A Day Late and a Dollar Short for the Week of January 3, 2011

I may have taken Monday off due to poor planning. Or it may have been part of a sinister plot. I’m reaching, here, people. Not that anything happened. The rest of the week looks interesting, though.

Greg Bear is not pimping Hull Zero Three, tonight, instead signing a Halo tie-in novel at UW Bookstore. The rest of the week is heavy on poetry, both local and imported, with Ben Lerner in town from Brooklyn, and several group readings from home-grown writers.

There’s also a sprinkling of sports, science, music, and dance to keep Seattleites intellectually well-rounded, if physically still rather pale and wan. Not as pale and wan as deceased honorees Gerry Garcia and Gypsy Rose Lee, but on the vampirish side, nonetheless.

01/04/11 7 p.m. UW Bookstore
Greg Bear
Halo: Cryptum, Book One of the Forerunner Saga
The local SF legend has penned a game tie-in novel. I’m ambivalent about this. On the one hand, everybody needs to eat, right? And if anyone can write a good tie-in novel, it is Mr. Bear. But still, it makes me feel ooky. (Although, not as ooky as calling a grown man, “Mr. Bear.”)

01/04/11 8 p.m. Richard Hugo House
Castalia Reading Series
Group Reading
UW folks read their work.

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01/05/11 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Megan Snyder-Camp, Laura Shoemaker, & Sarah Steinke
Poetry Reading
EBBC hosts three local poets whose last names all start with an S. One of those odd little things that strike me as funny, what can I say?

01/05/11 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Doug Merlino
The Hustle: One Team and Ten Lives in Black and White
Back in the ’80s, Seattle was trying really hard to be integrated and post-racial, with varying degrees of success. One effort was an integrated student basketball team. Merlino looked up the members, twenty years later, to gauge the results. This is a “sports” book that I will definitely be reading.

01/05/11 7:30 p.m. Richard Hugo House
Scribes
Group Reading
Alums from Hugo House’s Scribes program read.

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01/06/11 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Janet Thomas
Day Breaks Over Dharamsala: A Memoir of Life Lost and Found
The author of The Battle in Seattle takes a left turn.

01/07/11 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Milton D. Ghivizzani
Hitter of the Year
The second novel featuring Joe Bari, a modern Perry Mason. “Sonny” Ghivizzani is a local attorney and, apparently, mystery writer. More lawyers should turn author. They seem to do well at it. Also, the world could use fewer lawyers, don’t you think?

01/07/11 7:30 p.m. Open Books Poem Emporium
Ben Lerner
Mean Free Path
The Brooklyn-based writer is published by local outfit Copper Canyon Press because they have excellent taste.

01/08/11 2 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
David George Gordon
The Secret World of Slugs and Snails: Life in the Very Slow Lane
I’m giddy about this book. Did you know the Pacific Banana slug is the 2nd largest land-slug on the planet? And the Great Grey slug is also known as the Leopard slug? Awesome! Also, the book is beautifully illustrated by Gordon’s wife, Karen Luke Fildes.

01/08/11 4 p.m. Green Lake Branch Library
PoetsWest
Poetry Reading
Open mic and poetry reading.

01/08/11 5 p.m. Pilot Books
Paul Nelson
Pacific Rim Poetics
Preview of a six-week Hugo House course on the poetics of our region.

01/08/11 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Gary McKinney & Scott MacFarlane
The Storyteller Speaks: Rare & Different Fictions of the Grateful Dead
Stories inspired by the Dead, music, and remembrances of things past.

01/08/11 8 p.m. The Triple Door
The Swedish Housewife
Burlesque Theatre Performance
In celebration of Gypsy Rose Lee’s 100th birthday, local Burlesque performers will strut their stuff. Elliott Bay will have copies of Karen Abbott’s new biography, American Rose: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee, available for sale.

01/09/11 2 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Dennis Milam Bensie
Shorn: Toys to Men
“Dennis Bensie was a ‘different’ kind of boy, bullied at school, humiliated and virtually ignored by his father. His memoir tracks an initial fascination with hair to a full-blown, life-defining illness, a paraphilia in extremis. At times the story becomes so disturbing that you wonder how he can possibly emerge as a wonderful human being. But he does. This book is at once a confession and a gift.” – Walter de Milly

01/09/11 5 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Brian E. Penprase
The Power of Stars: How Celestial Observations Have Shaped Civilization
Astronomy, astrology, cosmology, and philosophy. Start the year off with the Big Bang!