast or lunch or happy hour, is usually good. And the crab melt was terrific. Though the motherfucker sure was rich: whole pieces of real crab and just-right avocado with cheese and a mound of fries, along with a mayo-chipotle dipping sauce. I'm just about set for the day, food-wise, I reckon. The server was polite and quick. I could've done without the classic rock soundtrack--for me, eating to the dulcet tones of Boston is slightly more appealing than eating a four-course meal in a bathroom--but I'd definitely come back for a fancy lunch.


What does your date say about itself? Park was a founding member of The Believer. It's about workers in an office who are starting to get fired with a terrifying frequency. There is a blurb from Helen DeWitt, the brilliant author who wrote The Last Samurai (no relation to the awful Tom Cruise movie), which was one of the best debuts of the last ten years: "With Personal Days, Ed Park joins Andy Warhol and Don DeLillo as a master of the deadpan vernacular." I've never seen a blurb by DeWitt before. People in the book business refer to Park writing a lot of Nabokovian wordplay, also.

Is there a representative quote? "Laars looks gaunt these days, his floppy hair hanging limp around his temples...He confesses to spending his evenings nursing Scotch before his computer at home, Googling himself until the wee hours. There's a person out there who shares the same name, incredibly enough. Person or persons. He's found himself in Appalachian hiking e-gazettes, antique typewriter societies, and University of Alaska alumni newsletters. I must destroy him, he says...No doubt he's Googled everyone in the office, uncovering secrets nestled in the thirty-fifth screen of results. Jack II says that when you feel a tingling in your fingers, it means someone's Googling you. We take to this bit of instant folklore immediately."

Will you two end up in bed together? Yes. If you told me two weeks ago that I'd love a second book set in an office written in the first person plural this year, after Then We Came To the End, by Joshua Ferris, I would have slapped you in the face and called you Sally. But I do love it. (It helps that I've heard that it doesn't keep up with the "we" narrator all the way through.) Park is coming to town on the 16th, and this is very exciting. I can't wait to leave here tonight so I can finish the book.

In 2000, Rolling Stone ran an essay by David Foster Wallace, in which the author rode on John McCain's Straight Talk Express for a few weeks. Wallace, of course, is one of the smartest human beings on earth--I generally prefer his essays to his fiction, incidentally--and the essay is pretty great. Wallace kind of falls under McCain's spell, though not so much that he'd actually vote for him.

Back Bay Books is repackaging the essay, which can also be found in Wallace's last book of essays, Consider the Lobster, as a standalone, $10 book called McCain's Promise: Aboard the Straight Talk Express with John McCain and a Whole Bunch of Actual Reporters, Thinking About Hope. I would suggest buying Consider the Lobster instead, because for four bucks more, you get about six extra essays, including the title essay which considers whether lobsters actually feel pain when you boil them.

Thing is, and hopefully the foreword to the book will acknowledge this, 2000 John McCain and 2008 John McCain are entirely different beasts. The Wall Street Journal talked with Wallace about this last week:

The essay quite specifically concerns a couple weeks in February, 2000, and the situation of both McCain [and] national politics in those couple weeks. It is heavily context-dependent. And that context now seems a long, long, long time ago. McCain himself has obviously changed; his flipperoos and weaselings on Roe v. Wade, campaign finance, the toxicity of lobbyists, Iraq timetables, etc. are just some of what make him a less interesting, more depressing political figure now—for me, at least. It's all understandable, of course—he's the GOP nominee now, not an insurgent maverick. Understandable, but depressing.

I (heart) David Foster Wallace.

(UPDATE: I forgot to say "via Galleycat." Sorry Galleycat.)

Criminy, there's a lot going on tonight, including an open mic; two poets on power, sexuality and mortality; a book about adopting a child from another country; and a book about two women in conversation that was originally inspired by a painting.

At the Ballard Branch of the SPL, Dan White reads from The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind and Almost Found Myself on the Pacific Crest Trail. There are bears in the book. Otherwise, it looks like another one of those books about someone who does something outdoorsy and possibly stupid and barely lives to tell the tale.

