Each week, the Sunday Post highlights a few articles we enjoyed this week, good for consumption over a cup of coffee (or tea, if that's your pleasure). Settle in for a while; we saved you a seat. You can also look through the archives.

Trapped: The Grenfell Tower Story

Tom Lamont’s account of the Grenfell Tower fire is riveting and wrenching. It’s not a political examination, but a human one, a set of interlocking stories by residents and firefighters who lived through the night. A piece like this always risks catering to looky-loos. But I think it’s worthwhile, for obvious reasons right now, to invest our attention in the implications of political decisions (regulatory, economic, and otherwise) — implications from which the politicians calling the shots are mostly exempt.

Fire from the fourth floor had reached an outside wall of the tower and then caught — unthinkably — the sheer sides of the exterior. Fat amber flames licked up Grenfell's northeastern elevation so quickly, so determinedly, that for a time firefighters stationed indoors and outdoors would have been responding to wildly different degrees of crisis. What would have seemed inside to be a manageable appliance fire was catastrophizing, outside, into the gravest threat to residential Londoners in 75 years: since the city's bombing at war. One of the first police officers to arrive at the scene would later say that "the building was melting." At least 320 people were inside. Most, like Oluwaseun Talabi, were asleep.

Ana Mardoll on Prairie Fires

With many apologies to those for whom Little House on the Prairie is a beloved childhood touchpoint, here’s Ana Mardoll’s brilliant, hilarious live-read of Prairie Fires, the new biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. If you’re wearing rose-colored glasses, take them off now so you don’t get shards in your eyes — this woman has evidence-based smacktalk down to an art.

To no surprise whatsoever, Almanzo is now breaking homesteading rules and scamming the government. Again, I don't disapprove exactly, but I remind you this is supposed to be people who succeeded through honest hard labor.

Almanzo is being a dick to Eliza Jane but I am 100% on her side, fight me. She's going to claim her own homestead at 29 because fuck marriage and men, and that's frankly way more sympathetic than Manzo and Royal. I mean, they're all trash fires stealing land from indigenous people, but at least she hates men and I respect that.

Cormac McCarthy Returns to the Kekulé Problem

The only thing better than Cormac McCarthy offering up an apostrophe-less analysis of one of the knottiest problems in linguistics is McCarthy responding to readers’ comments and questions on the selfsame piece.

I havent read the William Burroughs book that several people mentioned in which apparently language is compared to a virus. The only Burroughs book I’ve read is Naked Lunch. One reader seemed to know that that is just what I would say. Bloody McCarthy lies about everything. Naked Lunch was supposedly so named by Jack Kerouac. When Burroughs wanted to know what it meant, Kerouac said that it was that frozen moment when everybody sees what’s on the end of the fork. Or so the story.

Mea Culpa. Kinda Sorta.

Remember how your mom taught you to apologize — straight up “I’m sorry,” not “I’m sorry you felt bad,” not “I’m sorry and here’s why it’s your fault”? Apparently not everyone got that memo from mom, even with professional PR agencies to help them. Jessica Bennett, Claire Cain Miller, Amanda Taub, and Choire Sicha of the New York Times analyze shitty responses from shitty men, media and otherwise, to accusations of harassment and assault.

These sound like the ramblings of your crazy uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.

Seattle Writing Prompts are intended to spark ideas for your writing, based on locations and stories of Seattle. Write something inspired by a prompt? Send it to us! We're looking to publish writing sparked by prompts.

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There's a tweet going around that a bunch of my friends have been responding to. Don't worry, it's fun, for once.

Without revealing your actual age, what's something you remember that if you told a younger person they wouldn't understand?

— Matt (@mattwhitlockPM) November 27, 2017

I kept trying to come up with a good answer to this, but it wasn't until I sat down to write this piece that I thought of one: when I was in school, we watched slides that had a tone telling you when to advance, and the sound came from a turntable or cassette player.

I think of that now, because one of the filmstrips we watched was a cartoon telling of "The Legend of Sleepy Hallow." I've always been a fan of the story, for it's subtle airs and clear authorial point of view. It's a story that works best if you don't expect it, but like reading Frankenstein (where the monster is not green and does not have bolts), later tellings of the story have cast it in a certain light, with certain trappings that have stolen it's original verve and intention.

This filmstrip, no doubt, was one such telling, although in my memory, it's awfully consistent with the real text. In it, Ichabod Crane is taking a bath to get ready to attend the social where he will be challenged and bested by his rival. The drawing of Crane had him in a galvanized wash bucket, his lanky legs sticking out over the side, basically only his hips and buttocks in the thing.

