There are a whole bunch of readings going on tonight, so let’s get into it:

Steven Kazlowski is at the Ballard Branch of the Seattle Public Library, reading from The Last Polar Bear, which is a photo book about global warming and polar bears. The title of this book makes me think of one of my favorite David Lasky cartoons, which you can find here.

The UW Grad School is hosting a lecture titled “Organism and Environment: The Organism as Subject and Object of Evolution.” I can’t even begin to explain it, because I can’t begin to understand the subject, exactly. This probably means that it’s a very good event.

The University Bookstore has Emily Transue, reading from Patient by Patient. This is a non-fiction account of being a doctor. I find these sorts of books fascinating, if just because, as you can tell by the above paragraph, lots of these science-y type things fly right the hell over my head. It’s interesting to have a general-reader-friendly account of what being a doctor means, although I always leave these books with a mild case of hypochondria, too.

Susan Hutton reads at Open Books, from On the Vanishing of Large Creatures, which is a book of poetry that’s pretty heavily influenced by Judaism. You can listen to the author reading three of her poems here. It’s always nice to hear poetry in the author’s own voice, unless that author is a Beat, in which case it’s better to read on your own.

And at Elliott Bay Book Company, Jane Smiley reads from Ten Days in the Hills, which has just been released in paperback. It’s a retelling of The Decameron, set in an Los Angeles house party that goes on for ten days. I didn’t read this book last year, and I regret that. I liked the set-up a lot.

More details are in the readings calendar, which includes the next week’s worth of events.