Let's get down to it.

Over at Third Place Books, Karen Burns reads from The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl. Not that kind of working girl, silly! It's about finding employment as a woman.

At the Hugo House, it's time for River & Sound Review, "a literary entertainment variety show" with performers like bestselling local author Stephanie Kallos. Let's hope it's more Muppet Show than Sonny & Cher.

At Town Hall, Sandra Cisneros is "celebrat[ing] the 25th anniversary of her best-known work, The House on Mango Street." Unlike most anniversaries, this is actually worth celebrating. At Benaroya Hall, Naomi Shihab Nye reads poetry about her American-Palestinian mixed heritage.

University Book Store hosts Saxon Holt. Holt is a gardener. Holt reads from his new book, imaginatively titled Get Gardening. Elsewhere in the U District, Walter Russell Mead gives a lecture titled "After Fukuyama and Huntington: Prospects for American Power." Mead is probably smarter than you. Yes, even you.

Elliott Bay Book Company hosts Daniel Weiner, who reads from Good God: Faith for the Rest of Us. I dislike Weiner's presumptuous use of the word "us" in that title.

And at Arundel Books, Lindsay Hill and Nicole Sarrocco read. Hill is the author of an upcoming novel. Sarrocco is the author of the awesome poetry collection Karate Bride. I wrote about Karate Bride in this week's book section:

Karate Bride is a mix of lurid imagery ("History" begins: "In my hallway hangs a photograph/of my father. One frame, two pictures;/in one he eyes a disaster of an Easter bunny,/in the next, he's held by a leering Santa") and passionate longing ("One Long Lecture" ends: "I want to crawl down, settle myself/deep, deep into a dark place./And I want you there with me").

Sarrocco provides the perfect gateway for readers who are interested in experimenting with poetry. Her poems are, more often than not, narratives. She employs imagery with a novelist's steady hand, and the stories are told with muscular verbs and concrete language.

This is the reading of the night.

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