book reading

I was listening to a really interesting radio interview this morning with a local author, Pauls Toutonghi, who wrote a book called "Evil Knievel Days" about a half-Egyptian guy who goes to Egypt with his father to discover his heritage. The book sounded terrific and at the very end of the interview the author said he would do a reading at Powell's tonight. So...guess what I decided to do? Go to it, with Rachel of course.

When I picked her up from school tonight I told her where we were headed. "You go on the best mommy/daughter dates EVER!" said Teacher Erin. We played for a bit in the park across the street from school, then headed to a pizza place across the street from Powell's called "Sizzle Pie." It actually has pretty decent pizza. I promised Rachel we could read at least ONE BOOK before the reading, and of course she picked out another fairy book. We got to the reading just in time for it to start.

The reading was good but the author seemed very unprepared even though this is his second book and he teaches at Lewis & Clark. At one point he had his wife, also a writer, accompany him on guitar, singing a song he mentioned in the book (and I had to wince at her voice). Much less polished than the reading we went to a few weeks ago for a friend and former Oregonian colleague, Peter Zuckerman, who wrote a book about K2 (currently one of Rachel's obsessions these days). Peter is a first-time author and between reading and questions afterward, it was a whole hour. Tonight's reading was only 30 minutes and the guy didn't seem like he wanted to answer questions.

Rachel was very patient through the whole reading; she spent most of it curled up in my lap.

On the way home we ran into a former Oregonian colleague, Betsy Hammond, at the gas station where we'd both stopped to get gas. She exclaimed over how big Rachel is (Betsy's two sons are 11 and 13) and she knew just what questions to ask to get Rachel to talk. Here is what Betsy posted on Facebook after we left:

"How cool is it that Lisa Lednicer has taken her adorable daughter Rachel to so many Powell's readings that Rachel, age 4, can compare tonight's ("short") with Peter Zuckerman's ("better") and wonder why her grandparents didn't take Lisa Lednicer to any such bookstore events when she was super-young. Yay Rachel!"

Yay, indeed. I thanked Rachel profusely for coming with me and reminded her how much fun I have going out with her. And I do.