Readers ask me for book recommendations in Questionland all the time. Match Book is about helping you find the right book, at the right time.

Books with Pace, Plot and Setting. Recommendations?

Some of my favorite things to read are true stories of world war II especially submarine patrols, short poetry, Raymond Chandler, mysteries that take place in Nordic countries (Per Wahloo is great, not Henning Mankell for some reason). I've read the Stieg Larsson books (so-so).

I'd like something in that realm. or something completely new with those characteristics so that I branch out a bit.

That's a tall order I know. So thanks.
CB C@L

Howdy CB C@L:

Well, it's not a true World War II story, but you should give Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada a shot. It's a novel written by an author who participated in German underground activities against the Nazis. You can read more about it in my interview with Alan Furst, who has written ten espionage novels set in World War II that you might find interesting, too. (A counterpart novel to Every Man is Irene Némirovsky, whose recently discovered novel Suite Francaise is the French side of the story.)

You might enjoy Fred Vargas's Inspector Adamsberg mysteries, too. They're very French and not Nordic, but there are some similarities to Wahloo's work.

And I think everyone should give Richard Stark's Parker novels a try. They're revenge crime fiction, and they're brutally, brilliantly written novels.

Are you about to go on a long vacation? Have you read everything by your favorite author but you still want more? Do you want to learn about a new subject, but don't know where to start? I can help. Ask me for book recommendations on Questionland

At Third Place Ravenna, Christina Dudley reads from her novel Mourning Becomes Cassandra. It's about a Christian who moves in with some friends and decides to mentor a "prickly, dog-whispering 15-year-old." If you are a prickly 15-year-old—dog-whispering or not—you might want to go to Secret Garden Books tonight. Heather Brewer reads from The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Eleventh Grade Burns, which is the fourth installment in a young adult vampire series. No, not that young adult vampire series.

Geoffery Canada reads at Kane Hall. Canada, the President and CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone, wants to completely revive inner cities all at once. Oddly, this is the same debate that takes place in the French action movie District 13: Ultimatum, which is now playing at the Varsity.

The reading of the night, though, is at Town Hall. Garry Wills is a big damn deal. Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State looks at the office of the president and how it's become over-reliant on nuclear weaponry.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.

Why is it useless? It's a memoir (adapted from an L.A. Weekly article) about the author's first marriage, which was a failure. I guess it's supposed to be amusing, but the problem is that the author is an idiot. There are a bunch of quotes like this:

I was a struggling writer slash cocktail waitress. He was a struggling actor slash bartender. It was a romance made in L.A. heaven. I had broken up with my live-in boyfriend Adam only two months before Jeff and I had our first date. And like a game of Tetris, Adam's upside down L shape turned and formed the space in my heart for Jeff's rectangle.

Ugh. When she's not just plain dumb, Rothchild comes across as whiny. (She blames her mother for damming up her emotions and then says:

But the dam has to break sometimes and when it does it's like a polluted river. All sorts of things you didn't realize you were holding back comes spilling out, and they are as toxic as mercury-filled fish carcasses, dirty needles, and used condoms.

Double ugh.)

Could anyone enjoy this book? Well, apparently it's going to be a movie. Someone will buy the book after they see the sure-to-be-mediocre movie, I bet. But, Christ: This book makes an unimpeachable case for outlawing the memoir. Freedom of the press be damned; did you read that fucking Tetris simile?

...you should know that Ryan Boudinot has cached his first short story as part of his Found and Lost project somewhere in Fort Worden.

I have several more copies of Found and Lost: Juan to cache. My brother in Connecticut has offered to distribute some stories on the East coast, and I’ve gotten other offers to help from friends in Australia and the UK. The more I consider how this project is going to play out, the more I think I’m going to have to employ “mules” to distribute the stories worldwide.

If you find a copy of Juan , please send me an e-mail about the experience.

I feel as though I must respond: In yesterday's Yesterday The Stranger Suggested, Matthew Cooke (whose smart, funny posts I have been enjoying quite a bit over the last week) says that he hasn't attended a literary event since at least college. Then he goes on to say:

If you haven’t already guessed, I harbor my own literary aspirations and it was instructive for me to see the nitty-gritty of a book tour.

