Christopher Frizzelle on the sad disappearance of Nextbook:

Nextbook's goal to promote Jewish literature was built around books, not beliefs; never had an exclusionary vibe to it; and was always marketed to the mainstream. In contrast to small bookstore readings or Seattle Arts & Lectures' giant hall, Nextbook's readings and onstage interviews (more than a dozen a year) often happened in bars—the Rendezvous, Tractor Tavern, places like that.

It's a great look back at why Nextbook was so important, and a consideration of the big hole it's going to leave in Seattle's reading scene. You should read it.

FiveThirtyEight has a fairly comprehensive link-happy list of all the Obama comparisons that have been made in the last few months. Obama has been compared to both Bushes, Bob Dole, John Kerry, Richard Nixon, and just about every politician ever to be involved in presidential politics except Taft.

In other news, the Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle website has been transformed into an incredibly cheap-ass book.

(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? Muhajababes by Allegra Stratton.

Where'd you go? In the Bowl

What'd you eat? Fake-beef yakisoba ($7.95).

How was the food? It was really good. It's super-spicy—they must've gotten quite a few complaints, because there are warnings posted everywhere about how spicy the food is—but it was a tasty, hot bowl of noodles. And I love the fake beef, which I believe is made from compressed mushroom stalks. I liked it better than Boom Noodle's yakisoba.

What does your date say about itself? "Meet the new Middle East—young, sexy and devout." The Times Literary Supplement says it "will disabuse you of your preconceptions of the Middle East forever."

Is there a representative quote? Talking about Superstar, the Middle Eastern American Idol: "She explained that Musa liked to think, though he'd never say it, that Superstar is better than Jazeera. While al-Jazeera does get between 40 million and 50 million regular viewers, 15 million voted on the outcome of Superstar, 'more Arabs than have ever cast ballots in a free election.'"

Will you two end up in bed together? Yes. The book feels a little slight so far, as though it would maybe be better off as a series of magazine articles, but writing about the youth in the Middle East is important, and something I haven't read much about. A giant baby boom happened in the Middle East 20 or 30 years ago, and all those people are ultimately going to have a lot to do with what the world will look like. The writing is all right, and the title is really atrocious, but I think that I'll stick with it.

Two authors that I wrote about yesterday are reading again tonight, along with an open mic, a thriller, and several other events.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Johan Bruyneel reads from We Might as Well Win: On the Road to Success with the Mastermind Behind the Eight Tour de France Victories. Apparently, people refer to Bruyneel as "the Vince Lombardi of cycling,” which is a really funny image.

After Bruyneel, David Wroblewski will read from his new novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which is about a family raising a unique dog breed. It's getting pretty decent reviews, but I have not read it yet.

And at the Hugo House, it's time to say goodbye to their current crop of writers-in-residence. Wendy Call, Todd Faulkner, David Wagoner and Cody Walker will be reading. I bet at least one of them will get misty, which will be entertaining in its own right. I expressed my love for Wagoner a few months back. A new crew, including Cienna Madrid, will begin writing, um, in residence at the Hugo House this fall.

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

He was an author who did it to promote a book. I know that we're in the age of alternative book marketing, as defined by Bugliosi's anti-Bush book that just hit the New York Times Bestseller list without any marketing from a major publisher, but this is a bit much.

Also a bit much? The fact that the book being promoted by the human fly was "argues that Sept. 11 was part of a plot by al-Qaida to provoke the U.S. into invading Iraq, according to a book summary at Amazon.com."

It's a whole new strain of Truthers, and, if possible, it makes even less sense than the original. ( I hope they call themselves the Truthiers.) Somehow bin Laden planned the whole thing to happen exactly as it did? Genius!

David Rothman, who is always very excited about e-books, brings news that the iTunes store might be incorporating e-books into the music and movies. This comes on the heels of multiple news stories reporting that the new 3G iPhone will have an e-reader function. Rothman says that this is "one more reason why publishers would be foolish to be Kindle-centric," which is absolutely true. Of course, they shouldn't be iTunes -centric, either.

If all this actually happens, it's one step closer to what I think will be the real future of the e-book. It's not going to replace anything, it's just another distribution system for publishers, and could very well result in more people reading more books.