So, this meandering start is leading to a really simple reveal: I'm a tall guy, and that's how I feel when I take a bath. Rare is the tub that I can submerge in. I'm normally all akimbo, and in a chill enough room, that which sticks out goes all goose-pimply while the rest of me is warm and snug in the steaming water.

Generally, to be fair, I prefer showers. But a bath is an amazing thing. Reading in the bath? Best place. Watching a show on your iPad in the bath? Heaven. But it's a rare indulgence for me, due to the lanky me and tiny tub phenomenon.

But every now and again, you encounter a tub that amazes you. There's a house on Capitol Hill, a mansion, that I visited a few times because it was the conference home for my father's church, when he was both alive and a working minister. We'd sometimes stay there, when visiting Seattle from Bellingham, and in one of the bathrooms was a nine foot tub. I could lay down in that thing, and have a clear foot-and-a-half above my head and another under my soles. It was incredible — except, for one tragic flaw: water didn't run to it anymore. And given the houses use as primarily an office, it wasn't required.

That tub has been in my imagination ever since and, in fact, made an appearance in the first Christmas Ghost Story I wrote for the site.

Out in the weather, tonight, on my way home, a deeper chill than previously felt seeping in, I started thinking about being warm to the bones in only the way that a bath can provide. Certainly, all around Seattle, hundreds of people are taking a private soak, alone (most of them), and although I'm not going to Icahabod Crane myself into a thimble, I sure can imagine how good it would feel. Today, friends, is about the bathers.

Today's prompts

1. The bath was the best place to get stoned. She pulled up some Sigur Ros on the phone, lit a couple candles and locked the door. Thirty minutes later, after topping off a few times with hot water, the music coming to a certain crescendo, she thought she heard the door to the apartment open, that familiar hinge-creaking sound. But couldn't it have been the music, maybe? "Hello?" she cried out. That wasn't right, only one person could possibly come in, and he lived two states away and was busy this weekend. She heard he door shut, and then, both candles snuffed out leaving her in complete darkness.

2. "I don't care" — "But Mom...." — "I don't care." — "I wasn't the only one!" — "Sharpie. Why did you have to use a goddamned Sharpie?" — "Mom, you just said a bad...." — "this shit never comes off, you know that? You know how hard I'm going to have to scrub?" — "Owww! That hurts!" — "Well, suits you right for drawing that crap all over yourself." — He bunched up his face, and exploded into a howl she had never heard before "It is not crap! It is my tattoos and they are precious to me!"

3. It was that one mole on his leg. It was in the most awkward spot, right on the back of his calf where he couldn't see the fucking thing, and this was not the first time he had cut it, but it was the worst yet. The blood dripped off of his leg into the water, spreading as it hit. Of course, tonight, when he was MCing the drag show, of course tonight, and he had his dress and hose all picked out and a bloody leg would ruin the whole fucking effect, you know. He cursed out loud, as loud as he could, then grabbed the washcloth and pressed it down hard. It slowly turned red, absorbing that slow steady, annoying, and only barely painful leak. Nothing to do now but wait and watch the bath color, expecting to see little Jaws start to circle. And that's when Kitty came in and saw him and shrieked herself. "No! You've got so much to live for!"

4. There was only one thing to do, and it was going to suck for everybody. He opened the faucet all the way, and then ran to the kitchen, sliding on a Lego spaceship that splintered under his feet and sent him into the wall. He grabbed the whole tray of ice in the freezer and ran back to the filling tub, seeing he forgot to plug the drain and it was all slipping away. He did that, dumped the ice in, watching the water rise. "Okay!" he cried "Okay!", and she came in holding the kid, listless against her, and so, so hot. She gave him a look. "I can't", she said. "I can't either!" He said. "But we have to." She nodded, then knelt, kissed the boy's forehead, and lowered him into the icy water.

5. Nothing was as good as a hot bath. She went under the water, and came up, hair back out of her face for the first time today. She squeegeed it with her hands, and lay back against the sloping wall of the tub. Settled, she flipped the excess water from her hands, and wiped them on the towel she laid out on the edge, then picked up her book, ready to while away an hour or so without a care in the world. She was already so relaxed. She read a chapter, put down her book and picked up her ice cold water for a sip. And then she picked up her motherfucking goddamned phone and looked at Twitter.

Every Friday, Cienna Madrid offers solutions to life’s most vexing literary problems. Do you need a book recommendation to send your worst cousin on her birthday? Is it okay to read erotica on public transit? Cienna can help. Send your questions to advice@seattlereviewofbooks.com.

Dear Cienna,

My friends and I started a book club and we gave everyone a month to read our first pick. It was a short science fiction book, so this seemed like ample time. When we met, only two of us had read the whole book. Everyone else came because we had good snacks, and I guess they wanted to hang out or something. This led to a lot of shushing and talking around any topic that might spoil the ending.

