Happy Hearts and Chocolates Day, Readings, and Signings for the Week of February 14, 2011

I’m not a big fan of Hallmark Holidays, or holidays in general, really, but if you are, well, have fun. More joy to you.

This week’s readings feature a terrible dilemma: on Friday, both Maxine Hong Kingston and Connie Willis are speaking, at different venues, at the same time! Terrible, awful news! Don’t Seattle’s booksellers speak to each other? This is criminal scheduling, absolutely unacceptable. I protest! Moreover, I strongly protest! Rise up against the negligence of event planners, I say, rise all you bibliophiliacs; revolt against your oppressors, and make your voices heard. Vive la Révolution!

Ahem.

2/14/2011 12:05 p.m. Seattle Public Library
Thrilling Tales
Story Time for Grown-Ups
Monday lunch hour series at the Central Library.

2/14/2011 6 p.m. Pilot Books
Writer’s Group
New exercises every week. Come prepared to write and discuss. Aye, Cap’n!

2/14/2011 6:30 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Ned Vizzini
It’s Kind of a Funny Story
EBBC’s Young Adult Book Group has a new regular day and time; do take note, please.

2/14/2011 6:30 p.m. West Seattle Branch Library
Seattle Opera
Don Quixote
The Opera previews Massenet’s “Don Quixote.”

2/14/2011 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Kevin Young
Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels
...Being an Epic Account of the Capture of the Spanish Schooner Amistad, by the Africans on Board; Their Voyage and Capture Near Long Island, New York; with Phrenological Studies of Several of the Surviving Africans

2/14/2011 7 p.m. Queen Anne Books
Patrick Radden Keefe
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream
QAB’s monthly book club. Repeats Wednesday, February 16.

2/14/2011 8 p.m. Century Ballroom
Nick Hornsby
High Fidelity
The Bushwick Book Club presents music inspired by this dreadful lad-lit novel. Decent movie, though.

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2/15/2011 12 p.m. Seattle Public Library
Medieval Women’s Choir
A Voice of Her Own
Margriet Tindemans and members of the Medieval Women’s Choir preview their upcoming concert.

2/15/2011 6 p.m. West Seattle Branch Library
Poetry Workshop
Workshop
Get feedback on your writing.

2/15/2011 6:30 p.m. North East Branch Library
Charlotte Cote
Spirits of Our Whaling Ancestors
Reading and signing

2/15/2011 6:30 p.m. Kane Hall, Room 120
Evelyn Nakano Glenn
Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Temple University Press); Unequal Freedom, How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Harvard University Press); and Forced to Care: Race, Gender and Coercive Labor (Harvard University Press); and the editor of Mothering: Ideology, Experience and Agency (Routledge) and Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters (Stanford University Press)
Professor Glenn will reflect on the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Evelyn Coke vs. Long Island Care at Home to address the question of why women generally and women of color particularly perform the lion’s share of caring labor in our society.

2/15/2011 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
D.M. Cornish
Foundling
SFF Book Group reads the first book in the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy.

2/15/2011 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Joseph O’Connor
Ghost Light
A fictional account of the lives of playwright J.M. Synge and actress Molly Allgood. “[B]rilliant, beautiful, exhilarating, heartbreaking, masterly. It’s that good.” – Roddy Doyle

2/15/2011 7 p.m. UW Bookstore
Nicolette Bromberg & David Martin
Shadows of a Fleeting World: Pictorial Photography and the Seattle Camera Club
A collection of photos collected from the UW Library’s archive of the Club.

2/15/2011 7:30 p.m. Benaroya Hall
Patricia Smith
Seattle Arts & Lectures Poetry Series
“Reading poems like these, overflowing with life but contained by art, makes us all feel a little bit helpless. These poems are blessings that will move like white light through your veins.” – American Book Review

2/15/2011 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Shraga Biran
Opportunism
Shraga Biran argues that grown-ups should get to call “dibs!”

2/15/2011 8:30 p.m. Rebar
Seattle Slam
Poetry Reading
Competitive poetry open mic.

