Only one reading tonight, but it should be a good one. Rabih Alameddine is reading at Elliott Bay Book Company with The Hakawati, which is an epic novel set in the Middle East. It's getting rave reviews from authors I adore, like Dorothy Allison and Jonathan Safran Foer. I have not read it yet; it's 500 pages, and I'm still pushing my way through Heinlein.

And now, Chuck Palahniuk interviewing a transvestite pretending to be the porn-star main character of his upcoming novel, Snuff.

That's all for today, but there's always more in our readings calendar.

For those of you who didn't make it to the Emerald City Comic Con (ECCC) last weekend, I'll fill you in: it was awesome.

This year, the ECCC moved into a new, gigantic space at the Washington State Convention Center to give us nerds more room to roam.

I was only able to make it to the con on Sunday—no, I didn't go in costume—but the place was still friggin' packed. It also smelled a little stinky.

There were lines wrapping around the room for some of the big name comic writers and artists signing books and doing sketches, but nobody seemed to care about the "celebrity" guests, who practically had tumbleweeds blowing by their tables. Just what the hell is a Farscape, anyways?

All the booksellers were well stocked—a huge improvement over last year, where there were, like, three dudes selling comics—and willing to haggle, and I walked out with a full run of Sandman books. Big disappointment of the day: I couldn't get one seller to drop his asking price for this beauty:

According to the guy selling this monstrosity, it's "totally worth $800 bucks" because it "doubles as a coffee table."

For those of you that missed this year's rad ECCC, Kelly O's got your back. Ms. O shot a fantastic two-part video with local ruffian and comic fan Jeff Leonard, featuring the Suicide Girls (???) and a dude dressed as Space Ghost who bears an uncanny resemblance to Paul Constant. Hmm....

See you next year!

Critical Mass brings news that Publishers Weekly has cut the pay rate for their reviewers by exactly 50%. They sent out this e-mail:

Dear Reviewer,

We are under constraints to reduce our expenses and must reduce the fee we pay to reviewers. Any reviews assigned after June 15 will be billed at $25 per review. However, you will be credited as a contributor in issues where your reviews appear. Please know that we value the work you do for us. Your astute reading and writing are what make our magazine so valuable in the industry and we regret this necessary action. All of us here are also experiencing change but we expect that we will continue to be the gold standard in book reviewing.

This is depressing. A number of publications cut their books sections entirely in the last year or so. Now, even the publications devoted strictly to books are drastically cutting their finances. Granted, Publishers Weekly has never been a general-interest publication (it's more of an industry rag) and their reviews have often been very, very bad. But this is a really troubling sign.

io9 has a good post up called "7 Reasons Why Sci-fi Book Series Outstay Their Welcomes." It pretty well explains exactly why I'll put a book down the minute that I see that it's the first book in a series.

Also, in the comments, someone misspells "sequels" as "squeals." This is unintentionally brilliant. I think "squeal" should be instantaneously adopted worldwide as the new word for "sequel." Maybe the thought of piggish yowling would somehow save the world from the pain and heartbreak of another Spider-Man 3.

No less than eleven book-related activities tonight, including an open mic, a group reading, a book about a midlife crisis, a fishing book, and a mystery/thriller about cracking some sort of code.

David Rothenberg is at the University Book Store with Thousand Mile Song: Whale Music in a Sea of Sound. The press materials for this book insist that we love whales for their songs. I don't think that this is true, exactly. I thought we loved whales because they are big, gentle creatures. Their songs sound kind of like a cow stuck in a barbed-wire fence. Of course, without whale songs, we wouldn't have the greatest Star Trek movie of all time, so there's that.

Up at Third Place Books, Jim Sheeler reads from Final Salute, which is his account of being the man who the military pays to tell soldiers' families that their sons and daughters are dead. It probably won't be a laugh riot, but it should be a thoughtful and interesting reading.

At Town Hall, George Johnson, who writes about this thing called "science" for a paper called The New York Times, reads from his book The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments. I really wanted to cover this book, but the publisher never sent us a copy. Bummer. Also at Town Hall, Susan Halpern reads from her book, Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Frontlines of Memory Research. Expect lots of jokes in the audience about forgetting what they're there for.

At the Hugo House, Jessy Randall reads from A Day in Boyland, which is a book of poetry. Unfortunately, now Mr. Poe is going to have to find a new title for his memoir.

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, Will Durst, who is not Fred Durst, reads from The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing: Confessions of a Raging Moderate. Press materials compare Durst to Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Osgood. I say, "Barf."

To see what else is going on, don't forget to consult the full readings calendar.

(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? The Explainers, by Jules Feiffer.

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

What'd you eat? I had the lunch combo $8.99, which is rice, salad, and any two Thai food combos. I went with the green curry and the Phad Kee Mao

How was the food? It was pretty damn good. The wide rice noodles were cooked just right, the vegetables were fresh, and I really liked being able to order two types of Thai food at once. It's the kind of option that you usually only get at bad Chinese places, but everything at Phuket was made to order. The sauces were a tad too sweet, but on the whole it's a good Thai lunch counter. I ordered medium and there was virtually no spice; heat-seekers might want to aim high.


What does your date say about itself? This is volume one of Fantagraphics' new chronological collection of Feiffer's complete Village Voice strips. This volume collects 1956 through 1966.

Is there a representative quote?

