It’s trivia time! Please read the rules carefully before submitting your answers to today’s 40th anniversary trivia question.

Rules:

This contest is not open to employees, present or former, nor is it open to any persons related to employees, present or former.

The contest is open to community members of any age.

All answers must be submitted via email to contest@elliottbaybook.com.

Only answers received within the timeline provided will be considered.

Correct answers will be entered in a raffle for a $15 gift certificate.

In order to be eligible for the raffle, the trivia question must be answered correctly.

One winner will be awarded a $15 gift certificate per trivia question.

Winners will be notified via email and announced on our social media sites.

If you have any questions, please ask!

Onto the trivia question:

What is the first book Sherman Alexie read from at Elliott Bay Book Company?

Note: Today’s trivia question is open until Thursday, June 20th.

Rules:

This contest is not open to employees, present or former, nor is it open to any persons related to employees, present or former.

The contest is open to community members of any age.

All answers must be submitted via email to contest@elliottbaybook.com.

Only answers received within the timeline provided will be considered.

Correct answers will be entered in a raffle for a $15 gift certificate.

In order to be eligible for the raffle, the trivia question must be answered correctly.

One winner will be awarded a $15 gift certificate per trivia question.

Winners will be notified via email and announced on our social media sites.

If you have any questions, please ask!

Onto the trivia question:

What was the original address of Elliott Bay Book Company?

(Hint: Be careful–this is a trick question)

Note: Today’s trivia question is open until Friday, June 14th.

One of many stellar Wave Books titles

by Dave Wheeler

Nothing is quite as potent a dose of humility as pub trivia. Ubiquitous bits of knowledge swirling like dust motes on a sunny afternoon are picked at random to be used as weapons to bludgeon anyone’s mind foolish enough to participate. And yet, we all do. (Have you been answering our anniversary trivia questions on our blog?)

Quick! What continent has never observed a tornado?

We don’t just want to know stuff. We want to know we know stuff, and we want others to know we know we know stuff, in a way that stuffs stuff we know in their faces.

Normally, I’m the team expert on books and literature. But when my co-workers invited me to local poetry press Wave Books‘s poetry trivia night, that badge was put to agonized shame. It was like that comprehensive final exam you knew pulling an all-nighter wouldn’t help with, so you didn’t study at all.

Round after round barraged us with questions like, What poet’s father invented Life Savers hard candy? (Oh, you know it was Hart Crane? I’m sure.) What type of vehicle killed Frank O’Hara on Fire Island in 1966? (Dune buggy? *eyebrow raise*) Who was the first African American to publish a collection of poems? (Of course it’s Phyllis Wheatley!) All right, smart kid, name all the poets who read at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on the night Allen Ginsberg premiered Howl.

The questions gushed from the heyday when people paid much closer attention to poets and their lives. I mean, I can tell you that Kathleen Flenniken is our Washington State Poet Laureate, but I’ll be damned if I know what she had for breakfast this morning. If you watch Mad Men you might know that tons of people were not only reading but talking – really talking — about O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency in the late Fifties.

Here’s a tough one: What contemporary book of poetry has had as broad an impact as that?

Like with ninety-nine percent of Wave Book’s questions the other night, I have no idea. Sure I can tick off today’s prize-winners, name backlist like a son of a gun, and spell Wisława Szymborska correctly, but it’s not so easy to see which contemporaries will live on in the revered tradition of their forebears.

And maybe that’s why I felt I should have known the answers to more questions. The people and times and places and poems have already been distilled by history into a concentrated tier of significance the years may never diminish. Strip away the retrospective lens of Fitzgeraldian romanticism, and you have poets who have stood the greatest test: time.

Sure. It was just trivia. Wave put on a spectacular evening, complete with Randy Newman cover band Lonely At The Top, and everyone — myself included — had a superb time. My ego hurt for a few hours afterward, though, and I went home and ate ice cream. But I made sure to read a few poems from Stephen Burt’s new book Belmont before I turned on the next episode of Scandal. Because when you aren’t paying attention, you might miss the question.

Rules:

This contest is not open to employees, present or former, nor is it open to any persons related to employees, present or former.

The contest is open to community members of any age.

All answers must be submitted via email to contest@elliottbaybook.com.

Only answers received within the timeline provided will be considered.

Correct answers will be entered in a raffle for a $15 gift certificate.

In order to be eligible for the raffle, the trivia question must be answered correctly.

