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Reading a book is finally cool again.
It always has been, in all honesty, but now we’ve got the stats to back it up. Just last week, WW reported on students flocking to school libraries after their cellphones were taken away, both at Lincoln High School and across the nation (“A Novel Phenomenon,” Oct. 15). Adults are turning pages, too—whether it’s at the book club reading Animal Farm outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on the South Waterfront, or the dozens of elected officials who recently told us where they’re finding comfort and instruction in an uncertain time (“What We’re Reading to Stay Sane,” Sept. 24).
Reading is also powerful.
Learning about people who are like you is important, but so is learning about people who are not like you. Reading offers a chance not only to engross yourself in a stranger’s position, but to share that experience with fellow readers.
Portland Book Festival
Not only are readers early adapters—tastemakers who decide which literary adaptations we’ll be streaming in the next two to seven years—but they are empowered by writers’ words. The sentences writers arrange can ignite an emotional firestorm big enough to take down corrupt power players. They can also start an inner revolution when an idea touches readers personally enough to inspire a new way of living.
Portland Book Festival celebrates this spirit annually. Among this year’s brightest stars is Susan Orlean, the omnivorous, adventuring journalist who—as she proudly states in her new memoir, Joyride—became a writer during her time on Willamette Week’s staff. We asked Orlean about Joyride, her time with us, and the future of professional writing.
Joyride is one in a pile of exciting releases and developments coming from Portland’s literati this fall. Another Portland writer-journalist, Emmy Award–winning former KGW broadcaster Samantha Saldivar, is releasing her queer sports romance novel Play You For It. We got an early look at the on- and offcourt heat. Pile Press organizer SarahAnn Harvey talks about her collective’s biannual literary journals and its long-term publishing goals, while Donald Riordan looks back on nearly 50 years of comic book history as the owner of East Burnside’s Future Dreams comics shop. Since Orlean is an obvious PBF event choice, we picked out a few possibly lesser-known authors to hear speak and previewed readings across the city this fall happening long after PBF wraps on Nov. 8.
Sweater weather season is not wretchedly cold and wet yet, and the holiday madness hasn’t set in yet. Now’s the perfect time to build your book fort to hibernate through winter gloom. As my father would say: All youse get off your dupa and get readin’. —Andrew Jankowski, Interim Arts & Culture Editor
