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Thursday, December 10, 2009

Books Reading Tonight: You Must Go to Open Books or Third Place Books Tonight.

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 10:22 AM

There are so many events tonight—a book about the medical science of the TV show House, a book with photos of Puget Sound, a book about mass political murder, and a book about having an "explorer's garden" of invasive plants—but there are really only three events that matter in town tonight.

Twyla Tharp reads at Kane Hall in the U District tonight. If you know who Twyla Tharp is, you'll probably want to go to this. If you don't know who Twyla Tharp is, you'll want to listen to Brendan Kiley interview her.

And Maged Zaher reads at Open Books. Zaher is a poet and an engineer. Portrait of the Poet as an Engineer is the imaginative title of his poetry collection. I unfortunately got a copy of his book this week, which means I didn't have a chance to write about it for The Stranger in time for this reading, but I have to say that this is a really fine poetry collection. Zaher incorporates text messages, gentrification, condoms, and Karl Marx into his poetry; it's funny and intelligent and everything that modern poetry should be. I have a Suggest about Jess Walter's fabulous new novel The Financial Lives of the Poets popping up here soon, and that is a great book. These are both great books in very different ways. But because this is Zaher's debut reading for Portrait of the Poet as an Engineer, I'm going to call his reading the reading of the night.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.