Joe Kanon, who wrote The Good German, returns with a new mystery called Stardust about murder in old-timey Hollywood. Kanon is not your typical mystery writer, and I bet Kanon could tell hours of interesting stories about Hollywood based on his research.

Two poets read at Open Books. Kate Greenstreet reads from The Last 4 Things, and Linda V. Russo's most recent collection is Mirth. Two poets also read at SAM tonight, responding to a particular work of art via poetry. The poets are Karen Finneyfrock and Judith Roche. I will recommend the latter reading over the former, simply because it's a one-time-only kind of event, and Finneyfrock is awesome.

There's a reading at the Hugo House, too. Switched-on Gutenberg claims to be one of the oldest online literary journals. They're having a fifteenth anniversary party tonight. I bet someone who used to post poetry on ARPANET back in the Cold War is probably very angry right now. This sounds kind of interesting, but tonight there is also a roundtable called "Godtable." It is a group of smart local religious writers, including Shauna Shapiro, Sylvia Boorstein, Lesley Hazleton, Nassim Assefi, and Rev. Ebenezer Ben Mudede, talking about religion. I'm going to call this the reading of the night, but there's a hell of a lot to choose from.

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.