Archives of Your Week in Readings

MONDAY Let’s start our week off with one of the last Works in Progress open mic nights at the Hugo House in its current location. Works in Progress has been going on for years now, and it will undoubtedly stick with Hugo House in their temporary location on First Hill, but there is a certain kind of magic to the Hugo House cabaret space right now, as awkward as it can be when there’s a full house. There have been a lot of readers on this stage, and this is one of your last chances to get up there and give it a shot. Why not?

TUESDAY It’s time for Salon of Shame at the Cornish Playhouse in Seattle Center. The Salon, in case you didn’t know, is an ongoing reading series where people read their awkward teenage writing aloud. It’s cringe-y and funny and kind of empowering, in that it reminds you that you have evolved beyond your teenage self, even if you essentially feel the same inside.

WEDNESDAY This is the big event of the week: Eli Sanders and Jennifer Hopper appear in conversation with with Marcie Sillman at Town Hall. Sanders’s long-awaited book about the South Park home invasion case, While the City Slept, is finally published on Tuesday of this week, and this is an event to commemorate the book’s release. We’ll have more to say about this book in the next few days, but you should absolutely read it. It’s beautiful and sad and a brilliant piece of journalism.

Across town, I’ll be at the taping of Civic Cocktail, which is a local-interest TV show hosted by Joni Balter. Steve Scher and I will be interviewing local treasure Nancy Pearl. Four of Seattle’s city councilmembers will be there, too, to discuss the new woman-majority council. You can register for that here.

THURSDAY Head back to Town Hall tonight for Ted Rall, who is reading from his cartoon biography of Bernie Sanders. I interviewed Rall last year when he came to town with his biography of Edward Snowden, and he’s a passionate, knowledgeable interviewee. If you have questions about Senator Sanders, this might be the place to get ‘em answered.

FRIDAY Elliott Bay Book Company hosts Anastacia Tolbert, who will be reading with Storme Webber and a touring program of Cave Canem fellows including Kamilah Aishah Moon and Librecht Baker. Cave Canem, if you didn’t know, is an organization that promotes and cultivates the work and careers of African-American poets. Every time they come to town, they blow audiences away.

SATURDAY Write Here Write Now happens at Fremont Abbey today. This one is for the authors: press materials promise a “one-day writing intensive like any other,” with an array of “mini-lessons, 1-on-1 author consultations, and lots of writing time with fellow writers.” This year’s keynote will be delivered by novelist Nancy Horan.

SUNDAY Seattle historian Paul Dorpat will discuss the life and legacy of Seattle restaurateur and personality Ivar Haglund at the West Seattle branch of Seattle Public Library. Dorpat has some rare photographs of Haglund and will talk about the clam guy’s West Seattle roots.

MONDAY What better way to kick off your week than a brainy talk about aspirational science? Head to Town Hall Seattle for Oliver Morton, reading from his new book, The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World. It’s about how “an increasing number of climate scientists are advocating for more proactive human intervention in the biosphere,” which can mean anything “from cultivating photosynthetic plankton to seeding clouds with fleets of unmanned ships.” Sounds like this could be a rare hopeful climate-related event.

TUESDAY Tonight, you’ll want to head to Elliott Bay Book Company, where Seattle-by-way-of-West-Virginia novelist Ann Pancake will celebrate the paperback release of her excellent short story collection Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley with author Valerie Trueblood, who will herself be debuting a new collection of stories titled Criminals: Love Stories. Pancake is one of the top five best short-story writers in town, and she works pretty slowly, so you might not have another chance to celebrate a publication date with her for a while. Get out there and enjoy the moment while it lasts.

So that’s your Tuesday sorted, except there’s just one thing: Chop Suey is hosting an event called “A Loose Leaf Reading: An Evening Of Story Telling and Music” that looks really good, too. So I’m going to call this one a tie. This reading, like the Elliott Bay event, is free, and it features musician Nora Hughes with writers Patty Belsick, Casandra Lopez, Jenny Hayes, Kristen Millares Young, and featured reader Michelle Peñaloza. Good stuff.

WEDNESDAY This will be big fun: Seattle science fiction writers Nisi Shawl and Eileen Gunn will be reading at Cafe Racer as part of a science fiction and fantasy-themed open mic night called Two Hour Transport. I have to be honest, here. I’ve never heard of Two Hour Transport before, but it sounds like a fun time: featured readers share the stage with readers who sign up to read their sci-fi stories of five minutes’ duration or less. Gunn has won or been shortlisted for a boatload of awards. Shawl writes short fiction, publishes book reviews, and she has a novel coming out this September that we at the Seattle Review of Books are just dying to read. Maybe you’ll get a sneak preview of that book tonight.

THURSDAY Maggie Nelson reads at Hugo House. Chances are good that if you know a local writer, they have waxed rhapsodic about the idea of attending this reading. Maggie Nelson is an incredible writer (you should absolutely read Bluets and The Argonauts) and a world-class thinker. Tonight, she’ll be discussing “our different writing bodies and what they mean." There will also be a Q&A. This is the highest-profile reading of the week, and the hottest ticket in town.

FRIDAY Musician Korby Lenker reads at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight. He’s got a short story collection titled Medium Hero, which is full of all sorts of great opening lines:

• “You were my old piano teacher, and now you are dead.”
• “Come pick me up is what the text said.”
• “I was in a mood.”
• “Maybe it’s because I’m single again, maybe it’s because my dad had to go to the hospital last week for weird symptoms associated with stroke, but I’m going to write this story down.”

If you’re into short stories, you know the opening lines are half the battle. Not every story in this collection is a jaw-dropper, but they’re all energetic and exciting and eager to be read.

SATURDAY If you’re into the Seattle comics scene, your heart probably broke a little bit when you heard that Intruder, the invitation-only free local comics anthology newspaper, was going to end with issue #20. It’s so good! It’s been going for so long! We all thought Intruder would be around forever! But we still have a few issues left to appreciate, and the Intruder #18 release party is tonight at music shop Spin Cycle on Broadway, so you should go and share some of that love. This party features free comics, live DJs, and, reportedly, “a bag of kettle chips.” Does their generosity know any bounds? Apparently not.