Allow me to intervene here, and provide some advice for writers: If you have literary aspirations, you need to attend readings. A lot of readings. Not to ask "where do you get your ideas from?"during the Q&A session, but to watch and learn.

If you get published, you will need to read your own work—at readings, on the radio, on YouTube. Thomas Pynchon is the only author in America who doesn't do promotional work. And if you're going to do readings, you need to attend readings to see what works and what doesn't. If the author is a bad reader, you'll get the kind of ego boost that comes from knowing that you are better than the person onstage, but that's just a bonus. The point is this: Everybody is sick to death of bad readings, of uncomfortable authors murdering their own texts in the most boring or awkward way imaginable. But a good, charming reader is memorable and surprising. A good reader develops a rabid fan base. And the only way you can be a good reader is to do some serious thinking about what makes a reading successful. And the only way you can do that is by going to lots of readings.

But what makes a good reading? I'm glad you asked. In Questionland, Stinkbug asked me:

What are some of the best readings you've been to and what made them so great?

You can find my answer over there.

Garry Wills is at the Sorrento Hotel tonight, with booze and "a hearty stew." Wills is a major modern political thinker and historian. Ticketing for this event is closed online, which means you're out of luck tonight. Luckily, he's reading at Town Hall tomorrow night, too. At the University branch of the Seattle Public Library, Chris Bohjalian will be doing a reading. The Oprah-approved, book club-friendly author reads from his newest book, Secrets of Eden, which is about a Vermont couple that dies.

Ann B. Irish reads at Elliott Bay Book Company. Hokkaido is a "sourcebook" about the history and culture of a Japanese island. And Tara Weaver reads at University Book Store tonight, too. Butcher and Vegetarian is about how Weaver, who was raised vegetarian, fell off the wagon onto the meat truck.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.

Meet Matthew Cooke, a Stranger reader who has vowed to do everything The Stranger suggests for the entire month of February. Look for his reports daily on Slog. —Eds.

I usually spend my Saturdays in the most brainless pursuits imaginable, and so I can’t say I was looking forward to hunkering down in a library basement during an exceedingly pleasant afternoon, listening to a reading by an author I’d never heard of.

I’d never actually been to a reading before, at least not since college. And even then, it was more like a poetry slam. (Do they still do those? Am I dating myself?). I wasn’t even sure what to wear. Corduroy, maybe? A turtleneck? A beret? A pipe and a smoking jacket? I settled on jeans and a sweater.

Walking in, I was impressed by the turnout; not only where there a fair number of people, but there were more than a few youngsters, many of them female. When Ferris walked up and introduced himself, I felt a little swoon in the room. It wasn’t exactly The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, but it’s good to know that writing is sexy.

If you haven’t already guessed, I harbor my own literary aspirations and it was instructive for me to see the nitty-gritty of a book tour. I was heartened by Ferris’s normalcy; I tend to think of successful novelists as untouchable geniuses, floating in shimmering pools of wisdom and enlightenment. But Ferris, while clearly sharp and self-possessed, was not some impossibly smart Superman. He just focused on an idea and stayed true to it.

It gave me hope. And so, in the presence of hope, I’m forced once again to approve of the recommendation. However, this is their one and only pass; if they send me to a reading on a sunny day again, there might be a “go fuck yourself” involved. Some things just aren’t negotiable.

I’m always trying to better myself by reading books about zombies, in order to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse. So I was eager to read every single path in Chooseomatic’s first choose-your-own-adventure-style release, Zombocalypse Now.

Unfortunately, I did not feel that author Matt Youngmark took the subject seriously, so I can’t say I really picked up very much new information that will help in the Zombie Uprising (The main character is an anthropomorphic stuffed animal. I mean, seriously? Please). This book actually took a really long time to read in its entirety, partly because I had a whole tracking system to follow, and partly because I quickly found that this was a far more interesting book to read while under the influence of my favorite mind-altering substance, which made it harder to follow said tracking system.

In the spirit of the disjointed nature of Zombocalypse Now, these are the thoughts on surviving the zombie apocalypse that I scribbled in the book while reading, in no particular order (warning: may contain spoilers):

• Follow the stuffed pelican on his yacht and start a new civilization that is created entirely from giant stuffed animals. This new civilization will be just as destructive, but it will be adorable, which is a step up.

