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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Books Reading Tonight: Three Flights of Fancy

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:22 AM

Three events tonight.

Peter Brown reads at the Ballard branch of SPL. The Curious Garden is "a picture book about urban renewal and perseverance...geared toward children ages 3 to 8." I know a few three-year-olds who are totally passionate about urban renewal, but they are not so concerned about gentrification, which I find to be a troubling sign of the world to come.

University Book Store hosts Grant McCracken. He's an anthropologist who insists that American corporations need to hire a Chief Culture Officer, which is why his book is titled Chief Culture Officer. This sounds even more fanciful to me than the idea of interesting three-year-olds in urban renewal.

But neither of these two books are nearly as fanciful as the reading of the night, which will also be appearing in a Suggests any minute now. Robert McChesney and John Nichols read at Town Hall tonight from The Death and Life of American Journalism is an excellent book about saving journalism from Google and greedy corporations. You can read about it in this week's books lead.

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.