There’s a lot going on tonight, and some of it looks really interesting.

Up at Third Place Books, Alison Wright reads from Learning to Breathe : One Woman’s Journey of Spirit and Survival. In the press release for the reading, Richard Gere says that Wright is “a wonder,” “a true pilgrim and a seeker of truth,” and “the real deal.” If Richard Gere calls you “the real deal,” that seems like a bad sign to me. Just based on the few interviews I’ve seen, I expect that Richard Gere would not know “the real deal” if it crawled up his pant leg and bit him on the nads.

At Seattle Mystery Bookshop, Kelli Stanley reads from Nox Dormienda: A Long Night for Sleeping, which is a mystery/noir novel set in ancient Rome, which seems pretty interesting to me.

At Elliott Bay Book Company, Todd Komarnicki reads from his new novel War, which is about an unnamed soldier surveying an anonymous landscape in the aftermath of an unexplained war. All you The Road junkies might want to check it out.

And at the University Book Store, employees and some local authors will be reading short stories, poems, and essays by Dorothy Parker. This is because it is Dorothy Parker’s birthday. Dorothy Parker’s birthday should be a national holiday. She would have been 115 years old today, and the University Book Store is having a party to celebrate that fact, which makes the University Book Store my heroes today. Good job, you guys.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.