(Girl with a road salt earring image from Mocoloco.)

Sweet lord a’mercy, we’ve got eleven events today, including an open mic, two children’s books events, a book about birthin’ babies up at Ravenna Third Place, and a book about Seattle’s architecture up at the University Book Store.

First, I want to address an error on my part: in the print edition of The Stranger this week, I said that Susan Vreeland, reading at Third Place Books, was the author of Girl With a Pearl Earring. That is a mistake. She is the author of The Girl in Hyacinth Blue. I received a very nice e-mail from Karla pointing out my boneheaded mistake that read, in part, as follows:

Just thought I’d mention that Susan Vreeland didn’t write Girl With a Pearl Earring. That would be Tracy Chevalier. Vreeland had The Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Chevalier had The Virgin Blue, they both like medieval arts and crafts…plenty of room for confusion.

Vreeland’s Passion of Artemisia, while a bit of a chick-lit potboiler, was at the least a decent read, and inspired me to research Artemisia Gentileschi for myself. Which I always consider a job well done on any author’s part. I also own a personalized haiku written by Chevalier, but that really doesn’t contribute to the issue at hand either way.

The delightful Karla is, of course, correct and I am wrong—this was a mistake I made dozens of times when I was a bookseller, too—and I apologize to the author and to Third Place Books.

That said, there are better readings more worth your time tonight.

Mary Doria Russell is at the Seattle Public Library tonight. Russell wrote The Sparrow, which was an interesting mix of religion and science fiction (but not in a Scientology sort of way). Her new book is called Dreamers of the Day. It is about the creation of the modern Middle East, in the 1920s. I was really interested to read this—it’s a great subject for a novel—until I read that it was narrated posthumously, that is to say, by a narrator after he or she is already dead. That made me think of The Lovely Bones, which was narrated from heaven, and that made me not want to read it. But she seems like a thoughtful author and, as I said, it’s a really interesting subject, and the reading is free, so it looks like a good time.

Scott Heim is at Elliott Bay Book Company. Heim wrote Mysterious Skin, which is a book so great that even Mr. Poe read it. But then he’s written a couple of books that seem like retreads of Mysterious Skin, including We Disappear, his newest. This should still be an eventful reading, though.

Robert Mittenthal and Nico Vassilakis are reading at Open Books tonight for you poetry lovers, and also Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer are reading from their guidebook to political action, The True Patriot, at Town Hall. For those interested in political action of a slightly more collectivist sort, there’s also a discussion at the Ethnic Cultural Center in the U District about “the power of collective action and its changing role in the 21st Century.”

Full readings calendar including the next week or so, with corrected Vreeland text, is here.