I'm not a teacher. How do you get people to show up having done their homework?

Lily, Fairbanks, AK

Dear Lily,

It's unrealistic to expect everyone to read each book – I drop books that don't grip me because I believe that reading is a pleasure not a chore. I think more people would be readers if they didn't feel an educational obligation drilled in from youth to finish every book and be ready to take a quiz on it.

However, someone must set the tone for the book club and seeing as you have strong feelings about it, that someone should be you. if you want this to be a book-geared book club and not another social gathering, you need to make it clear that everyone is encouraged to participate but that conversation will be about the book of the month – endings and important plot points will be discussed in detail.

Have you ever met a brown recluse? They are the Cadillac of spiders: quiet, impeccable manners, and a low tolerance for bullshit punctuated by a venomous bite (which is oddly erotic when placed on the lips). I encourage you to lead your book club like a brown recluse – be polite but take no bullshit. If someone asks you to not spoil the ending, invite them to leave the room. And if someone shushes you, bite them on the lips until you taste blood.

Kisses,

Cienna

Each week, Christine Larsen creates a new portrait of an author for us. Have any favorites you’d love to see immortalized? Let us know

Saturday, December 2nd: Healing Histories

Everfair novelist, much-anthologized short story author, and Seattle Review of Books columnist Nisi Shawl teaches a free writing class in the Green Lake branch of the Seattle Public Library. What the hell could you possibly have to lose? For the low, low price of free, Shawl will almost certainly leave you a better author than you were when you walked into the room.
Seattle Public Library, Green Lake Branch, 7364 East Green Lake Dr N, http://spl.org, 2 pm, free.

The first issue of Now, a quarterly comics anthology from Fantagraphics, begins with a text page that falls just shy of manifesto territory. It's by Now editor Eric Reynolds, and it argues that "The anthology format can be an inherent force for good."

Reynolds makes a compelling argument. Anthologies are a great way for young cartoonists to get exposure and to experiment with styles without committing to a longform project. But nobody's really doing anthologies anymore. It's been years since Fantagraphics last dipped into the format with their gorgeous Mome series of bookshelf-ready paperbacks.

While still very substantial, Now seems more magazine-y than Mome, and that's a good thing: comics anthologies like this should feel of-the-moment and maybe not so permanent. And a good anthology needs a real reason to exist — a point to make, an argument to bear out, a fight to win.

So does Now live up to its name? Is it of the zeitgeist, or is it more of a nostalgia trip for a time when the comics industry was choking on anthologies?

The best comics in Now look like nothing else on the stands. The first page in the book, a strip called "Constitutional" by Sara Corbett, is absolutely gorgeous, a cross between a mannered kid's book from the 1950s and a deck of art deco playing cards. Nothing much happens in the six panels — an old woman and her cat go walking in a city park — but you can't stop staring at it, trying to figure out how a human hand could make something so eerily perfect.

Tobias Schalken's "21 Positions" feels like a magazine illustration from another time. It's just 21 borderless panels of a man and a woman dancing — or are they fighting, or are they fucking, or all three at once? — but as a comic it's something stripped down and raw and totemic. It's hard to pull your eyes from it.

A few comics veterans contribute pieces to Now. In "Scorpio," Dash Shaw tells a story of a couple whose baby arrives on election night, 2016. Gabrielle Bell's "Dear Naked Guy In the Apartment Across from Mine Spread-Eagled & Absent-mindedly Flicking his Penis While Watching TV" is pretty much what it says in the title. (It begins, "I know that you know that I know that you see me seeing you seeing me back.") Neither of these strips feel especially groundbreaking in relation to their respective artists' careers, but they're both haunting little vignettes.

There are 17 different pieces in Now, and they're thematically all over the place. Sammy Harkam's "I, Marlon" imagines the plight of mid-career Marlon Brando as he luxuriates on his private island. "Widening Horizon," by Malachi Ward and Matt Sheean, portrays a parallel history of space travel in a strip that might not be out of place in an especially adventurous issue of Popular Mechanics. Antoine Cossé's "Statue" is science fiction told in loopy, minimalist sketches. You never know what's going to come with the turn of a page, and every reader will find that some pieces of Now work better for them than others. (That's the whole point of an anthology.)

The most successful strips feel like they come from a slightly different universe, one where the lush aesthetics of magazine illustration fused together with comics. Given that magazines are nearly dead now — the Kochs will likely deliver the death blow to the long-suffering medium — it's heartening to see the mannered and deeply designed illustrations from magazine culture's heyday take refuge in the (relative) safe harbor of comics, where cartooning has held sway for over a century.

