MONDAY Start your week in readings at Third Place Books up in Lake Forest Park. Debbie Clarke Moderow reads from her new book Fast into the Night: A Woman, Her Dogs, and Their Journey North on the Iditarod Trail. If you’ve ever wondered about sled dogs — and c’mon, pretty much everybody has wondered about sled dogs — this is a good chance to learn.

TUESDAY Seattle author Matt Ruff finally debuts his long-awaited novel Lovecraft Country at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight! This event is years in the making — I’ve been waiting for this book to drop since Ruff read a bit from it at Hugo House way back in 2008. I’ve read Lovecraft Country and I can tell you it’s worth the wait; it’s a horror novel that mixes together America’s racist past, the mythology created by H.P. Lovecraft, Lovecraft’s infamous racism, and Ruff’s assured storytelling. This is a book that works on every single level. However, because I’m joining Ruff onstage for a Q&A at this event, that could be construed by some as a conflict of interest. And because we take our selection process at This Week in Readings seriously, we always provide an alternate event for you to consider when there’s a potential conflict of interest.

And so our ALTERNATE TUESDAY event is the February Literary Mixer at The Hideout. I went to the last Literary Mixer and had a lot of fun. Here’s the deal: bring the book you’re reading. Buy a drink. Talk to people about the books they brought and be prepared to talk about the book you brought. That’s it! (You might want to bring a piece of paper and a pen so you can write down some book recommendations, too.)

WEDNESDAY Tonight, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore reads at The Furnace Reading Series at Hollow Earth Radio. The Furnace is a reading series in which one writer reads their short story with audio accompaniment — music, sound effects, etc. When Sycamore moved to Seattle from San Francisco a few years back, she became a cornerstone of the literary community almost overnight. Her memoir The End of San Francisco is about gentrification and sexuality and what it’s like to watch a city die. That’s going to be a big part of her reading tonight, apparently: press notes say she’ll be reading from an “elliptical essay [that] ruminates on the complexities of desire and belonging in a shifting community.”

THURSDAY It’s a book party to celebrate the release of Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night at Hugo House. Queen, Chee’s second novel, is about an opera singer who is cast in a production that is adapted from her own life story. This is a big, buzzy book that everyone is talking about. After the reading, incredible Elliott Bay Book Company bookseller Karen Maeda Allman will lead a Q&A.

FRIDAY Internationally celebrated Spanish painter Ricardo Cavolo will debut his new book 100 Artists to Listen to Before You Die at Ada’s Technical Books. This is a gorgeous book — part comic, part diary, part fan’s notes — that is published by the very exciting London comics press Nobrow. Seattle cartoonist Fran Lopez will conduct a conversation and Q&A with Cavolo.

SATURDAY Did somebody say "conflict of interest?" Paul Constant will be giving a lecture and hosting a conversation about book-to-film adaptation at the Northgate Barnes & Noble at 1 pm this afternoon. This event is part of a book fair to benefit the good people at Scarecrow Video, which is the greatest damn video store in the entire United States of America. Come out and show them the love.

And your ALTERNATE SATURDAY event is the Bwitch Zine Release Party at Push/Pull. This is a thematic anthology zine — this edition’s theme is “dark fairytale” — that is “for all the girls in the comic scene that want to be heard and express themselves.” This event offers free snacks and drinks, as well as some sort of a musical act, which has not been announced yet.

SUNDAY The Monorail Reading Series happens tonight at the Fred Wildlife Refuge. Tonight’s readers are Lisa Ciccarello, Willie Fitzgerald, and Feliz Lucia Molina. Ciccarello is a poet who has published one collection and eight chapbooks. Molina is the author of two books, with a chapbook and another book on the way. Fitzgerald has published fiction and non-fiction in a bunch of places, including right here at the Seattle Review of Books. A boozy-fun reading from a bunch of up-and-comers seems like a great way to cap out the week.