A Weekend of International Poetry with Wave Books

On November 4th, Wave Books kicks off their 2nd annual Poetry Festival at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. This year, their theme is Poetry in Translation, which already has me running around in circles like an over-excited pet. Each day is packed with fifteen separate events, ranging from art exhibitions to lectures and discussions, to readings held in the beatific James Turrell Skyspace. Friday night is looking mighty fine: from 7pm to 9pm over a dozen festival participants are assembling at the Henry Art Gallery Auditorium for a gigantic  group reading. And Sunday’s grand finale sounds phenomenal: at 7:30 pm, MacArthur grant winning poet Peter Cole, preeminent translator of Chinese and Buddhist texts Bill Porter (aka Red Pine), and James Joyce translator/scholar Nikolai Popov gather to speak at the Neptune Theatre. The lecture, entitled, “Translators on Translation,” is presented in partnership with Seattle Arts & Lectures and will be moderated by poet Matthew Zapruder.

The sheer scope of this festival is flabbergasting; especially when one considers just how little international literature we have access to in America. As publishing house Open Letter points out, only 3 percent of books published in the U.S. are works in translation (when you run those numbers for literary fiction and poetry, it’s more like 0.7 percent).  So thank you, Wave, for organizing such a singular and edifying weekend. Here’s a glimpse at just a few of the poets, translators, and editors scheduled to attend:

John Beer, Don Mee Choi, Zhang Er, Jonathan Way, Alejandro de Acosta, Deborah Woodard, Michael Biggins, Sarah Valentine, Maged Zaher, Joshua Beckman, Michael Wiegers, Graham Foust, Samuel Frederick, Anthony McCann, Cole Heinowitz, Summer Robinson, Kevin Craft, Annie Janusch, Giuseppe Leporace, Laura Jensen, Anthony Geist, and Alissa Valles.

The schedule:

(11/4) Friday’s schedule of events is here

(11/5) Saturday’s schedule of events is here

(11/6) Sunday’s schedule of events is here

Purchasing a pass gains you entry to all three days of the festival, plus a welcome packet including, among other delights: a handmade book, pamphlets, festival ephemera, and a ticket to Sunday night’s grand finale.

Visit Wave Books for more info and pick up your pass today!

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Midnight Murakami Release Party is Tonight!

Murakami at Midnight

Join us tonight as we celebrate the much-awaited English-language release of Haruki Murakami’s dazzling new novel,
1Q84
with a special midnight release party.

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Tonight, Elliott Bay will stay open past its usual 10 p.m. in anticipation of the new Murakami book release at midnight. As the onsale moment draws near, we’ll offer some fun and diversion (besides other books) in the form of Murakami trivia contests.

A limited number of SIGNED COPIES will be available for those on-hand at midnight.

We have been promised signed first-edition U.S. copies of 1Q84. At midnight, we will have a special drawing for those present who are interested in purchasing one of these autographed copies.

You must be on-hand to be eligible for a signed copy.

Please join us.

And remember: If you pre-order 1Q84 before its midnight release you’ll receive a 20% discount!

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Fall Booknotes from our Staff – Fiction

Zone One
by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)

Many readers’ eyes glaze over at the mention of zombies. Our sensationally conditioned minds conjure outlandishly campy struggles to the death with a brain-craving horde. With Zone One, Whitehead has thrown down the literary gauntlet, delivering a more reasoned take on how society would fare should the undead rise. Rather than focusing on gruesome slaughter, this adventure conjures some humorous, yet perhaps depressingly prescient outcomes of societal collapse. If heady satire isn’t your bag, don’t worry, there is still a healthy dose of good old-fashioned undead mayhem within these pages. Satisfy that literary craving, and sink your teeth into this cerebral tale. -Jamil

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How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive
by Christopher Boucher (Melville House)

So, the narrator’s son is a Volkswagen Beetle, his father’s heart attack came from a tree, and that really nice woman with the black hair is just so—”window.” Any questions? Such is the world Boucher has created, and it has to be experienced to be believed. Objects and relationships don’t act like they’re supposed to, but that doesn’t stop them from offering up a poignant meditation on life, love, and death. This is an astonishing exploration of what a book is capable of, and it is also the very best kind of sensitive and courageous nonsense—the kind that rings true. -Casey O.

