First, the not-so-good: Laura Day, who is the author of How to Rule the World From Your Couch, will allegedly show you how to amplify your brain and control your intuition to get things done. Funny how "amplifying your brain" used to mean "getting smarter." Now it means "paying twenty-four bucks for a useless self-help book that promises you magical powers."

Just got an e-mail yesterday about a reading at the Jack Straw Studios on Roosevelt. Five poets published in Floating Bridge Review #2 will give a reading: Dennis Caswell, Jim Gurley, Alicia Hokanson, Marge Manwaring, and Eve Preus. The only poet of these that I have read is Manwaring, but she is very good.

Also in the U District is a more genre-specific reading. Jeff Vandermeer and Cat Rambo will read. Vandermeer's Finch is a novel about how "mysterious underground inhabitants...have reconquered the failed fantasy state Ambergris and put it under martial law." It's a detective-fantasy pastiche. Rambo's Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight is about a fantastical port town filled with dryads and the last known living elephant.

At Town Hall, it's Brad Matsen. Matsen is the author of a biography of Jacques Cousteau titled Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King. I do not need to tell you why this book is awesome.

And Lydia Davis reads at Benaroya Hall tonight. Brendan Kiley wrote a great review of Lydia Davis's new collection of stories in the book section. Here is a tiny taste of that review, in which he remarks on the existential hum that is so palpable in Davis's stories:

Living in that mental hall of mirrors could drive a person mad. Kurt Vonnegut once wrote about a friend who described taking heroin and immediately understanding the seductiveness of the drug—it shuts down the existential hum and allows us to feel, for the first time, entirely at ease.

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.