• There could always be other, unconnected paranormal activity going on. Don’t confuse the two; don’t try to make two pieces of different puzzles fit together. The Zombie Apocalypse is what is important.

• The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend (e.g., the militaristic, evil cocker spaniels).

• Oral hygiene may be a key factor in the Zombie Apocalypse, but squirting any old toothpaste at the undead generally do not stop them.

• Though it makes no logical sense, undead animals don’t seem to be as cannibalistic as zombie humans. They will eat both humans and giant, sentient stuffed bunnies. Also, they are fast.

• Seeking low ground may work if you have explosives.

Overall, Matt Youngmark is no Max Brooks. But this is a good book to have around, either in your bathroom or next to your bong.

Yesterday, I posted about the Macmillan/Amazon Kindle pricing war, and the comments field turned into a thoughtful discussion* about ebooks and what you should expect to pay for them:

This comment by Joe Szilagyi is definitely right:

I suspect publishers (and authors, of course, who have to earn a living) are terrified of the fact that per copy they won't make as much off of each e-book as they do off of each physical volume.

RobotRevolution puts ebooks in perspective with physical books:

I will never, ever, ever pay $15 for an e-book. I could buy 3 to 5 used books for that much, or two new paperbacks. With physical copies, I actually own them as well - I'm not just licensing them from a company on some proprietary hardware.

And Michael Wells from Bailey/Coy added to the conversation, too. You should read the whole thread.

Today, Sarah Weinman reports that Hachette, which many of you would probably know better if I referred to it as as The Publisher Formerly Known as Time Warner, is about to jump into the pricing battle, too. And they're smartly framing it as a fight for their artists; they say they want to "make pricing decisions that are rational and reflect the value of our authors' works." And in the Kindle vs. iPad wars, Daily Finance also has the story that Amazon may be working on a "Super-Kindle". This won't end anytime soon.

* Well, except for the bits where Will in Seattle and Fnarf took potshots at each other. Seriously, boys. Am I going to have to get Jimmy Carter all up in your Slog to broker a peace treaty?

On their nifty, newly redesigned website, Pilot Books is starting to list the details of their upcoming Small Press Fest. Because March is Small Press Month, Pilot is hosting one event every night in March. Right now, they've got anyone who's anyone in Seattle small press talent lined up, including Matthew Simmons, Stacey Levine, Doug Nufer, Matt Briggs, John Olson, and more.

Some of the events will be highly non-traditional readings, too, including a street reading whose location will be be announced one hour before the reading begins. And the month will end with a reading from Tao Lin (start your internet hate machines now, kids.) There are a few unclaimed days remaining, so if you'd like to suggest a small-press event, you should contact Pilot Books here.

I can't wait for March.

Who's your date today? The Gin Closet, by Leslie Jamison.

Where'd you go? I Love New York Deli on Roosevelt.

What'd you eat? I had the Empire State, a beef brisket sandwich with horseradish on marble rye ($10.99.)

How was the food? I'll admit it: I'm kind of cheating. I've eaten at I Love New York Deli before. I know I love it. But, in the interest of Lunch Date's spirit, I did order something other than the Reuben, which is what I always order at I Love New York. The Empire State was similarly stuffed full of meat, but it wasn't as wet as the Reuben. The cheese, horseradish, and caramelized onions were all great touches, but I could have used more of everything but the meat; the sandwich was slightly dry. That said, it was still better than 95% of the sandwiches in Seattle.

What does your date say about itself? Charles D'Ambrosio, in a blurb on the back, says "In this gorgeous first novel, Leslie Jamison tells the tale of women caught in a chaos of drives and desires, seeking new meaning in our most ancient relations...With language as smart and sensuous as you'll find anywhere, Jamison nails the nervous borders of our new future brilliantly."

Is there a representative quote? "Alice and I had eating disorders at the same time in college and shared them like an extracurricular, the way some people share cocaine or volleyball. She taught me tricks, like drinking hot water to stay warm...I thought about her bones more than I thought about other people's bones. They were like tree branches under her skin."

Will you two end up in bed together? Yes. I picked up the book because of D'Ambrosio's quote—he doesn't blurb books as often as most other authors, which gives him more currency as a blurber—and his blurb seems just about spot-on to me. There is surprising, exact language on nearly every page. The story is taking a while to take off, but I want to follow this voice all the way to the end of the story.

