Readings and Signings for the Week of January 17, 2011

This week’s calendar features a number of revisits from local artists, poets, and authors, so if you missed Kangas, Baskas, or Perillo last year, you have another chance this week.

For something completely different, the Seattle Public Library now offers free music downloads, via Freegal. Get it? Free and legal music downloads. Patrons can download up to three songs per week from the website; just click through to the Digital Books & Media page, scroll down past the Overdrive link, and there you go.

Also, please join The SunBreak in congratulating Susan Hildreth, head librarian of the Seattle Public Library. On December 22, 2010, the United States Senate confirmed Ms. Hildreth’s appointment as Director of Museum and Library Services by President Barack Obama. She will begin her term at the end of this month. Then will begin the search for a new City Librarian… woe.

01/17/11 6 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Claire Dederer
Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses
The reading will begin at 7 p.m., after a reception with the author. “Dederer’s humor is tangy and precision-aimed … A book reviewer and social critic with bylines in The New York Times, Slate, and Vogue, Dederer acidly deconstructs hip, politically correct Seattle … Dederer writes superbly and offers sharp insights into family dynamics as well as hatha yoga’s impact on American life.” – Donna Seaman, Booklist

01/17/11 6 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Thought Leaders Discussion
Cascadia: A Vision for a Restorative Future
Island Press presents a panel discussion of sustainability and change.

01/17/11 6 p.m. Pilot Books
Writer’s Group
“New exercises every week. Come prepared to write and discuss.” Aye, Cap’n!

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01/18/11 4 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Perry Moore
Hero
After School & Beyond, the EBBC Young Adult Bookgroup, will discuss this surprising and delightful story of a young, gay superhero. Highly recommended for all ages, by the way.

01/18/11 6 p.m. UW Bookstore
Michael Honey
All Labor Has Dignity
Honey has collected a group of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches that focus on economic justice.

01/18/11 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Cory Doctorow
Little Brother
Speculations, the EBBC SFF Bookgroup, takes on Cory’s YA novel of child labor, technology, privacy, and government. Awkward when it’s not overly facile, the story nonetheless resonates with anyone who’s ever played Farmville or feared the Department of Homeland Security. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

01/18/11 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Kurt Timmermeister
Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land
The founder of Cafe Septieme wrote a book: “Timmermeister begins his enterprise with little farming know-how. As he cultivates his agrarian education (often through trial and error), he reflects on self-sufficiency, sustainability, and the industrialization of food production. While narrating over two decades of the farm’s history, he describes such tasks as installing bees in a new hive, making apple cider, buying livestock, and slaughtering a pig … Part memoir, part manual, this refreshingly candid account doesn’t oversell its author or a political message.” – Lisa Campbell, Library Journal

01/18/11 7 p.m. The UW Club
Naomi Sokoloff & Susan Glenn
Boundaries of Jewish Identity
This discussion of the short fiction of Sayed Kashua, an Arab citizen of Israel, will include a dessert reception.

01/18/11 7:30 p.m. Open Books Poem Emporium
Belle Randall
The Coast Starlight
The local poet shares her first collection in quite a while. Go welcome her back.

01/18/11 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Parag Khanna
How to Run the World
Khanna asks whether we are entering a new Enlightenment, courtesy of Bill Gates and Bono.

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01/19/11 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Cecilia Martínez-Gil
Psaltery and Serpentines
“This is a luscious and lustrous collection of poems, a delightful first book from a poet who demonstrates convincingly here both the gravity and the joy of her calling.” – Gail Wronsky

01/19/11 7 p.m. Secret Garden Books
Harriet Baskas
Washington Icons: 50 Classic Views of the Evergreen State
The local photographer shares her book of pictures.

01/19/11 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Izzeldin Abuelaish
I Shall Not Hate
“The Gaza doctor” comes to Seattle to share his campaign for understanding, respect, and peace. An evening to break your heart.

01/20/11 6:30 p.m. Secret Garden Books
Wendelin Van Draanan
Shredderman: Secret Identity
In conjunction with Adams Elementary School, SGB welcomes the award-winning YA author, as part of the 4th Annual Adams Reads The Same Book program.

01/20/11 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Colm Tóibín
The Empty Family
“Tóibín returns to his native shores from Brooklyn for the bulk of these nine pristine stories, all—save one—contemporary tales of lives haunted by loss … Affairs, airports, and deathbeds populate a mature prose that’s as tender with descriptions of sexual, often gay, love, as it is with the heart’s more inexpressible reaches … These stories go a long way toward establishing Tóibín as heir to William Trevor, with reverberations that show how life encompasses more than the living.” – Publishers Weekly

01/20/11 7 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Deborah Richardson
Sex Trafficking’s Local Victims
“In Seattle, a recent study commissioned by the city found that 300-500 local children likely are being forced into prostitution. This forum… addresses the growing tragedy of sex trafficking, how the Internet is worsening the problem, and how you can make a difference. Presented by the Women’s Funding Alliance. “

01/20/11 7 p.m. UW Bookstore
Matthew Kangas
Burning Forest: The Art of Maria Frank Abrams
Kangas takes another turn reading his mono about the Holocaust survivor and NW School artist.