SUNDAY The downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library is hosting something called “The Star Trek Geek Out” all weekend long. Costumes are encouraged. Today’s events include live action interpretations of classic Star Trek scenes, a screening of 2009’s Star Trek reboot movie, and a panel discussion “on Kirk, Spock and gender.” This is not strictly book-related, but come on. Us nerds gotta stick together, you know.

MONDAY Your week in readings begins at Seattle Center's Artists at Play Playground at 9 pm tonight. Seattle poet Arlo Smith reads as part of the Inumbrating Pinnacle reading series, which continues all week long, culminating on Saturday night. If you haven’t been to this playground, you should most definitely go just for the spectacle of it; it’s unbelievably cool.

TUESDAY Wage Slaves, the work-themed reading series featuring free donuts, happens tonight at the Hugo House. Tonight’s event is focused on women in the workplace, and readers include Sonya Lea, Storme Webber, Michelle Peñaloza, Tele Aadsen, and Jean Burnet. I bet there'll be a lot of jaw-dropping stories at this reading.

WEDNESDAY It’s back to the Hugo House with you to celebrate Seattle Arts and Lecture’s incredible Writers in the Schools program, which helps young people learn how to communicate through writing. Tonight, Seattle writing instructors with WitS will read new work. Readers include Samar Abulhassan, Daemond Arrindell, Emily Bedard, Aaron Counts, Laura Gamache, Clare Meeker, Peter Mountford, Sierra Nelson, Imani Sims and Greg Stump.

THURSDAY Good lord, it’s a three-night stand at the Hugo House this week! Washington publisher Two Sylvias Press presents authors reading from their new collections. Cecilia Woloch presents her chapbook Earth, which won the 2014 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize, and Martha Silano reads the second, expanded version of her collection What The Truth Tastes Like.

FRIDAY The penultimate Inumbrating Pinnacle event happens at the Armory Monorail station at Seattle Center at 9 pm. Your readers are Seattle poetry stalwarts Jeremy Springsteed and Jeanne Morel. Why not take the Monorail from downtown to this one? You can pretend to be a resident of Seattle’s future, circa 1963.

SATURDAY Head to he central branch of the Seattle Public Library downtown for the first in an exciting new series put on by SPL called Page to Screen: Hear the Story, See the Film. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a reading of a short story, followed by a showing of the film adapted from that story. Today’s feature is Tod Browning’s incredibly creepy 1932 film Freaks — of “one of us! One of us!” fame —and a reading of Tod Robbins’s story “Spurs,” which inspired the film. It’s a neat idea, isn’t it? I’m excited to see how this works.

SUNDAY End your week with the excellent Monorail Reading Series at Fred Wildlife Refuge. Poets Raul Alvarez, Julie Carr, and Diana Khoi Nguyen read. With plenty of booze! I can't imagine a livelier way to close out the week.

MONDAY Your week of civic activism, Black Lives Matter, and a heavy dose of poetry begins at the Fremont branch of the Seattle Public Library with Floating Bridge Press's quarterly reading series An Evening of Poetry. This is Elizabeth Austen’s last Seattle-area appearance in her capacity as Washington’s poet laureate. (Read about our new poet laureate here.) Go and show her some love for all the hard work she’s put in as the public face of poetry. Other readers include Angela Belcaster and Von Thompson.

TUESDAY We have a real rarity tonight: I can’t decide between the two top readings, so I’m going to tell you about them both. First up, Sara Brickman features at the Round at Fremont Abbey. Brickman, a Seattle poet who headed east for graduate school, is making a rare local appearance with other poets, a cellist, and “live painters.” Brickman is a lively reader, and it’ll be good to catch up with her recent work.

Also tonight, Nick Licata debuts his new book Becoming a Citizen Activist at Couth Buzzard Books. I reviewed this one last week. Licata just left Seattle’s city council last week, and now he’s re-entering life as a private citizen. Be gentle with him.

WEDNESDAY Elliott Bay Book Company hosts a launch party for Seattle poet Emily Johnston’s debut collection, Her Animals. She’ll be joined by Drew Dillhunt, the associate editor at Her Animals’s publisher, Hummingbird Press. Seems like a good way to introduce yourself to a Seattle-area small publisher and support Seattle poetry in one evening.

THURSDAY It’s time again for Margin Shift, the Seattle poetry collective's reading series. Tonight’s readers are Eddie Kim from Seoul, Seattle poet Samar Abulhassan, and, up from LA, Cathy Linh Che. You won’t find a more geographically diverse bill in Seattle this week, and Margin Shift always puts on a good show.

FRIDAY Tonight’s best event is a talk titled “Black Lives Matter in Hip-Hop” at Town Hall Seattle. A panel of local musicians, including Wyking Garrett, Jace Ecaj, Nikkita Oliver, Suntonio Bandanaz, and Renaissance the Poet, will talk about gentrification in hip-hop and the local Black Lives Matter movement. This one is important.

SATURDAY Elliott Bay Book Company teams with Copper Canyon Press to bring Washington poet Red Pine to Seattle. His newest book, Finding Them Gone: Visiting China’s Poets of the Past, is a photo-filled travelogue from Pine’s monthlong trip to China, during which he tried to learn more about the history of Chinese poetry.

SUNDAY University Book Store closes out our week with “Cindy Safronoff's comparative biography of late 19th century feminist activists Mary Baker Eddy and Victoria Claflin Woodhull." Eddy believed in marriage as an institution. Woodhull was a proponent of free love. They often disagreed. Passionately. The book is titled Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage, and it sounds totally fascinating.

MONDAY Elliott Bay Book Company kicks off your new year of readings with Siamak Vossoughi, a short story author who is originally from Iran but who now lives in Seattle. His first collection of stories is titled Better Than War, and it’s a winner of the Flannery O’Connor Prize.

TUESDAY Science fiction author Dave Bara celebrates the debut of the second book in his space opera series The Lightship Chronicles at University Book Store. In it, the crew of a spaceship must investigate a mysterious space station.

WEDNESDAY Town Hall presents its first night of programming in the new year. Jamie Merisotis is president/CEO of the Lumina Foundation, and he’s interested in talking about America’s talent gap. America Needs Talent is a book about how “educated, talented, and innovative individuals are needed in the United States.”

THURSDAY Elliott Bay Book Company co-presents a reading with novelist Ru Freeman and local authors Tess Gallagher, Peter Mountford, and Alice Rothchild. They’re all contributors to an anthology titled Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine. It features 65 pieces of journalism, essays, poetry, and fiction about the Palestinian experience.