David Guterson, who I wish answered to the nickname The Goot, reads from his new novel, The Other, at Barnes and Noble in University Village. I do not know anyone who's read the book as of yet, so I can't tell you if it's good or bad. I can tell you, however, that Guterson is local and will read at virtually every venue in the next few days, so you don't need to go to University Village tonight if you want to see him.

Up at Third Place, Lee Child reads from Nothing to Lose, which is about "two lonely towns in Colorado: Hope and Despair." I think that might be what the kids call 'symbolism.'

Thomas J. Campanella, who is the "associate professor of urban planning at the University of North Carolina" discusses The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Expect wonk, but expect very important wonk.

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, Tony Horwitz, the author of that Confederates in the Attic book that was all the rage (and for good reason) a while back, reads from A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World. Booklist says that his new one is "what could be described as a guide for those who are historically ignorant of the “lost century” between the first voyage of Columbus and the establishment of Jamestown in 1607." I think this looks like the reading of the night.

Or, if Artwalk-style whimsy is your thing, over at Arundel Books on 1st Ave, which is a nice bookstore for bargain hunters of art books that I don't get to write about too often, Michael C. Ford will conduct the world's shortest poetry reading promptly at 7 pm. I am told that if you are even one minute late, or if you in fact blink at the wrong time, you will miss the poetry. If you want to make a night of it, you can attend this reading and then still have time to get to the Horwitz reading down the street.

Upcoming readings, including a couple with The Goot, are on our readings calendar.

This summer's Adrian Tomine New Yorker Fiction Issue cover is great.

In case you can't make it out on your browser: It's a woman receiving a package from Amazon.com looking guiltily at an independent bookseller who happens to be arriving at his bookstore at the same time. When Tomine's hot, he's hot.

Borders lays off 245 corporate employees.

Borders said Tuesday the cuts represent about 20 percent of its corporate jobs, but less than 1 percent of its total work force.

When I worked there, almost a decade ago now, I was positive that if Borders cut their corporate staff by half, it would kick Barnes & Noble's ass because the employees would presumably have more of a say in the store's selection of books and each Borders would be more of a local bookshop. I'm willing to be that that's not what's going to happen now.

Something's rotten in Nampa, Idaho:

The Nampa Public Library Board has voted to permanently remove two sex education books from library shelves, storing them instead in the library director's office and making them available only on request.

The board voted 3-2 Monday to have The New Joy of Sex and The Joy of Gay Sex kept off shelves for good, following up on a March meeting when the board voted to temporarily move the books to the director's office.

The books, which contain drawings and photos of sexual activity, first drew criticism in 2005 from Randy Jackson, director of a Christian activist group called "Youth 4 Revolution," based in Nampa.

Board members in 2006 unanimously rejected Jackson's request to remove the books from the shelves. But three new board members had since been appointed by Nampa Mayor Tom Dale. All three, Bruce Skaug, Kim Keller and Sandy Levi, voted to remove the books.

(Via Bookshelves of Doom.)

There is a gigantic slate of readings tonight including a couple of mysteries and a Poetry Slam.

First, at the Seattle Public Library, we have C.D. Wright reading from Rising, Falling, Hovering. Angela Garbes tells you why you should go:

There is no one like Wright. Her voice—crackling and edgy, corporeal and erotic—carries with it the sound and feeling of her birthplace, the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, though she's lived the last 20 years outside of Providence, where she teaches at Brown University. She has an uncanny and characteristic reverence for both the vernacular and the esoteric, which leads to riveting and rare depictions of American culture.

If you're more into fiction, Nam Le reads from The Boat, a collection of seven stories, at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight. I have not read Nam Le, but he is a young author under 30 who has already won the Pushcart Prize, so that pretty much certifies that he is a specific kind of good, at the very least.

Up at the University Book Store, Steven Wax reads from Kafka Comes to America: Fighting For Justice in the War on Terror. It's about civil rights. And down at Town Hall, Michael Kinsley reads from a collection of essays. Kinsley can be very wrong, but he is also frequently right-on.