Will you two end up in bed together? I'm marrying the fucker. I've always said that Feiffer's cartoons are like Schulz's Peanuts all grown up, and this collection is going to wind up on the same shelf that I reserve for Fantagraphics' gorgeous Complete Peanuts collections. The surprising part is that most of these cartoons have aged incredibly well--though Feiffer worked on a tiny deadline for most of his early career, these strips still seem fresh and neurotic and crazy as ever. If I were to have one complaint--and I always have at least one complaint--it's that I don't like the neon orange on the cover. But this book is just about as perfect a collection of comics as you'll ever find.

As I said last Friday, Brad bet me fifty bucks I couldn't read I Will Fear No Evil, by Robert A. Heinlein. Brad and two of his former roommates couldn't get their way through the book, and he called it unreadable.

Most of the dozens of commenters on Friday's post say that Evil is a horrible, horrible book, but they claim that it is at least readable. A couple of readers even suggested that the book was their gateway to Samuel R. Delaney's brilliant sci-fi novel Dhalgren.

I am now 122 pages into Evil, which was published in 1970. It has not been difficult, but it is very poorly written. I've read Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers, so Heinlein's not a new experience for me, but this reads like atrophied Heinlein, as though he's trying to write like a young man and failing miserably. This almost works with the ideas that the novel is trying to encompass, but I have a feeling it's not going to seem appropriate for that much longer.

The story thus far: sometime after the turn of the twenty-first century, bajillionaire Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is getting very, very old. Because he fears death and he's inordinately wealthy, he's going to have surgery to implant his brain in a much younger body.

The catch--and of course there's a catch--is that Smith has a super-rare blood type, AB Negative. Only one in a million people have this blood type, but one of these people, it turns out, is Eunice, Smith's gorgeous secretary. Eunice, in the fashion of the early twenty-first century, eschews clothing for the most part, instead choosing to wear body paint and maybe a g-string and/or a pair of ruffly panties. Her husband, a painter, takes great pleasure in painting her body for work--and they both seem to creepily enjoy the pleasure that creepy old Smith gets in looking at Eunice's body. Smith puts out a call to bring any young, AB-negative corpses that are freshly deceased to him.

More, including study questions, after the jump.

Continue reading "Book Club of the Damned: I Will Fear No Evil, Part 1" »

Whereas yesterday was totally packed with thrilling readings choices, tonight has a couple of reading choices that are not so hot, with a couple gems. And a poetry slam.

Jane Porter is at the University Book Store with Mrs. Perfect. Which is a novel about a woman who "gets jealous when her arch rival is named Head Room Mom" at her daughter's school. I will speak of this book no more.

"Fly-fishing's foremost scribe" is at Third Place Books. That's enough of that one, too, unless you're into fly-fishing, in which case: get to it.

At the Seattle Public Library, Alexandra Fuller, author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, which is a memoir of growing up in Africa, reads from The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, which is a novel about a young man in Wyoming. Fuller's first book was very popular with the book club crowd. Myself and other booksellers ascribed its success to the fact that it was about Africa, (exotic) but it was written by a white woman (familiar). I've always wanted Charles to review it.

At Third Place Books Ravenna, we have the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty. I told you this was the week of tons of books about food. This one is less about the actual food and more about its fair redistribution.

Simon Winchester, who wrote The Professor and the Madman, is at Kane Hall on the UW campus, reading from his new book The Man Who Loved China, which is about a man who helped open modern China to the west. I wasn't crazy (har-har) about The Professor and the Madman, but Winchester is an author who is at least very talented in picking very interesting subjects for his books, which might be half the authorial battle right there.

And at Town Hall, Leonard Mlodinow reads from The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. I haven't read it yet, but it looks like a very Freakonomics-y type book. But this reading should be recommended if just for the author's resume: he was "co-author with Stephen Hawking of A Briefer History of Time" and he wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation and MacGyver. This is, needless to say, awesome.

Don't forget to consult the full readings calendar for more information.

It looks like HarperCollins is the first major publisher to get in on this whole Web 2.0 business that all the kids are talking about. Authonomy--not my name, so don't give me shit for it--is currently in beta testing. Apparently, it's a way for would-be authors to post their work and have other authors rate it thumbs up or thumbs down. The publisher intends to publish the best in normal, boring old-fashioned book form.

From their blog:

...amidst the flurry of proposals that fill the daily mail bag (proposals that vary quite wildly in quality) the chance of the right book landing on the right desk - and at the right time - has long been creeping perilously close to zero. But if we could start again; use the internet to flush out the brightest, the freshest new literature from the widest pool of talent possible – what might emerge?

(W)e’ll be asking writers to upload as much of their manuscript as they choose to an online platform for visitors to read, review, and talk about. And we’ll be using the public’s recommendations to search out the cream of the crop – and showcasing those titles to the book world at large.

It’ll be a transparent system, and most importantly it puts readers back in the spotlight; recognising that it’s the very people that search out, digest, and spread the word about the best new books that have always kept publishing alive.

And while we’ll be keeping a close eye on what emerges, it really isn’t just about getting signed: authonomy is a community - not a writing competition - and like the best communities we hope it will be a bundle of ideas, opinions and voices; swinging, we would hope, from the deadly serious to the downright quirky.

The biggest pitfall for their little online wonderland: many would-be authors that I've met are unnaturally obsessed with having their manuscript stolen. They think that book-stealing ninjas are everywhere, ready to abscond with their precious life's work and then publish it under their own names. But a mass-market social network of authors-to-be could be a big damn deal. At the very worst, it'll keep them off Facebook.

