The P-I's John Cook reports that Amazon has bought Shelfari. Shelfari is reporting its purchase, too, so it must be true. Wonder if Amazon gets free shipping when it buys an HQ? This creates an awkward, "kissing cousins" relationship for Shelfari competitor LibraryThing, which was minority-owned by AbeBooks, also purchased by Amazon a few weeks ago. The bad blood is all very red-book vs. blue-book. Shelfari is the book-oriented social-networking site that Gawker called "social......

IN A WU TANG WAY: Not being of the hip-hop persuasion ourselves, Seattlest asked our resident hip-hop guru Katelyn how relevant it may be to people that Gza of Wu Tang Clan fame is playing at Neumo's tonight. She basically said it was relevant "in a Wu Tang way." We don't know what that means, but if you do, then Neumo's is your place to be. 8 p.m. doors // Neumo's // $20 YOUR BRAIN......

"The 'double reading' self-portrait" by dhammza. Cool! Seattlest's childhood summers were for three things: camping, sleeping late, and reading. The latter was the most pervasive. We borrowed stacks of ambitiously thick books at a time from the Lake Hills library--a bike ride through the greenbelt away--and we'd burrow somewhere comfortable to read for long hours. We inhaled books, goldfish crackers, and pina colada-flavored slurpees from the corner store during those summers like there was......

Yes, but will it be pork-filled rummage? We've just been alerted that Pork Filled Players, ReAct Theatre, Rk Productions, and SIS Productions are holding a weekend rummage sale from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday the 26th, and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday the 27th. There you will find "costumes, clothing, small appliances, interesting theatre props, small furniture, equipment, books, knickknacks, and lots of other great finds at bargain prices and......

WHAT A WICKED GAME YOU PLAY: There's some pretty good national names hitting town tonight. But, since Emmylou Harris is sold out at the Zoo, perhaps you'll enjoy the warbling sounds of Chris Isaak at the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery. Tickets for that are still on sale. 7 p.m. // Chateau Ste. Michelle // $45-69 THE SLAVES' WAR: Local author Andrew Ward will be reading from his latest compelling historical account of what some of......

One more event for tonight: Christian Lander, the biting satirist of Stuff White People Like, makes a free appearance tonight at the Hideout (1005 Boren Ave) to shill the book based on his blog. There's a private dinner beforehand--begging the question "Exactly what stuff do white people like to eat?"--but tickets to that portion of the evening are long sold out. Show up any time after 8 p.m. to buy a book, get it signed,......

NPR IN DA HOUSE: Seattlest was kind of surprised to hear that tickets are still available for NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me live show at the Paramount tonight. We've never personally been to a live radio show before, but we do love the N to the PR, and we're guessing this'll be well worth your time. In case you don't mack on the NPR, it's the silly quiz show that takes a humorous look......

Weirdly, the case of Amazon's disappearing "Buy Now" button does, in fact, have something to do with Harry Potter. But it's more about accounting wizardry than the fun kind. We colonials have mostly* been spared being unbuttoned, but on its British site, Amazon has been dematerializing the impulse buy-friendly buttons right and left when disputing with publishers over the vig for book sales. Amazon has not been cutting off its button nose to spite its......

FROSH LIT: Desperately hip? Unsuccessful Seattle literary type desperate to bask in the glow of the real thing? Wanna kvetch about how much you hate the stuck-up Ivy League boys over at n+1? Well, tonight's your chance: Ed Park, one of the founding editors of McSweeneys tagalong The Believer, is in town pitching his debut novel, Personal Days. It's a book about a bunch of Manhattan office workers, delving deep into the rich inner lives......

SALMAN RUSHDIE: He'll be hitting Town Hall tonight to read from his latest effort, The Enchantress of Florence. According to the press release, it sounds like it's one of those quasi-fictional tales pitting opposites against each other (and, possibly, in the process, showing how opposites attract?). Tickets are available at University Bookstore for $5 a pop, or you can just buy a copy of the novel and use that as your entry. 7:30 p.m.......