A man is suing two Bible publishers for printing what he claims to be a bad translation of the original text, which has resulted in institutional homophobia. The suit claims $70,000,000 in damages.

This is from a wonderful blogger's summary of the case:

What is at issue is the meaning of the words μαλακοι and αρσενοκοιται The usual view is that they refer to men who engage in homosexual acts. μαλακοι are those taken to play the "feminine" role, αρσενοκοιται those taken to play the "masculine" role. That these refer to homosexuals of some sort is clear from the Latin translation, produced in the 5th century, which uses molles "soft ones" for μαλακοι and masculorum concubitores "those who sleep with men" for αρσενοκοιται.

...

As I understand Fowler's complaints, he is not arguing that the New Testament, when translated correctly, discriminates against him as a gay man. Rather, he thinks that the publishers were negligent in publishing Bibles containing what in his view is an erroneous translation, one that, he thinks, falsely condemns homsexuality.

Of course, the right wing blogs, which I'm not going to link to, are having a field day with this, along the lines of : "Liberals are suing Jesus! Next, they'll sue all of us for praying in the comfort of our own homes!" But, really, this is a pretty fascinating lawsuit about the nuances of translation, which is just the kind of nerdery that makes me tingle.

Via Maud.

The Booker of Bookers tournament, an attempt to decide on the best Booker Prize winner of the 40 years of the prize's history, has settled on Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Midnight's Children won the 25th anniversary Booker of Bookers award, too, which means that it is clearly the best book ever. Or the best book of the last 40 years. Or the best of the 40 books that were chosen as winners of the Booker over the last 40 years. Or something. Right?

We have a two mystery authors tonight (one who writes about a "skeleton detective" and one who titles a book Rock and Roll Never Forgets: A JP Kincaid Mystery and apparently thinks that that's a good idea.) and many other readings.

At Queen Anne Books, local author Garth Stein, who wrote The Art of Racing in the Rain, which is the novel from the point of view of a dog, reads. It's also the big Starbucks book of choice at the moment. And this reading will feature free cookies. There will also be cookies for dogs, but dogs aren't allowed at the reading.

Up at Third Place Books, Guyanne Booth, whose first name is Guyanne, will be reading from Robber's Roost, which is about a family that moves in with a bunch of robbers. And then wacky hijinx and important life lessons, no doubt, will ensue.

Elliott Bay Book Company has a couple of authors, Lin and Leif Enger, reading from their respective books. Leif wrote a book called Peace Like a River a few years ago that critics hated but independent booksellers seemed to love. I hated the hell out of that book—it felt like super-generic literary fiction to me—and at the time I was both a critic and an independent bookseller. I haven't read his new book, but if you'll permit me to judge it by its cover, I think it looks like more of the same. I have not even looked at Lin's book. The one thing you can guarantee about this reading is that it will be twice as long as other book readings.

At the Richard Hugo House, Susanna Lang will read from Even Now, a collection of poems. Here is a link to one of Ms. Lang's narrative poems, called "Pussywillow." I actually really like the poem (except for the last line), but that's still enough to make this the reading of the night.

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

GalleyCat brings news that Dutch mystery author Janwillem van de Wetering has died. Van de Wetering is the author of the Amsterdam Cops series, of which there were fourteen installments. Soho Press was just about to reissue his books. A lot of my mystery-reading friends—people with really good taste—have recommended him to me. I haven't read any of his books yet, but I have a couple at home waiting for me.

Used Books Blog put up a post about Borders reorganizing their corporate plan. The post became an apparently much-needed place for Borders employees to collect and gripe about the changes the corporation made and how they affect them:

From the front lines, those “strategic alternatives” included getting rid of managers and supervisors, eliminating the employee gift card of $25/mo. for full time employees, eliminating time and a half for all employees working holidays and the thing that is guaranteed to save their rosy butts — charging employees 35 cents for tea and coffee that had been previously free.

Corporations are always so classy when they're desperately trying not to go bankrupt.

There's a great piece today in the San Francisco Chronicle--I know! weird, right?--about reading books. Look, you're already asleep. You're already scrolling past this.