And at the Chapel Performance space, Doug Nufer is reading with Janet Sarbanes as part of the Subtext reading series. Doug Nufer is a kick. Andrew Bleeker reviews Nufer's latest, We Were Werewolves, also in the paper this week:

You can tell a Doug Nufer reading by the kind of laughter it inspires. Nufer won't ask his audience for those wan chuckles chuckled by initiates in the presence of a flattering joke. That's too easy for the author of Poem Noir, an increasingly elaborate series of poems that bends a sparse, hardboiled lexicon until it turns white-hot and creaks with genius. Nufer's audiences laugh from pure surprise, and Nufer's books remain surprising after multiple reads.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is up for your perusal.

Since you're all crazy about sexy librarians, Slog tipper Davida directs me to this photo:

From the Law Librarian blog. Myself, I'm not crazy about the shoes. This whole pointy-shoe thing drives me crazy in a anti-boner kind of way.

_{Image from Vice magazine's photo spread of Swedish librarians, which is the greatest thing that Vice magazine has ever done.}

Just got a press release announcing that the Seattle Public Library's ask-a-librarian program, which Christopher enthusiastically wrote up almost two years ago on Slog, is now available on IM.

To IM a librarian, you just have to go to SPL's main page and, as the presser says:

...click the “Find” button without typing any text into the catalog keyword search box. The chat box will be on the right side of the screen. Type in your question or message where it says “Your question/message” and click “Send.” The staff member’s response will appear and the user can respond by writing another message and clicking “Send” again.

I hate using phones. This is good news.

Tonight we have a class on how to write. At the same time in a different place, two classes about how to write will be reading their work (one on memoir, one on fiction), and then there's a total sausage-fest in the literary community tonight.

At the Faire Gallery and Cafe, which is always a lovely place to spend some time, David Shields will be reading from his new (well, not-so-new at this point) memoir, The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll be Dead. Charles reviewed this one back in February and he liked it.

Up at Third Place, Eric Liu reads from The True Patriot, which is a skinny little book on how to be patriotic. The publisher says "the principles of true patriotism — country above self, responsible stewardship, equality, shared sacrifice and service — are inherently progressive."

At Town Hall, Carl Zimmer reads from Microcosm, which is about E. coli. This doesn't look like one of those "We're all gonna die!" books, so if you're interested in the science of disease but you're not interested in hypochondriacs, this might be the talk for you.

Also at Town Hall, Richard Florida reads from Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life. which seems to be making a bad play on "Who's your daddy?" in the title. Florida wrote a book a few years ago where he insisted that America is home to a new class of worker, the Creative Class. I say, if you consider being a copywriter that much different from a factory worker--aside from the pay and the quality of life differences, of course--you're not observing things as closely as you should be.

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, Tim Winton, the Australian who wrote the lovely novel Dirt Music, is reading from his new one, Breath.

Questions can be aimed at the full readings calendar.

GalleyCat brings news that Simon and Schuster will be publishing a secret, pop-culture-themed memoir on July 15th, with a first print run of 350,000 copies. This was always one of my favorite things about working in a bookstore. Our buyers would get word that there was a very important book coming out and they'd be forced to order them without knowing what they are. The secret books would arrive in boxes promising everything but the death penalty--legal threats, heavy fines and boycotts of the store--if the books were sold before their release date.

GalleyCat suspects that this is Madonna's ex-nanny's book. Usually, these mystery books are disappointing--one that everybody was speculating would be a Bush administration whistle-blower a few years back turned out to be Princess Di's butler's memoir--but sometimes they're exciting. I have to admit, though, that I can't think of any other celebrity memoir that would warrant nearly a half a million copies in its first printing--Mary Kate and Ashley's nutritionist speaks? Something about Heath Ledger?--but it's nice to have some sense of immediacy in an industry that normally moves at a glacial pace.

One of the best things about leaving BEA is that I have a ton of good books for the plane ride home. This is usually more meaningful when BEA is on the east coast and eight hours away, but the two-and-a-half-hour flight still makes for some good reading time. Rather than reading bestsellers, I can actually read some of the stuff that I'm most excited to read.