FRIDAY It’s back to Elliott Bay Book Company with you for a reading from a Montana-based writer named Ben Nickol, who is the author of a short story collection titled Where the Wind Can Find It. These are stories mostly about people who live near wildernesses.

SATURDAY Our last visit to Elliott Bay Book Company this week is a celebration of the life of Seattle poet Madeline DeFrees. DeFrees, who passed away in November, was one of the very best poets our region had to offer. Local writers including Kathleen Flenniken will be presenting her work and celebrating her life. This is not to be missed.

SUNDAY University Book Store closes out your week with a memoir by Katherine A. Hitchcock. Hitchcock was one of the very few women in Silicon Valley in the late 60s, 70s, and 80s, which means she helped computers transform from gigantic monsters to tiny little handheld time-sucking devices. Her memoir is titled Atypical Girl Geek.

MONDAY Your week begins with a splash: author and artist Molly Crabapple reads at Elliott Bay Book Company. Crabapple’s Drawing Blood is a memoir about art, journalism, and upheaval. It’s an absolutely gorgeous (and, by all accounts, beautifully written) book.

TUESDAY Hugo House hosts the Copper Canyon Press holiday party. A bunch of Copper Canon poets including Dean Young and Deborah Landau will read new work, and Copper Canyon staffers will introduce you to poets and books that could change your life. (This is the publisher that Sherman Alexie once called the best poetry press in America, after all.) They’ll offer great gift suggestions, too!

WEDNESDAY The best-looking literary event of the night is at the South Park Neighborhood Center, where Seattle Public Library staffers will lead a book club discussion of the excellent comic book memoir Marbles by Ellen Forney, who is a Seattle-area treasure.

THURSDAY University Book Store presents a Theo Chocolate and Coffee Tasting. There’ll be chocolate from Theo and coffee from Stumptown, along with signed copies of the Theo Chocolate cookbook. University Book Store does offer gift-wrapping, so this is a pretty easy way to score a good Christmas present and sneak some chocolate for yourself along the way.

FRIDAY At the Jack Straw Cultural Center Jack Straw musicians Sharon Nyree Williams and Stephen Cohen will present new work. (Williams is also a storyteller and poet.) They’ll be joined by Anna Balint, who will present writers from the Recovery Café Safe Place Writing Circle. Balint is recording writers from the Recovery Café in a series of podcasts.

SATURDAY It’s back to University Book Store for a special story time for kids, featuring treats, activities, and a visit from Santa Claus. (We have it on good authority that Mr. Claus will also pose for free photos with the kids, too.)

SUNDAY We’re about to enter the two most reading-free weeks of the year, but this is a great way to close out 2015: Seattle poet Sarah Galvin presents a debut party for her new book The Best Party of Our Lives at Hugo House. This is a heartwarming collection of true stories about gay weddings. Galvin will be joined by couples from the book, and she’ll be interviewed onstage by Official Awesome Person David Schmader. This one is not to be missed.

MONDAY Happy new week! I’m sorry to report that tonight’s reading with xkcd’s Randall Munro and Hank Green at Town Hall is sold out. Instead, you should visit Campion Ballroom at Seattle University for Jon Meacham. Meacham is an excellent presidential biographer, and his newest book is about George Herbert Walker Bush. Destiny and Power is a much-needed spotlight on the somewhat-reasonable-in-retrospect man who sired two dullards with presidential aspirations.

TUESDAY Seattle Arts and Lectures brings poet Srikanth Reddy to McCaw Hall. Check out the beginning of Reddy’s poem “Burial Practices”:

Then the pulse.

Then a pause.

Then twilight in a box.

Dusk underfoot.

Then generations.

Whoooa. That's some good stuff. According to press materials, “Reddy's talk will consider a range of questions concerning poetry and poetics, including theories of likeness, ekphrasis, technology, and wonder.” Sold!

WEDNESDAY Christopher T. Bayley reads from his new book Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle at Town Hall Seattle. It’s a true crime story that begins with this sentence: “It was a sunny day in July, and Seattle perched on a gray-green sound edged by mountains: the Cascades formed a wall on the east, the Olympics rose and fell along the west.”

THURSDAY Tonight’s pick for best event is Pay Dirt at the Rendezvous. Local writers Anca L. Szilágyi, Bernard Grant, Emily Bedard, Martha Kreiner, and Matthew Schnirman “explore art, money, and desire in new fiction and poetry.” This event will be hosted by Poetry Northwest’ magazine’s Kevin Craft, who is an excellent host. It’s always interesting when writers talk about money.

FRIDAY Elliott Bay Book Company hosts a launch party for Mairead Case’s See You In the Morning, which is a book about three seventeen-year-olds told in paragraph-length poems.

SATURDAY It’s time for Urban Craft Uprising at Seattle Center. Why not go and support Seattle’s biggest and best craft show? They’ve got plenty of paper craft on display, including some gorgeous letterpress printers.

SUNDAY University Book Store’s Bellevue branch hosts authors Maia Chance, Janine A. Southard, Raven Oak, and G. Clemans. Their anthology, Joy to the Worlds, is a collection of holiday-themed sci-fi and mystery short stories. (The publishers of this book sponsored the Seattle Review of Books last month, but they did not pay for this recommendation; I think it sounds like the best event of the day.) Go and have a very genre holiday.

MONDAY Elliott Bay Book Company kicks off your week in readings with an event that might improve your Thanksgiving dinner: Sommelier Madeline Puckette reads from her book Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine tonight. If you ask nicely, she will probably tell you what wine goes best with turkey and stuffing.

TUESDAY At Town Hall Seattle, neuroscientist David Eagleman, who you most likely know from his PBS series about the brain, will be reading and discussing his new book The Brain: The Story of You, which aspires to “explore why we think and feel the way we do, and how the brain shapes nearly every aspect of who we are and what we perceive as reality.”

WEDNESDAY No readings happening tonight, but Ravenna Third Place Books is hosting a book club discussing the great John Scalzi’s sci-fi novel Old Man’s War. It’s about a widower in his 70s who joins a space army.

