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Here's some good news, fans of fantasy books and readings that are actually entertaining: Best-selling fantasy mega-author Patrick Rothfuss is coming to the Newmark Theatre on October 28. (If you need some brushing up on your best-selling fantasy mega-authors, here's the Mercury's 2011 interview with Rothfuss.) He'll be in town to read from his new novella, The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

You should go! Assuming you can stomach two things about the venue*, it should be a good time, and the Newmark is a solid spot to have Rothfuss: The last time he came to town, he was out at Powell's Cedar Hills location, where the crowd was so massive that it filled up the reading area and spilled into the mall. It was still a great reading; Rothfuss is charming and affable and enthusiastic, and his books—well, there's a reason people who've read them tend to get pretty excited when they come up in conversation.

(For those curious about those service fees I mentioned: I just bit the bullet and picked up two tickets online. Tickets to the reading, which include a copy of the book, are $28.95 each—steep, but reasonable enough given the fact the book is included. The Portland Center for the Performing Arts then charged me a $10.35 service fee for each ticket, and then charged me a $3 "order charge," for... having the gall to place an order, I guess? Which means two tickets to a book reading just cost me 80 bucks.)

*Those two things being 1) that the Portland Center for the Performing Arts obnoxiously keeps trying to get people to call it "Portland'5 Centers for the Arts," and 2) that the Portland Center for the Performing Arts charges ridiculous service fees.