There is so much good stuff going on tonight that one almost wishes that there was an iron-fisted ruler of book readings who could make bookstores apportion out their good author events evenly.

Firstly, Matthew Sharpe is reading at the University Book Store. His book, Jamestown, just came out in paperback. It's a weird, beautifully written dystopian sci-fi novel. It's one of those dense books that incorporates a made-up language and takes weeks to read successfully, but it's totally worth it.

At the Seattle Public Library, Tan Twan Eng reads from his book The Gift of Rain. I wrote a Lunch Date about it, and I have to admit that I haven't finished reading it, although I liked what I read a lot. I also lamented not being able to find a representative quote for the book, and commenter Janet Brown said that this isn't a sign of badness:

You're right--I love this book and have read it twice, but can't pull an individual "representative quote" that gives a sound bite for this book. The observations and descriptions stop me in my reading tracks with the world and the thoughts that they evoke, but they are part of a fictional fabric, tightly woven to form a cohesive picture. Pulling them apart does the novel no service.

So there you go. I happen to know Janet--she's one of the three people I've met who reads more than me--and I trust her implicitly.

John Olson, who is a Stranger Genius, reads at Open Books tonight. Christopher Frizzelle wrote a lovely profile about Olson here. Here's part of what he had to say:

Olson is a poet of excess and expansion. His best poems are rich, sturdy, absurd, startling, tightly strung, and scattershot. The second poem in 1996's Swarm of Edges begins: "It sounds funny but an orange/is not a television//so much as the imagination/of a limb."

And at Town Hall, Augusten Burroughs is reading from his new book, A Wolf at the Table. Former Stranger Public Intern Steven Blum wrote a review of Burroughs' new book for us, but it had to be cut from last week's paper for space considerations. it will run in this week's paper, but I'm also including the whole review after the jump as an early treat for Slog readers. Here's a taste:

Augusten’s father can’t stand his gay son. His mother tries to protect him from dad, but she also suffers from the unfortunate Burroughs family compulsion to record every depressing moment of her life on a typewriter in her room. Without a mom or dad to talk to about being a baby 'mo, Burroughs fantasizes about killing his dad fifty gazillion times, but never does. Because every single character in the book is depressed, and repressing every single emotion, nothing is ever really said and little actually happens.

I second young Steven's opinion: I like a lot of Burroughs' earlier stuff, particularly Dry, but this book is a total bust. I look forward to Burroughs' next book, which I believe will be a novel.

And then there's also a grammar book, a sports book, a book about a man who kayaked from Idaho to the Pacific, and the eighth book in a series of southern mysteries starring vampires and other monsters, all of which you can find out more about in our full readings calendar.

Continue reading "Reading Tonight" »

Via Maud, we have a New York Times report that there are no plans to print a new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The dictionary will only exist online from here on out. I still have my giant one-volume, tiny print edition, which I barely use, but I still find this really sad news.

Vanity Fair reports that The Revolution, Ron Paul's manifesto, which I reviewed here, will be number one on the New York Times bestseller list next week. Don't worry, though; this isn't a sign of overwhelming unilateral support for Ron Paul. It's more a sign that book sales are really suffering. I also suspect that a bunch of 9/11 Truthers organized a big old nation-wide book-buy-fest.

(Above illustration from this website, under the headline A Holiday Gift: Ron Paul Beyond Words.)

One open mic and two readings tonight: perhaps everyone is hung over from Emerald City Comicon?

At Elliott Bay Book Company tonight, we have Taras Grescoe reading from Bottomfeeder, which is about the aquaculture industry and exactly where our seafood comes from. This month seems to be food-book month, and I know that food industry books can be hard to read at times (and you have to give me credit for not saying "hard to swallow," and then take that credit away because I inserted it in parentheses), but these books--like Fast Food Nation and Omnivore's Dilemma--are important. Think of it as the book equivalent of eating your spinach; you'll thank me in the long run.

And at Town Hall, Rick Perlstein reads from Nixonland, which is about the lasting impact of Nixon on America, including the presidency of George W. Bush. It looks good and interesting and, in my opinion, you can never have too many books about Richard Nixon. I know that I am in the minority here.

If Nixon and seafood aren't your things, you should consult the full readings calendar, which includes the next week or so.

There's a lot going on for a Sunday, and I've got some Mother's Day love in my heart.

Emerald City Comicon is today at the Convention Center. Today's convention should be much slower than yesterday's, so it's probably a better day to actually, you know, shop for comic books. Despite the fact that they have Suicide Girls in attendance, I would like to say that it's good that we have the locally owned Emerald City Comicon, because it's not owned by Wizard Entertainment, which is basically the Maxim of the comic book world. Wizard owns conventions around the country, but not here. So ECC: way to keep it local--good on you. Just leave the internet porn at home next year, please.

Kerry Reichs, whose mother is Kathy Reichs, who writes the books that are a basis for the Fox TV show Bones, will be reading at Elliott Bay Book Company from her debut novel, The Best Day of Someone Else's Life. She deserves credit for not writing a mystery series like her mom for an easy paycheck.

And at Town Hall, it's time for Short Stories Live, which is a reading of three short stories by authors like Eudora Welty and Deborah Eisenberg. Since I'm giving out compliments today, I think that it's nice that they're providing a literary option for Mother's Day. Spread the mother love!

