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Monday, November 26, 2012

Books "Evita with Robots" Is a Hell of a Pitch

Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 2:52 PM

1. If you're a science fiction fan, you'll want to stop by University Book Store tonight for a reading by Nancy Kress, Louise Marley, and Brenda Cooper. Kress is a newly local author whose most recent science fiction book is titled Flash Point. It's about a reality TV show in the future that goes terribly wrong. Kress is a smart, science-minded science fiction author—I'd recommend her novella After the Fall Before the Fall During the Fall and of course her masterpiece Beggars in Spain—and tonight she's bringing along two newer authors. Marley's book The Glass Butterfly is about "a mother [who] must let her son believe she is dead to protect him," and Cooper's The Creative Fire is, intriguingly, a "retelling of the Evita Peron story in a robot-filled future world."

2. If you're not into science fiction, I've got a reading for you, too. Andrew Solomon's book about depression, The Noonday Demon, has become a classic. His new book, Far From the Tree, is the fruit of a decades' worth of "interviews with more than 250 families dealing with autism, deafness, schizophrenia, kids who identify as transgender, or kids who are conceived in rape, or commit serious crimes." In short, he's written a mammoth book that deals directly with the nature vs. nurture argument. I only got this book in the mail last week, which means it was too late for me to review it in time for the reading, but it's really quite impressive and I can't wait to dig in.

3. There's also a reading with a Jimi Hendrix expert tonight, too. For everything you need to know about everything literary in Seattle, visit our readings calendar.