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.). more ›

Whenever we have to pass by a Books On Tape section of a retail giant we get kind of weirded out by the selection. Dan Brown, Self Help, Self Help, Dan Brown, Mitch Albom, Self Help. Hey self helpers, step one to recovery is setting enough time aside to sit the fuck down and read a book. There are some uses, though. A friend of Seattlest's was so bored at an undemanding job up in B'ham that he took to feeding NYT and Harpers articles through a text-to-speech program and slapping them on his iPod so MSMary could read him the news while he did his busywork. We'd like to take this opportunity to point him to LibriVox. more ›

They've sold music. They've sold movies. Now, Starbucks is adding a "third leg to the stool": books. But not, you know, good books. They're officially launching their "book strategy" with Mitch Albom's new novel, For One More Day. Per the PI:

Albom's sentimental narratives are far from the Beat poetry traditionally associated with coffeehouse culture, and from CDs by Coldplay, Antigone Rising and others that Starbucks has sold. But Lombard said the author's new book, the story of a son reunited with his late mother, "embodies Starbucks values" because it's "an inspirational tale that encourages people to examine their lives with family and friends."

Ha! Yes, we're alluding to The Dying Gaul in the post title. Probably just a knee-jerk reaction to death and dying, trying to distance ourselves with irony. more ›