Mark Morford writes:

See, I love books. Admire and appreciate and adore. Was a lit major at Berkeley, still love to read, still like to consider myself a big consumer of books and deep thinker about bookish issues and ideas.

And yet, if I'm painfully honest, I have to admit it: I barely read books anymore. Not nearly the way I used to, anyway. Not for a long, long time. And chances are, if you're at all drawn to the new media vortex, neither do you.

He's right, of course--the internet's pulling all of us away from books. Except maybe Paul Constant, who somehow posts more than anyone on Slog (except possibly Savage and ECB) and, at the same time, reads three books per weekend.

A teenage poetry reading followed by an open mic, a poetry slam, and a guide to "flora gawking" tonight, along with a few other readings.

Up at Third Place Books, Asara Lovejoy reads from The One Command, which is about creating wealth "with six steps to theta, the brainwave that opens unlimited potential and financial good." Something tells me there's gonna be a whole lot of brain use at this reading.

At the Seattle Public Library, Stephen L. Carter reads from his new mystery thriller, Palace Council. I was excited about this book—Nixon's a character—but then I read this Entertainment Weekly review of the book, which begins like this:

Stephen L. Carter's new novel, Palace Council, comes billed as a political thriller, but the most compelling mystery here has nothing to do with its botched suspense plot. How is it that the writer of The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White — bona fide page-turners set among the black upper class — has published a third novel that reads like a first draft? Why would this Yale Law professor and celebrated public intellectual construct a sub-Dan Brown cryptography thriller that panders to yahoo paranoia about New World Order high jinks?

And now I don't want to read it anymore. (And before anyone gets huffy, I have to say that Entertainment Weekly does good reviews of thrillers and other pop-lit books. I don't trust their judgment on literary fiction, but in this case, the comparison to Dan Brown alone is enough to make me skip Palace Council. I've read enough Da Vinci Code ripoffs in the last few years, thankyewverymuch.)

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, in the best-looking reading of the night, Steve Kozlowski reads from The Last Polar Bear, which is a book about polar bears and how we're fucking slaughtering them. The first thing we have to do is keep them away from treadmills:

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

io9 reports on the new, free downloadable version of the world's longest novel, Marienbad, My Love, by Mark Leach. It's 12.6 million words long. The press release has all kinds of interesting information about the book's record-breakingness, including:

* the world's longest word. Also called "the holy Jah," the 4.4-million-letter noun is a coinage of words from the world's faiths. It means "god within."

* the world's longest sentence (3 million words).

* the world's longest book title (6,700 words).

The website also has the Top Ten reasons to read Marienbad, My Love:

1. A giant orbiting UFO 2. Nazi/alien collaborations 3. Alien abductions 4. Human/alien hybrids 5. Mind control 6. Religious insects from outer space 7. A mad scientist 8. An evil CEO 9. A time-traveling, green-skinned monster of the unconscious 10. The end of the world

You know, I've been trying to find another book to revive Book Club of the Damned here on Slog, but I think I'd rather choose a book that I can successfully read in my lifetime. Still and all, it's totally free! Go! Download! Enjoy! And don't say I never gave you anything.

I haven't read anything by Terry Pratchett, the fantasy humorist, in quite some time, though I read all of his books when I was a teenager. I hadn't thought of Pratchett in a good long while, either, until about six months ago, when he announced that he was suffering from a rare, early-onset form of Alzheimer's.

The Internet—or at least the geek-and-lit blogs portion of it—is abuzz about this piece that Pratchett, an avowed atheist, wrote for the Daily Mail. It's about whether he is more prone to believe in God, now that the end is in sight. I think that it's a classy, generous essay, and well worth reading.

Three readings tonight.

At the Elliott Bay Book Company, Kaya McLaren reads from her reissued novel, Church of the Dog. Here is what Publisher's Weekly says about the book:

...The result is an ersatz inspirational novel that mistakes the characters' tendencies to natter on about God and ethics and spout goofy New Age-isms for plot or character development.

And here is what Emerging Crone has to say about it:

It is impossible to encounter this book and not have your heart expanded.