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The Barbarian Nurseries
by Héctor Tobar (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)

Whether Los Angeles is beginning to resemble the rest of the United States, or the US is beginning to resemble Los Angeles, these days there is less of a sense of LA exceptionalism. Hard times bring empathy. Award-winning journalist Héctor Tobar ‘s remarkable debut novel is resolutely set in LA, but its narrative undertow carries shimmers of nation-wide resonance; financial distress is causing the loss of jobs (particularly domestic immigrant labor), to say nothing of other forms of wreckage. One abandoned woman’s story of desperate searching serves to tell the tale of many, giving readers a bracing portrait of a city and its time. -Rick

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Lightning Rods
by Helen DeWitt (New Directions)

Joe is an unsuccessful salesman—returning to his trailer at the end of the day not with sales, but with pies. Pies and lots of time on his hands to concoct ever more elaborate fantasies about women. Until one fantasy in particular promises to increase office productivity, curtail sexual harassment, and make Joe lots of money. Ten years after her sublime, incomparable debut, The Last Samurai, we have, at last, a new book from Helen DeWitt—an absurdist tale of the corporate world and sex in modern America, where the satire of Nathanael West meets the provocation of Nicholson Baker. -Molly

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Booknotes, the newsletter of The Elliott Bay Book Company, is written entirely by bookstore staff. It represents a sampling of recently published books that we have enjoyed reading. We appreciate every opportunity to assist in finding books to meet your interests.

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Murakami at Midnight

Celebrate the much-awaited English-language release of Haruki Murakami’s epic, dazzling new novel,
1Q84
And don’t wait any more than you have to.

Pre-order your copy before the midnight release and save 20% Off!

–

On Monday, October 24, Elliott Bay will stay open past its usual 10 p.m. in anticipation of the new Murakami book release at midnight. As the onsale moment draws near—we’ll offer some fun and diversion (besides other books) in the form of Murakami trivia contests.

A limited number of SIGNED COPIES to be available for those on-hand at midnight.

We have been promised signed first-edition U.S. copies of 1Q84. At midnight, we will have a special drawing for those present who are interested in purchasing one of those autographed copies.

You must be on-hand to be eligible for a signed copy.

Please join us.

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Also to note: On Monday, November 14 at 7 p.m., noted translator Jay Rubin, who translated two of three portions of 1Q84, and also translated The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, and after the quake, will talk about translating Murakami and 1Q84 at Elliott Bay.

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…and don’t forget our event with John Hodgeman & Friends at Town Hall Seattle on November 7th at 7:30 p.m.

 

Tickets are $25 for one ticket and a copy of That is All / $30 for two tickets and a book. Purchase tickets at Elliott Bay Book Company or at http://www.brownpapertickets.com or 1-800-838-3006. Call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600 for more information.

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Fall Booknotes from Our Staff – Fiction

The Stranger’s Child
by Alam Hollinghurst (Knopf)

It’s hard to believe that Hollinghurst is a contemporary novelist. Written with detail and breadth reminiscent of Dickens, and echoes of Austen’s pre-Victorian romance, intrigue, and satire, The Stranger’s Child is the kind of novel that has become an anomaly in the post-modern literary world. It is at once both dense and juicy, filled with small gossip, illicit love affairs, and long kept secrets. When Cecil Valance—an up-and-coming poet—visits George Sawles’s family and writes what will become his most famous poem in the young Miss Sawles’s autograph book, lives are forever changed, and in a series of dramatic revelations, a truth that was hidden over decades, finds its way out. -Candra

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Mr. Fox
by Helen Oyeyemi (Riverhead)

