An estimated 150 souls crowded into the Make-Out Room last night, for the last-ever edition of the Progressive Reading Series. Host Stephen Elliott announced that maybe they would start up again for the election in 2010, “after Obama is president,” to huge cheers. Standouts in the lineup were definitely Justin Chin, Michelle Tea, and the legendary Ishmael Reed, who has appeared at every single Litquake since the beginning, in Golden Gate Park in 1999. Big laughs came courtesy of political comedians Nato Green and Will Durst, and cartoons from Litquake’s Todd Zuniga. A great night closed with Bucky Sinister’s gritty and angelic ode to the now-closed Hunt’s Donut Shop.

Great crowds also turned out for Litquake-sponsored bookstore events. At the Booksmith, Armistead Maupin spoke about Christopher Isherwood, and sources tell us he “regaled us with a history of his relationship with Isherwood (from the first meeting with Armistead as the adoring juvenile to their later escapades at bars up and down the SoCal coast — with plenty of naughty bits).” The release of Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, at City Lights, was co-sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center, and drew a capacity crowd of over 60 fans. And Leslie Chang’s event at Book Passage was standing room only, with audience and author discussing Chinese labor conditions, policies, and culture, with many sharing their own personal stories.

Saturday night marks the infamous Lit Crawl through the Mission District. This year the literary invasion will  feature outdoor readings and music at Clarion Alley between 17th and 18th Streets, and Mission and Valencia. The first hour, from 6 to 7 p.m. features “Literature from the Gutter Up” readings, with emcee Bucky Sinister. People can sign up during this hour, to do their own reading at the Open Mic in the second hour, emceed by Beth Lisick. The final hour, from 8:30-9:30, will present six-word memoirs by a fleet of writers, including Lisa Brown, Elizabeth Bernstein, Daniel Handler, Ayelet Waldman, and Larry Smith from Smith Magazine, who co-edited the anthology Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. If this is your first Lit Crawl, here’s a tip on how to navigate the crawl and not die of starvation.

The show starts out with stylish opening titles featuring glimpses of real ads from the period—and a clinker: What’s Lucida Handwriting (1992) doing here? I usually consider the titles to be outside the world of the story, but considering all the period cues in these titles, this typeface, which was designed specifically for computer screens, is out of place. – critical appraisal of typefaces used in the hit TV show Mad Men.

Ithaca College Theatre is accepting donations of books and other reading materials to be sent free of charge to inmates across the country via the Ithaca-based organization Books thru Bars…The books most requested by prisoners are dictionaries, especially legal dictionaries and Spanish-English dictionaries. Other often-requested books include those on GED preparation; legal texts; books by African American, Native American and Hispanic authors; books on African American, Native American, and Hispanic history; health texts; and Spanish language books. – from the Ithaca Journal.