FULL PUPPET NUDITY: You might have noticed that big banner on the side of the Paramount advertising puppet cleavage Avenue Q. Well, tonight is opening night, so if you haven't gotten your tickets for this ever-so-brief run of the Tony Award-winning show, now's your time. Seattlest will be there tonight for the kick-off, but then it's up to you to get out and see those puppets sing and swear all over the place. June 10-22......

DARK, CRAZY MEMORIES: Augusten Burroughs has a new memoir out—A Wolf at the Table. We don't have it yet, but a friend who does says it's exquisite. He'll be hitting Town Hall tonight to read from it. The Town Hall site sums up the story quite well: "Burrough’s dark story follows the radical pendulum swing between love and hate—stunning psychological cruelty, and ultimately, the redemptive power of hope." 7:30 p.m. // Town Hall // Free......

What? What'd we say? We just heard that Starbucks has chosen a book by Seattle novelist Garth Stein to distribute wherever its grande americanos are sold. Titled The Art of Racing in the Rain, the novel has also won the hearts and minds of U.S. independent booksellers, who have made it their No. 1 Booksense recommendation for June. See, the story's narrator is a dog named Enzo (an idea Stein lifted from a Billy Collins......

BURLESQUE BENEFIT: Jet City Burlesque appears at the Columbia City Theatre in a benefit for animals in animal shelters. You're supposed to bring dog and cat "items" to the show, to help the shelter experience seem less like prison. Join the Swedish Housewife and the Shanghai Pearl, among many other luminaries, for a warm-hearted celebration of the slightly indecent and intoxicatingly indecorous. And don't forget the squeaky toy. For the animals. 7 p.m. doors,......

MUSICAL: Just you wait, 'Enry 'Iggins! Lerner & Loewe's proto-Pretty Woman fantasia, My Fair Lady, opens at the Paramount, starring British theatre actors Christopher Cazenove and Lisa O'Hare as Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle. The production unites the original U.K. artistic team with Trevor Nunn (director), Matthew Bourne (choreography and musical staging), and Anthony Ward (production design). 7:30 p.m. // Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine Street // Tickets: $25-$72 MUSIC: Peter Morén, the lead......

ART: New York graffiti artist Ghost a/k/a Cousin Frank has a show up at the BLVD Gallery. A pioneer who got started in the late 1970s, Ghost was on the ground for the NYC subway graffiti movement featured so prominently in Warriors. His stuff is instantly recognizable. If we end up walking by, we're heading in. 1-6 p.m. // BLVD Gallery, 2316 Second Avenue // FREE FILM: Now where did that cat Jonesy get......

For a first novel, Nathaniel Rich's The Mayor's Tongue makes for a good read. But even though he's "not yet 30," he is a senior editor at The Paris Review (and the author of San Francisco Noir), and so you do expect him not to offer you some rewarmed Roth in the first place. He's down at Elliott Bay Book Company on Monday night, April 21st, giving the usual free reading/Q&A and not fielding questions......

BOOKS: Marjane Satrapi--she grew up in Iran so you don't have to--is speaking at the Moore tonight. Best known for her graphic memoir Persepolis (Now a major motion picture!), Satrapi is also the author and illustrator of Embroideries and Chicken with Plums, along with several children's books. 7:30 p.m. // Moore Theatre, 1932 Second Avenue // Tickets: $25-$32 SCIENCE: Buddhist-friendly pediatric psychiatrist Daniel Siegel, co-director of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Center, has written a......

BEISBOL!: The Seattle Mariners kick off 2008 by hosting the Texas Rangers. Jeff Weaver Eric Bedard will bring his future-talent-sacrificing, spring-home-run-gifting, 8.63 ERA to the mound. Fans will cheer. Fans will get pissed off. There will be the heavenly scents of processed meat, garlic fries, beer, and (imagined) freshly trimmed field. It will, finally, be baseball season again. (Photo courtesy of Seattlest Flickr pool member grundlepuck.) 3:40pm // Safeco Field // Tickets: Ask a......

BOOKS: Though one of Joshua Ferris's ad-man protagonists claims to be writing a "small and angry" book about his work, the New York Times calls Ferris's And Then We Came to the End "expansive, great-hearted and acidly funny." He's reading from his dot-com-era novel at Elliott Bay. It centers around the layoff-paranoid employees of an ad agency, who have been contracted to create a breast cancer awareness campaign that will make women laugh in......