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

Today we have an open mic and a number of readings. Dinaw Mengestu, author of the The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, will be finishing his run as the Seattle Reads author. Check the Library's listing of events on their website. He's done like ninety events a day for the last three days, though, so he might not be as fresh as when he started out.

Also, we have the Emerald City Comicon at the convention center. Many years ago now, when I was starting out at The Stranger, I wrote a piece about Comicon. It was too mean. I got many responses to the piece, and one of them said: "Why don't you go back to jerking off over Suicide Girls" or something along those lines. I would just like to point out that, as entertainment at the Emerald City Comicon, the Suicide Girls will be in attendance. And so I say to the person who wrote me back then: I apologize for my meanness, sir, but now it is time for you to go jerk off over the Suicide Girls. And to the founders of the convention: this is not the way to get more women to take comics seriously, boys.

Up at the University Village Barnes and Noble, Annie Griffiths Belt will discuss being a photographer for National Geographic and being a mother. She is a good person to discuss this, since she is both a photographer for National Geographic and a mother.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, in the afternoon, Emily Transue, a local doctor who has read at virtually every bookstore in town, will be reading. In the later afternoon, Raj Patel, a man who has been "tear-gassed on four continents," will be reading from Stuffed and Starved, which is kind of an anti-Michael Pollan book about the global food shortage from tiny, gorgeous publisher Melville House. This is the reading to attend, in my opinion.

And then, also at Elliott Bay in the evening, Sarah Katherine Lewis will read from her book Sex and Bacon. I assigned that book to a Stranger writer to review, but the reviewer declined to review it, because the book was bad, but not bad in any sort of an interesting way. I read Indecent, Lewis's previous book, and it was horrible, and not in an interesting way. So at least she's consistent.

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

So some time ago, Brad threw a copy of this book:

on my desk. He said that he and two other roommates tried...repeatedly...to read it, to no avail. He couldn't express in words exactly what was so horrible about it, although his facial expression signified a very particular kind of distaste. It was like watching someone remember an atrocious shit smell. And then he bet me fifty dollars that I couldn't read this book from cover to cover.

And so, welcome to Book Club of the Damned. For the rest of May, I will read I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein ("The Brilliantly Shocking Story of the Ultimate Transplant!") in three segments. Starting next Wednesday, I will post a weekly book club update, complete with discussion questions, here on Slog. If any brave souls would like to read along at home, they are more than welcome to, although I'm not splitting the fifty bucks. It should be a singular reading experience.

Here's what the Ace paperback edition's back cover says about the book:

"As startling and provocative as his famous STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, here is Heinlein's awesome masterpiece about a man supremely talented, immensely old and obscenely wealthy who discovers that money can buy everything. Even a new life in the body of a beautiful young woman."

One open mic and a whole lotta readings tonight, so let's get into it.

Today there are three disgustingly popular authors reading at Borders downtown at noon. Terry Brooks, who wrote the novelization of Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace, and who I've commented on before, will be appearing with Susan Wigg, who is a popular romance author, and John Saul who writes Dean Koontz knock-offs, which is sad on many levels.

Up at Third Place, Ellie Matthews, who won the motherfucking Pillsbury Bake-Off, will be reading from her book, which is about climbing to the top of the competitive cooking chain. It also includes recipes. I recommend this reading. Seriously.

At the University Book Store, Chelsea Handler, who is the author of Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, will be reading. Apparently, she's a comedian, though you can't tell from the title of her book.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Andrew Foster Altschul reads from Lady Lazarus, which is a novel about rock and roll. This is one of those books that everyone thinks I'd like and then I start reading it and I really don't like it. But Altschul hangs with the McSweeney's crowd and despite this severely uninteresting first novel, I think that he's a decent writer, so maybe there's something there for you.

Also, from the 7th through the 10th, Dinaw Mengestu, author the The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, will be reading at various libraries throughout Seattle. Check the Library's listing of events on their website. There will surely be a reading somewhere near you.

Here is the full readings calendar.

Many authors have felt this way, but this is the first modern age author to admit it: Sci-fi writer Thomas Disch has announced on his LiveJournal that he is God. He is taking questions.

Dear God,

What is your favorite species in the whole universe and why?

Your friend,

zack

Disch's response:

The Xloti of Aldebaran 4. They'd be your favorite too, if they weren't invible to the human eye.

Hopefully, this is just to promote Disch's new book, The Word of God, but if he gets enough of a positive response, I suspect that he might just stick with it. I guess that Norman Mailer's death has left a vacuum in authors who believe they're deities.

Here is the MySpace page for Cassie Wright, the porn-star main character of Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk's new novel. Palahniuk will be reading at Town Hall on May 20th. On the MySpace page, there's a video trailer for a fake movie, called The Wizard of Ass, starring the fake porn star. It's also a trailer for the book. I'm not going to embed the video here, because, well, gross.

Also on the MySpace page is a list of fictional movies that the fictional Cassie Wright has starred in, with titles that have already been used in actual porn movies like On Golden Blonde and The Da Vinci Load. There's also a message from Chuck Palahniuk himself:

Hey all,

Just Top Friended you. Let's get this page some hits. Cassie deserves it.

It's authors like Palahniuk that make me proud to have devoted my life to literature. That is all.

I love waking up to grammar corrections. I just got an e-mail this morning referring to this article, and particularly this sentence from the article:

It'll be sad when Amazon isn't based out of the looming Pacific Medical Center building anymore.

