MONDAY Daniel Gottlieb will be reading from Letters to Sam: A Grandfather’s Lesson on Love, Loss, and the Gifts of Life, which are much happier than his Letters to Comcast: Seriously, When The Hell Are You Guys Going to Have My Internet Hooked Up Because It’s Been Three Weeks For The Love of All that is Holy. Barnes & Noble, 4801 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda., at 7 p.m. TUESDAY Given the manifest inattention to the…

[Note: Last week, the comma that normally follows the word “Reader” in the title was inadvertently left off. Anyone who really feels strongly about that is invited to attend June Casagrande’s signing at the Wilson Boulevard Olsson’s in Court House this Wednesday at 7 p.m. She wrote a book about you, so eat your shoots and leaves and attend. 2111 Wilson.] MONDAY The Folger Shakespeare Library hosts Pulitzer prize-winning poet Charles Simic as he reads…

This week we saw Verizon’s first foray into graffiti advertising fail miserably, as the District levied fines totaling over $20,000 on the telecommunications giant for the illegal use of public space. It was also quite the week for George Mason University, whose students, faculty and administrators rallied around the team and went easy on class attendance, only to see it lose to Florida in its Final Four matchup. We reported on some Hill heavies…

Franklin Foer, a longtime writer for The New Republic, was recently named editor of the venerable political magazine. A fourth generation Washingtonian, he’s authored a book called, “How Soccer Explains the World,” (which we heartily recommend), and his writing has appeared in a host of publications, from The New York Times to Spin. Mr. Foer was good enough to take a few of our questions, on blogging, city life, and those cursed Chelski footballers. What’s…

MONDAY: >> We’ve been hearing an awful lot about certain journalists who’ve spent superfluous time in jail for ideals they supposedly believe in — but, before you make any contributions to that gravy train, why not hear from Marie-Helene Carleton, who’ll be in town discussing the travails of her filmmaker partner Micah Garen, who was taken hostage in Iraq in 2003. Even if you’re an avid news junkie, there’s still a lot you don’t know…