Sounds like we have an old-fashioned "critics are just so full of hate that they can't appreciate a beautiful, inspirational book for what it is" battle going on. To figure out what side of the fight you fall on, you might want to go to this reading. I'm not going, because Emerging Crone's website has already given me hives from all its New Agey foo-foo.

Up at Third Place Books, Garth Stein reads from The Art of Racing in the Rain. Stein is local, and his book is prominently displayed in just about every Starbucks in the nation. It's told from the point of view of a dog. I haven't read it.

Lastly, and bestly, Cory Doctorow is back in town at the University Book Store. He was here a month or so ago for his young adult novel Little Brother, but I think that this will be a reading of new work. This is clearly the reading of the night.

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

From the book editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Dear Colleagues,

For three years, it's been my joy to help unleash your opinions upon the world, or at least the corner of it in northeast Ohio. Thank you for making the books pages one of the smartest, most diverse, liveliest and unpredictable sections of The Plain Dealer.

Starting this Sunday, July 6, that joy is reduced by 25 percent. The pages are being cut to one and one-half. Nobody following the news biz can pretend to be surprised, but all of us can be sad, just the same.

The most important part of this email, however, is to stress that a reduction of 25 percent still allows us a passing grade, especially if we spend the real estate we do have more wisely.

The Plain Dealer has a really good books page. In fact, I think it's probably the best part of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The letter ends with a request that people e-mail the Plain Dealer with requests to keep their book section at the size it is presently. Regardless of the glee that some people are taking in the print media's demise, it's sad that editors have to beg for letter-writing campaigns to convince people that their sections are important and relevant.

The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary has unveiled their new edition, which features 100 new words. I know this is just a stupid publicity stunt, but I always fall for it. Some new additions to the official Merriam-Webster lexicon include:

Pescatarian, fanboy, edamame, mondegreen, infinity pool, dirty bomb, subprime, wing nut, mental health day, and air quotes.

I wish that infinity pool didn't mean what the Merriam-Webster folks say it means:

an outdoor pool with one lower edge that allows water to gush over making it look like it flows into the horizon.

I wish that the above definition applied to the word mondegreen. To me, an infinity pool sounds like a beautiful trap, or a catch-22, or something along those lines.

Dead, apparently by suicide, on the 4th of July.

I was going to do a phone interview with him later this month for his newest book, The Word of God. It's not so much a novel as a collection of short stories, with commentary by Disch, who, in the book, claimed to be God. I was looking forward to talking with him.

Disch wrote a lot of essays and poetry. On the Internet, he's probably best known as a science-fiction author who wrote books like Camp Concentration. Philip K. Dick also, famously, tried to turn Disch in to the FBI for being un-American, but Disch remained a lifelong fan and early advocate of Dick's work.

This is a real shame.

Two open mics and three other readings tonight.

At the Elliott Bay Book Company, Tom Farrey reads from Game On: The All-American Race to Make Champions of Our Children. I can't really justify attending this reading: every day, I thank my parents for raising a mediocre child.

Up at Third Place Books, Janice Taylor reads from All is Forgiven, Move On. This seems to be a weight-loss book that will lead readers on "a journey to Sveltesville." It looks, um, pretty...wacky.

And at the I.D. Library, Sasha Su-Ling Welland reads from A Thousand Miles of Dreams, which is "an evocative and intimate biography of two Chinese sisters who took very different paths in their quest to be independent women." Like Cagney & Lacey!

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

Only one event today, and it's an open mic at Little Red Studio. I once attended a party at Little Red Studio, and it was awesome.

In other literary news:

Here's an interview between Tim Russert and Hunter S. Thompson. Note that it's posted by 9/11 Truth people, who seem to believe that Thompson was killed because he was onto the truth about 9/11. Also note the comment on the video on YouTube by redpaul79 that reads:

both dead now--coincidence???????

Chew on that, Sunday.

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

In the aftermath of yesterday's freedom, there are only two readings today, and they both involve poetry.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Cat Ruiz reads from her book of poems, Stirring Up the Water.

And at Gallery 1412 on Capitol Hill, Melanie Noel reads poetry as part of a series of summer performances called Parity 3. You can read more about Parity 3 and Gallery 1412 here.

