Friends of the Library is hosting a Mini-Book Sale today at Magnuson Park. No, the books aren't mini. The sale is mini; they'll only (?) have 10,000 books for sale.

At Seattle Mystery Bookshop, it's time for Derek Haas. Columbus is about an international assassin who is nicknamed "The Silver Bear." I think "The Silver Bear" would be a great nickname for our new mayor.

Dr. Ken Croswell talks at Pacific Science Center. Croswell, who knows about "stellar evolution" and "extrasolar planets," discusses what life on other planets could be like. This is like awesome with a side of awesome, soaked in awesome sauce.

Anthony Alvarado & Friend(s) are at Pilot Books today. Alvarado is the author and illustrator of Throwing Bones, which is a "macabre" selection of weird stories. You can read more about the book and Alvarado's great little publisher, Gunbaby Graphics, over here.

Mary Karr reads at Third Place Books tonight. Karr is a very rare thing: a memoirist who doesn't suck. Lit is about her drinking problem.

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.

Barbara Kingsolver is at Third Place Books tonight. The Lacuna is her first novel in a long time. Her publisher says it is about "an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover." I haven't read it yet, obviously, but I will say that "Lacuna" is a beautiful word.

At the exact same time, at Elliott Bay Book Company, Mary Karr reads from her new book. Karr is one of the few memoirists who should always be allowed to write memoirs. The Liars Club and Cherry are both excellent. Karr's newest book, Lit is about being drunk.

And the Hugo House is hosting a reading titled "Visiting Hours." Visting Hours. Elizabeth Austen, who is a very intelligent writer who also produces poetry segments on KUOW, reads on the theme of "Visiting Hours" with awesome young novelist Benjamin Parzybok. (I really enjoyed Parzybok's debut novel Couch, and you can read my review here.) Parzybok and Austen are joined by an actor named Matt Smith and a singer named Molly Rose.

Any one of these three readings will be great.

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.

Amy Foster reads at Third Place Books today. When Autumn Leaves "is the story of coming to terms with the magical things we take for granted every day," like peat moss and bodily functions.

If you want to attend a nautical reading but you don't want to shell out the big bucks for the Pacific Marine Expo, you can go to the Museum of History and Industry. Lorraine McConaghy reads from Warship under Sail, a book about war and the sea.

Elliott Bay Book Company hosts Marilyn Chin tonight. Two Chinese-American sisters deal with their "iron-willed" grandmother in Chin's novel Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen.

And we conclude with two poetry readings. First, Brenda Hillman writes poetry with lines like "a sorceress looking for my sources". Practical Water is her new poetry collection, and she reads at Open Books tonight.

And Daemond Arrindell and Kary Wayson will respond to SAM's new Michelangelo exhibit tonight as part of SAM Word. I'm going to call this one the reading of the night; it's not often you get to see brand-new work from two very good local poets in a reaction to something like a work of art. Even if the Michelangelo exhibit is a little weak, there's still the opportunity for something exciting to come out of this.

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.

There will be several fancy readings tonight. Fancy reading the first: Cornel West at the University Village Barnes and Noble. The political activist and star of The Matrix sequels (?!) discusses his new memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.

Fancy reading the second: Ken Croswell reads at Pacific Science Center. The Lives of Stars is a book about those bags of gas we stare at at night. Croswell is a star expert, which is awesome.

Fancy reading the third: Elliott Bay Book Company is hosting an event called Madeline DeFrees: Celebrating a Poet at 90. Poets will read DeFrees's work and pay tribute to her and then DeFrees herself will cut the birthday cake. This looks undeniably sweet. You can read more about DeFrees here.

But many of you out there don't care about any of the above. You only care that Brandon Sanderson is going to sign The Gathering Storm, which is book 12 in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, at University Book Store tonight. Jordan, of course, passed away and left his work unfinished. Sanderson is finishing the job. Over here, you can see photos of a release party for this book at Brigham Young University. You will note the leather-jacketed man who is raising a sword in the air and screaming as he waits in line. Be careful at this reading, nerds. We don't want you to get hacked to death by an overzealous fan.