Here is the e-mail in full, minus the link to the story:

Perhaps I'm being petty, but how can Amazon be "based out of the looming Pacific Medical Center" when it is located IN that building?

I have no idea where or how the phrase "based out of" originated, but in this usage it is clearly an oxymoron. Indeed, I have never seen or heard a case in which this overused phrase was not.

I'm sure you meant that Amazon is based IN the looming Pacific Medical Center. Why did you not write that? The phrase you used is an affectation. Please do not use it again.

Thank you.

dr

I took the question to our copy desk, and they said that it means "to serve as a base," and that the phrase appears frequently in the New York Times and "If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us." I agree. I just informed dr and am eagerly waiting a response. I'm thinking it'll be a crisp "Good day, sir."

Questions: Does this mysterious dr have a Google alert on "based out of?" Does s/he think of him/herself as a kind of grammar vigilante, swooping in to right wrongs? Does this Batman of usage ever sleep?

A ton of readings on a whole bunch of topics tonight, including a mystery book signing at noon and an open mic.

Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart read from Fixing Failed States, which seems to theorize a way to fix failed states, at Town Hall.

Up at Third Place Books, Charlie Ayers reads from his memoir, Food 2.0 : Secrets From the Chef Who Fed Google. Apparently, it's a cookbook that suggests how to eat yourself into smartness.

At the University Book Store, book blogger Mark Sarvas reads from his debut novel, Harry, Revised. It's a pretty good debut, with lots of good writing, but it's a little too consciously literary. I look forward to his future work, and the Q & A for this reading should be a fun, name-dropping discussion about books, too.

At Parkplace Books out in Kirkland, we have Morgan Howell, reading from a fantasy trilogy. There may be elves in attendance.

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, Siri Hustvedt reads from her new novel, The Sorrows of an American. It's always awkward to say this sort of thing, and many people will find it obnoxious and unnecessary, but Siri Hustvedt is married to Paul Auster. I find this sort of thing relevant not because of weird claims of nepotism, but rather because it means that Ms. Hustvedt's book has an excellent first reader. She's a very good writer in and of herself, and, having begun this book, I can say it's probably one of her best.

Also, from the 7th through the 10th, Dinaw Mengestu, author the The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, will be reading at various libraries throughout Seattle. Check the Library's listing of events on their website. There will surely be a reading somewhere near you.

There's more going on in the full readings calendar.

In one corner: Michel Houellebecq, author of nihilistic and prurient French novels.

In the other corner: His mother, Lucie Ceccaldi.

He said:

In his international bestseller Les Particules élémentaires - translated as Atomised - he created one of modern French literature's vilest mothers, a selfish, sex-obsessed hippy called "Ceccaldi" who leaves her young son in an attic in his own excrement then dumps him so she can enjoy free-love life in a bizarre cult. Elsewhere, he described the "fundamental psychic flaw" his mother caused in him. He hasn't spoken to her for 17 years. He once told an interviewer she was dead.

She said:

She calls her son an "evil, stupid little bastard" adding that "this individual, who alas came from my womb, is a liar, an imposter, a parasite and above all - above all - a petit arriviste ready to do absolutely anything for money and fame."

She also said:

"[His] book is pure pornography, it's repugnant, it's crap... " In her own book, she speculates that he writes about sex because he doesn't get enough. "What's this moronic literature?! Houellebecq is someone who's never done anything, who's never really desired anything, who never wanted to look at others. And that arrogance of taking yourself as superior ... Stupid little bastard. Yes, Houellebecq's a stupid little bastard, whether he's my son or not."

And one more, for good measure:

"If he is unfortunate enough to use my name in something again, I'll cane him round the face, that'll knock his teeth out, that's for sure. And [his publishers] won't stop me."

Happy mother's day, everyone.

Last night, I went down to Elliott Bay Book Company to buy Mother's Day gifts to mail to my mom and to attend the Aleksandar Hemon reading (he was very charming, by the way, in an aloof, Eastern European way and, while he's not the best reader of his own work, he did bring a Power Point presentation of the gorgeous photos in his most recent, very good book The Lazarus Project).

When I got there, customers and employees alike were abuzz with a recent happening: it seems that a furious customer had just shouted at an employee about the books lead that I wrote about Amazon.com's lack of contributions to local arts organizations.

Now, I do quote an Elliott Bay employee's blog--a blog not sponsored by Elliott Bay Book Company--in my article, but Elliott Bay had nothing to do with the story beyond that. The employee tried to tell the customer this, but the man was inconsolable. He said that, due to their involvement in that hack-work passing as journalism, he was never going to shop at Elliott Bay Book Company ever again. And then he threw his frequent buyer's card at the employee and stormed out.

To which I have to say: You, anonymous angry consumer guy, are a total jackass. Way to protest my pointing out that a locally based global retailer doesn't support local arts by boycotting a local retailer. You're really making a case.

A poetry slam, a book about mothering, and other readings that are almost 100% guaranteed to have nothing to do with primary season going on tonight.

At Third Place Books, Elizabeth George is reading from Careless in Red. George is the mystery series writer who killed one of her main characters in the last book in this series. It caused a huge uproar among her readers--I guess one of the unwritten rules of writing a mystery series is that you're not allowed to kill any of the main characters or change anything important, because readers don't like actual change in their mysteries--and, even though I've never read any of her books, it made me fall in love with Elizabeth George.

