Tonight, Portland author Monica Drake reads from her second novel, The Stud Book (Drake’s first novel, Clown Girl, was optioned by SNL’s Kristen Wiig). The Stud Book is often funny and always stridently unsentimental; every turn of the page is accompanied by a hot gust of honesty to the face. And if the climax feels like an unsatisfying way to say good-bye to the selfish, witty, willful women we’ve fallen in love with along the way? Well. Reproduction, by definition, has never been great with endings. (Vermillion, 1508 11th Ave, vermillionseattle.com, 7 pm, free)