And because I ran the godawful Captain America theme song yesterday, here's the godawful Hulk theme song today:

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

Because it is the 4th of July, there are no readings today. All the authors, if you believe Fox News, are probably crouching in their spider-holes trying to figure out exactly how to finally overthrow America this year. Their plans probably involve disseminating anti-freedom information at those packed book readings us hippies are always going to.

Enjoy your Constitution while it lasts, folks!

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, here, on our very un-American books page.

Okay, I know that lots of authors are appearing in book trailers. But, really: if you can't bring at least a QVC-type level of professionalism to the video, maybe you shouldn't appear in your own book trailer.

This:

does not make me want to read this book, especially when she uses the phrase "self-savvy insights."

I just received the most awesomest press release ever:

(Branford, CT) The Woodland Park Zoological Gardens in Seattle is one of sixty to be honored as one of "America's Best Zoos 2008" by The Intrepid Traveler, a travel publisher located in Branford, CT.

Of course, the press release doesn't say what number the Woodland Park Zoo made on the list—maybe it's un-numbered? As someone in the office helpfully pointed out: "That's more than one zoo per state!" Some quick math confirms this observation, which means that we are not one of the ten states to experience the sheer giddiness of having two zoos worth mentioning on the 60-zoo-strong "America's Best Zoos 2008" list.

But the press release worked, since I went to the Intrepid Traveler website and found a book that will definitely go on my 60-book-strong "America's Best Book Titles 2008" list: Here Be Yaks.

They'll be receiving a press release announcing their achievement in the next few days.

There is an open mic tonight and one exceedingly ill-timed reading.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Bob Delaney reads from Covert, which is his memoir about infiltrating the mob. The thing is, nobody's going to want to talk about infiltrating the mob because Bob Delaney is an NBA referee.

I figure that, in this first post-Sonics-abduction day, all the questions after Mr. Delaney reads are probably going to be along the lines of "ThsssshhkplehSONICS! BlehthphttthhhhhGODDAMNOKIES!" Which is a shame, because going deep-cover in the mob is fucking awesome.

Check out the full readings calendar, including the next week or so, here.

(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 Grin of the Dark, by Ramsey Campbell.

Where'd you go? Boom Noodle.

What'd you eat? The tofu yakisoba ($8.95). Also, a side of steamed rice with curry sauce. ($2.50)

How was the food? You know, it was all right. I mean, it was a decent plate of yakisoba. There were some good mushrooms in there, and surprising little hits of ginger. And the tofu was fried perfectly—pillowy on the outside and not over-fried on the outside. It wasn't worth nine dollars, though. I'd recommend it for a dinner menu, but a cheaper lunch menu with smaller portions would be preferable. I do not, by any means, recommend the curry. It has the consistency and appearance and some of the flavor of gravy from a can.

What does your date say about itself? It's a horror novel from the British Stephen King about an out-of-work film critic who's researching a long-lost silent comedy star named Tubby Thackeray. Apparently, he starts seeing evil clowns everywhere as he digs up The Secret of Tubby. "Easily Campbell's finest book in years. The man really knows how to scare, not via empty shock value but by inducing a far deeper, all-encompassing sense of psychological dread. By the end of the book, the protagonist's sanity is in tatters, and yours very well may be, too!" says The Fright Site.

The British cover, to the right, is much, much better than the American cover.

Is there a representative quote? "He's in a toyshop. Perhaps his black bow tie and bulging dinner jacket signify that he has left a party or a drunken meal. With his head that's too small for his oval torso and long legs, he looks shaped for comedy before he makes a move. His disconcertingly round eyees are wide with innocence."

Will you two end up in bed together? Nope. I gave the goddamned thing fifty pages and I still don't care about the main character, his situation, or the mystery. The writing is subpar, too. Summer is a great time for genre fiction, but I can't spend any more time on this book. People who are interested in the premise of a film critic exploring a long-lost bit of film history that leads to a giant conspiracy and weird thrills should read Theodore Roszak's Flicker instead.

Christopher Hitchens had himself waterboarded for the August issue of Vanity Fair. There is video of Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded here. I know a few people who will bookmark this page and go back to it whenever they read a Hitchens essay from now on.