It's been years since I've seen someone in the comics world draw a line in the sand like this. Even Fantagraphics, which was practically a manifesto-producing factory back in the 1990s, hasn't made a declaration like Now in a while. Hopefully Reynolds will continue to explore this aesthetic in future issues of Now. This first issue proves he has the ambition, but it remains to be seen if the can turn that potential into a movement.

• This Saturday, December 2nd, Redmond Poet Laureate Shin Yu Pai will be presenting new work at the Redmond Lights holiday festival. Pai has written a special poem for the occasion recounting Redmond's logging history and celebrating the city's attempts to regrow its gorgeous tree canopy. Additionally, Seattle designer Michael Barakat has animated the poem, and it will be projected on the side of City Hall as part of the festivities. Pai is an estimable talent who always gives her all to every project, and this looks to be a capstone on her incredibly fruitful tenure as Poet Laureate of Redmond. (And if you're into holiday festivities, the full itinerary of Redmond Lights looks like a lot of winter-themed fun, with popcorn and facepainting and a city walk and a tree lighting and ice carving.)

• You should read David Lasky's first blog post about the Georgetown Steam Plant comic that he and Mairead Case have been commissioned by the city to create. The post really highlights how wonderful it is to live in a city that takes art seriously, and I also learned something cool about finches while reading it so, you know, it's a win-win.

• You probably saw that our idiot president was a big racist in front of some heroic Native American veterans of World War II earlier this week. If you'd like to honor those veterans by learning more about their heroism and sacrifice, you should consider purchasing this comic book history of the Code Talkers. If I told you Donald Trump didn't want you to read this comic book, would you be more likely to buy it?

• Today in "But You Knew I Was a Snake When You Picked Me Up" news: GoodReads, the bookish social network purchased by Amazon a while back, is now charging authors for the right to run book giveaways on their own pages. The "standard" giveaway price is $119, and the "premium" price is $599. If you took the news that Amazon bought GoodReads in stride, this is your wakeup call: Time to find another way to talk about books online! This is just the first step toward a new pay-to-play GoodReads model; Amazon is going to choke authors and publishers for every cent they can, starting right now.

• Yesterday, Bleeding Cool broke the news that incoming Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski once freelanced for the company under the name Akira Yoshida. This is problematic on several levels. First of all, Cebulski, who is white, portrayed himself as a Japanese comics writer, even giving an interview in character to a comics news outlet and generating interest in his work based on the supposed cultural identity of "Yoshida." (He created Japanese-inflected comics for Marvel under the pseudonym.) Second of all, Cebulski was employed on the editorial staff of Marvel at the time and was not supposed to work as a freelancer. Many Marvel staffers claim to not have known about the Yoshida ruse, but that does raise some interesting questions: I've done a lot of freelance work in my day, and I always have to supply some proof of identity. How did Cebulski convince Marvel of "Yoshida's" authenticity? Seems like this story has some more layers to it that will be unpeeled in coming days.

• Just so you don't think that things are only terrible in America: 10 libraries in the UK will be permanently closed down by December 20th due to a serious budget crunch.

Over Thanksgiving break, I did something unusual: I played a video game. It only took about an hour and a half to play from start to finish, and (happily) it required absolutely zero hand-eye coordination. The game is called Far from Noise, and it's available pretty much everywhere you play games: on Steam, on the PS4, or — and this is how I played it — on Apple devices.

The premise of Far from Noise is simple. You "play" as a woman sitting behind the wheel of a car. The car is balanced precariously on the edge of a steep cliff by the ocean. It seems as though the slightest movement — a squirrel perched the wrong way on the car, even — might tip you over to your death. Then a deer walks up to the car and speaks to you. You engage in a conversation with the deer that could last all night.

The only real gameplay in Far From Noise is an occasional click. The game will offer you two different choices of dialogue, and you choose the phrase you want to say by tapping it. Your choices subtly affect the gameplay, and every choice takes you down a different conversational branch.

So why am I writing about this on a book website? Well, because Far from Noise is basically a Choose Your Own Adventure story for adults, with some beautiful, lightly animated graphics laid on top. It's as much literature as comics are, and fans of introspective fiction will find a lot to enjoy.

Sure, it sometimes gets a little pretentious. And occasionally the slow pace of the game gets on my nerves. But for the most part, Far from Noise scratches the same itch that a good, funny, high-concept literary story does. It's a video game with literary roots, and there are far worse ways to spend a dark wintry afternoon.

Every Wednesday between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we're asking some of our favorite Seattle authors to recommend the books they're most excited to give as gifts this holiday. Our first author is novelist Anca Szilágyi.