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.

Slog Tipper Martin wants us to know that Peter Bagge has a new cartoon over at Reason titled "Will Everyone Please Stop Freaking Out Over Ayn Rand?!?"

It's worth a quick read. If you're thirsty for more after that one, Peter Bagge's recent collection of libertarian cartoons from Fantagraphics, Everybody Is Stupid Except For Me and Other Astute Observations is much funnier than libertarian cartoons have any right to be.

And some others. Jennie Shortridge reads at Queen Anne Books. When She Flew is a fictionalization of a true story about a dad and daughter living in the wilderness.

The weirdly named Jak Koke reads with Bruce Cordell at University Book Store. The Edge of Chaos: The Wilds is Koke's fantasy novel about "the Plaguewrought Lands" and "wild magic." Cordell is the author of a Lovecraftian book about a sleeping demon and a hidden city in City of Torment.

Up at Kane Hall, Michael Specter, the author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives speaks the truth at you.

It's Salon of Shame time at the Theater Off Jackson. I haven't been to SoS for a while, so I am unsure if they're still line-around-the-block, sold-out affairs. You might want to call before venturing out, but Salon of Shame is always a good time.

And Hannah Pakula reads at Seattle Asian Art Museum. The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China sounds like a fascinating look into a fascinating time and place, and sometimes that's all you need to be the reading of the night.

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.

Now that everyone is talking about the greatest novelist in the history of this language of ours, Nabokov, about his incomplete novel The Original of Laura, I want to offer not a few words (the title of the incomplete novel tells me everything I need to know about it—Nabokov's last important work is Ada) but an image, a curious image:

Two things I want to say before ending this post. One, this passage shows us something that's worth a moment or two of thought:

I can tell you that Nabokov's son Dmitri did not publish this [incomplete novel] against Vladimir's wishes because he wanted money for a sportscar. Dmitri is 76, and in a wheelchair. This was a question, among other things, of legacy and of keeping the decision in the family.

Two: It is not a surprise that Nabokov is the greatest novelist in English. The Russian tradition of that form is much richer than the English one, which not only has failed to produce a school of exceptional novelists but also philosophers. We have only brilliant flashes here and there but nothing like a proper constellation of luminous novelists and philosophers. The English is only something special when it comes to economics. Ours is the language of doing (and writing about) business.

Donald Harington, who created a surreal rural mini-world in more than a dozen novels set in the fictional Ozark hamlet of Stay More, Ark., died last week in Springdale, Ark. He was 73 and lived in Fayetteville, Ark.

I started reading Harington back in 2002 with his novel Thirteen Albatrosses, which I picked up because I was in a heavy political-fiction phase. I got lucky, it turns out, because Albatrosses was maybe his most accessible work for new readers. I loved the sensation that there was a whole world that extended beyond just the one book—characters made references to past events in Stay More. They were living full, fictional lives, of which Albatrosses was just a part.

I've read two or three more Harington novels—With, a ghost story about a young girl forced to fend for herself in the Ozarks, is quite exceptional, too—and I always came away pleased with Harington's sense of play, his ability to mess with the language and eke new meanings out of words that have been around forever. I fully expect to read all of Harington's Stay More novels over the course of my life, and I'm sorry that there won't be any new editions in the saga. Harington was never wildly popular, but he did something that very few modern literary authors, outside of Faulkner, have been able to do: He created a fictional place that will live forever.

UPDATE: Gold Star Comment goes to Bub, who points out "Another fictional place that will live forever: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Macondo." As soon as I read that comment, it occurred to me that Harington's Stay More might be closer in spirit to Macondo than Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, but I got sidetracked by the whole south of the Mason-Dixon thing. Good call, Bub.

If you're downtown and you eat lunch, the Seattle Public Library is hosting another edition of Thrilling Tales: A Story Time for Adults. The story today is "Hunters in the Snow" by Tobias Wolff.

Tony Angell reads at Third Place Books tonight. Angell is the author of Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye. He is a local author who is reading everywhere for his book. If you haven't seen him yet and you can't make it out to Third Place Books tonight, he's reading again next week.