Speaking of torture, the soundtrack for the waterboarding video is really, really bad.

_{Sleep, my bloggy little angel, sleep and dream. When you awaken, you shall be rich!}

Slunch, which is quoting from Publisher's Lunch, says that former Gawker editor and recent New York Times Magazine cover story whiner Emily Gould has sold her memoir, titled And the Heart Says..."Whatever", to Free Press. Estimates for the book deal range from $250,000 to 1 meeellion dollars.

The press release says that ATHS..."W" will be:

"an honest, searching and wry set of recollections that together weave a picture of what it's like to be a young person in New York City in the early 2000s"

Can't wait to review this one!

There's a poetry slam tonight and several other events, one of which is important.

Zoe Ferrarris reads at Third Place Books tonight, from her new mystery, Finding Nouf. I want to say the words "Zoe Ferrarris" all day long. And maybe I will. The book is set in contemporary Saudi Arabia, and it involves culture clashes, Muslim conservatism...and murder.

At the Chapel Performance Space in Wallingford, Deborah Meadows, who wrote a poetry collection called Goodbye Tissues, and Mickey O’Connor, who wrote Not Even Merely End, will be reading poetry. It is unclear whether their poetry will have a slam (or, indeed, a slammin') element to it.

Norman Fischer, a zen teacher, reads at Elliott Bay Book Company from his book Sailing Home: Using the Wisdom of Homer’s Odyssey to Navigate Life’s Perils and Pitfalls. Everything about that title makes me want to vomit, and not from sea sickness. It seems as though, in the last few years, literary criticism has been replaced by these awful books about what the classics can do for (or say about) you. Correct answer: who cares? They'll be around a lot longer than you anyway.

And at Town Hall, Mahvish Khan reads from My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me. Khan was a translator at Guantanamo. Everybody needs to know what's going on in there, and not just in that comical prison rape kind of way. This is obviously the reading of the night.

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

I suppose it had to happen sometime. Stephanie Cleveland takes issue with the "Slut" in "Bookslut." Her essay is way, way too long. Here's the beginning of her point:

It wasn’t until I was back in New York that I checked out Bookslut online, and got my first introduction to the magazine via the August issue. One of the first things I noticed was, despite its claim to be a magazine for “people” who love reading, and despite a few male editors flippantly (offensively?) proclaiming themselves “sluts” on the masthead, Bookslut features images of women in various states of undress, but no naked men.

The Bookslut logo is a cartoon of a female nude, lying horizontally, in the great tradition of reclining female nudes painted by male artists throughout history. Bookslut is hunched eagerly over her book, and the focal point of the cartoon is her ass. She has long wavy hair, perched atop her head in a ponytail. Her body looks thin and young, traditionally attractive. You can see the edge of her right breast jutting over the side of her rib cage perkily. On the Bookslut site, readers can buy pictures of this logo and different pinup style cartoons of women, on T-shirts, tote-bags, and other merchandise.

Jessa Crispin, the head Bookslut, responds:

...My riled up inner feminist gets mightily pissed off at the assertion that I am harming women by running Bookslut...

I don't even know what to say here, except that I hope the Anti-Ninja Defamation League goes after Bookninja next. Seriously, I'm not a huge fan of using sexual imagery to sell a love of books—I'm not the fond of the title of Nancy Pearl's wonderful book about books, Book Lust, for example. But I think declaring that a litblog is perpetuating violence against women is a bit much.

One thing I hope we can all agree on is that Bookslut needs to change its logo, which has been the same hunk of ugly for a very long time:

Out in Hollywood, they're about to start work on a Martha Gellhorn biopic. Gillian Anderson (of the incredibly dumb-sounding X-Files: I Want To Believe movie coming out this summer) will produce and star.

If you don't know who Martha Gellhorn is, you should be ashamed of yourself. She's probably best known as one of Hemingway's ex-wives, but she was an amazing journalist and travel essayist. She lived a crazy life, traveling everywhere and meeting seemingly everyone.