This spring, I cackled all the way through Elaine Dundy's novel The Dud Avocado, the story of Sally Jay Gorce, a 21-year-old American in 1950s Paris who is a delightful hot mess. It's my kind of "beach read" (if I went to beaches) and should be a welcome reprieve from the darkest months.

Thanks to Anca Szilágyi for her fantastic recommendation. You should attend the launch party for Anca's debut novel, Daughters of the Air on Tuesday, December 5th at the Hotel Sorrento. It starts at 7:30 and it's absolutely free. For more information about Anca Szilágyi and what she's reading, you can follow her on Twitter or on her website.

These events came in too late for me to add to our readings calendar, but you should definitely know about them: This coming Sunday, December 3rd, Seattle Civic Poet Anastacia-Renee is hosting two very different events.

The first event, Speak to Me! is billed as "an intergenerational monthly reading series showcasing emerging and seasoned poets," and the reading is "followed by a 30-minute optional writing workshop facilitated by Anastacia-Renee and visiting workshop facilitators." Readers/facilitators at this event include Seattle poets Robert Francis Flor, Jalayna Carter, and the fabulous Quenton Baker. It starts at 1 pm and runs to 3:30, and it's at the Black Zone, which is located at 2301 S. Jackson St. in suite 203.

Then, Anastacia-Renee will scramble across town to a 5 pm reading she's curating at Open Books in Wallingford. This reading will include Anastacia-Renee's precedessor in the Civic Poet program, Claudia Castro Luna. (Castro Luna will become the Washington State Poet Laureate next year.) They'll be joined by Lily Baumgart, who's serving as Seattle's Youth Poet Laureate, and local novelist Sonora Jha, who is currently Hugo House's Writer in Residence. And if that's not enough, other readers include the wonderful Jekeva Phillips and Open Books's very first Poet-in-Residence, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha.

I have already marveled at the fact that Anastacia-Renee is a dynamo of poetry, but this Sunday is a herculean feat of poetic performance. Do you think you can keep up? She's daring you to try.

This week, the Seattle Review of Books is sponsored by Paul Mullin, playwright, poet, and creator/curator of the Loud Mouth Lit reading series. We're infinitely grateful to Paul for supporting the site and for sharing a chapter from his memoir, The Starting Gate, with our readers. The excerpt is a great standalone story: the down-and-dirty (or up-and-clean) on the dangers of washing windows on a New York highrise when you're a young writer with three jobs and no time to sleep. And it's an irresistible entry point for Mullin's no-holds-barred style.

Buy a copy of The Starting Gate here. Or come out for this month's edition of Loud Mouth Lit, at St. Andrew's Bar on Tuesday night, to hear Mullin read — Lindy West is also on the marquee, so it should be a brilliant night for anger done funny — and pick up a copy while you're there.

Sponsors like Paul Mullin make the Seattle Review of Books possible. Did you know you could sponsor us, as well? Slots for spring and summer 2018 are open now and going fast. If you have a book, event, or opportunity you’d like to get in front of our readers, reserve your dates now.

Monday, November 27th: Obama: an Intimate Portrait Reading

Pete Souza was President Barack Obama’s official photographer, and the photos that he’s captured in that role have defined America’s relationship to Obama. These are photos that will last forever, long after the horrendous current political moment has passed. And Souza has been trolling Donald Trump quite effectively on social media in the last few months by posting photographic proof of Obama’s competence whenever Trump messes something up. It’s a cathartic, moving experience. Moore Theatre, 1932 2nd Ave, https://www.stgpresents.org, 7 pm, $54.50.

Tuesday, November 28th: Loud Mouth Lit with Lindy West

Playwright and memoirist Paul Mullin's reading series continues a string of knockout lineups with the indomitable Lindy West. Mullin will be reading a chapter from an upcoming novel. West will be reading, and I quote from the press release, "whatever she goddamn pleases." (But seriously: West's working on her second book, so you might just get a special preview if you come out tonight.) Saint Andrew’s Bar and Grill, 7406 Aurora Ave N., 523-1193. http://www.standrewsbarandgrill.com/, 8 pm, free, 21+.

Wednesday, November 29th: The Sentient Machine Reading

Amir Husain’s first book has the oh-so-humble name of The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence. Is it true that AI will be the death of us all? Is it possible that the AI revolution that so many have predicted simply…won’t happen? What the hell should we do about it? Husain will provide the answers tonight. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600, http://elliottbaybook.com, 7 pm, free.

Thursday, November 30th: Artemis Reading

See our Event of the Week column for more details.

Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333, http://thirdplacebooks.com, 7 pm, $30.