At the University Book Store, William J. Bernstein reads from A Splendid Exchange, which is about the history of trade. For some reason, this fascinates me. I'm about the farthest thing from an economist that there is, but I'm probably going to wind up reading this book. I can't explain why. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with the cover, which is super-bland.

At the Good Shepherd Center on Capitol Hill, Bethany Wright and Roberta Olson, the authors of many books of poetry and such, will read as part of Subtext's reading series. Subtext does good work supporting non-commercial writing, and we should all pay attention to them, even if we don't appreciate all the writers they bring on: the scene would be a lot poorer if there was no Subtext reading series.

And to bookend the Reading Tonight post with mysteries, Dominic Stansberry reads from The Ancient Rain, which is a mystery that has something to do with the Beats. This is sure to be exciting, because nobody's ever published a book about the Beats before. If you were going to this reading, please consider going to Elizabeth George instead.

Also, from the 7th through the 10th, Dinaw Mengestu, author the The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, will be reading at various libraries throughout Seattle. Check the Library's listing of events on their website. There will surely be a reading somewhere near you.

For your non-Mengestu readings needs, consult the full readings calendar.

Over on his blog, Terry Teachout (theater critic for the Wall Street Journal) reminded me about the Jane Chord:

The Jane Chord, to which Bill Buckley introduced us years ago, is a concept originally promulgated by Hugh Kenner. The idea is that if you make a two-word sentence out of the first and last words of a book, it will tell you something revealing about the book in question. Or not: the Jane Chord of Pride and Prejudice is It/them. But every once in a while you run across a Jane Chord so resonant that it makes the room shiver--the chord for Death Comes for the Archbishop is One/built--and even when a famous book yields up nonsense, it's still a good game to play.

Miranda July noticed her own Jane Chord for No One Belongs Here More than You here.

Some Jane Chords in books on shelves and desks around the office:

On God by Norman Mailer: Scientists experience.

Atonement by Ian McEwan: The sleep.

Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban: He sea.

Please Feed Me: A Punk Vegan Cookbook: We delicious.

Gifts of the Body by Rebecca Brown: I mourned.

United States: Essays 1952–1992 by Gore Vidal: I sanity.

Brothels of Nevada [a photo book]: Visits imperative.

And Democracy in America by Tocqueville: Among misery.

According to the New York Times, Peter W. Olson, the chief executive of giant publisher Random House, and a man who looks like the main character in a 1980's John Updike novel--

--will resign. Or will be forced to resign by a penny-pinching boss, because profits at Random House (one of the three biggest publishers in the US) fell 5.6 percent last year. At least Olson was a heavy reader, and so he was likely to read a lot of the product he was responsible for. I shudder to think what'll happen if Bertelsmann, the German company that now owns Random House, puts an accountant in charge. Get ready for the book version of Ouch My Balls!

Harper Collins has posted a desription of Anathem, which is local sci-fi author Neal Stephenson's next (and first post-Baroque Cycle) book:

Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400–year—old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians. There, he and his cohorts are sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, and unpredictable "saecular" world, an endless landscape of casinos and megastores that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, dark ages and renaissances, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides it is only these cloistered scholars who have the abilities to avert an impending catastrope (sic). And, one by one, Raz and his friends, mentors, and teachers are sent forth without warning into the unknown.

I generally trust Stephenson to at least write very, very good pulp. But this sounds a little too reliant on the Red State/Blue State thing, which is, as we all know, so 2004. Hopefully he'll pull through, though, because he's one of Seattle's best mainstream authors publishing work today.

I have no love for Alice Walker. The best thing to come out of her vapid career is a movie based on her most famous book.
The director of Jaws can place his interpretation of Walker's novel in the list of his five most important works. His film is yet another piece of evidence for those who correctly argue that a good movie is more likely to come from a weak novel than a strong one. Walker owes her entire value as an artist to this movie.

Upon reading this article yesterday morning, my dislike of Alice Walker's work was displaced by my deep dislike of her daughter's personality. Her name is Rebecca Walker, she is 38, she has written a memoir, Baby Love, that says feeble-minded things like:

My mother did a lot of leaving to go to her writing retreat, which was over 100 miles away — so she’d go there and leave me a little bit of money, leave me in the care of a neighbour...

and:

When I was pregnant at 14, I think it was because I was so lonely that I was reaching out through my sexuality. My mother’s a crusader for daughters around the world, but couldn’t see that her own daughter was having a difficult time. It was me having to psycho-emotionally tiptoe around her, rather than her taking care of me.

Utter garbage! Pure drivel! Total crap!

Rebecca is of the type that thrives on one form of power--the power of ressentiment. Her strength is drawn not from herself but from the one she despises. And the more the strength of the one she despises increases, the more her own power increases. If the one she despises is weak, she too is weak. How I hate this sort of swamp creature. The way it slithers and hisses, and thinks that this slithering and hissing is the stuff of greatness.

There are a ton of readings tonight, including what could be an intriguing double-feature.

At Third Place Books, William Dietrich reads from The Rosetta Key. It feels as though, this month, William Dietrich is always reading The Rosetta Key somewhere.

The University Book Store is hosting two readings: Ch'oe Yun, who the bookstore calls "one of Korea's most important fiction writers," will be appearing with Bruce Fulton, her translator. And Christopher Sanford will be reading from his book The Adventurous Traveler's Guide to Health, which will hopefully be useful for those who like to travel with their genitals.