NOON JAZZ: Cornish's music department is putting on a noon concert featuring the Jazz Composers Ensemble with Jovino Santos Neto, the Brazilian pianist, flutist, and composer. We don't have a lot of information on this, but come on, it's free. Grab something at Joe Bar and head on over. noon // Kerry Hall, 710 E Roy St // FREE DHARMA MEDITATION: Are you a continuing dharma student? Don't be fronting your sense of refuge:......

FILM: If you see only one documentary about fonts this year, make it Helvetica. New York taxi numbers are also in Helvetica. The font is on IRS tax forms, U.S. mailboxes, and ConEd trucks. The 50-year-old sans serif font spells out countless logos: Sears. Bloomingdale’s. JCPenney. Crate & Barrel. Target. Fendi. Jeep. Toyota. Energizer. Oral-B. MetLife. Nestlé. Once you realize Helvetica is everywhere, says Hustwit, "you just can’t stop thinking about it." 7:15, 9pm......

Sure, we've read his bestselling book, Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child: The Heart of Parenting. Heck, we even own the DVD. But it wasn't until after last night's lecture at Town Hall, presented by Parent Map, that we could truly call ourselves John Gottman fans. He charmed the sold-out crowd with heartwarming anecdotes and stone-cold research, and by the time we left, we were better, calmer parents (or soon-to-be parents). Part local legend, part international......

BOOKS: Novelist Richard Powers reads tonight at Benaroya Hall for Seattle Arts and Lectures. The former computer programmer's latest book, The Echo Maker, is "a haunting novel about memory, identity, and the boundaries of neuroscience," (Booklist), and won the National Book Award and all sorts of "Best Book of the Year" awards in 2006. He's a novelist of "ideas"; David Foster Wallace is a big fan. Here's an interview in the P-I. 7:30pm //......

Poets in particular seem to struggle with a bipolar mind, as discussed in Touched with Fire. But perhaps that visibility is just because they're poets, and inclined to make terrific material out of any experience. The new poetry anthology from Eastern Washington University, Living in Storms, shows no let-up to the harsh weather:Schramm has collected more than a hundred poems by some four-score contemporary poets whose lives have been affected in various ways by bipolar......

What with the Internetz, the Google and the digital camera, a new generation of wine touring guides is long overdue. Last April, there was a post over at Cornichon.org about a book called Touring the Wine Country of Washington, written by The Oldest Seattlest some 25 years ago. Everything you wanted to know about all 37 of the state's wineries, back in 1983. Now, with over 500 bonded premises in the state, with formal......

Honestly. Why aren't more book readings held in bars? Bookstores are antiseptic places where talking loudly is verboten--when an author does it at a reading, it feels impolite. In a bar, though, attempts to command attention are commonplace and usually welcome. And let's not forget the fact that pretty much everything is better when you have a drink in your hand--and when you know that, worst case, you can head to the video poker machine.......

After winning $3,022,700 from Jeopardy!, Ken Jennings could've retired to a Seattle suburb to roll around in piles of dollar bills. Instead, he became America's answer to Ben Schott, wroting about trivia: a book its history, a regular column in Mental_Floss, a popular weekly trivia quiz, and most recently a hu-frickin'-mungous collection of questions, the Trivia Almanac. In short, he's got the career we've secretly wished we could have since we were nine years......

We left it up to Jami Attenberg to pick a spot in a not-so-crowded Bauhaus Coffeehouse this morning, and somehow she managed to find the cavelike area behind and below everything that goes on in a not-so-crowded coffeehouse. Overtired, pre-caffeinated and maybe a little bit getting sick, Attenberg seemed comfortable in the cave. An interview she did with Metblogs on her last book tour indicated that Bauhaus is one of her favorite Seattle haunts,......

M. Coy Books on Pine is closing, and, because we spent hours and hours there as a teenager without buying anything, we're feeling a bit jerk-ish for not having patronized the place more in adulthood. Founder Michael Coy (yeah, he founded Bailey/Coy, too) sure knows how to make us feel like a tool. He tells the P-I: "We're going to miss interaction with our customers, but we will not miss waking up in the middle......