There's one problem on the horizon for this movie already. They licensed the rights to Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life, a recent biography of Gellhorn by Caroline Moorehead. It's actually nowhere near as good a book as Gellhorn's memoir Travels With Myself and Another, which everyone should read. The structure and the tone of Travels is so much better than Gellhorn, and ultimately more filmable. But still, anything that's likely to get her books out to a bigger audience is good news.

Four books on various topics going on tonight in the Seattle metro area.

Over at First Baptist Church on Harvard, two theologians named Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker read from Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. It looks to be lovingly critical of Christianity's fetishistic obsession with crucifixion. This looks pretty interesting. More information can be found here.

And at Elliot Bay Book Company, Darin Strauss reads from More Than It Hurts You. Strauss wrote a novel called Chang and Eng, about the famous siamese twins. Regardless of its fascinating subject matter, it was pretty dull. I haven't read Strauss since.

Up at Third Place Books, Jonathan Harrington reads from The Climate Diet, which is all about how you can "Cut Carbon, Cut Costs, and Save the Planet" just like this guy:

At the University Book Store, we leave the planet Earth behind entirely with Mary Rosenblum, who has written a book called Horizons, which is a science fiction novel about how human life would develop in zero gravity, which was covered to hilarious effect in Wall-E.

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

This online book dealer bought about a hundred books from a widow. After he brought the books home, he opened them up to find that quite a few of the books had been hollowed out and filled with pornographic Polaroids of the deceased husband with a bunch of different women.

Most of the commenters are asking...actually, demanding...that he upload the pics to Flickr.

Via Kottke.

Paid Content says that MagHound will launch in September. Maghound is an open subscription service, where you get three, four, or more magazines a month, but you're not locked into a particular magazine subscription: you can change the titles you receive any time you want. This sounds like a smart idea to me, and probably long overdue, but the catch comes in the desciption of the pricing:

...three titles for $3.95 per month; five titles for $7.95; seven titles for $9.95, and $1 per title for eight titles or more. Then titles that have a non-discounted traditional sub rate of around $19 or more per year are considered “premium” titles and will have an extra $2 fee per month..which means the likes of Economist, The Atlantic, New Yorker and and others would cost more...

Just about every magazine I'd want falls into that latter category, which would probably make the whole thing prohibitively expensive for me. But I can still think of dozens of people who'll sign up for this on the day it launches.

Don't get me wrong: just this weekend, I was discussing the timeless joy of Loony Tunes cartoons. The one where Bugs Bunny takes on the opera singer is second in my heart only to the one where he goes bullfighting. Or maybe "What's Opera, Doc?" is my favorite of all time.

But Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States, has a story in the Wall Street Journal about how inspired he has been by those early Warner Brothers cartoons:

Bugs would do the impossible by jumping out of the frame and landing on the drawing board of the cartoonist who was at work creating him. This freedom to transcend the laws of basic physics, to hop around in time and space, and to skip from one dimension to another has long been a crucial aspect of imaginative poetry.

I really don't like Billy Collins at all. He's the kind of whimsical poet—packed with thoughts that are, you know, deep, but not too deep, things that could all be prefaced by "Didja ever notice?"—who's murdering poetry by trying to make it accessible. He's the 'hip' substitute teacher who tries to convince the students that World War I was really all about sex.

But whatever. The worst part of Collins' article is that it has little poems for each of the Looney Tunes characters. From "Elmer":

Later he will have his nap,/the enormous pink head/rolling on the pillow/dreaming again of the wabbit,/the private carrot patch.

I just wish that Billy Collins would stop trying to save poetry. It's embarrassing to watch.

I got an e-mail on Friday from Mr. Poe. He attended the Andre Dubus III reading on Thursday, and came away thoroughly disappointed. It was a really funny e-mail, all about how the point of the reading seemed to be about pronouncing Dubus correctly. He kindly let me quote from it here, bolded for truth.

I don't know how you continually attend these things. They don't exactly exist for people who don't know of or haven't already read/started to read the novel, and they don't add much of anything to the material. In fact, I'm starting to realize I'd rather not see my preferred authors in person. I'd rather know nothing about them.

He goes on to say that the only relevant part of readings are usually the questions.

But nobody ever asks any good questions, and when they do, they're either:

1) Generic: You've heard the question before at every reading, and regardless of the answer, you've heard that too. It isn't a dumb question...it's a done question.

