We have two open mic nights and the biggest readings night of the year so far, so let’s get right into it.

First, poor David Rothkopf is reading at the University Bookstore. I say “poor David Rothkopf” because he’s up against two authors who I’m really interested in. Rothkopf’s book, Superclass, looks really interesting, though: It’s a study of that one percent of one percent of one percent (&etc. &etc. &etc.) who rules the world. Any other night, this would be the reading I recommend.

In other issues-type books, we have Maude Barlow at the Elliott Bay Book Company, with Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. Again, if this reading happened yesterday, I’d say, by all means, go.

But Jhumpa Lahiri is reading at the Seattle Public Library, with Unaccustomed Earth, her excellent new collection of short stories. The lovely and talented Ms. Cienna Madrid wrote about Unaccustomed Earth this week, in what I hope will be the first of many books reviews for me. A sample:

After the unparalleled success of both Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake, I was braced for Unaccustomed Earth to disappoint. Jhumpa Lahiri has earned the right to relax a little, throw out a stinker filled with lazy prose and creepily mixed metaphor, where virginity clings like a barnacle to the racehorse thighs of an ugly Bengali duckling.

But thankfully, Unaccustomed Earth is as absorbing as its predecessors, and Lahiri’s prose continues to be thoughtful, measured, and unexpected…

(The full review, including vitreous eye clumps, is obviously worth reading.)

And! And!! And!!! Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis and other Persepolis-related books, is at the Moore Theatre tonight, talking about comics, and her family, and directing a cartoon version of Persepolis. To prepare for the greatness, you should perhaps check out Annie Wagner’s great interview with Satrapi. Here’s why she decided to make Persepolis into a movie:

I always thought it was the worst idea in the world to adapt my story into a movie… Then at one point, I had a friend who wanted to become a producer, and he said, oh la la, let’s make it. And I said, okay, but I want it animation, black and white, hand-drawn, made in Paris, I want to make it with my best friend, I want Catherine Deneuve, I want this, I want that. And they said okay. And I was like, shit, now I have to do it.

And that’s just the answer to the first question. The full interview, titled “In Praise of Bad Taste,” is lovely.

The full readings calendar talks about the upcoming, anticlimactic week of readings in Seattle, but there’s no reason not to go to a reading tonight.