No stranger to the somewhat eerie narrative, Oyeyemi brings us lighter fare than her previous novels, but note, the depth is no less and the surreal is never too far off. Author St. John Fox conjures stories that tend to leave their female characters lifeless, if not terribly wounded. His muse, Miss Mary Foxe, enters into his world to lure him away from such endings. With a shifting voice, slipping back and forth through time, and in and out of fantasy and fact, Mary, Mr. Fox, and his wife, Daphne, travel through what it means to love and yearn, pushing and pulling against each other in this beautiful read. -Shannon

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I Married You For Happiness
by Lily Tuck (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Nina’s husband, Philip, has just died in their bed. As Nina sits by his side, she travels through memories of their life together, and as one memory spawns another the nature of intimacy is revealed like a spider’s web after a rainfall. Glimmering with hope, heavy with doubts and deceits, but strung with care and devotion, the complex and delicate balance that two individuals find and nurture in order to spend a lifetime together is depicted with remarkable dexterity and insight in Lily Tuck’s new novel. Never saccharine or sentimental, Tuck unveils a complicated and enduring love with astonishing brevity and honesty. -Candra

Booknotes, the newsletter of The Elliott Bay Book Company, is written entirely by bookstore staff. It represents a sampling of recently published books that we have enjoyed reading. We appreciate every opportunity to assist in finding books to meet your interests.

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Ernest Cline at Elliott Bay on Tuesday, Oct. 11th at 7 pm

Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline (Crown)

The phrase, “grabs you from the first page,” may be one of the most overused lines in the book review world, and it’s almost never true. This story is one of the few that actually grabs you from page-one and refuses to let go. Wade Watts has spent a considerable amount of his life jacked into the OASIS (a computer generated utopia that most of humanity uses to escape from an increasingly desolate world), engaged in a 1980s-themed hunt set up by one of the original OASIS programmers. Success could change Watts’s life forever, while failure could result in the collapse of an already teetering society. -Rich

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• Hammer Pants
• The McDLT
• Mr. Wizard
• You Can’t Do That on Television
• Mike Tyson’s Punchout

If any of those things mean anything to you, then you will most likely enjoy this book. Clive has created a masterful homage to classic 80′s adventures such as The Goonies and Wargames. This novel may take place in the future, but its heart is firmly rooted in the past. This book is totally awesome to the max. -Jamil

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With Ready Player One, Cline has created the virtual reality world that we’ve always been promised. He has also given us a brilliantly plotted love letter to the 80′s, a stirring look at what our media-obsessed, economically depressed society could become, and an engaging edge-of-your-seat adventure novel. I wanted to read it all the way through in one sitting, but work got in the way. This is THE GEEK NOVEL for the 21st century. Unlike the arcade games that are talked about in the book, thankfully I can read it again without inserting another quarter. -Casey S.

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Ernest Cline will read from Ready Player One on Tuesday, October 11th at 7 pm. If you can’t make it to the reading but would like an autographed copy of the book, please call us at (206) 624-6600 or stop in and purchase one today.

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Fall Booknotes from Our Staff – Fiction

On Canaan’s Side
by Sebastian Barry (Viking)

Lilly Bere writes what she calls her “confession” over a seventeen-day period following her grandson Bill’s suicide. Barry’s novel recounts Lilly’s flight from Ireland to North America after World War I, and the ensuing drama of her life over seven decades filled with sorrow, but also with joy. Lilly’s loss and forbearance is conveyed with a quiet intensity. The revelations in her story come at a price and are indeed a surprise to the reader. Barry’s prose is crystalline, understated, and compassionate—he is incomparable. -Greg

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Shards
by Ismet Prcic (Black Cat)

A young Bosnian man named Ismet Prcic escapes the war as a member of a theater troupe. Now, safe in California, he continually has to survive what he has already lived through. Visions of a similar man who remained in Bosnia to became an elite soldier slowly infiltrate his life, and memories collide with terrible versions of what his life could have been. Before long it is unclear who he actually is. A voice that is at once brutally honest, brave, and vulnerable combines with an innovative structure to create an arresting work of art. –Casey O.

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Booknotes, the newsletter of The Elliott Bay Book Company, is written entirely by bookstore staff. It represents a sampling of recently published books that we have enjoyed reading. We appreciate every opportunity to assist in finding books to meet your interests.

Read Full Post »