Town Hall is hosting a cookbook reading. Ellie Krieger reads from So Easy: Luscious, Healthy Meals for Every Day of the Week. Krieger is a celebrity chef. Do with that what you will.

Gordon L. Miller is at Elliott Bay Book Company tonight. He's showing his photographs for a new translations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Metamorphosis of Plants.

Miller's reading looks good, but the reading of the night tonight is Christopher S. Parker's reading at University Book Store. Fighting for Democracy: Black Veterans and the Struggle Against White Supremacy in the Postwar South is about how black veterans had to take up arms against racist idiots twice—once abroad, and once at home.

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.

Brian Teare is at Open Books in Wallingford. Sight Map and The Room Where I Was Born are two books by Teare. He has also written a book called Pleasure. He has won more awards than you ever will. You can read some of his poetry here.

Michael Lavine is at Neumo's tonight. Grunge is a collection of photos of people from Seattle's grunge scene. It is a perfect opportunity to play "Find-the-Slats," which is like "Where's Waldo," but, you know, grungier.

And Nisi Shawl is at Elliott Bay Book Company. Shawl is a local author, book critic, and winner of the very worthwhile James Tiptree Jr. Award. Filter House is her new collection of stories. She plays with ideas of gender and sexuality in her sci-fi, which is something that usually gets swept under the rug to make way for big-breasted slave girls and manly space captains.

That would be the reading of the night, but we're all going to be at the Genius Awards tonight, so we'll have to hit up Nisi the next time she's reading in town.

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.

I will be unable to attend Slog Happy due to all the readings going on in Seattle tonight. But there will be many free books for you to take home and enjoy and hopefully review for Slog. Here are just a few:

First of all: We have a dust-jacketless copy of Stephen King's Under the Dome! I reviewed it here. You know you want it. Other prominent novels include The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Far North by Marcel Theroux, and The Mere Future, along with many other sci-fi, literary fiction, and fantasy novels.

Some non-fiction books include Tinsel, a study of America's Christmas obsession; Reasonable Men: The Birth of the National Enquirer; and A Heartbreak and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears.

Some funny books include the great Masterpiece Comics by R. Sikoryak (a book that is worth it for the Charlie Brown/Kafka's "Metamorphosis" mashup alone), and Logicomix, about Bertrand Russell.

Plus, as the kids say, many more. Get there early: I call "no dibsies!"

First up, in the University District, Lorraine McConaghy reads. If you're into war and stuff, the title Warship Under Sail: The USS Decatur in the Pacific West probably means something to you. So you should put down your plastic war-plane model and come to this reading. You can leave the camouflage jacket on; you'll fit right in. Over at the Henry, Gary Hill, who is a local artist, discusses his new book An Art of Limina: Gary Hill's Works and Writings. According to the presser, this reading "investigates relationships between words and electronic images." Perhaps Jen Graves has something to say about Hill; I don't know his work. Also on the UW campus is Lester R. Brown, the author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Brown believes that we can find a new economic path that is environmentally feasible.

Speaking of economic feasibility, Elliott Bay Book Company hosts Amanda Little. Little is the author of Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells—-Our Ride to the Sustainable Future, which is about how we are goddamned addicts who need just one more hit of fossil fuels.

Greg Bear is at University Book Store. Greg Bear. Bear is a local author who has written some cracking great sci-fi novels (Darwin's Radio is one such sci-fi novel). Mariposa, his newest, looks less sci-fi-ish than some of his others. It's about a shady corporation and veterans who are losing their emotions.

There will be a Suggests popping up soon about the reading of the night, so I don't want to spend too much time on it, but here are the details of the 12 Books Launch. The Sorrento Hotel is home to a new bookstore made up of twelve books, most of which have some sort of local interest. If you're staying in the hotel, you can order a copy of the books up to your room, like room service. Celebrating the launch tonight will be some local authors (Matt Briggs, John Roderick), a publisher explaining his new line of bootleg books (Matthew Stadler), and Bruce Benderson, whose Pacific Agony is a hilarious, smart new novel about a cynical New Yorker writing a guidebook to the Pacific Northwest. (I wrote a little about it here.) If literary fiction isn't your thing, I'd suggest you go to the Bear reading. I bet you'll enjoy yourself.

