Just a reminder that we are very excited about the Seattle Review of Books showcase happening at Bumbershoot this Sunday at 7:30 pm. We'll be presenting poets EJ Koh and Robert Lashley onstage with poet, novelist, short story author, and all-around Seattle literary lion Sherman Alexie. We hope to see you there.

Wallingford's wonderful Open Books closed yesterday and will remain closed for about two weeks because it's "transition time," which means old owner John Marshall will be officially handing over ownership to Billie Swift. Expect the store to reopen in mid-September under Swift's command.

You have two days to submit to the Tahoma Literary Review's eighth issue.

So happy that Ursula Le Guin is getting her own Library of America edition but it's a little sad that she prickles so much at the mention of genre: "'I don’t want to be reduced to being "the sci-fi writer." People are always trying to push me off the literary scene, and to hell with it,'" she tells the New York Times. This is very likely a generational thing — Vonnegut hated being referred to as a sci-fi writer, too — and in the long run, it's not a big deal. Still, it's a shame that Le Guin can't take pleasure in raising the bar for an entire genre.

Amazon's newest brick-and-mortar Amazon Books store will open in Chicago in 2017.

Since the internet is currently (and rightly) aghast at a dumb blog's "how to talk to a woman wearing headphones" article, let's just take this opportunity to remind men how to talk to women reading books in public. Step one: don't. Every step after that: seriously, don't. This has been a public service announcement from the Seattle Review of Books.