Jack O'Dell and Nikhil Pal Singh read in the UW Communications Building this afternoon at four. Climbin' Jacob's Ladder is a book that tracks the history of the civil rights movement in the 20th century.

Third Place Books hosts Chris Nowlin, whose new novel To See the Sky allegedly satirizes Vancouver's efforts to wow the world in the Olympics. In other news, the Olympics is apparently coming up.

Sara Wiseman is reportedly a "psychic counselor." As opposed to a corporeal counselor, I guess. She's reading from her book Writing the Divine at East West Bookshop.

But the reading of the night is at Elliott Bay Book Company. Paul Nelson and Amalio Madueño read tonight. A Time Before Slaughter is Nelson's book-length history of Auburn, Washington told in poetry. I have just started reading it and I enjoy the hell out of it. Madueño is a poet from New Mexico.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.

Why is it useless? It's a bunch of objects (rocks, tree stumps, sheet metal, etc. etc.) that look like they have Jesus, Mary, or other holy figures hidden in them. I guess. Most of them just have blobs that look like they could be beards with two blobs that are separated by about the distance of a pair of eyes floating somewhere above the beard-blobs. This book really struggles to make pattern recognition into something more than it is.

Could anyone enjoy this book? This book tries way too hard to play both sides of the street: They're trying to attract religious people by not being too offensive, and they're trying to attract non-believers by being mildly sarcastic. For every one picture that's kind of neat (the Buddha Beehive is weirdly interesting), there are three or four more where you squint at the page like it's a Magic Eye until you finally recall that you're staring at a rock that some hick thought looked like the Virgin Mary and give up.

So that's why I was nervous about The Unwritten. I generally like Mike Carey's writing, but a comic book about the son of a Harry Potter-popular author who gets swept into the story his father created sounded like the worst kind of Vertigo pitch to me. So I'm surprised to say that I really enjoyed the first volume of The Unwritten.

Tommy Taylor makes a living going to sci-fi conventions, talking about his dad, the creator of the Tommy Taylor boy wizard series of young adult novels. At one convention, he's confronted by a reporter who thinks he's a fraud—his identity seems to have been created quite recently. Soon after, Taylor is attacked by the villain from one of the books. It's not a Last Action Hero-style "the stories are coming to life!" snoozefest, either: The last chapter in this volume is a complex, wordy digression about Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and Oscar Wilde that is only vaguely tied to the main story. It becomes clear almost immediately that this is a comic book for book-lovers and fans of literature.

The story doesn't progress very far in volume one—it only collects the first five issues of the series—but for ten bucks, you'll want to check out The Unwritten if you enjoyed Sandman. Not because it in any way apes Sandman in form or in content, but because, like Sandman, it's a highly literate story with mystery, heart, and depth. Pick it up the next time you're at your local comics shop.

Readers ask me for book recommendations in Questionland all the time. Match Book is about helping you find the right book, at the right time.

What books should I get to go with Boneshaker?

I like (and have read)everything Ursula K leGuin. Samuel R. Delany, and Kim Stanley Robinson. I like Michael Chabon and Umberto Eco. Is Leviathan good? What else? I need another book or two to get free shipping.

-Jakey Riotllama

Hi, Jakey,

Well, first, I'm going to assume that you don't live near a great independent bookstore with your 'free shipping' comment and thank you for supporting Seattle's largest bookseller from wherever you are.

Cherie Priest's Boneshaker is really great fun, and it covers lots of ground: There's alternate Seattle history, zombies, air pirates, and swashbuckling adventure. Finding books that hit all those points is a tall order, but here's what I came up with:

You also might like Neal Stephenson's early work: The Diamond Age is kind of a grandfather of Boneshaker and lots of modern steampunk work. China Mieville is really an exceptional author who doesn't work in steampunk exactly, but who shares some urban fantasy leanings with Cherie Priest. And Jay Lake's fantasy—one series of books is about a clockwork universe—can do weird things to your brain. You also mentioned Delaney, and I'd like to recommend Dan Simmons's Hyperion series, which, while not as adventurous as Delaney's mammoth series, is just as imaginative.

Sorry to say I haven't read Leviathan, yet. If you do, let me know what you think!