Saturday, December 2nd: Healing Histories

Everfair novelist, much-anthologized short story author, and Seattle Review of Books columnist Nisi Shawl teaches a free writing class in the Green Lake branch of the Seattle Public Library. What the hell could you possibly have to lose? For the low, low price of free, Shawl will almost certainly leave you a better author than you were when you walked into the room. Seattle Public Library, Green Lake Branch, 7364 East Green Lake Dr N, http://spl.org, 2 pm, free.

Sunday, December 3rd: Seattle's Cold Moon: A Reading of Poetry and Rituals

A note from Seattle poet and event organizer Greg Bem reads:

The last full moon of the 2017 calendar year falls on Sunday, December 3rd. It is known as the ‘cold moon.’ We will honor this astral event with an evening of lunar readings. Location details to be announced. Reader list to be announced. The event will be free and open to the public, so please share widely.

Readers and "ritualists" include Abi Pollokoff, Elizabeth Cooperman, Eric Westerlind, Evan Peterson, Jason Kirk, Justine Chan, Lydia Swartz, Matt Trease, Paul Nelson, Rachel Nelson, and Thomas Walton.

Pritchard Island Beach, 8400 55th Ave S, 7 pm, free.

Andy Weir’s The Martian is a rare self-publishing success story. The Martian first began on a blog, in which Weir presented a series of problems relating to life on Mars followed with a cliffhanger, only to solve the cliffhanger in the next installment. And it must be said that The Martian is a ton of fun to read — basically, the dictionary definition of “page-turner.” Somehow, The Martian even defied the odds of adaptation, becoming a phenomenally watchable movie, too.

(Ask me to choose between the book and the film version of The Martian and I’d be hard-pressed to pick a side; while Weir’s original book contains a ton of nerdy detail that didn’t make it into the film, the film has Matt Damon at his most charismatic and a glowing ensemble cast. I love them both in different ways.)

And now Andy Weir is back with his sophomore novel, Artemis and, well…let’s just say the sophomore slump is more than just a boogeyman. It’s not that Artemis is a terrible book, but it does pale in comparison to The Martian. It’s the sci-fi story of a heist on the moon, and it never really finds a comfortable cruising altitude. Artemis doesn’t enjoy the wheels-fall-off speed of The Martian; in fact at times it positively drags.

That said, Artemis is simply uneven; it’s not bad enough to make you reconsider the appeal of Weir’s first book (Ernest Cline’s Armada single-handedly kicked off the Ready Player One backlash, for instance; that doesn’t happen here.) And so far as sophomore slumps go, Artemis fulfills its purpose: it clears the decks, identifies Weir as a mortal who makes mistakes, and sets the stage for him to do whatever he damn well pleases with his third book. Without The Martian’s looming presence hanging over Weir, he’s finally free to do what he wants.

Even though Artemis is a disappointment, you’ll want to come out to the launch party for the book on Thursday November 30th at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park. Weir will appear in conversation with Seattle’s own Neal Stephenson, and this is bound to be a conversation for the ages. Both writers are brainy, detail-oriented engineer types — Stephenson’s explosive novel Seveneves shares some DNA with The Martian — and they’re likely to blow your mind with the level of granular nerdy detail they’re willing to dig into. This conversation is absolutely the sci-fi nerd’s dream come true.

Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333, http://thirdplacebooks.com, 7 pm, $30.

Each week, the Sunday Post highlights a few articles we enjoyed this week, good for consumption over a cup of coffee (or tea, if that's your pleasure). Settle in for a while; we saved you a seat. You can also look through the archives.

What Do We Do With the Art of Monstrous Men?

This is the must-read of the week, and not just because it’s Claire Dederer, which means it’s sharp and funny and expresses anger and feelings in the most satisfyingly vulnerable-but-also-take-no-prisoners way possible. I mean, that’s a perfectly good reason to read it. We could stop there.

But also read it because it turns out that our creator-heroes don’t just have feet of clay, they have been absolutely wading through shit, and it’s spattered all of us. Now we have to deal with what that means for everything important and beautiful they made — all the important and beautiful things that became part of us — and the making of important and beautiful things at all.

The thing is, I'm not saying I'm right or wrong. But I'm the audience. And I'm just acknowledging the realities of the situation: the film Manhattan is disrupted by our knowledge of Soon-Yi; but it’s also kinda gross in its own right; and it's also got a lot of things about it that are pretty great. All these things can be true at once. Simply being told by men that Allen's history shouldn’t matter doesn’t achieve the objective of making it not matter.

What do I do about the monster? Do I have a responsibility either way? To turn away, or to overcome my biographical distaste and watch, or read, or listen?

And why does the monster make us — make me — so mad in the first place?

