Author to give talk tonight at Port Townsend Library Learning Center

Published 12:01 am Monday, November 10, 2014

PORT TOWNSEND — Tom Nissley, literature lover and trivia hoarder, will give a free talk on his guide, A Reader’s Book of Days, tonight at the Port Townsend Library Learning Center, 1256 Lawrence St.

Nissley’s book is a kind of almanac, with a page a day filled with births, deaths and fact snippets.

Each month has a list of recommended reading suitable for the season.

In his 6:30 p.m. presentation, Nissley will discuss how this project put him on a path of discovery into authors’ lives and the reasons they wrote what they did.

He found out, for example, that George Orwell had Aldous Huxley as a teacher when attending Eton.

James Joyce chose June 16, 1904, as Bloomsday in the book Ulysses because he went out for the first time with his future wife on that day.

And on Sept. 22, 1401, The Hobbit’s Bilbo Baggins celebrated his eleventy-first birthday.

For more information about activities hosted by the Port Townsend Library, visit www.PTPublicLibrary.org or phone 360-385-3181.