Also in the U District, at Kane Hall, Maresi Nerad and Mimi Heggelund read from Toward a Global PhD? This is a book about the impact of globalization on grad school. The three of you out there who find that last sentence interesting should totally go.

Finally, at Elliott Bay Book Company at 6 pm, Marc Acito reads from his new book, Attack of the Theater People. It's a novel about theater kids. Acito will be doing what he calls "a book singing," where he (and I believe other people) will sing bits from popular musicals. If you want to, you could double-feature this reading with the Elliott Bay 8 pm reading, which is Aleksandar Hemon, the author of the terrific The Question of Bruno, who is in town with his new novel The Lazarus Project. Obviously, if I had to pick one, I would pick Hemon, because he's a great writer, but the combination of the two readings--theater kids and songs from musicals combined with gruff, gorgeous writing about thuggish eastern European immigrants--would be the equivalent of literary whiplash.

Don't forget to check out the full readings calendar for upcoming events.

The Library's blog has a list of books that have been recently spotted on local bus routes. I've been thinking for a while now that someone should start a communal Google Map for routes, times, and books spotted.

I think this is a great idea. Besides reading on the bus, my favorite bus pastime is seeing what everyone else is reading. There's this one lady I see occasionally who, I swear, has been reading the same book, a Christian book about solving the mystery of God, for years.

It's a fairly good mix of books that the U Book Store has spotted: Some Jane Austen, the good (if a little slow) Dominique Fabre novel that came out from Archipeligo Books a couple months ago, and, bless whoever this was, a collection of erotica edited by the mononomenclatured erotica author Zane. But, to the person who's reading A Brief History of Time: Really. Everyone else stopped pretending they read that book like twelve years ago. You can give up on trying to impress people now.

(UPDATED: Like a bonehead, I confused the Library's blog for the University Book Store's blog. The list is at the Library's blog. I had both blogs open at the same time. Sorry to both fine literary institutions.)

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.

It will happen...

Dmitri Nabokov, the son of the greatest novelist in the English language, Vladimir Nabokov, will publish the novel his father did not want the world to read, The Original of Laura.

In an NYT interview, Dmitri defends his betrayal with this reasoning:

It’s been three decades since your father’s death. Why did it take you so long to decide the fate of “Laura”, and how did you come to your final decision? How difficult has it been?

In the words of one blogger, 30 years is tantamount to eternity in the given context, which would absolve me from any disobedience of my father’s wishes. More seriously, it did not take me 30 years to come to a decision with regard to burning the manuscript. I had never imagined myself as a “literary arsonist.” I also recalled, parenthetically, that when my father was asked, not very long before his death, what three books he considered indispensable, he named them in climactic order, concluding with “The Original of Laura” — could he have ever seriously contemplated its destruction?

Dmitri Nabokov is soon to reach the age of his father's death, 78.

One book-related event going on today: At Elliott Bay Book Company, there will be a gathering to celebrate the life of Curbstone Press co-founder Alexander "Sandy" Taylor, who passed away in December. Authors and publishers and friends will be in attendance.

And now, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett at the Pitch 'n Putt:

Only one reading tonight. Cristina Garcia is reading at the Elliott Bay Book Company from A Handbook To Luck, a novel. I had a girlfriend who loved Cristina Garcia. Things ended badly with that girlfriend, and that's why I've never read Cristina Garcia. She could be a lovely author for all I know, and I should totally get over it. I have a similar situation with Gretl Ehrlich.

Also, it's Free Comic Book Day. If you go to pretty much any comic book shop, you should be able to get free comic books. Some shops that are participating in Free Comic Book Day have advertised in our paper this week, including a shop I've never been to, Dreamstrands, up in Greenlake. Apparently, Jonah Spangenthal-Lee thinks that Free Comic Book Day is a bunch of bullshit, but his post has some good recommendations for comics to look for if you're interested.

And now, some advice from Ernest Hemingway:

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is ready for you now.

Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) is, in concept, a great thing. Tomorrow, you can walk into just about any comic store and walk out with an armful of free comics. The event is supposed to pump more money into the long-stagnant comic industry by drawing in new readers and get people to see that (some) comics are more than just a bunch of big dudes in spandex punching shit.

Well, FCBD's supposed to help change that perception. There are plenty of great independent, non-superhero books on the market right now, but FCBD isn't doing doing much to push those books on the public and, unfortunately, FCBD is really set up to benefit the big two: Marvel and DC

For FCBD, comic shops can order batches of books at cost—about 12-40 cents a book, depending on the title—but in order to get a break on independent books, retailers first have to buy about 250 copies of ten different mostly superhero books. At cost, that only works out to about $50, plus shipping, but according to one local retailer, that pricing scheme is keeping comic shops from promoting indie books.

Aaron Tarbuck, owner of The Dreaming in the University District—full disclosure: that's where I get my comics—says he'd rather promote books like Atomic Robo than give Marvel and DC more money. "The independent, [who is] probably not even drawing a profit, he’s the guy who needs me to be buying these from him," Tarbuck says. "The big guys can write this off."

It's unfortunate FCBD doesn't put as much of an emphasis on indie books, but that doesn't mean you can't hunt something down when you're in a comic store tomorrow.
Look for Ganges by Kevin Huizenga, Glamourpuss by Dave Sim or anything by Oni Press. Or just ask your friendly neighborhood comic book guy for a recommendation.