Wednesday Addams Is Just Another Settler

Thanksgiving — especially in the American West, a scant year after the police attack on protesters at Standing Rock (and a scant week after the largest spill yet from the Keystone Pipeline in South Dakota) — represents some of our nation’s very worst moments, all knotted up with family and tradition and community in a way we just can’t seem to tease apart. Elissa Washuta writes brilliantly about reclaiming a sense of belonging from the sticky tangle of America’s most problematic feast day.

It's been a decade since I spent a Thanksgiving with my parents. After I moved to the West Coast, the holiday wasn't important enough to me to justify the expense of a cross-country flight. For the last ten years, I've spent Thanksgiving with friends or relatives or alone. I've never liked Thanksgiving and for a while, I couldn't figure out why: I like and love my family and I like to eat. I decided it was the football, or the years of packing my body with stuffing while suffering from undiagnosed celiac disease, or the anxiety, later, of trying to avoid both gluten and the anxious shame of making others think about it. Really, though, I'm uncomfortable committing to a six-hour stretch spent with other people (even those I'm fond of), no activity planned but eating, no hiding place for me to retreat to, and no way to silence the mean critic in my head who begins analyzing my words at the two-hour mark. I dread any event that fits this description. Thanksgiving is only different because my Nativeness has let me get away with hating it.

'I Have No Idea How to Tell This Horror Story'

You’ll find this correspondence between reporter John Branch and Walter Peat, father of an NHL “enforcer” with concussion-related health and behavioral issues, nestled between headlines celebrating the sport on the hockey page on the New York Times website. It’s a short read, but a unique perspective on how badly big-money sports organizations are failing their players — a raw appeal for help that had not, at the time of publication, yet appeared.

I am at a loss of what to do, and who to turn to for help. Many night, I lose countless hours of sleep, thinking of what will happen, and am I doing the right thing. There are so many people who prefer to put a paper bag over their head and ignore the fact that Stephen or so many players suffer from these injuries. But, the injuries just don’t stop there, as the emotional, financial, and in some cases, physical injuries suffered by family members. I am living the nightmare of the movie "Concussion."

How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online

Remember when the Seattle Police Department’s public affairs office tried using the streaming video game platform Twitch as a way to connect with the public about sensitive issues like the Charleena Lyles shooting? Here’s an insanely fascinating article by Taylor Clark about the people who make a living as Twitch personalities, sometimes playing 60 hours or more straight to build and keep an audience. That this exists at all feels crazy, much less that it’s getting professionalized in exactly the same way as any other digital marketing medium.

Perhaps the best embodiment of the effort to master Twitch is Ben Cassell, O.P.G.'s first client, who broadcasts, as CohhCarnage, from his farmhouse in North Carolina. After nearly quitting Twitch in 2013, when sixteen-hour streams weren't winning him an audience, Cassell instead dedicated himself to research. "This medium is brand new," he explained. "There's nowhere to go to see how to succeed on Twitch." So he built data-tracking software, and studied scheduling, game selection, and the market's niches: hard-core professional gamers, lighthearted jesters, "boobie streamers," histrionic yellers, baseball-cap-wearing frat bros. Based on his findings, Cassell reinvented his channel as upbeat and safe-for-work; to followers, he told me, "my channel is "Cheers.' " Every day — and he has logged more than fourteen hundred in a row, including the one on which his first child was born — he begins his stream at 8 a.m., right before Twitch's audience crests.

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Blessed be you who knit, for you shall forever have warmth. As shall all who know you. Also surrounding trees, cars, tanks, and occasionally local bookstores.

The best thing about yarn bombing is that it's (usually) a surprise to the person experiencing it. Walking down the street, or coming around a corner, and seeing a trunk wrapped tight in colorful yarn is always fun. It's only when things get rainy and droopy that they get a bit messy and weird.

Using Google Trends as a baseline, it looks like the first mentions of "yarnbomb" or "yarn bomb" started in 2008 with a strong peak in 2013. That strikes true with my recollection — as fads go, it was a pretty great one, but you just don't see yarn bombs nearly as often as you used to.

That's why I was so pleased, the other day, after walking through the La Marzocco/KEXP place to see the intricate and lovely embroidery/yarn bomb on the trees in the courtyard there. What a great thing to see on my way out, hot coffee in hand, heading over towards the playground with my kid.

It made me wonder about the mysterious people who make these amazing treats of the city. So, instead of doing, you know, actual journalism, I decided to make some up.

Today's prompts

1. The night guard Chester caught them, in the rail yards, doing something next to one of the trains. They bolted when they saw the guards coming, but Chester sent a couple round the other side to corral them, so they were penned in, no doubt. Four of them, in balaclavas. One guard came jogging up with a bag. "Found this." Chester looked inside expecting to find cans of spray paint, but, it turned out, all that was in it was colorful yarn. "What's the gag, here?"