01/20/11 7 p.m. Sorrento Hotel
Wallace Shawn
Essays
“Penthouse Symposium no. 10 : Wallace Shawn in conversation with Sean Nelson” at the Sorrento Hotel’s 7th floor Penthouse. Ticket price includes “a hearty stew” and a copy of the book.

01/20/11 7:30 p.m. Benaroya Hall
Lucia Perillo
Inseminating the Elephant
“I have two words for anyone who wants to know why people turn to poetry in times of need: Lucia Perillo. She’s the funniest poet writing today, which is saying a lot, since she’s also the poet most concerned with the treachery practiced on us daily by our best friends and worst enemies, our bodies.” —The New York Times

01/20/11 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Ron Reagan
My Father at 100
I’m currently reading this, but I’m only halfway through, so it’s not fair to comment. Ron Reagan fils lives in Seattle and works as a commentator for MSNBC.

01/21/11 12 p.m. Seattle Mystery Bookshop
Lori Armstrong
Mercy Kill
In this second novel featuring former Army sniper Mercy Gunderson, an old Army buddy comes to town, and is inevitably murdered. Mercy must investigate for justice to triumph, et cetera.

01/21/11 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Amy Chua
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
The John M. Duffy Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and author of two very serious books on global economics, wrote a smart, candid memoir, which the WSJ then chose to excerpt with a provocative title. The whole thing turned into a minor kerfuffle that does a grave injustice to Professor Chua’s book. Battle Hymn is a complex and nuanced account of the difficulties facing multi-ethnic parents, and the often conflicting demands they face from family, culture, and society.

01/21/11 7 p.m. UW Bookstore
Michael Cassutt
Heaven’s Shadow
The former TV exec and scriptwriter visits to discuss his new book, TV drama writing, and shows he’s worked on.

01/21/11 7 p.m. Pilot Books
Sarah Lippek
Complicity
“…depicts a ramshackle near-future dystopia, where individuals are driven by unthinkable compulsions and unnameable desires. Informers file reports on one other, birds croak warnings to soldiers, living ghosts haunt detention camps, and lonely coroners take orders from corpses.” –Pilot Books

01/21/11 7:30 p.m. Barnes & Noble U-Village
Signe Pike
Faery Tale: One Woman’s Search for Enchantment in a Modern World
The author “discusses her journey of magical discovery.”

01/21/11 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Wallace Shawn
Essays
Shawn reads again, without the hearty stew. “Lovely, hilarious, and seriously thought provoking. I enjoyed it tremendously.” – Toni Morrison

01/22/11 10 a.m. Westin Hotel
Creation Entertainment
Twilight Fan Convention
Creation runs some of the crappiest conventions in the business, which is a bummer. No matter what I think of the Twilight novels, no one deserves to get ripped off by this outfit. However, Hilly and Hannah, of The Hillywood Show, will be on hand for a Q&A, so maybe it’s not a total loss. The convention continues through Sunday, January 23.

01/22/11 2 p.m. University Branch Library
Jump Into Journal Writing
Workshop
Learn how to begin and maintain a “journal-writing practice.”

01/22/11 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Tom Rachman
The Imperfectionists
“[A] witty, poignant glimpse into the universe of expatriates living in Rome, and the dreams, stress, and melodrama of a small newspaper. Rachman is clearly at home in these worlds, and his portrait is alternately hilarious, sad, intensely human, and always spot-on in its accuracy.” – Andrea Lee

01/22/11 9:30 a.m. SAAM
Ken Oshima
International Architecture in Interwar Japan: Constructing Kokusai Kenchiku
The Saturday University Sacred Sites of Asia Lecture Series presents the UW architecture professor on “Architecture of Asia Outside of Asia.” This is the concluding lecture of the series.

01/23/11 2 p.m. Barnes & Noble U-Village
Marianne Williamson
A Course in Weight Loss
“21 spiritual lessons to lose weight and gain personal strength by retraining our consciousness on eating issues.”

01/23/11 2 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Penelope Scambly Schott
Crow Mercies
“Schott’s poems, like shields of hammered copper, stand between a speaker (speaking by turns fierce and tender) and a listening grandson, mother, husband, bear-husband, butterfly sipping from their common cup … Entering your life, these poems will be invited to stay, even as you feed them, generously one by one, to friends and strangers, but keep the very best close with your secrets.” – Kim Stafford

01/23/11 4 p.m. Ada’s Technical Books
Michelle Bates
Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity
The “Holga queen” presents “the definitive book on the subject” of plastic cameras.