Share your ideas for Book Club selection with us
It’s going on mid-August, and the summer is flying by. Though I don’t want to think about the coming cold weather and darkness falling at 4 p.m., I am interested in working up a fall reading schedule for The Spokesman-Review Book Club. This month we’re reading Seattle author Jonathan Raban’s memoir “Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings.”
I’m not sure that July’s choice, which was Charles Johnson’s National Book Award-winning novel “Middle Passage,” was much of a success. Coeur d’Alene reader Phoebe Hruska, who can always be depended on to venture an opinion, had this to say: “Reading this book was like a detested assignment. It did not appeal to me.”
Fair enough. So where should we go for the next three months? Here are some suggestions (all by Northwest writers, all in paperback editions):
•David Long’s 1997 story collection “Blue Spruce” (Scribner, 256 pages, $16.95) contains a dozen stories by the Tacoma writer, author of the novels “The Falling Boy” and “The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux.”
•Medical Lake writer John Keeble’s nonfiction study “Out of the Channel: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound” (Eastern Washington University Press, 363 pages, $14), which was originally published in 1991, is a thorough look at an ecological disaster.
•”Daughters Of The Desert: Stories Of Remarkable Women From Christian, Jewish, And Muslim Traditions,” the title of the collection of stories by Spokane writers Claire Rudolf Murphy, Meghan Nuttall Sayres, Mary Cronk Farrell, Sarah Conover and Betsy Wharton (Skylight Paths Publishing, 191 pages, $14), pretty much says it all.
•Portland writer Molly Gloss’ 1989 novel “The Jump-Off Creek” (Mariner Books, 208 pages, $12) is about a woman’s struggles to make a go of it in rural Oregon of 1895.
We’d like to hear about any other book by a notable Northwest writer that you can think of. Send your suggestions to Book Club Suggestion, c/o Dan Webster, The Spokesman-Review, 999 W. Riverside, Spokane, WA 99201. Or e-mail danw@spokesman.com
Saving the land
Paul Vandevelder, author of the book “Coyote Warrior,” will give a lecture titled “What Happens to Cultures When Rivers Die” at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Kress Gallery, on the third level of River Park Square.
This is the second half of a two-part “Meet the Authors” speaker series co-sponsored by Save Our Wild Salmon and the Sierra Club.
For further information, call Sherry L. Johnson at 456-3413.
Books for sale
A two-day book sale dubbed the Coming Together Bookfest begins Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Coeur d’Alene Public Library, 201 E. Harrison Ave. The sale, which will raise money for a number of library programs – including the building fund – replaces the usual one-day August sale.
The sale runs through 5 p.m. Saturday and continues next Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. For information on donating books, call (208) 769-2315.
The voice is all
Here’s another reminder: Christopher Howell will hold a poetry writing workshop, “Finding the Authentic Voice: Strategies for Accommodating Narrative to the Lyric Impulse,” Sept. 16 and 17 at Sandpoint’s Oden Hall. The two-day event, which costs $100, is sponsored by Lost Horse Press.
Howell is the author of 10 poetry collections, and his poems have appeared in such literary journals as Antioch Review, Harper’s, North American Review and Poetry Northwest.
For more information, see the Lost Horse Web site (www.losthorsepress.org), call (208) 255-4410 or e-mail losthorsepress@mindspring.com.
Book talk
•Poetry reading group (747-3454), 3 p.m. today, Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington (838-0206).
•Current Affairs Book Group (“Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity,” by Lawrence Lessig), 6 p.m. Monday, Auntie’s Bookstore.
•Dark City Mystery Book Group (“Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story Of A Doctor Who Got Away With Murder,” by James B. Stewart), 7 p.m. Monday, Auntie’s Bookstore.
•Family Readers Group (“Fire in the Hole,” by Mary Cronk Farrell), 7 p.m. Monday, Valley Hastings, 15312 E. Sprague Ave. (924-0667).
•”Eragon” Discussion Group, 7 p.m. Friday, Valley Hastings.
•Saturday Afternoon Kids Club Reading Time, 2 p.m. Saturday, Christian Life Bookstore, 510 E. Francis Ave. (483-5338).
The reader board
•Luella Dow (“Fire in Her Soul”), signing, 1 to 3 p.m. today, Valley Hastings.
•Heidi Jo Lopez (“The Knight Revealed”), reading, 7 p.m. Wednesday, Auntie’s Bookstore.
•Paul Vandevelder (“Coyote Warrior”), lecture, 7 p.m. Wednesday, Kress Gallery, third level of River Park Square.
•Marilyn Newkirk (“Spokane, 22nd St. and the Fifties”), signings, Friday, 5 to 8 p.m., Valley Hastings; Saturday, 4 to 6:30 p.m., Lincoln Heights Hastings, 2512 E. 29th Ave. (535-4342).