2/16/2011 5:30 p.m. Seattle Labor Temple
Michael Honey
All Labor Has Dignity
Michael Honey, Haley Professor of Humanities at the University of Washington, Tacoma, Harry Bridges Emeritus at the UW, and author of an award-winning trilogy of labor and civil rights history, will discuss “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Pro-Union Social Gospel.” The talk will address how King’s moral and religious rhetoric can support today’s struggles for social and economic justice.’ – UW

2/16/2011 6 p.m. Richard Hugo House
Write Time
Weekly Series
A drop-in writing circle for teens, facilitated by the Hugo House writer-in-residence, Karen Finneyfrock.

2/16/2011 6:30 p.m. UW Bookstore
Paul Dorpat & Richard C. Berner
Seattle 1900-1920: From Boomtown, Urban Turbulence, to Restoration
The UW is reissuing this book in an edition printed on the Espresso Book Machine.

2/16/2011 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Jonathan Evison
West of Here
The much-anticipated new novel by the author of 2008 Washington State Book Award winner All About Lulu.

2/16/2011 7 p.m. Barnes & Noble U-Village
Mystery Book Group
Meeting
This month’s theme is Historical Mysteries. Might I suggest the Roman Noir series?

2/16/2011 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Simon Johnson
13 Bankers
Mr. Johnson believes that the solution to “too big to fail” is to break up financial institutions into pieces small enough to tank without catastrophic consequences.

2/17/2011 5 p.m. Barnes & Noble Downtown
Ski Johnson
Fundraiser
Johnson will sign autographs and answer questions to support the Jazz for Life Foundation and the American Cancer Society.

2/17/2011 6:30 p.m. Secret Garden Books
Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Join SGB for their first year of book clubbing. Club books are discounted 10%.

2/17/2011 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
David Vann
Caribou Island
A solemn novel of family, poor planning, and frustration. If you’ve read Mr. Vann’s story collection, Legend of a Suicide, you’ll get the idea. Actually, the title of the collection pretty much tells you the plot of his new novel.

2/17/2011 7 p.m. The Sorrento Hotel
Jill Kargman
Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut: Essays and Observations
Perhaps Ms. Kargman’s novels are funny. I wouldn’t know. But not only was I not amused by this collection, I was annoyed, then actively repelled. I foisted it onto friends and coworkers, in search of second, third, and fourth opinions, and none of them could get past the third “chapter” without wanting to punch Ms. Kargman in the throat. YMMV.

2/17/2011 7 p.m. UW Bookstore
Jonathan Evison
West of Here
The much-anticipated new novel by the author of 2008 Washington State Book Award winner All About Lulu.

2/17/2011 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Global Rhythms: Art & the Arab-American Experience
Song of the Dove
Writer Gida Sinno reads from her short story “Our Minority Way of Life”; violinist Sallah Ali and Palestinian-American oud player Stephen Elaimy discuss and demonstrate the role Arab music has played in their careers; and internationally renowned performer and teacher Helene Eriksen speaks about her love affair with the dances of the Arab world and offers examples of their styles. Also, Oscar-nominated producer and filmmaker John Sinno premieres his special film montage of Arab-American performances. – Town Hall Seattle

2/18/2011 7 p.m. UW Bookstore
Connie Willis
Fantastic Fiction
The brilliant, yet still very kind and personable, Ms. Willis will grace us with her wit and insight. Unfortunately, this is book right against Maxine Hong Kingston, which is disgraceful, even heartbreaking. Ms. Willis has won 10 Hugo and 6 Nebula Awards for fiction.

