A book that is a letter from a mother to a son and many more readings tonight.

In an hour and a half or so, at the Elliott Bay Book Company, Gar Alperovitz & Lew Daly read from Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back. This is a book about crazy ideas like universal health care and certain wealthy people only making seven figures annually instead of nine. It seems like an okay way to spend a lunch hour, especially if you eat at the new cafe, which is delicious. Later in the day at Elliott Bay, Benoit Denizet-Lewis reads from America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life, which is about old and young addicts who are also American.

Up at Third Place Books, Cliff Mass reads from The Weather of the Pacific Northwest. Apparently, if this holiday season had a sleeper hit in local bookstores, it was this book. Maybe you should go and ask Mr. Mass to make the cold and snow stop.

At the Richard Hugo House, Rebecca Loudon, who is a poet, reads. I don't know anything about her book except for its title. But I do have to say Cadaver Dogs is a great title for a collection of poetry.

And at the University Book Store, Knute Berger reads from Pugetopolis, which is about how everything in Seattle was better back in the good ol' days (i.e. the author's youth.) Erica C. Barnett reviewed Pugetopolis in this week's paper.

Similarly, throughout Pugetopolis, Berger criticizes the "Manhattanization" of Seattle—a term that to you and me might imply skyscrapers, cabs on demand, and decent pizza, but to Mossback means transit, bridges, and street repairs. No reasonable person would argue that bridges and urban renewal will turn Seattle into a city of 10 million people; it won't, nor is that anyone's goal. What Berger opposes, it seems, are investments in infrastructure that make Seattle an attractive place to live or visit.

The comments section is still a-roaring. You should read the review.

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