THURSDAY It’s Thanksgiving day. We suggest you stay home and read in the morning. Pick a good short book — Jim Dodge’s Fup, say, or We Should All Be Feminists — and sit down and read it in its entirety, from front to back. It’ll give you something to talk about over dinner, and it will calm and center your mind. If you can’t take a holiday to do something special for yourself, what’s the point of holidays? And what could be more special than carving out the time to read a whole book in one sitting?

FRIDAY Just as there are no readings on Thanksgiving day, there are no readings on Black Friday, either. If you’re not out supporting your local independent bookstore, you should know that the Central Library is hosting fall crafts for kids from 1 to 5 pm today. That sounds like a nice way to dodge all the holiday shopping craziness.

SATURDAY The book event of the week is happening at Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery in Georgetown, where cartoonist Colleen Frakes signs her comic book memoir Prison Island, which I reviewed when it was released back in September. It’s about growing up on McNeil Island, a prison island in Washington state.

(Saturday, I must mention, is also Small Business Saturday, which is the day when you’re supposed to leave the mall behind and visit your local inependent shops. University Book Store is hosting events all day, including three readings and two panels — one on YA and one on sci-fi. Most other bookstores in your area are having events, too. Go give them your support. This city would be a terrible place without independently owned businesses.)

SUNDAY It’s time for “Bow Wows and Books” at the Greenlake branch of the Library. Here’s the description: “Practice reading with a new friend who is warm, friendly and a perfect listener! Certified therapy dogs and their handlers join young readers to read one-on-one in a relaxing and nonjudgmental environment.” This simply could not be any more adorable.

MONDAY Lyndon Johnson is perhaps the modern president who most lends himself to literary works. He’s appeared in Robert Caro’s ridiculously ambitious biographies, one of David Foster Wallace’s best short stories, and Robert Schenkkan’s incredible plays. But tonight, Betty Boyd Caroli looks at an under-appreciated side of the LBJ story in her book Lady Bird and Lyndon. Lady Bird Johnson could not have been a dull or unintelligent woman, but she’s gotten short shrift in most of the above-mentioned literary accounts. Caroli will be reading from the book at Town Hall Seattle tonight.

TUESDAY Elliott Bay Book Company hosts Michael Witwer, who will be reading from his new book Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons and Dragons. This is the first biography of Dungeons & Dragons inventor Gary Gygax, who has one of the all-time best names.

WEDNESDAY It’s time for the twelfth edition of WordsWest at C&P Coffee Company in West Seattle. The readers tonight are memoirist Allison Green, who recently wrote a great blog post about the controversy surrounding the Seattle: City of Literature anthology, and poet Hannah Faith Notess, whose debut collection Ghost House knocked my socks off.

THURSDAY: The Northwest African American Museum hosts Lauret Savoy, whose book Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape was called “a stunning excavation and revelation of race, identity, and the American landscape” by Terry Tempest Williams.

FRIDAY: It’s time again for the Hugo Literary Series at Hugo House. Like every entry in the series this year, writers will present new work based on a cliche. Tonight’s cliche is "Beggars can't be choosers.” The writers are novelist and essayist Leslie Jamison, the poet Roger Reeves, and Portland novelist Alexis M. Smith. YVES singer Susie Philipsen will also present new music on the theme.

SATURDAY: I suppose it’s time to start thinking about Christmas shopping. Today is the 2015 Holiday Bookfest at the Phinney Neighborhood Center, which will for the day be turned into “a boutique bookstore, created especially by local indie bookstore Secret Garden.” Find books, baked goods, and 27 local authors, including Garth Stein, Elizabeth George, Nancy Horan, Jim Lynch, Megan Chance, and Sean Beaudoin. Go get some autographed books for Christmas.

SUNDAY: Okay, so Patti Smith at Town Hall has long since sold out. So here’s an alternate event for the kids in your life: at the southwest branch of Seattle Public Library, there will be a workshop for kids “based in the legend of El Bibliobandido (or 'Book Bandit'), a ravenous, story-eating bandit that pesters youth to write and offer him fresh-baked stories.” The stories will involve digital media, paper craft, and good old-fashioned talkin’ and writin’. This looks like it should be a fun way to cap a fun week.

MONDAY Elliott Bay Book Company kicks off our week in readings with Calf, Andrea Kleine’s debut novel. Here’s an introductory note you’ll find before the first page of Calf:

If that doesn't grab your attention, I don't know what will. Kleine will be appearing with delightful Seattle author Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, who will read new work.

TUESDAY Marion Nestle, who is a nutrition expert, reads at Town Hall from her book Soda Politics. It’s about how the soda industry has willfully caused “increased rates of obesity, risk for Type 2 Diabetes, [and] poor dental health” in people all over the world. She also prescribes some solutions and highlights some anti-soda campaigns that have worked around the world.

WEDNESDAY Okay, it’s time for a programming note: this week is incredibly loaded down with great-looking events. I could highlight three or four events for every night this week — for instance, Sloane Crosley is reading at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight. But tonight at the Seattle Public Library, Orhan Pamuk will be reading from his newest book, A Strangeness in My Mind. Crosley is one of the funniest writers at work today, but Pamuk has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, so he obviously comes out on top.

THURSDAY At Hugo House it’s time for the last Cheap Wine and Poetry of the year. Your readers tonight are Poetry Northwest’s Kevin Craft, memoirist Nicole Hardy, self-professed “creative heartist” Nikkita Oliver, and the indomitable Ed Skoog. Wine, as always, is $1 a glass.

FRIDAY Remember what I said about every night of the week being overstuffed with events? The Carrie Brownstein and Maria Semple reading at The Neptune is very likely to have sold out by now, so let’s direct our attention to a smaller, very worthy event: at Left Bank Books, Vancouver poets Kevin Spenst and Jeff Steudel will read from their latest books. Spenst’s debut collection is riddled with pop culture and the landscape of Vancouver. It’s titled Jabbering with Bing Bong. Steudel’s Foreign Park is about the history and ecology of the Fraser River. It’s not every night you get to attend a reading at Left Bank Books; go celebrate one of Seattle's best bookstores.

SATURDAY Town Hall Scholar in residence Brangien Davis, who was until recently the arts and culture editor of Seattle magazine, will give a tour of Town Hall’s hidden gem, “an Austin Universal Air Chest, a 2023-pipe organ that was installed in 1923.” The organ hasn’t worked in a long time, but Davis will investigate the way it’s blended into the building, and she’ll talk about what it might take to bring the organ back to life.