2/18/2011 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Maxine Hong Kingston
I Love a Broad Margin to My Life
“Told in free verse reminiscent of one of Kingston’s idols, Walt Whitman, this uncommon memoir of the artist at 65 is informed by the wide margins on the pages of the Chinese editions of her works. Kingston revisits characters … and themes from her books: her pacifist, feminist activism; the challenge of stereotypes; East and West. Though this homage to aging, with wisdom gained through a freewheeling reflection on family, the past, fate, and self-reliance often rambles, it also has the cohesion and intricate logic of a musical composition. The artist is a mental traveler, presenting her life as a dreamlike journey that culminates in a listing of ‘my dead,’ some 50 names, which both pulls Kingston toward oblivion and inspires seven reasons to live.” – Publishers Weekly

2/18/2011 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Brendan Brazier
Thrive & Thrive Fitness: The Vegan-Based Training Program for Maximum Strength, Health, and Fitness
Mr. Brazier does not sit in front of a screen all day, typing, scarfing day-old take-out sushi for lunch, and wondering where his next mocha is coming from.

2/18/2011 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Dambiso Moyo
How the West was Lost
…or the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Ms. Moyo claims that the global West shot itself in the foot about 50 years ago, and keeps reloading and refiring, until now we’re teetering along on bloody stumps, like the Black Knight, claiming “It’s just a flesh wound!”

2/18/2011 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Daniel Tucker
Farm Together Now
Tucker is joined by Seattle artist and urban planner Sarah Kavage (Industrial Harvest), UW urban anthropologist and farmer Devon Pena (profiled in the book), and other food activists from the Seattle area.

2/19/2011 2 p.m. University Branch Library
Poetry for Beginners
Workshop
In this class you will study the foundations of contemporary poems, then use writing exercises to create some of your own.

2/19/2011 4 p.m. Green Lake Branch
PoetsWest
Open Mic
PoetsWest has programs with open mike sessions on the first three Saturdays in February.

2/19/2011 7 p.m. SAAM
Daniel Waugh
Central Asia: Land and Peoples
Saturday University World Little Known: Central Asia, Its Histories and Place in Today’s World Lecture Series

2/19/2011 7 p.m. Richard Hugo House
Hugo Literary Series
Brief Encounters
Dubbed “Hugo House: The Musical,” Brief Encounters features musicians Jason Dodson of The Maldives, Laura Love and Macklemore, joined by novelist Matthew Simmons, premiering new work.

2/19/2011 7 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Karen Russell
Swamplandia!
“Russell’s lavishly imagined and spectacularly crafted first novel sprang from a story in her highly praised collection. Swamplandia! is a shabby tourist attraction deep in the Everglades, owned by the Bigtree clan of alligator wrestlers … Russell’s powers reside in her profound knowledge of the great, imperiled swamp … Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell’s archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air.” – Donna Seaman, Booklist

2/19/2011 7:30 p.m. Open Books Poem Emporium
Mary Ruefle
Selected Poems
“All of the heroes
you see falling down
were filmed trying to stand up”

2/20/2011 2 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Jeremy Evans
In Search of Powder: A Story of America’s Disappearing Ski Bum
“Evans is funny, irreverent, hedonistic, saucy, insightful, and ski-obsessed. Much like the ski bums detailed within.” – Rob Story

2/20/2011 5 p.m. Elliott Bay Book Company
Laila El-Haddad
Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between
“Laila El-Haddad writes with passion and uncompromising honesty revealing a personal narrative that encapsulates a collective Palestinian experience … Occupation and exile, siege and incursions, oppression and dehumanization, the tragedy of the Palestinian experience unfolds in the fullness of its human expression through Laila’s intense and captivating revelations. Her sense of self and identity, sometimes presented with critical distance and irony, remains the dominant vehicle of expression in the multiplicity of Laila’s roles are mother, daughter, wife, journalist, blogger, activist—or simply a Gazan Palestinian grappling with her plight as with the fate of her nation.” – Hanan Ashrawi

2/20/2011 7:30 p.m. Town Hall Seattle
Global Rhythms: Arab in America
Nassima Chabane & Ensemble
Chabane is a popular artist in North Africa and the Middle East for her performance of the music of Andalusia and North Africa, and is appearing at Town Hall prior to a concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Also performing on the program is noted Iraqi ud player Rahim AlHaj, making his Town Hall debut. AlHaj has twice been nominated for a Grammy for his traditional performance of Iraqi music, and for his explorations combining Arab and Western music. – Town Hall Seattle