reading and readings

Currently on my bedside table: Susan Choi’s finely etched page-turner American Woman, loosely based on the true story of one of Patty Hearst’s accomplices. The beginning was unnecessarily confusing, but now I can’t put it down. Although I feel highly uncreative quoting a critic who is quoted on the book’s cover, the Chicago Tribune did put it nicely: “Weaving past and present, hunters and hunted, Choi’s taut, surprising structure keeps us off-balance…. This is a rare thing, a book both big and fine-grained.”

What I’m doing Saturday, Oct. 13 at 5 p.m.: Catching my City Works Press editor Jim Miller’s reading of his new novel, Drift, at Skylight Books. I just bought my copy this weekend, so I haven’t read it yet (also, see above), but the cover by Perry Vasquez is pretty kick-ass, and I like to think of myself as someone who judges books by, well, you know.

What I’m doing Sunday, Oct. 21 at 2 p.m.: Reading from some new-ish work at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre as part of Writers at Work’s 10^th Anniversary Reading. Hopefully this will be what you’re doing on Oct. 21 too—you’ll also get to hear from my fellow LA writers and WAW alumni Eloise Klein Healy, Sage Bennett, Stephanie Hemphill, Joan Kelly, Max Pierce and Julia Salazar. And because Terry Wolverton is putting this together, I can assure you that all the readings will be short and sweet, and that it will be a fun afternoon.