Results tagged “book”

THE CHILDREN ARE OUR RALLY: Friends of Children’s Hospital, your friendly neighborhood Fearey Group-promoted advocacy group for Seattle Children's Hospital is taking it the steps of City Hall. The rally is to show support for Children's after Laurelhurst Community Club protested Children's proposed expansion and won the city hearing. Few moments in life offer the moral high ground of this rally, and it should be a great way to meet hot nurses and doctors. noon-1:30 p.m. // City Hall's west side steps, 600 4th Avenue // FREE

Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft is a peculiarly engaging read--it's a polemic about the necessity for self-directed work, an "I did it my way" memoir about a political science Ph.D. who resigned from a thinktank to fix motorcycles, and an illuminating critique of the "knowledge worker" paradise. Probably because of the motorcycle repair, it's getting comparisons to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but Crawford is equally happy to tackle the after-effects of Taylorism and Druckerism, too.

Author Mark Kurlansky doesn’t always write about food, but it has been the subject of two of his bestselling books (Cod, Salt) and his newest book, The Food of a Younger Land (he's reading at Elliott Bay tonight, 7:30 p.m., free admission). But don’t call him a food writer.

Wednesday science writer Winifred Gallagher is in town to discuss Rapt at 7:30 p.m. at the Elliott Bay Book Co., 101 S. Main St. in Seattle (free). She also pops up Thursday at the "Good Life" event at 6:30 p.m. at the Palace Ballroom, 2100 Fifth Avenue (tickets: $25).

EARTH DAY: The UW's Green Coalition invites you out to the campus today for some live music, a gallery of environmental art, a zero-emissions electric car show, a social on the Lake Washington waterfront, and a presentation about sustainable business practices from Jerry Heinlen of Yakima Products to be followed by the movie The Eleventh Hour. Don't worry--there's more earthy doings on tap if you can't make that.

Hester Rumberg had her work cut out for her while writing Ten Degrees of Reckoning. Mainly because--as is clearly pointed out in the beginning of the book--it is not her story. It is her account of her best friend Judy Sleavin's family tragedy, aboard the Sleavin's sailboat, the Melinda Lee while sailing to New Zealand.

GEEK TRIVIA: The infamous Geeks Who Drink take over Ozzie's on LQA. This may surprise those of you who visit their site and read about "two geeks who drink and host pub quizzes throughout Colorado, Texas and New Mexico." But now they're here in Washington, too. The quiz is eight rounds of eight questions and is played by teams of up to six people. There are audio rounds, too. Expect to spend two to three hours drinking in friendly company, and possibly losing to a team called Reverend Horton Hears a Who.

Back in '06, Seattlest James mentioned that the library let you scope the difference online between active and inactive holds, which made us pine for a "Netflix queue" for hold requests, not realizing that active/inactive was a big step in that direction.

BEGLEY VISION: We don't know about you but we are stoked about this visit from Ed Begley, Jr., who wants to tell us all about--and write his name on--his new book, Living Like Ed: A Guide To Eco-Friendly Life. It's not clear if Ed bicycled up here from L.A., but you know he could have. The Siskiyou Pass would have been a challenge on a bike this time of year, though, so maybe he stuck with his electric car or jet or what-have-you. The great thing about Ed, really, is that he's (in)famous in L.A. for riding that bicycle--you know, holy shit! a bicycle! A man is riding a bicycle! L.A. could just choke on its exhaust and it wouldn't bug us. If Ed was out of town at the time, we mean.

HAPPY WASHINGTON WINE HOUR: The Sorrento is marking the Washingtonization of The Hunt Club's previously Californicated wine list with a series of “Winemaker Happy Hours!” every Wednesday in March, with dueling winemakers, their wines, and appetizers--all for just $10. Tonight's guest vintners are Lantz Cellars (Yakima Valley, focus on Bordeaux and Rhone varietals) and Baer Winery (Woodinville, blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot).