I got this letter in the mail today, along with a self-published cookbook:

Nobody here at the office can recall anything like this happening before. I guess that I must give off that "My reviews can be bought for twenty bucks" vibe. Should I just return the money, or should I do something more creative with it? Someone suggested using the money to buy groceries to make some of the recipes. Or there's always booze.

Jesus Christ, people! Seventy-somthin' somethin' comments on a post about Tao Lin's feature this week! Lin does seem to be a bit of an inter-web lightning rod. In June of last year, Gawker had it out with Tao Lin:

Tao Lin, I know you're reading this. I just want you to know that because of your ill-conceived self-marketing strategy, you have 100% guaranteed that I will never read your damned book with its oh-so-wacky title...Your publicity games aren't a play on fame-seeking or celebrity culture. Actually, you're maybe perhaps the single most irritating person we've ever had to deal with—and you wouldn't believe our in-box. Stop it. Stop it now. And now we will go back to never mentioning you again.

but then they pardoned him for the piece that he wrote for us back in November, about the varying levels of greatness that American writers can attain.

Then he got into a fight with n+1 by printing his entire correspondence with editor Benjamin Kunkel. He also ran some of an e-mail that was probably not intended for him:

Well, I read or tried to read Tao Lin's story. It's not horrible, nor horribly written--some of it is pretty nice--but I found it over-rhetorical, full of the deliberate whimsy afflicting many of our younger writers, and it seemed kind of aimless too, although I might not have thought so if I'd read through to the end.

And then he or a friend of his might have accidentally called someone a faggot.

I just read a little of that right before going to a reading at Melville House where Tao was in the lineup--I hadn't seen him in maybe six months. Weirdly, he read a story with me in it as a character, incorporating my emails and gmail chats. Afterward I finished reading the comments and they seemed so exasperatingly stupid/ugly that I posted, "Judgments of quality aside, many people posting here in "defense" of Tao could stand to be a lot less obnoxious about it..." A couple minutes later--although I didn't see it until the next afternoon--Zachary German wrote, "you are a faggot...you have sex with other gay men like yourself" on my blog, and then "syke."

On Eric's blog, Tao said, "i don't approve of calling people faggots..." When I noted that his friend Zachary German had just called me a faggot, Tao said, "he typed that as a 'joke' just to show me on the screen then i accidentally pushed 'enter' or something." Accidentally! I'm laughing.

The comments for all of these posts are numerous and fervent. All of which is to say that apparently, Tao Lin is the master of the Internet.

The Nigerian author of this book...
...Dr. N.D. Audu, is also author of: I Love Raising the Dead. Who can better that title? Who?

The Seattle PI had a poetry contest and picked this poem as the best:

"Bloodspell" by Marie-Caroline Moir:

Now just ho there, splayed peacock,

and spare the poor girl but a ruby

from your pomegranate heart.

She's far goner than long and

nosing that notch in your seashell ear

(the mere thought of it!)

just sends her --

wakes her daily with a tickle/thump

before the shuffling on of sun,

and the augur of hair patties from the

mystic drain.

Should you not want her,

she may end up in rubber sandals

and very loose pants,

at some artists' commune

stuffed up in the Ozarks.

Making origami jockstraps

and other gestures of homage.

This is what the judges had to say about "Bloodspell":

The poem demonstrates a wonderful mixture of sincerity and surprising humor, alloying its various tones and moods into something completely its own. The language leaps energetically from one verbal register to another (we go from the arcane and serious 'augur' to the gross and everyday 'hair patties,' from the antiquated greeting 'ho' to unmistakably contemporary language), and the imagery -- pomegranate heart, hair patties, origami jockstrap -- is as original as it is vivid.

The above reasons for admiring the poem are as bad as the poem itself.

(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? Mortarville, by Grant Bailie.

Where'd you go? This is a very special Lunch Date. It's actually more of a Dinner Date: last night, I went to Pike Street Fish Fry. They're only open from 5 'till "Late," so it's not strictly lunch, although I hadn't eaten lunch when I went there at 5:30, so it still counts.

What'd you eat? I had the cheapest order of fish, which was a white fish($5.50). And I had an order of Spanish Fries ($5), which is a regular order of french fries with sour cream and spicy sauce.

How was the food? Awesome. The fries aren't as good as Frites' fries were, but they're still good. The Spanish part of the Spanish fries, with the sour cream and the spicy sauce, was a little excessive: Next time I'm getting the regular fries and the curry ketchup. If I was drunk, I'd be all about getting the Spanish on, though. The fish was light and juicy and fried just right. Next time I might try the asparagus instead of fish. The biggest problem I had with the place was the lack of wet-naps: I smelled like an armless Alaskan fisherman by the time I was done eating.


What does your date say about itself? The author came to town a few weeks ago, but I just got a copy of the book in the mail yesterday. It's about an artificial human created by mad scientists, born from a spigot, who gets a job as a mall security guard.

Is there a representative quote? Try the first three sentences: "My parents died in a fire before I was born. Drs. John and Jonathon Smithee--no relation. It was a fate that befalls so many of our better mad scientists."

Will you two end up in bed together? Yes. I'm very excited to read this one. I've been on a bit of a depressing run in fiction, lately--I've been reading a lot of books that seem like they should be interesting, but they never really work out to actually be interesting. This one, at least, seems funny and weird and vaguely sweet.