I stopped by the Continuum booth at the show, and one of their number shoved a book in my hand and completely sold it to me. It came out in November of last year and was completely off my radar. Like most of the 33 1/3 books published by Continuum, it's about one record's creation and impact. Unlike most of the series, this isn't written by someone with a positive slant on the record: it's by Carl Wilson and it's called Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste. Wilson worked as a music critic for a very long time and in this book he studies exactly why he loathes Celine Dion. Apparently, later in the book, he gets into Marxism and the politics of personal taste. Wilson did a lot of research into Dion, tracing her history as a young music sensation and her history with the Quebec separatist movement. He marks a seminal moment at the Oscars when Elliott Smith and Dion were in direct competition--apparently, Dion was so sweet to Smith that he spent the rest of his life defending her in interviews. And it kind of chronologically studies the ascent of Dion-hate.

I was loving the book, but I had to get up at four this morning to take the subway to the airport, and so, sitting uncomfortably in my compact window seat, I had to close my eyes for a little nap. I woke up about five minutes later, when the book fell off my lap into the netherworld between plane seat and plane wall. I scratched at the space below my seat, but Celine Dion was lost to me for the duration of the flight.

Instead, I pulled out I am Death, by Gary Amdahl. It's a new paperback original comprised of two novellas by the lovely little nonprofit Milkweek Press, which has been producing more and more interesting stuff lately. The title novella, subtitled "or Bartleby the Mobster," was responsible for my atrocious, painful sunburn that I picked up by the pool yesterday. It was a collection of interviews and excerpts of pieces about a journalist who is interviewing an old mobster who wants to publish a memoir titled A Boy’s First Book of Mobsters. It was pretty great.

But the rest of my trip was spent reading the other novella, called Peasants, which is about the interoffice politics of a publisher of books about a publisher of guides for geographic information systems. It's funny and embarrassing and painful and great. There's a lot of wordplay and characters doing things that should seem completely out-of-character, yet they work in a really entertaining way. I was reminded of Stanley Elkin, who is one of the best authors in the world to be reminded of. If novellas are your thing, you should really check it out.

And the nice lady in the seat behind me returned the Celine Dion book to me when we were deplaning, so I'll finish that one tonight.

Writes Col. John "Hannibal" Smith:

There was once a very lovely, very frightened girl. She lived alone except for a nameless cat.

Writes Ludwig Wittgenstein:

What we call "understanding a sentence" has, in many cases, a much greater similarity to understanding a musical theme than we might be inclined to think.

Tonight we have an open mic, a book about Christianity, and a mystery where the President might be a murderer.

At the University Book Store, Douglas Smith reads from The Pearl, which is a book about an opera singer falling in love with an aristocrat. In Russia. In the 18th Century. And it's non-fiction.

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, a man with the unfortunate last name of Creamer is reading from Listen to Your Mother, Stand Up Straight! This is one of the worst titles I've heard in a long time. But it's about being a progressive and organizing people toward a common goal. And before you roll your eyes, Mr. Creamer helped organize the fight against privatizing social security. Which is one of the few liberal victories from that era of the Bush White House. So this is a man who at least knows what he's talking about.

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

Only one reading today. Ellie Matthews, who won the Pillsbury Bake-Off, reads at Elliott Bay Book Company. I'm not sure why I'm so impressed at someone who's won the Pilllsbury Bake-Off, but I seriously am. In honor of her, here's a video about man-on-man penis envy gone horribly awry:

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

BEA is full of seminars where people talk about books and pretty much all aspects of the book industry. There are meetings about copyright. There are meetings about minority representation. There are a whole bunch of meetings about running a small, medium, or large bookstore.

These are the sorts of things that are fascinating only to the people who are interested in this kind of thing, of couse. I attended a couple of seminars so far. One was about Book Buzz...I'm totally addicted to buzz, don't'chaknow. I did learn about a couple of interesting books at that one. There's a memoirish novel called Miles From Nowhere by a first time novelist named Nami Mun. She's from South Korea and moved to New York and has worked as an Avon Lady. This sounds pretty good. Another editor talked about The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews. Miriam Toews has a couple of books out already--one, called A Complicated Kindness is really amazing. I don't know why she isn't widely read, except maybe that certain book editors have entirely failed to talk about her. Troutmans is about a family--the son is addicted to a New York Times Magazine interviewer, and the daughter has started talking like a hip hop star--taking a road trip to South Dakota to find the missing father. It's kind of a hard sell, but Toews could totally pull it off. This seminar was only about half-full, or half-empty if you prefer.

