This week in the bargain bin that is the Mercury arts section...

BOOKS!:

Erik Henriksen reviews Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes—an "approachable, brisk, and frequently fascinating" book about the modern history of Hawaii and American expansionism.

I review the new novel Catching Babies, by local author J.D> Kleinke and published by local house Fourth Chapter, about a OB/GYNs as they finish their residencies and begin their medical careers. I am completely unversed in medical fiction, which I assume is a genre, and I was initially put off both by the gore and by Kleinke's occasional syntactical clumsiness (here's both: "a large gauze dressing, protruding from a vulva swollen from a delivery two hours earlier, was crimson wet with fresh new blood and dripping"). But by a few chapters in I was totally hooked. Probably don't read it if you're pregnant, though.

I also review Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth's great Stumptown, a noir comics series set in Portland. Oni Press is releasing the first four issues in hardback, with a kickoff party at Bridge City Comics.

PERFORMANCE:

I write about Jack Goes Boating at Artists Rep, which—unlike One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest—was actually better than the movie.

This week also kicks off a new column from local burlesque producer Rayleen Courtney, highlighting upcoming burlesque, cabaret, and circus performances of note. Here's the first one.