Shopping Bag
My AccountToday’s Featured Book Event
Sweet & Saucy Sixteenth Birthday (In Other Words Women’s Books & Resources, @6:00pm, $7-30 Sliding Scale Donation): Come celebrate Portland’s finest feminist literature establishment at this freaky fancy affair! The mainstage will feature readings by Emcee Sossity (of Dirty Queer fame), Ariel Gore, & Hope Hitchcock. There will be a cash bar in the lounge with live music provided by “This Charming Man” – a Smith’s cover band and Marisa Anderson. This event will be ASL interpreted.
Other Book Events Today:
Lecture: Harriet Murav “Bergelson, Benjamin, and Berlin: Justice Deferred” (Reed College, Biology 19, @5:30pm): Harriet Murav is professor of Slavic languages and literatures and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign. She has a Ph.D. from Stanford University and is the author of Holy Foolishness: Dostoevsky’s Novels & the Poetics of Cultural Critique, the award-winning Russia’s Legal Fictions, and Identity Theft: The Jew in Imperial Russia and the Case of Avraam Uri Kovner. She is currently working on a new book, Music from a Speeding Train: Russian Jewish and Soviet Yiddish Literature of the 20th Century.
Visiting Writers Series: Matthew and Michael Dickman (Reed College, Psychology 105, @6:30pm): Matthew Dickman’s first book, All-American Poem, won the 2008 APR/Honnickman First Book Prize, chosen by Tony Hoagland and published by Copper Canyon Press. His poems have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New Yorker and Tin House. Michael Dickman’s first collection is The End of the West (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Field, Tin House, Narrative magazine, and other journals. Twins Michael and Matthew Dickman will also give a colloquium, “Thinking in Images,” 6:10 p.m., Tuesday, October 27, in Vollum lounge. For more information, visit the Visiting Writers website.
Barbara Drake & Lynn Thompson (Looking Glass Bookstore, @7:00pm): “Barbara Drake’s witty humor, appreciated over the years by many readers, seeps joyfully into these [Driving One Hundred] pages. But that’s not all. There’s the ever-accurate observation of birds and the natural world, brought vividly into the reader’s imagination; and the startling and beautiful images: I’m left with a red horse standing chest high in a marsh. Underneath the well-honed poetic voice, stretches a bedrock of wisdom gained from looking squarely at the world around her and at the passing of years in a life well examined.” —Judith Barrington
In Lynn Thompson’s Far From the Edge, readers will appreciate the signs of compassion and integrity in his wide range of subjects. Thompson has faced reality straight-on and writes the decades of his life, painting unique images showing glimpses of the past that will catch the reader’s breath. There is enough tension, passion, and mischievous wit to make this book of poems a page-turner. Thompson has chosen poems for “Far From the Edge” that extend the reader’s sense of his playfulness, poems that feel like friendly conversations, words meant to be shared, spoken out loud, or considered over a cup of coffee. The subject matter tweaks the seemingly mundane: daydreaming in bed, standing in line, gardening, grocery shopping, reminiscing about childhood, reflecting on growing older – the usual subjects.
Eoin Colfer: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): The genius behind the Artemis Fowl series presents And Another Thing… (Hyperion), the authorized sixth book in the late Douglas Adams’s wildly popular Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy saga. Please note: A purchase of And Another Thing… is required at the event to get additional books signed by the author.
Jess Walter (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): From National Book Award finalist Jess Walter comes The Financial Lives of the Poets (Harper), a hysterically funny — and painfully timely — novel of one man’s attempt to save his family from economic disaster by putting his entrepreneurial leanings toward a life of petty crime.
The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest (Powells Books on Hawthorne, @7:30pm): In The Collector (Sasquatch Books), Jack Nisbet tells the story of David Douglas, the premier botanical explorer in the Pacific Northwest, whose discoveries include hundreds of western plants, most notably the Douglas fir.
You can find other events on your community Libraries schedule using these links: Washington County, Multnomah County, Clackamas County. For other book events this week, please check the list.
