Hello Portland, Hello Seattle...

Taking off tomorrow morning for Portland, where I will be appearing at Powell's Books 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd. location tomorrow (Monday Sept. 20) at 7:30 p.m. to read and sign, with special guests very likely.

Then Tuesday heading up to Seattle for a two-pronged evening of This is Burning Man fun. First, at 7 p.m., is a reading and signing at the University Bookstore, 4326 University Way Northeast.

Then I and the notorious Chicken John will retreat to the Rendezvous Lounge, 2322 Second Avenue, to share our esteemed collection of archival videos from Burning Man history and share commentary and lore from the "old days" (most of the videos date from 1990-96).

The Seattle Weekly gave me a very nice welcome to town with this extremely perceptive review by Gavin Borchert. (Scroll down, mine is the second review.) I can't resist quoting pieces of it:

[T]hose who have been curious about Burning Man—or those who, like this four-time veteran, have attended and want the back story on Danger Ranger, Dr. Megavolt, and Bianca's Smut Shack—can turn to Brian Doherty's book. It's an absorbing, thoughtful gathering of the event's history, reflections, and anecdotes that will, if anything will, make you want to attend.
.....
Doherty provides generous space for participants to weigh in; his book's a rich mix of oral history, reportage, and research in a tone that's warmly affectionate without being too gee-whiz or touchy-feely. Only gingerly does it touch on the big self-conscious What Does It All Mean questions that drive some Burners nuts. The book's strength is that it's very pointedly not a how-to guide. Trying to reproduce the experience in any medium misses the point: Burners work very hard to create an event that's about immediate experience, not observation. They also work very hard to create an event that eludes easy one-sentence descriptions like that last one. The conflict between living it and talking about it is one of the constant threads of Burning Man history, and Doherty's excellent and engaging book reconciles the conflict about as well as can be imagined.

Also now online is an interview I did with an Internet radio show hosted by Richard Rider, the Libertarian Alternative. As the title indiciates, it's a libertarian-themed show, so a lot of the Burning Man talk is filtered through that lens. He breaks the show down into individually-labeled segments; the first one is all about the book.

And there's also a fresh eplaya thread on my book, which I am even participating in.