John Updike and Amitav Ghosh in Seattle

Seattle is consistently ranked at the top of the most literate cities and has more bookstores per capita than any other city in the country, so last week was just "business as usual" as we hosted two well known writers, John Updike and Amitav Ghosh.

On Wednesday, Seattle's Arts and Lectures series presented an evening with John Updike, a revered figure of the American literary landscape and a prolific novelist, poet, short story writer, literary and art critic. His appearance marked the 20th anniversary of his last talk at Seattle Arts & Lectures during its inaugural season.

On Friday, Amitav Ghosh gave a reading at the Elliott Bay Book Company. Sea of Poppies, his acclaimed new novel, the first in an Ibis Trilogy and shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize, is - as Anna Mundow so appropriately described it - a writer's triumph and a reader's delight. Hearing Ghosh discuss the historical background and India of the 1830's, at the eve of the Opium Wars, and in his own voice bring to life a myriad of characters, through vivid use of language and imagination, was a treat. We have, in other words, been hooked again. With his grand vision and the seductive intimacy of his tone, Ghosh has not only drawn us into this exotic world. He has allowed us to inhabit these lives.