We have an open mic and a book of poetry by the Women’s Poetry Listserv and another night of really good readings tonight. You really ought to enjoy this week’s amazing breadth of interesting books, because I’ve seen what next week’s calendar looks like and we are currently in the middle of the feast before the famine.

Michael T. Klare reads at Elliott Bay Book Company with Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy . He’s followed by Daoud Hari, reading with co-author Megan M. McKenna. They’re reading from The Translator, which is Hari’s account of life in Darfur. If you’re feeling obsessively geopolitical tonight—a condition usually brought on by too much drinking of whiskey the evening before—you could go to both events, but if you have to choose one, I would definitely take the latter.

Michelle Bates is at the University Bookstore tonight with Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity, which is about people taking pictures with toy and homemade cameras. I don’t think that the author has any opinion on the “Save Polaroid, Save the World” people, but, dammit, maybe she ought to.

And lastly, but not leastly, David Hajdu is reading at Town Hall, from The Ten-Cent Plague, which is about the persecution of comic books in the ’40s and especially the ’50s. In this issue of The Stranger, Christopher Sabatini really likes this book. From the beginning of his review:

When the ’50s establishment tried to sod over impolite certainties like sex and death, those certainties inevitably resurfaced as strange and perverted foliage. Comic books are the most colorful example: In the years immediately following their invention, they became a maniacal showcase of murder, monsters, and impossible female proportions.

This should be a fun one; Hajdu is a likable speaker with a tremendous amount of research at his back.

The next week’s events, with some non-genocide and/or funnybook-related readings, can be found in the full readings calendar.