Today’s Featured Book Event:

Friends of Mystery presents “Fresh Blood” (Terwilliger Plaza, @6:30pm): Join Friends of Mystery for a panel of of up-and-coming mystery authors hosted by best-selling author Chelsea Cain. The panel will feature Northwest authors Bill Cameron, Mike Lawson, Dana Haynes and Brian Thornton, each with a different niche in the crime/thriller world, each creators of page-turning tales. The event will start with our annual book sale beginning at 6:30 pm. We will have hardbacks, paperbacks, audio books and DVD’s for sale. Most hardbacks will be priced at $1.00 and paperbacks at 50 cents. These books were donated by members for the sale. If you have books to donate, please bring them to the May meeting.

Other Book Events Today:

Kwame Anthony Appiah (U of O-Portland, @5:30pm): The Oregon Humanities Center presents the Tzedek Professorship in the Humanities lecture by Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy at Princeton University and director of the PEN American Center. In his lecture “A Life of Honor,” Appiah will examine the notion of “honor,” which has been used to justify many practices throughout history, including duels in aristocratic England, foot binding in 19th-century China, and honor killing in modern-day Pakistan.

Opening Reception (Ampersand, @6:00pm): The June show features a selection of beautiful hand-colored albumen photographs from Japan, circa 1880s to 1890s. Depicting tradespeople, market scenes & women clothed in magnificent kimonos, these photographs would have been exported to the West in ornamented lacquer albums or brought back from Japan during a voyage around the world. For most people in the West, separated as they were by vast geographic distances, such photographs served as the only visual record of life in Japan. Looking at the photographs today, the separation is now temporal & yet the affect is still the same—the exquisite colors, unfamiliar scenes & subtle details capture the imagination as though we, too, have been aboard a steamer & are on a tour around the world.

Open Mic (Lake Oswego Library, @6:30pm): The 2010 Open Mic season has begun—and what a great beginning! January featured performances by a classical guitarist, storyteller, and poets. Please join us for an evening of local talent! Sign up begins at 6:30 P.M. and performances begin at 7:00 P.M.

WITS Reading (BiPartisan Cafe, @7:00pm): Writers in the Schools (WITS) is a comprehensive program that cultivates young writers and supports Oregon authors through semester-long writing residencies in the Portland public high schools. Reading will be students from Franklin High School with WITS writers Alexis Nelson and Hunt Holman.

Blood Secrets (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): Written by real-life blood spatter expert Rod Englert, Blood Secrets (Thomas Dunne) reveals how forensic experts “read” the story of a murder told in the traces of blood left behind, providing crucial evidence that has helped convict criminals who might have otherwise walked free.

Charles Goodrich & Bill Siverly (Looking Glass Bookstore, @7:00pm): In addition to his new book, Going to Seed, Charles Goodrich is the author of another volume of poems, Insects of South Corvallis (Cloudbank Books, 2003), and a collection of essays about nature, parenting, and building his own house, The Practice of Home (Lyons Press, 2004). Bill Siverly has taught literature, composition and creative writing at PCC for twenty-five years. He has published four books of poetry, Parzival (1981), Phoenix Fire (1987), The Turn (2000), and Clearwater Way (2009). Bill is co-editor of Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place, which features poetry of the Pacific Northwest.

Mystery Book Group (St. John’s Books, @7:00pm): Love mysteries? Love to talk about them? Join us for the inaugural meeting of our new mystery book group! We’re kicking things off in classic style with The Nine Tailors, Dorothy Sayers’ renowned tale of codes, churchyards, and a body in a belfry. Local tragedy, natural disaster, and a strange death all shake the underpinnings of a peaceful English village. Sit down with us to share your thoughts on this book and help choose future readings! Store book group selections are always 20% off in-store.

David Moskowitz (Audubon House, @7:00pm): The Audubon Society presents David Moskowitz, author of the newly published Wildlife of the Pacific Northwest: Tracking and Identifying Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians, and Invertebrates (Timber Press, $25.95).  The book includes illustrated descriptions for more than 180 mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates most common in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, northern California, Idaho, and western Montana. With more than 460 photographs, hundreds of scale drawings, and more than 90 distribution maps, it belongs in every pack and is a must-have for nature lovers of all ages and skill levels.

Lynn Schooler (Powells Books on Hawthorne, @7:30pm): Walking Home (Bloomsbury) chronicles Lynn Schooler’s solo journey into the Alaskan wilderness — first by small boat across the formidable Gulf of Alaska, then on foot along one of the wildest coastlines in North America.

Deanna Fei (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): In A Thread of Sky (Penguin), a stunning debut by talented new writer Deanna Fei, three generations of women, looking to reconnect with their ancestral home and with one another, tour mainland China on a journey that will change their family forever.

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You can find other events on your community Libraries schedule using these links: Washington County, Multnomah County, Clackamas County, and the rest of this weeks Portland book events here.

Image credit Chelsea Cain.

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