One winner will be awarded a $15 gift certificate per trivia question.

Winners will be notified via email and announced on our social media sites.

If you have any questions, please ask!

Onto the trivia question:

What young, officeless entrepreneur spent countless hours developing and planning his business in the Elliott Bay Cafe?

(Hint: His business would eventually help wipe out hundreds and hundreds of small, independent bookstores across the United States)

Note: Today’s trivia question is open until noon on Saturday, June 8th.

On a personal level, I love having people read to me and tell me stories, so readings are an obvious place for me to be spending time.

Here are a few of highlights from our recent readings and events.

Jill McCorkle reads Life After Life

Jaina Sanga

Kevin and Roberta Presenting Kevin’s Amazing Book and the Yummy Food from Savior Fork

Kevin O’Brien with Roberta Miner and Savior Fork (“Redemption Through Pie” http://www.saviorfork.com)

World Book Night Giver Box

World Book Night Giver Treats

World Book Night Giver Treats

Our grand prize winner, Ci Hossner, age 13 has won a $50 gift certificate. Ci’s design will be featured as a bookmark in our store. 

Thanks to all our entrants!

Rules:

This contest is not open to employees, present or former, nor is it open to any persons related to employees, present or former.

The contest is open to community members of any age.

All answers must be submitted via email to contest@elliottbaybook.com.

Only answers received within the timeline provided will be considered.

Correct answers will be entered in a raffle for a $15 gift certificate.

In order to be eligible for the raffle, the trivia question must be answered correctly.

One winner will be awarded a $15 gift certificate per trivia question.

Winners will be notified via email and announced on our social media sites.

If you have any questions, please ask!

Onto the trivia question:

Where did our Senior Book Buyer, Rick Simonson, first meet founder and owner Walter Carr?

Note: Today’s trivia question is open until Wednesday, June 5th at noon.

Rules:

This contest is not open to employees, present or former, nor is it open to any persons related to employees, present or former.

The contest is open to community members of any age.

All answers must be submitted via email to contest@elliottbaybook.com.

Only answers received within the timeline provided will be considered.

Correct answers will be entered in a raffle for a $15 gift certificate.

In order to be eligible for the raffle, the trivia question must be answered correctly.

One winner will be awarded a $15 gift certificate per trivia question.

Winners will be notified via email and announced on our social media sites.

If you have any questions, please ask!

Onto the trivia question:

Name two Nobel Prize for literature authors who have read at Elliott Bay Book Company.

Note: Today’s trivia question is open until noon on Tuesday, May 28th.

It begins with a tweet. Or, no. It begins with Arthur Rimbaud — a photocopy of Arthur Rimbaud — rather, his face on a figure near a glass dessert case — rather, a photo David Wojnarowicz (new object of my obsession) took of someone wearing Rimbaud’s face.

Anyway, I was vaguely sure I’d heard of Alex Dimitrov’s debut book of poetry when my colleague, Kenny, foisted it upon me. And whether it was Twitter or the melancholy cover tableau or the eager, near-militant recommendation that got me reading Begging For It we’ll never know. It was probably all three (it usually is).

Because I didn’t just read Begging For It: I set aside an afternoon, made sure no one else was home, poured a heavy glass of wine, and read aloud. To the dog. (She’s a good listener.) Line by line I uttered these delectable syllables saturated with sass, sorrow, sex, and sometimes all three. It felt like the oral equivalent to automatic writing. Like I was possessed with Dimitrov’s spirit, at once incisive and visceral.

I prefer to read poetry aloud. When I read silently, I often overlook the aural dimension to its pleasure. And I’ve never really “devoured” a book of poems. I usually take them like small, soft hits of intoxicants. To buoy me just so.

My day with Alex Dimitrov, though, I took gluttonous, decadent swallows, recklessly reaching a powerful high I haven’t come down from yet. Dimitrov is a smart young poet, as promising as a guy in his late-twenties can say of someone else in his late-twenties, and exhibits a preternatural enough ingenuity to cultivate a queer salon of poets and writers in the heart of New York City, called Wilde Boys.

Kenny’s not getting his book back anytime soon, because I’m reading it again. Because I’m crushing as hard as I did when I was a schoolboy. Laws of diminishing returns do not apply here. Dimitrov’s book is aptly titled, Begging For It, as in: once you try it, you will be.

(This book trailer may not be suitable for all ages or work environments. But live a little why don’t you.)