Starbucks Goes to the Dogs

What? What'd we say?

We just heard that Starbucks has chosen a book by Seattle novelist Garth Stein to distribute wherever its grande americanos are sold. Titled The Art of Racing in the Rain, the novel has also won the hearts and minds of U.S. independent booksellers, who have made it their No. 1 Booksense recommendation for June.

See, the story's narrator is a dog named Enzo (an idea Stein lifted from a Billy Collins poem), who suspects he's a man who was reincarnated as a dog. Old and infirm and startlingly insightful, he looks back on his life with Denny Swift, who wants to be a racecar driver.

More importantly to Seattlest, as this Seattle Times review points out, is that "Stein, who lives in Mount Baker, sets his story in Seattle and its environs. A tiny Craftsman house in the Central District where Enzo worries about the bees in a bush that could sting Zoe. Mercer Island with its Lake Washington views. The Bauhaus cafe on Capitol Hill. The fertile Cascades during a summer hike."

If you don't want to trek all the way over to Mount Baker to camp outside Stein's home and tell him about how you've often noticed your dog looks like he's thinking--and believe us, this is precisely the kind of thing Stein would like to hear about--he's going to be showing up tomorrow in the Madison Park Starbucks (4000 East Madison Ave), for a 7 p.m. Q&A with Warren Etheredge. On May 14, he appears at the University Village Barnes and Noble for a 7:30 p.m. reading. He'll do more readings in June, so we'll keep you posted if like us, you'd rather read first and hear him talk later. (We have not read the book yet but we're going to, partly on the strength of a blurb from Temple Grandin, of all people.)