SUNDAY At Benaroya Hall tonight, Gloria Steinem will present her new memoir, My Life on the Road. She will be interviewed by Cheryl Strayed, and Seattle singer/songwriter Hollis Wong-Wear will perform new music. This is obviously going to be a very special evening.

MONDAY Start the week off with some librarians at a Bookish Happy Hour at the Diller Room. This is part of Seattle Public Library’s Booktoberfest program, which brings librarians, beer, and you together in non-traditional venues.

TUESDAY I’ve been looking forward to this for months now: at the Seattle Public Library, I’m participating in an event with Colum McCann and John Freeman. McCann, of course, is a beloved novelist who manages to span that widest of chasms: he writes — gasp! — bestselling literary fiction. His newest collection is titled Thirteen Ways of Looking, and it contains a novella and three short stories, touching on security and our modern panopticon of a society and also heartbreak, because you can’t have a McCann story without heartbreak. Freeman is well-known in the publishing industry: he was editor at Granta, he’s a noteworthy literary critic (which makes him as rare as mermaid’s tears), and now he’s starting a new magazine called Freeman’s, which presents new work based on a theme. The first issue is centered around the idea of “Arrival,” and it features talent like McCann, Haruki Murakami, Louise Erdrich, and Dave Eggers. This is an explosive debut for a literary magazine, and this event should be a lot of fun.

But of course, because I’m involved in that event, I’m naturally biased. So allow me to present an ALTERNATE TUESDAY event for your edification. At Town Hall Seattle, Jack Nisbet will appear in conversation with John Marzluff, a professor of wildlife science, and geologist David Montgomery. Nisbet’s newest book Ancient Places explores the relationship between the landscape and the culture of the Pacific Northwest,.

WEDNESDAY The WordsWest Literary Series will happen at C&P Coffee Company in West Seattle. This is a monthly reading series that brings new and established talent to a neighborhood that doesn’t see very many literary events. Tonight’s readers are KUOW journalist Ruby de Luna, who has reported on immigrant communities and health care, and Stephanie Timm, an author who recently wrote a play titled Tails of Wasps and co-authored an adaptation of The Ramayana with Yussef el Guindi.

THURSDAY Obviously, you’re going to Lit Crawl Seattle. This is not optional.

FRIDAY Elliott Bay Book Company hosts two novelists who have been published by the wonderful publisher Akashic Books. Joe Meno will read from his new novel, Marvel and a Wonder, which is about a farm, horse-racing, and family. Nina Revoyr’s new novel Lost Canyon is about four backpackers who go on a trip that finds them outside of their comfort zone.

SATURDAY University Book Store presents a special reading with Seattle author G. Willow Wilson and writer Margaret Stohl. They’ll be signing their new books: Wilson’s latest comic is A-Force, which features an all-woman team of superheroes, and Stohl recently published a young adult novel starring the Marvel character Black Widow. While mainstream comics is slowly opening up to women, it’s still a predominantly male-dominated field. This is a rare chance to meet and talk with two women who have made names for themselves and thrived in that industry. Go show them some love.

SUNDAY Hugo House hosts a reading from Floating Bridge Press chapbook winners. Every year, great local publisher Floating Bridge Press sponsors a contest that finds a new poet and publishes their work. This year’s winner is Michael Schmeltzer, who will read from his chapbook, Elegy/Elk River. (He’s also got a book coming out soon from Two Sylvias Press.) Several finalists from the contest— Maya Jewell Zeller, Brian Cooney, and Linda Malnack — will also read. This is a great chance to see some new poets do their thing; you’ll likely be seeing these names around town for years to come. Why not get a head start tonight?

MONDAY It’s not very often that I send you out to Bellevue, but tonight I bring you a very good reason to head east: the Bellevue branch of University Book Store hosts an evening with a number of poets reading from Raising Lily Ledbetter, a compelling anthology of poetry about women at work that I reviewed a few weeks ago. Readers include Carolyne Wright, Eugenia Toledo, Kathya Alexander, Deborah Woodard, Judith Roche, Erin Fristad, and Mary Ellen Talley.

TUESDAY Cartoonist Ted Rall will discuss his excellent comic-book biography of Edward Snowden at Town Hall tonight. He’ll be interviewed onstage by some jerk named Paul Constant, who press materials inform us is the co-founder of a site called the Seattle Review of Books.

So because we here at SRoB have a conflict-of-interest rule that insists we provide an alternate event on nights when we’re taking part in a reading, our ALTERNATE TUESDAY: event is a doozy: Seattle Arts and Lectures presents an evening with poets Mary Szybist and Robert Wrigley. Szybist is interested in what it means to have a body, and Wrigley writes about nature and spirituality in a very interesting way. Expect a smart discussion about corporeality and its limits.

WEDNESDAY We’ve got a two-fer tonight: First up, awesome small press festival Short Run, which is preparing a month’s worth of events in October, presents a Zine and Comix Fair in the lobby of Northwest Film Forum. After the fair, though, you should head down to Vermillion for the 5th anniversary celebration of Seattle’s other great small-press festival, the APRIL Festival. Readers include Stacey Levine, who is one of the best short story writers in all of Seattle and such an incredible reader of her own work that she released a single on Sub Pop, and Don Mee Choi, who is one of my favorite local poets. Think of it as a mini-lit crawl with two stops!

THURSDAY Ravenna Third Place Books hosts Ryan Boudinot, Paul Constant, Eric Reynolds, and Sonora Jha having a panel discussion about Seattle’s literary scene to celebrate the release of Boudinot’s new book, Seattle: City of Literature. Reynolds is an editor at Fantagraphics, which means he works on some of the best comics in America. Boudinot, most recently, is the author of The Octopus Rises. And Jha is the local author of a great novel called Foreign that was for some reason only published in India, but which you can buy at Elliott Bay Book Company.

And because I’m on that panel, your ALTERNATE THURSDAY event is at University Book Store, where the wonderful writer Lauren Groff presents her new and much-ballyhooed novel Fates and Furies, which is described as a “portrait of a modern marriage told with the fury and force of a Greek myth.”

