Bryan Charles reads at University Book Store tonight. He's reading from his book about the making of Pavement's Wowee Zowee album. Nearby at Open Books, Allen Braden and Oliver de la Paz will read poetry. Braden is the author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood; de la Paz is the author of, among other titles, Requiem for the Orchard.
And Meghan Daum reads from her real-estate-minded memoir, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight. I wrote about Daum's book in this week's books lead, which is a look at books about money, pre-and-post-recession:
It's a gutsy move to write a tell-all-style recovery memoir about housing and money. Americans still get twitchy when you speak about exact figures (especially large exact figures), and Daum's obsession coincides with our real-estate boom, bubble, and bust almost exactly, so the discomfort is more personal than schadenfreudey. House lingers too long in some places—in a strange twist for a memoir, you want Daum to quit relating her fuzzy recollections about an aggravating roommate and move on to her witty observations about the next complicated rental situation—but Daum is a clear-eyed observer, and her candor can elicit the occasional shocked gasp from a reader.
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.