But then I attended a Q&A with Jeff Bezos. The room was packed. Bezos talked about the Kindle and then a Wired Magazine editor asked him questions. This was a very thorough Q&A session. The only two hardball questions I'm surprised that Bezos didn't get asked were: "Why are you so great?" and "Can I just give you a blowjob right here and now?" This is pretty depressing for a whole lot of reasons, mostly the symbolic kind.

You may have noticed that I have blogged about celebrities and Scientology, but not at all about books. All the publishers, as is the thing at BEA, are giving away tons of advance copies of their fall and winter lists. Yesterday, I mostly walked around the floor picking up books and having publishers push books into my hand. There's a stack of books about three feet high in my hotel room. I am concerned about bringing it all home with me, and airplane luggage weight limits.

Here are some books that are in my hotel room right now. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, the new Haruki Murakami book that will be out in August. I've read about half of it--it's a skinny little book--and it's a memoir about Murakami's experience as a runner who trains for marathons. It's a little weird. American Savior is, I think, a first-time novelist's book about Jesus coming back and running for president. Couch is a novel about three guys trying to move a couch out of an apartment--I'm actually really excited about that one. I also have five reprints of pulps by L. Ron Hubbard--him again!--because the Church of Scientology is rereleasing all his pulp novels (80 books) over the next two years. And a book by Roger Ebert about Martin Scorsese that will be out in November, although it's only credited to "Ebert," so perhaps he has finally made the jump to one name a la Prince or Cher. And there's a book called I Shot a Man in Reno, about death in popular music by the same people who do the 33 1/3 series. The nice man at that booth gave me two older books in the 33 1/3 series: one about 69 Love Songs and one about a Celine Dion album.

There's a lot more, but I have to get back to the business of collecting a bunch of free books.

Last night, there were any number of parties. This is not unusual for a BEA, but, of course, because we're in Hollywood this year, there are lots of celebrities everywhere, hosting parties. Thus far, there have been parties with Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Alec Baldwin, George Hamilton, a party for Ted Turner at Larry King's house, and a party at Prince's house.

There are lots of starfuckers here, of course, like everywhere, but one of the best things about booksellers is the way that they try to make everything sound so...uninteresting. "Oh, yeah, tonight is the Ted Turner thing and then I'm going out to Prince's...it's not so far, they're both in Beverly Hills. I might be able to swing by the Baldwin thing for a minute, though." I know that in type on a blog, this seems as though it might be an asshole thing to say. But in person, it's wonderfully nerdy and makes me want to hug everyone who's trying to act like a party with George Hamilton is a completely normal thing for a bookseller on a Thursday night to do.

Also: Loni Anderson was at one of these parties. This seems important. And: I'm not going to tell you which parties I went to. That will wind up in the print edition.

If you buy into hetero gender roles, it's kind of a Mars and Venus day in the readingosphere.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, we have a book about fly fishing. That, of course, would be for all you fellers out there.

And at Third Place Books, which would be Venus, Wendy Walker reads from Four Wives, which is about four suburban moms torn between their home lives and blah blah blah. Here, from Wendy Walker's Website (for weal!) is an excerpt of Four Wives:

She was standing now between two worlds, her eyes taking in her life, her mind reliving the feel of his hands on her body not an hour before – his face replete with desire as he approached her. In that desire, she had seen the teenager in the back of his father’s Cadillac, the young man whose heart she’d so foolishly broken in high school, then the college lover who’d broken hers. He had been, in that moment, every first kiss, every curious glance from across a room. All the things she’d left behind so many years ago…

She closed her eyes, wanting to remember for one moment more the feel of his weight over her, her legs wrapped around him, pulling him closer - her mouth on his, nearly consuming him in a frantic embrace. And yet her life was waiting, pulling her back in.

Anyway: full readings calendar!

This is the banner you see on entering the Staples Center. It reads, "One of the most legendary figures of our time is ready to tell his story." Call me Ted by Ted Turner, with Bill Burke.

The title is NUMBERS: The Energy Forces In Your Name, but I really like the little "Hand-delivered" Superman someone left on top of the book

The title is IF YOU LOVE ME, PLEASE DON'T SPANK ME!, and the boy on the cover is saying "Hey Mom. This boy looks alot like me." Also note the lacivious mushroom to the right of the boy.