FRIDAY Hugo House hosts a big splashy launch party for Seattle: City of Literature, featuring Ryan Boudinot, Rick Simonson, Jim Lynch, Elissa Washuta, Charles Mudede, and Brian McGuigan.

SATURDAY Elliott Bay Book Company hosts Ian Brennan and Bob Forrest. The authors will discuss Brennan's novella, Sister Maple Syrup Eyes, and Forrest’s memoir Running With Monsters. Forrest apparently has something to do with a show called Celebrity Rehab, and his book includes reminiscences of River Phoenix’s death.

SUNDAY The Beacon Hill branch of Seattle Public Library hosts a free screening of the movie The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 and also hosts a discussion of the book on which the movie is based. The film series is set to conclude this fall, which makes this an interesting time to discuss the final book in the series. Half of the book has already been (poorly) adapted, so what’s the second half going to be like? Is there a chance that the Hunger Games film series can rebound and reclaim the greatness of its second installment? Is Mockingjay even a good book to begin with? These questions, and more, will finally be settled once and for all. (No pressure!)

MONDAY Your week begins at University Book Store, where Fran Wilde reads from her new fantasy novel Updraft. It’s set in a world “built in towers of living bone” and stars a main character who has the “ability to control the invisible predators that roam the skies with her voice.” That sounds entirely bonkers, and is therefore worthy of our respect.

TUESDAY Elliott Bay Book Company brings Joy Williams to town for what they acknowledge is a “rare” visit. Williams is largely regarded as a master of American fiction, and her name is often dropped in the same sentence as writers like Flannery O’Connor. If you like short stories, I’d recommend her collection Honored Guest. She debuts a new story collection, The Visiting Privilege, here tonight.

WEDNESDAY The reading series Lit Fix pops up in Belltown tonight with a great lineup: Kevin Maloney, Jeanine Walker, and short-story author (and Instant Future publisher) Matthew Simmons, as well as musician Steven Curtis. But tonight’s Lit Fix is also a big deal because it’s the last local public appearance of local writer Kelly Davio before she moves to London. Davio gave a great interview to the Seattle Review of Books about why she’s leaving town and what she’ll most miss about Seattle a week or so ago. Here’s your chance to go show your support for her.

THURSDAY You’ll want to visit Hugo House for the latest installment of Cheap Beer & Prose, where the beer is cheap ($1 per can of PBR) and the readers are guaranteed to be good. Tonight’s readers include Jean Burnet, Kevin Emerson, Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, and Jay McAleer.

FRIDAY Philip Howard, a professor at the University of Washington reads at Town Hall from his book Pax Technica, which reimagines the internet as something simultaneously open and secure, neither of which is strictly true today.

SATURDAY Head to Neighbours Nighclub for Banned! Books in Drag, in which David Schmader hosts a bunch of drag queens who will “give performances inspired by their favorite works of literature” to raise awareness for banned literature. This is the only literary event this week where you’ll find performer names like Sparkle Leigh, Isabella St. Extynn St. James, LaSaveona Hunt, Atasha Manila, Aleksa Manila, Charlie Menace, DonaTella Howe, Sylvia O'Stayformore and Kitty Kitty Bang Bang.

SUNDAY Hugo House hosts a passel of poets in a baseball-themed World Series of Poetry. Two teams composed from the poets Ed Skoog, Kary Wayson, Oliver de la Paz, Arlene Kim, Dean Rader, and Sarah Galvin will “take turns batting at topics pitched to them by the audience.” Sounds like a lot of fun! This event is hosted by John Roderick, a musician who tried to be a politician a few months ago. He's a good host of literary events.

MONDAY Celebrate Labor Day at Bumbershoot, where the Words & Ideas Stage hosts a discussion between local authors Timothy Egan and Jamie Ford, with moderation from Portland Magazine editor Brian Doyle. Egan, of course, is a New York Times contributor and the author of some fantastic non-fiction history books. Ford wrote the Seattle-set novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

TUESDAY Elliott Bay Book Company hosts Anita Feng, a local poet and zen teacher who just published Sid, a contemporary retelling of Siddhartha. Press materials say that “Sid teaches that the key to the story of the Buddha's life is that the story could be about any of us.”

WEDNESDAY This is a big-name night with a big-name Seattle author. Third Place Books hosts Jonathan Evison, who will be reading from his new novel This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! Evison, the author of the very good All About Lulu and the phenomenal Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving (which is being adapted into a movie starring Paul Rudd) is always trying new things in his fiction. Harriet is a novel about a nearly 80 year-old woman on an Alaskan cruise. At this reading, you should ask Evison how he researched the book.

THURSDAY When an event is titled “Wave in the PNW: An Evening with Wave Books,” you’ve got our attention. Wave Books is one of the most ambitious publishers of poetry in America today, and tonight, they’re bringing five Pacific Northwest authors to town. Tonight’s readers are Alejandro de Acosta, Joshua Beckman, John Beer, Cedar Sigo, and Don Mee Choi, who is one of the best poets in Seattle right now. Seriously, this is a roster that’s gushing with talent — Beckman and Sigo have rocked my world in past readings — but I can’t wait to read Don Mee Choi’s forthcoming collection.

FRIDAY It’s time again for the Hugo House’s Literary Series, in which three authors and a local band produce new work based around a theme. Tonight’s readers are novelists Dinaw Mengestu and Alissa Nutting, along with wonderful local poet Sarah Galvin. The Foghorns will perform new songs. The theme — this year’s Literary Series is all about cliches — is “Beating a Dead Horse.” Somehow, I think this is the theme Sarah Galvin was born to write about.

SATURDAY Head on out to the Bellevue branch of University Book Store for what sounds like a fascinating book. Here’s the pitch: “Over a decade ago, W. Ernest Freud, the only one of Sigmund Freud's grandchildren to become a psychoanalyst, asked Bellevue psychologist Daniel Benveniste to write his biography.” Tonight, Benveniste debuts the biography, which is titled The Interwoven Lives of Sigmund, Anna and W. Ernest Freud: Three Generations of Psychoanalysis. Imagine the kind of apple that family tree must’ve produced.

SUNDAY Capitol Hill rum bar Rumba is an unconventional place to hold a reading, which means we’re all for it. Tonight, author Adam Rakunas presents his novel Windswept, which is a science fiction story about a labor organizer who wants to open a rum distillery. Yes, and it all happens in space. You just can’t resist that kind of a premise.