"wt [10]" by Patrick Wright, from the Seattlest Flickr pool

Stephen Mitchell has introduced us to both Rainer Maria Rilke and Lao-tzu. He did the same for a lot of people, we suspect--his translation of the Tao Te Ching has sold over a million copies. Now he's on a book tour for The Second Book of the Tao, which is based on the writings of Lao-tzu’s disciple Chuang-tzu and Confucius’s grandson Tzu-ssu. He's in town Saturday, February 28, at the Elliott Bay Book Company for a 2 p.m. appearance. We ask him a few "We haven't read your book yet" questions below--after the jump there's an excerpt he selected just for Seattlest.

There's a posting on CL that we had to click on: "Writer Wanted For Ex North Idaho Drug Kingpin." The pitch is a gifted young boy with undiagnosed ADHD who grows up to rub elbow with Colombian drug lords and imprisoned Mafiosi. You want high stakes? "I SHOULD BE DEAD A HUNDRED TIMES OVER." And, helpfully, there is this postscript: "All Statue of Limitations are finished and all prison time completed." What can we say, we're intrigued. Someone jump on this. Hell, we'll serialize it for you.

Jonah Lehrer is all laconic, low-key business behind the podium, despite his emo-rocker look on his homepage. A little more bedhead and some ink, and he could make a third bandmate for We Are Scientists. (Tambourine?) He was Town Hall last night talking about his second book, How We Decide, which, it turns out, has a lot to do with dopamine-driven emotions, rather than Vulcan-style rationality.

STELLA! YOU MAKE US YELL-A!: It's a good week when we get to use the phrase "comedic stylings," and the stylings of Stella--that's Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain--fall squarely in the comedic category. We're not really "comedy" people, but even we have seen Michael Ian Black live and laughed like there was no tomorrow--when in fact there was, and that became a whole thing we won't get into. The group has been called "bizarre, nonsensical, and very funny" and "dumb comedy in a suit," if that gives you some idea.

Sometimes book readings are news because of the book; sometimes because of the author. With Steven Johnson, you get both. He's in town for a few days on his book tour for The Invention of Air: at Elliott Bay Book Company on Sunday, at 3 p.m.; Town Hall on Monday, 7:30 p.m., and holding court at a "Words & Wine" event at the Pan Pacific Hotel on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.

Korean-born, American-"raised" novelist Nami Mun visits Elliott Bay Book Company next Tuesday, January 6, at 7:30 p.m. We put the "raised" in quotes like that because she actually lived on the street for a bit. But this is a novel, not a memoir--or not over 1 percent memoir--so the appeal has to have more to do with her skills as a novelist, than her street cred.

SMALL BUSINESS SKILLS: SeattleSCORE, the people who help small business people learn stuff, have put together a 4-hour seminar, Marketing 101. On the syllabus! Identifying your customers, packaging your product or service, creating effective marketing tools, and getting repeat customers. Now, in this market none of this will help, but it will get you out of the office for a bit, and you might meet some new people.

This American Life-r Sarah Vowell has written a new book, The Wordy Shipmates, which is the most readable history of New England Puritan thought you're likely to come across in your lifetime. It's a bit like reading the journal of a grad student who's doing their thesis on Puritan rhetoric--with all the marginal asides and musings left poignantly in. We emailed her a few questions, and she wrote back, double-spacing after periods, which extra space we edited out to save on pixels. If you have better questions, super-genius, she's in town on Monday, October 13, at Town Hall. Hie thee hence, why doncha.

. Casella, a physician, draws on her intimate knowledge of the health industry to construct a dramatic portrait of the subtleties and complexities of medical malpractice, when a child's death on the operating table sends an anesthesiologist's life into a tail-spin.

Tomorrow night, novelist Garth Stein (Raven Stole the Moon, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets) and his piercing eyes are making a crosstown trek from Stein's Mount Baker home to the Elliott Bay Book Company, where Stein will read from his latest book, The Art of Racing in the Rain (6/25, 7:30 p.m.).

We sent special Killer Bugs correspondent Roger van Oosten to Town Hall last night to catch Richard "Hot Zone" Preston's talk. Post-decontamination, here is his report.

He's Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head brewery; she's Marnie Old, director of wine studies at the French Culinary Institute. They've teamed up to write a warm-hearted, delightful book that tweaks the boy-girl, beer-wine stereotypes without dumbing things down.