Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« The Morning News: Catholic Shame, N… | Elderly Gay Couple Forcibly Separat… »

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Books Reading Today: A Bad Author and a Good Poet

Posted by Paul Constant on Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 10:22 AM

We have the second and final day of the Friends of the Seattle Public Library Spring Book Sale today. If you have never been to one of these things, you should definitely go. It's crazy! All these disgustingly cheap books—a quarter of a million!—in a big warehouse, with people rummaging around.

Sharon Olds reads at Benaroya Hall. You can find lots of information about Olds right here. She's a Whitmanesque poet, and well worth your time.

Yann Martel reads at Third Place Books this afternoon. He wrote The Life of Pi, which is a book that gets dumber and dumber as time passes. His new book, Beatrice and Virgil,is an awful-looking novel about a successful writer who wants to write about the Holocaust. Edward Champion has written a hilarious takedown of this book. I urge you to take a look at it.

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.

Comments (3) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

yesterday I bought 24 books for $26! Yay!

Posted by J.T. Oldfield

on April 18, 2010 at 10:49 AM

I've always wanted to write a book that was awful, but wildly popular, like Ishmael or Twilight or Jonathan Livingston Seagull or Valley of the Dolls. When is Hugo House going to offer such a course?

Posted by Keister Button on April 18, 2010 at 11:01 AM

The Martel book sounds like tripe, but Ed Champion's review is his typical crap hyperbole. Martel's writing probably shines next to Champion's.

Posted by lotosesser on April 19, 2010 at 10:20 AM