MONDAY Our week starts off with the August edition of Nerd Nite at Lucid Jazz Lounge. As with every Nerd Nite, this one features two very different speakers. First up, Marielle Saums will discuss the history of bananas. Then, electrical engineer Krunal Desai, who press materials inform us “bailed on the auto industry to work on spacecraft,” will discuss why modern cars are so difficult to fix but so easy to hack.

TUESDAY The Central Library hosts a tribute to the dearly departed Northwest author Ivan Doig, with authors Annie Proulx, Linda Bierds, David Laskin, and Myra Platt all sharing memories of Doig and reading pieces in his honor.

WEDNESDAY It’s back to the Central Library for you: sci-fi author John Scalzi will read from The End of All Things, which is the newest volume in his Old Man’s War series. Scalzi is an excellent novelist who is also an Important Figure on the Internet. He’s not afraid to be political — specifically, he’s not afraid to be a feminist — and he’s often a voice of reason when Twitter events begin to fly out of control, as they so often do.

THURSDAY University Book Store hosts The Coup frontman Boots Riley, who’ll be reading from his book of lyrics, poems, and essays, Tell Homeland Security - We are the Bomb. I’m a fan of the lot of The Coup’s music, but I think their song “Wear Clean Draws" is a stone-cold classic:

FRIDAY Tonight, you're returning to University Book Store, as author Nina Ansary appears in conversation with with Steve Gutzler. They’ll be discussing Ansary’s new book Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran.Get a load of this, from the description of the event:

By digging into the actual impact of government policies, religious beliefs, and social norms, Ansary reveals the unintended increase of educated women following the repeal of gender equality laws, the influence of increased access to textbooks and women's magazines, and the powerful female voices and accomplishments by women in both Iran's past and present.

SATURDAY Elliott Bay Book Company hosts a reading with Pushcart Prizewinning author Ottessa Moshfegh. She’ll be reading from her novel Eileen, the story of a secretary at a boy’s prison who escapes from a terrible domestic situation.

SUNDAY Seattle’s very best Oulipian writer, Doug Nufer, shares the stage with Paolo Pergola, a member of the Italian Oulipian group OPLEPO. Pergola will read constraint-based pieces in English and Italian. Nufer will likely read from his new book, Lifeline Rule. (Pergola’s bio also mentions that he has “translated Popeye into Italian.”) This is all happening at Gallery 1412. Nufer’s readings are always a blast, and while we’re often visited by authors from around the country, we are not always visited by European writers. So we should give Pergola a warm Seattle welcome. Is that a thing? A "warm Seattle welcome?" Well, if it isn't, we should pretend that it is.

MONDAY August can be a challenging month for readings in Seattle. Now that we’re in August, Town Hall is shuttered for a month for its yearly schedule of renovations — you can’t keep a place that old looking that good without a whole lot of TLC — and other readings series choke back on their offerings. So maybe it’s time to check in on some old faithful institutions, like Works in Progress, the Hugo House’s twice-monthly reading series. A lot of the local poets you love got their start at open mic nights like this. Maybe you’ll find your next favorite here. The event listing explains the idea behind the series: “Applause for all. No judgment. Some content not suitable for children or small animals. Listeners welcome.”

TUESDAY The most promising reading of the week happens tonight at University Book Store, when local sci-fi authors Nisi Shawl, Eileen Gunn, and L. Timmel DuChamp present stories from Shawl’s new anthology, Stories for Chip. This is an anthology of stories honoring legendary sci-fi author Samuel R. “Chip” Delany. The New Yorker ran an appreciation of Delany just last week, so this reading is very timely.

WEDNESDAY Fremont cookbook shop The Book Larder hosts a class on how to make a steak dinner, with a menu including “Wedge salad with blue cheese and cherry tomatoes, Roasted green beans and corn with dill, Seared rib eye steak, Salsa verde, Anchovy butter, and Roasted peaches with soft cream.” Droooool. It’s 70 bucks, but that includes the class and dinner. Sign up at the Book Larder’s site in the link above.

THURSDAY Out at the Mill Creek branch of University Book Store, local author Sonya Lea reads from her new memoir Wondering Who You Are, a heartbreaking and inspiring story about a surgical accident that “left her husband of 23 years with no memory of their life together and barely any of the man she knew left inside of him.” How do you bounce back from something like that? Find out tonight.

FRIDAY The Seattle Public Library will be hosting a pop-up library at KEXP’s Concert at the Mural series. Go visit the library to a live soundtrack provided by local rock bands Other Lives, The Shivas, and Tangerine.

SATURDAY If you’re looking for a Saturday social event, you can’t do any better than Hot Off The Press: A Cool Summer Small Press Fest, happening at Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery. Local comics publishers Intruder Comics and Yeti Press will have items for sale, and there will be readings from cartoonists Noah Van Sciver and Gina Siciliano and novelist Ryan Boudinot, who will be reading from his eye-poppingly gorgeous new short story collection The Octopus Rises.

SUNDAY Why don’t more book clubs happen on Sundays? This afternoon, Ada’s Technical Books presents the newest edition of its Human Thought and Sexuality Book Club, which this month discusses Brian Alexander’s book America Unzipped. Promotional copy for the book begins with this impressive sentence: “Welcome to the America we don’t usually talk about, a place where that nice couple down the street could be saddling up for ‘pony play,’ making and selling their own porn DVDs, or hosting other couples for a little flogging." I don't know about you, but I'm sold.

Monday: Tonight’s recommended event is the Seattle Spelling Bee at Cafe Racer, in which adults drink beer and try to spell words of varying difficulty. What could possibly go wrong?

Tuesday: The Literary Mixer, a monthly happy hour event, has been going on for a couple years now. (It started at Vermillion, but the event moved to the Hideout not so long ago.) The concept behind Literary Mixer is as simple and clear as the name of the event: bring the book you’re currently reading to the bar. Buy a drink. Talk to strangers about the book you’re reading, and ask them about the book they’re reading. This is a fun way for shy book nerds to meet new people.

