Speaking Tour: 11/29 - 12/5
Wednesday, November 29
>>>Third Place Books, 7:00pm. Another weighty tome, Unreleased Beatles by Richie Unterberger, to add to your Beatles-only reference section. It details the shitload of stuff that was recorded but, you know, forgotten about what with being so high at the time, plus the whole headtrip with Yoko. Free with OCD collecting disorder.
>>>University Bookstore, 7:00pm. Elizabeth George backtracks: in her last Inspector Lynley mystery, the Inspector's wife was killed. In What Came Before He Shot Her, you learn what...er...came before she...uh...got shot. Free. Tell us how it turns out.
Thursday, November 30
>>>University of Washington, 6:00pm. The NW Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt presents Benson Harer, Jr., M.D.: mummy expert and ancient mystery-solver extraordinaire. After reviewing CT scans taken this year of King Tut's body, he thinks he knows who did Tut in. Free. Smith Hall, Rm 205. We guess Colonel Mustard in the tomb with a candlestick.
>>>Richard Hugo House, 7:00-9:00pm. "Women Write Relationships": chick-lit, dating blogs, how-to manuals -- there's a whole wide world of relationship writing out there from women too busy writing to have them. Authors Rebecca Agiewich (BreakupBabe) and Diane Mapes (How to Date) talk about how it's done. The writing, that is. $5 general/$3 members.
Seattle Public Library at Town Hall, 7:30pm. Isabel Allende reads from her new novel, Ines of My Soul. The Ines in question here is...ah...a real person...who, well, she's got something to do with Chile, historically. It's all there in the book. Free. Desert your shiftless husband and go, just like Ines.
Friday, December 1
>>>Seattle Public Library at Town Hall, 7:00pm. Right before your eyes, humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson channels Theodore Roosevelt, 26th POTUS, to your profound shock and amazement. Previously Jenkinson was inhabited by the spirits of Thomas Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis, but not simultaneously. Free, but Teddy was an exponent of regular exercise. Be ready for a few squat-thrusts.
Saturday, December 2
>>>Theatre Off Jackson, 2:00pm. Filmmaker Karen Ishizuka talks about her new book about unhappy campers: Lost and Found: Reclaiming the Japanese American Incarceration, with Roger Daniels, professor, historian, and scholar of Asian American history. Free. 409 Seventh Avenue South.
>>>University Bookstore, 1:30pm. Popular-vote VP John Edwards has been spending a lot of time at home since 2004, making lemonade out of a lemon electoral college. He reads from his collection of stories by mama's boy Americans who never got over leaving home. Free. Book-signing ticket requires purchase of his book. No teasing.
>>>Elliott Bay, 7:30pm. We couldn't pass up a book reading by someone called Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy: crackpot, eccentric recluse. He discusses his miscellany, The Affected Provincial's Companion, Vol. 1. Either very funny or painful. Possibly both. Free, mon vieux!
Sunday, December 3
>>>Elliott Bay, 2:00pm. Activist journalist John Ross talks about his book Zapatistas: Making Another World Possible: Chronicles of Resistance from 2000-2006. This is his fourth book on the fashion-forward, mediagenic Zapatistas and he and they show no signs of slowing down. Libre for todos! Black ski masks optional.
Monday, December 4
>>>Town Hall, 7:30pm. Freeman Dyson, retired Princeton physics professor and Royal Society member is a rebel with a serious cause. Science, he says, is characterized by its rebellion against the restrictions of local cultures. To understand science, you've got to understand the rebels who practice it. $5 at the door. Head downstairs to bask in his presence. We're not worthy.
>>>Third Place Books, 7:00pm. Erik Larson reads from Thunderstruck, his Edwardian crime novel featuring Hawley Crippen, an "unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication." Sometimes we slight fiction, but this one's got Marconi in it. Free. Enjoy "meta" thrill of texting friends about Marconi.
Tuesday, December 5
>>>Seattle Arts & Lectures at Benaroya Hall, 7:30pm. Global warming's Cassandra, Elizabeth Kolbert, reports on her "firsthand findings" that "climate change" is going to "kill everyone," beginning with the "very poor." Stick around for the panel discussion with journalist Timothy Egan, moderator, K.C. Golden, policy director for Climate Solutions, and Stephen Gardiner, UW professor and specialist in environmental ethics. Tickets: $25-$60 ($15 students and under 25). Free parking for your SUV!
>>>Elliott Bay, 7:30pm. Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and chair of the American Independent Business Alliance, reads from Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses. Geez, you make it through the subtitle, you feel like you've read the book. Free with proof of co-op membership. REI doesn't count.
