Bloglander

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Last week writer Maria Semple was in town to speak about her novel, Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, which was selected for this year’s Spokane Is Reading program. If you missed her appearances like we did — we were launching a website, what can you do? — the video is fortunately online.

It was Semple’s first time in Spokane, and she had nice things to say about it — for now.

“Just walking from the hotel I’m almost thinking, hey, maybe I could move here,” she said. “But maybe you wouldn’t want that. I’d have to write a book about it.”

A lot of the most hilarious parts of Bernadette make fun of Seattle (and its “kindergarten moms with gray hair”), and Semple says she initially did readings from the more bland passages for fear of Seattleites’ reactions. Here in Spokane she read one of those very funny portions from the middle of the novel, and the Idaho jokes got plenty of laughs. She also answered audience questions, revealed how she knows so much about Microsoft, explained the term "spelt mom" and criticized another author’s book: “Spoiler alert: nothing happens!”

Here’s part 1, and you can also find parts 2, 3 and 4.