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There are a ton of readings today, including a couple of different young adult novels, a poet in residence at the Henry, a discussion about Buddhism, a discussion about architecture, a novel about a lost Scott Joplin artifact, a book about accidentally becoming a country cook, and a book about rewriting your novel.

Today is also the first day of the Friends of the Seattle Public Library Spring Book Sale up in Magnuson Park. You can spend $25 and come away with enough books to keep you occcupied for a year.

And then there are two readings I want to tell you about.

At Barça, local awesome poet Doug Nufer is hosting the newest edition of his series, the Bar Room Writers' Offensive. This is a reading with the theme "Suicide Notes and Other Survival Tactics," with a bunch of local authors. It's free, there's lots of booze, and Barça is a pretty nice bar to spend time in.

And then I wrote about the reading at the Fantagraphics Store in this week's Constant Reader. Cartoonist James Sturm will be reading with local cartoonist Peter Bagge. Sturm is a co-founder of The Stranger and a great cartoonist. His most recent book is Market Day, about a weaver who suddenly discovers he can't sell his work anymore. I did an interview with Sturm that you can read right here. Here's an interesting bit:

I don't know if I set out to write necessarily about commerce. I think I was trying to explore that tension between making a living and making art. And how Mendelman, for the most part, was living a charmed life until market day. And this was when those things now become forces that unravel him I guess—pardon the pun—and what that does when you are making a living and making art. And especially as I've gotten older—it's been 19 years since The Stranger started—making art does become a war of attrition. And hanging in there. And you see people who stop. In some ways, Market Day was a cautionary tale to myself not to stop.

Peter Bagge is debuting his new book, Other Lives. It's the best thing he's done at least since he killed Stinky in Hate. This should be a fun, interesting reading.

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.