Wednesday: It’s a banner year for the UW writing program. No, not because David Shields has published approximately 35 books this year so far; that happens every year. The reason for celebration is that three UW grads are debuting poetry collections in 2015, and the Hugo House is hosting all three in a reading that’s kind of the equivalent of a literary homecoming party. Sonia Greenfield reads from Boy with a Halo at the Farmer’s Market, Jessica Johnson is the author of In Absolutes We Seek Each Other, and Erin Malone wrote Hover. All three books have already won awards. Go show your hometown pride.

Thursday: Elliott Bay Book Company hosts a group reading to celebrate the launch of a new anthology called BLENDED. Local authors including Samantha Waltz, Gigi Rosenberg, Emma Kate Tsai, Cassie Premo Steele, Kezia Willingham, and Sallie Wagner Brown will read their contributions to the book, which collects non-fiction stories about blended families.

Friday: What better way to celebrate a summer Friday night than with a reading from a sci-fi novel? Ted Kosmatka presents The Flicker Men at University Book Store tonight. It’s a thriller about a quantum physics researcher who accidentally discovers scientific proof of the soul. Of course he immediately is pursued by mysterious forces who want to keep his discovery quiet. Go get your genre on.

Saturday: Even though we just bumbled into August, it’s time to start getting ready for fall, or at least to start thinking about getting ready for fall. Amy Bronee, author of The Canning Kitchen, teaches a canning class up in Fremont’s Book Larder bookshop.

Sunday: One of the Seattle Public Library’s best outreach programs, the Books on Bikes team, will be building a temporary outdoor full-service library on the waterfront today, as part of the Waterfront Whimsea celebration. When they say full-service, they mean it: you can check out books, get a library card, and talk with a librarian about upcoming SPL programs. Bring the kids for games, music, and prizes.

Monday: The monthly science discussion series Nerd Nite Seattle hosts a lecture titled “Slimers and Submersibles” tonight at LUCIDLounge. Hilary Hayford discusses using radio to track small marine animals and Tim Dwyer discusses using remote-controlled giant robots to investigate the ocean. But there’s also a special guest appearance at this Nerd Nite: a special bonus "live Q&A with real-life researchers currently at sea on a research mission!” Why would you go anywhere else tonight?

Tuesday: The Elliott Bay Sci-fi and Fantasy Book Group is discussing Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle tonight at 6:30. It’s free and you don’t have to have bought the book at Elliott Bay in order to participate, although you get bonus points if you do. This is one of Dick’s best-loved books — though, frankly, I found it a little disappointing, given that he died before he could finish the story he started in this book — and it’s also a popular television show. Please only show up if you read the book, though. People don’t come to book groups to talk with people who only watch TV.

Wednesday: Author John Colasacco has a new book called Antigolf coming out from a publisher with the delightful name of Civil Coping Mechanisms. Tonight, he’s celebrating at Vermillion Art Gallery and Bar with delightful local poet Sarah Galvin and APRIL Festival cofounder Willie Fitzgerald, as well as with a Portland author named James Gendron, who is the author of a book titled Sexual Boat.

Thursday: Let’s be clear that Book Lust Nancy Pearl is a local treasure. I’m not as enamored with Steve Scher, who can be a very bad interviewer. But Scher and Pearl together have an easy rapport, especially when they nerd out on books. Town Hall is hosting a live taping of Pearl and Scher’s podcast, “That Stack of Books,” with a pair of special guests tonight at 7:30. It’s $5.

Friday: Geffrey Davis is a poet who was born here (hooray!) and then moved to Pennsylvania (let’s not hold that against him). He’s a Cave Canem fellow, which is a sign of quality in a poet. (You should learn what Cave Canem is, if you’re unfamliar.) He’ll be reading from his new collection, Revising the Storm, at University Book Store tonight at 7 pm.

Saturday: James B. Moore reads from his poetry collection Spirit Unchained: The Autobiography of a Soul: Collected Poems 1967-2014 at Ravenna Third Place Books at 7 pm. That’s maybe one too many colons for a title to bear, but how often do you get to hear a poet reflect on four whole decades in the business?

Sunday: No events that I could find. Go sit in the sun and re-read a book that you were so-so on the first time. Maybe you’ll find something new to love.

MONDAY: Elliott Bay Book Company hosts Seattle Times reporter James Neff, who debuts his new historical account, Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy Versus Jimmy Hoffa. This one’s got some good blurbs. Seymour Hersh says, “This is not a book about a good Bobby versus a bad Hoffa. It is a study of two men who always got what they wanted staging a shootout on the streets of Laredo. And, as Neff tells it, there were no winners.” And Erik Larson — Devil in the White City Erik Larson — calls it “a triumph of investigation and revelation.” That makes it well worth your time.

TUESDAY: Might as well have a pajama party in Elliott Bay Book Company all night Monday night, because they’ve got the best reading of Tuesday, too. Lidia Yukanvitch, the brilliant Portland author of Dora: A Headcase, reads from her new novel, The Small Backs of Children.

WEDNESDAY: Ada’s Technical Books hosts a comic book reading with Anders Nilsen and Marc Bell. Bell presents his first “full-length graphic novella,” which seems like a weird designation — what is the fullest length a graphic novella can reach without hitting novel-size? For that matter, what’s the official size of a graphic novel? Anyway, in Stroppy, the protagonist “hopes to win big in a songwriting contest organized by the All-Star Schnauzer Band.” Nilsen, who has made some great comics including the terrific Charles Schulz-meets-Tolstoy bird epic Big Questions, celebrates the publication of a new collection of his sketchbooks. It’s titled Poetry Is Useless, which is a great title.

THURSDAY: Up at Ravenna Third Place, Jody Bower reads from her book Jane Eyre's Sisters, which “argues that Joseph Campbell's model of the hero's journey does not work for women.” Instead, Bower thinks books about female heroes “need a different model to do justice to a woman's experience of moving beyond the expectations of conventional societal roles to find her true, creative self.” This is a fascinating argument.

FRIDAY: Back to Elliott Bay Book Company for a reading from Scott Dodson, who’ll read from his book The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Dodson’s book couldn’t be any better timed, now that the Notorious RGB has become a style icon.

SATURDAY: No events today. You should probably set the day aside to either read Go Set a Watchman, which was released on Tuesday or — my preference — re-read To Kill a Mockingbird, instead.

SUNDAY: No readings today, either. It’s summer! Go read a book in the park. Recommend a book to a friend, and ask for a recommendation in return. Bury your face in the pages of a book and waggle your face around for a while.