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.

Slog Tipper Brian lets us know that Towleroad found video of Kristen Wiig reading the poetry of Suzanne Somers. It really has to be heard to be believed:

If someone reads from the poetry of Suzanne Somers at Literary Death Match tonight, then I, as the Literary Merit Judge, will be forced to give them the highest score ever.

Tonight is the Literary Death Match at Re-Bar. Authors, including brand-new Stranger Genius Stacey Levine, will compete in front of judges, including Jonathan Evison and myself. The audience will get drunk and probably turn mean before the night is through. I hope you'll join me.

Besides that, you have some great choices tonight.

Dave Boling is at Queen Anne Books. Guernica is a "multigenerational family saga" set mostly during the Spanish Civil War, which, as we all know from Pan's Labyrinth, was a barrel of laughs. In other literary novels, Jennie Shortridge is at Third Place Books tonight. When She Flew is a novel about "a father and daughter living in the Oregon woods who find understanding in a policewoman."

Catherine Corman is at Elliott Bay Book Company. Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler's Imagined City is her newest book. It's a gorgeous book, too: Corman basically travels through L.A. taking photos of places that would appear in a Raymond Chandler novel. I believe there will be slides here tonight, so you can take a look at the photos before you invest in the book.

Malalai Joya reads at First Baptist Church tonight. Ms. Joya is the author of A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice. She is also the youngest person to ever be elected to Afghanistan's parliament. In other geopolitical book news, Mark Danner is at Town Hall. Danner is a foreign affairs journalist. Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War is about how the United States has been a real son of a bitch to the world at large.

And Lesley Hazleton is at the Sorrento Hotel this evening. Fifty bucks is relatively cheap for an evening of food and booze with Ms. Hazleton, who is the remarkable author of After the Prophet. The Sorrento has been host to some great, exciting stuff lately, and this reading looks like a great time.

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.

Slog Tipper Kristi notifies us about this "Experimental Contest" (Kristi calls it a "scam") on Tao Lin's blog:

the email address that paypals...the largest amount* of money by wednesday at 11 pm wins this 'experimental contest' (no amounts will be revealed until the end, and then only by email to those who 'participated,' and no amounts will be returned, as this isn't an 'auction,' but a kind of 'gamble'), gaining for themselves, their friends, and their family the items in the video below**

Here is the video with the prizes:

You can read the whole blog post (and get the e-mail address to enter the "contest") at Tao Lin's blog.

Stephen Majeski is up in the U District, giving a lecture titled U.S. Foreign Policy in Perspective: Clients, Enemies and Empire. Elsewhere in the U District, at University Book Store to be precise,
Brian Brett reads from his book Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life. It's about one day on his farm, which is for some reason named Trauma.

Two events at Third Place Books. The press release for Suzanne Selfors' reading from Coffee House Angel reads: "Teen girls! Come for cake and coffee with Suzanne Selfors, whose hero is not a vampire, but an angel!" Fat chance. That Edward is way too dreamy. Chef Jaden Hair will read after the Selfors reading.

In other cookbook readings, David Chang is at Spring Hill. Corey Kahler, who wrote wonderfully about cookbooks for this week's Stranger, says Chang's book Momofuku is totally fucking awesome. That is not a direct quote.

Queen Anne books is hosting David Wilma. His book Historic Photos of Puget Sound is a collection of photographs from as far back as the 1970s, which apparently now counts as "history." Elliott Bay Book Company hosts Jesse Katz. The Opposite Field is about how Katz took over his son's Little League organization and "found himself in a culturally rich, complex mix of worlds." There's also a reading at the Rendezvous in which artists will "reveal almost too much personal information" onstage tonight. That's not a selling point, but oh well.

But the reading of the night tonight is at the Barnes & Noble at University Village. Timothy Egan is a very good local non-fiction author. The Big Burn is his newest book, which is partially about Teddy Roosevelt. Egan reads at University Village tonight.

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.