2. He'd been working undercover nearly a year. Hanging out in yarn shops and craft places, going to knitting circles. Everybody was friendly, but nobody knew who was working those underground cells. Until he had his break, an acquaintance inviting him out to drinks one night after a lesson focusing on intarsia, and she asked him if he was willing to lend a hand on some large projects. "Something you might not be able to talk about," she said. He leaned in.

3. Every superhero has an origin story. Lupe's, as a girl: visiting her beloved grandmother in the hospital (she wasn't supposed to be there, she was sneaked in under her father's raincoat), and watching that strong, lovely, defiant, proud woman shiver in her bed, the drugs or the room or the gown or whatever. And then, that nurse who just came right in, needles in hand, casting off a woolen cap that she quickly finished with a thread and needle, then offered to Lupe's grandmother to pull over her head, over her thinning hair. And the look of relief on grandmother's face, that comfort, and suddenly Lupe knew that more than anything else she wanted to learn how to knit. And then her skin was punctured by a radioactive needle.

4. And so it was that the town was divided by two gangs. On one side, the Skein, and on the other Pink Angora. Their territory crossed in the university district, was tagged by yarn bombs in both of their colors. Hand knit clothes in those colors were banned from the yarn shops, because of fights breaking out. Metal detectors at the high schools scanned for metal needles. And it was in this environment that two young women, one from each gang, accidentally met each other, and without knowing the other's affiliation at first, totally fell for the other.

5. You never forget your first time. You work forever to make the pattern. You estimate the tree, maybe hit it with a tape to make sure you have the dimensions right. But it's not until you show up and stitch the thing on that you know if it's really going to fit or not. It's not until you're in the moment. It's not until you step back and see it hanging there that you know if you are happy, and if you're happy, you know it's gonna make someone else happy as well. Sometimes art is about big things. Sometimes art is about bringing small joys into other people's lives.

November's Post-it note art from Instagram

Over on our Instagram page, we're posting a weekly installation from Clare Johnson's Post-it Note Project, a long running daily project. Here's her wrap-up and statement from September's posts.

November's Theme: Same Day, Different Year

Looking through a decade of post-its, sometimes I notice weird patterns. For November, I started with the dates they would be published at the beginning and end of the month, and chose drawings from those same dates in two different years. This exposed a coincidence that made me smile and wince at the same time—both post-its from Nov. 3rd, five years apart, said “ouch”. In 2010 it was my injuries from a car accident, ones it turns out I never totally healed from. In 2015 I was watching a play in New York that felt like a stranger barraging me with every kind of crisis my family had survived the year before—being surrounded by a world of big broken hearts walking around everywhere. It feels like the “ouch” coincidence is even hurtling into the present: on Nov. 3rd this year my mom was telling us her cancer is back. And that play is now showing in Seattle; my parents are seeing it this week. The November 24th post-its exposed only a mistake—my Missy Elliott/Miranda Hart crush has the wrong date written in it. It’s nice to find a more lighthearted moment, because a lot of the drawings from late November get pretty heavy with the underlying heartbreak of Thanksgiving. I like the excuse to make stuffing, but the holiday makes me think of its history, displacement, a terrible disappearance. And personally, all the leaking hurt I could feel coming out of the grown-ups at the extended family gathering each year, my exposed-wound grandparents who would never, never talk about it that way. Then, looking at smiling family photos and knowing how things turned out for them. I don’t really want to talk about it either.

11.3.10 — OUCH.⠀ ⠀ #PostItArt by @clare.e.johnson #ClareJohnsonPostItProject

A post shared by The Seattle Review of Books (@seattlereviewof) on Nov 3, 2017 at 1:42pm PDT

11.3.15 — Ouch, Clare.⠀ ⠀ #PostItArt by @clare.e.johnson #ClareJohnsonPostItProject

A post shared by The Seattle Review of Books (@seattlereviewof) on Nov 10, 2017 at 12:28pm PST

11.25.15 — Can I be in love with Miranda Hart and Missy Elliott at the same time?⠀ ⠀ #PostItArt by @clare.e.johnson #ClareJohnsonPostItProject

A post shared by The Seattle Review of Books (@seattlereviewof) on Nov 17, 2017 at 12:18pm PST

11.24.10 — Some of the pictures are hard to look at. ⠀ ⠀ #PostItArt by @clare.e.johnson #ClareJohnsonPostItProject

A post shared by The Seattle Review of Books (@seattlereviewof) on Nov 24, 2017 at 2:36pm PST