Are you about to go on a long vacation? Have you read everything by your favorite author but you still want more? Do you want to learn about a new subject, but don't know where to start? I can help. Ask me for book recommendations on Questionland

The Ballard branch of Seattle Public Library is hosting a talk named "Russia and Its Neighbors." Will they discuss Sarah Palin? She is maybe the most famous neighbor of Russia in America right now. If you want to attend a talk, but Russia's not your thing, there's a good talk at Kane Hall in the U District tonight. The Katz Lectures in Humanities is presenting Richard Grey, who'll be giving a talk titled "Fabulation and Metahistory: W.G. Sebald and Recent German Holocaust Fiction." If you don't know, Sebald was the bees' knees.

Elliott Bay Book Company is hosting Brenda Peterson tonight. I Want to Be Left Behind is kind of a memoir by Peterson, who was raised by highly religious parents who were always preparing for the Rapture. She then got involved with the deep ecology movement and discovered that they were just as obsessed with the end of the world as Evangelicals. Her book is about relaxing and learning not to fear the end of the world.

Peterson's book sounds good, but the reading of the night has to be at Town Hall tonight. It's a fundraiser for local poetry publisher Copper Canyon Press titled "W.S. Merwin and Friends." Merwin, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his collection of poetry, The Shadow of Sirius, is the closest thing Washington has to a living godfather of poetry. Tonight he reads with a bunch of young poets: Erin Belieu, Ben Lerner, Valzhyna Mort, and Matthew Zapruder. Copper Canyon does good work, and you should really think about attending this one tonight.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.

The Wall Street Journal reports that textbook publishers have already started adapting their books for the iPad:

Though Apple didn't outline its strategy to target the educational sector with its iPad last week, people familiar with Apple's thinking have said that the iPad's use in schools was one of the focal points of discussions in developing the product. In its exploration of electronic book technology, it thought particularly about how it could re-invent textbooks, these people said. Apple declined to comment on the role of textbooks on the iPad. Apple has an edge in the educational sector because its Macintosh computers have always enjoyed a strong following in the academic sphere, and it already offers educational audio and video content through its iTunes U service.

The iPad also will be helped by the interest that schools have always had in tablet-form computers. Science teachers, for example, could use them for taking lab notes, which often use a combination of sentences, charts and mathematical equations, while others could use them on field trips. "This is the beginning of handheld education," said John Lema, chief executive of ScrollMotion.

In other iPad news, people who are complaining about iPad's lack of Flash should read this New York Times story about HTML5 video, which could mean the eventual end of Flash. If you're not on Firefox, you can check out SublimeVideo, an HTML5 video player, over here.

Clearly Brown Bear is about the interconnectedness of the animal world, and also the idea of looking around. But “seeing” is not quite as transparent a question as one would think. One interesting thing that the book raises is that some animals, such as humans, are set up to see in a predatory way—our eyes, and the eyes of bears, are aimed straight ahead. But there isn’t any predation in Brown Bear, these animals are just looking around taking note of each other and appreciating each other. So maybe that is good “communist” literature for children.

(Many thanks to Slog Tipper Michael.)

We have a rare reading at Peter Miller Architecture, that beautiful architecture bookstore in Belltown. Andrea Cochran will be on hand to discuss Andrea Cochran: Landscapes, a book by Andrea Cochran (of Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture) about her forays into landscape architecture.

Both Third Place Books are having events tonight. Kristin Hannah is at the main store in Lake Forest Park. Winter Garden is a novel about "the mother-daughter bond," and Leningrad. And the Ravenna branch of Third Place Books is hosting Sondra Kornblatt. What's the next best thing to getting sleep? Apparently, it's Restful Insomnia : How to Get the Benefits of Sleep Even When You Can't. I expect to see a lot of bleary eyes at this reading.

There is a reading at one of the most delicious places in Seattle—the I Love NY Deli on Roosevelt—tonight. David Sax reads from his book Save the Deli. It's about how the deli is going extinct.

Elliott Bay Book Company is hosting Rick Smith and Bruce Laurie. Slow Death by Rubber Duck is about how YOUR HOUSE IS FULL OF EVIL PLASTICS THAT WILL KILL YOU! Hopefully, this is the book that will save your life so you can live forever. Either this reading or the Deli reading would make a fine reading of the night.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.