Two readings tonight.

First, up at Third Place Books, Alan Furst is reading from his new-in-paperback espionage thriller, The Spies of Warsaw. I interviewed Furst a couple weeks ago, and you can read all about it here. He's a funny and charming author, and he'll go on a fascinating tangent faster than you can sometimes ask a question. Like, for instance, this part of the interview, when I ask Furst about pulps from the 1940s:

It was all menace fiction like mine is, but mine's postmenace menace fiction. The pulp authors didn't quite get the menace right, but they knew there was menace.

How did they not get it right?

They were projecting scenarios, and they just had no idea how bad it was going to be. I'll give you an example: There was a movie I saw that takes place in Dachau, made in Hollywood about 1940 or so, and in it, Dachau was a place where men dug holes with picks. At one point, there's a man digging a hole and a Gestapo guard says something to him and the man talks back to the Gestapo guard and the Gestapo guard slaps him. Just slaps him. If you want to know how horrific something really is, a way to figure that out is to read something that was written when people couldn't envision it happening. They had no way to imagine what was going to happen or what was happening [in Nazi Germany].

There will be a Suggests box for the other reading popping up soon, but let me tell you a little bit about it: Joe Meno, Ryan Boudinot, and Matthew Simmons are all reading at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight. Meno is very prolific, but his ambitious new novel, The Great Perhaps, is his first from a major publisher. Boudinot you should know: He's the local author of the great book of stories The Littlest Hitler and the upcoming novel Misconception. And Simmons is a writer and blogger who has just published his first novella. This should be fun.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.

UPDATED to change the title of Boudinot's upcoming book from Misconceptions to its proper title: Misconception. I'm a dumbass. Apologies to Mr. Boudinot.