2) Inconsiderate: Not everybody in the audience has finished the book. Your spoiler was fucking obnoxious and now everybody hates you. Now we all acknowledge that we can't discuss critical points in the story, so we start asking about proper pronunciation of last names and twelve more minutes of #1.

I can't really argue with you on these points, Mr. Poe, but I don't think that all readings are awful. I make it a point to not go to readings by authors I completely adore, because it's never worked out well in the past. There are a few authors whose work I can't read anymore because they turned out to be such douches.

But the kind of reading that I'm happy to attend are usually the up-and-comers, who I'm a little unsure about. Generally, if it's their first or second novel, they'll be pretty fresh and fast while reading from their work, and the questions are usually a little better. At least, the questions tend to be more along the lines of "Who are you?" and not "How did you get so astoundingly popular?"

In the last three months, off the top of my head, I've attended really good readings by Ed Lin, Aleksandar Hemon, Marjane Satrapi, and Margot Kahn. They were all grateful and gracious to the audience, full of anecdotes, and excellent readers of their own work.

I think that readings can be amazing ways to learn about books and authors that you're interested in. All I can really offer by way of advice to avoid the stinkers—and hoo boy are there a lot of stinkers—is this: I try to only star the readings that I think will be interesting in the readings calendar, and then I try to point out the most interesting ones every day on Slog. Occasionally, I'll be wrong, and please let me know if I am. I'll apologize and I'll try to learn from my mistakes. But I've been to too many good readings to completely turn my back on all of them.

Two events going on tonight, in what is probably a tremendous readings-related hangover from the first big summer weekend in the Northwest. First up is the Mellow Mondays open mic at Bai Pai Thai, up in Ravenna. I haven't been, myself, but I hear that it's a pretty laid-back open mic, as far as they go.

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, Carol Cassella reads from Oxygen, which is a medical thriller about a Seattle "anesthesiologist at the height of her profession." Her process suddenly goes wrong and a patient dies, and she must figure out what went wrong. Reading the summary of the novel on Cassella's website, I think that I've already figured out what happened. But I kind of like the cover, so there's that.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, can be found on our website.

An open mic at the Little Red Studio and two other great-looking events going on today.

At Town Hall, there is a new edition of Short Stories Live, which is an event where actors read short stories to the audience. This is a special Roaring Twenties edition, and it should be pretty awesome. I don't know who the actors are, but the stories are by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and P.G. Wodehouse. A Wodehouse story read aloud by a capable person should be wildly entertaining, and a Fitzgerald story is always great, but, Dorothy Parker is of course something special. Anyone who knows that my column is named Constant Reader should understand that she's a hero of mine. So this is highly recommended.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Erick Lyle, who used to be known in zine circles as "Iggy Scam," reads from his new book On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City. I regret not reading this one for review, because it looks really neat. It's about fighting gentrification, and it's a collection of essays, memoir, and a manual for creative resistance. Local legend Chris Estey suggests this reading, and so do I.

Lyle is at 2 and Short Stories Live is at 4. You can probably do both.

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

It is a packed-with-readings Saturday including an open mic, a children's book about an elephant, and a book about utopia.

At Seattle Mystery Bookshop, James Rollins signs from his newest book, The Last Oracle. That's not an important fact about James Rollins. An important fact about James Rollins is that he wrote the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull novelization. If, like me, you left that movie wanting to hold someone accountable, this is probably your only chance to meet someone even tangentially related to the movie. If you go, make sure to ask him if he rolled his eyes while reading the script as much as you did while watching the movie.

At Borders, Jeff Dwyer signs his newest book, the Ghost Hunter's Guide to Seattle and Puget Sound. I've met several ghost hunters, and I find them to be incredibly entertaining people. This could be an amusing way to spend a half hour or so in the afternoon if you happen to be downtown.

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, Gary Vaynerchuck reads from his book 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World. I can't read that title without assuming that 'Thunder' here implies 'gas.' What a weird title. Do you think that Vaynerchuck is always referring to things that he likes as "bringing thunder?" Maybe we should popularize it.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, can be found over on our books page.