Is everyone already leaving town for the holidays? Our calendar here at Reader, Meet Author is looking a little lonely right now. If you have any tips or complaints that we’re not posting all the awesome poetry readings, feel free to email us. MONDAY: Caroline Kennedy will be at Politics and Prose to share the Christmas prose most dear to her. It’s all in her latest book, A Family Christmas, which includes tributes to Irving…

>> It’s the first night of Hanukkah, so if you’re not celebrating with family and friends at home, consider catching the Sinai Mountain Boys, a Maryland combo that melds the speedy strumming and twanging of bluegrass with Orthodox Jewish melodies. They’ll be offering an hour of unique sounds for free beginning at 6 p.m. at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage. >> The Washington Jewish Film Festival presents Diane Crespo and Stefan Schaefer’s Arranged, the…

MONDAY: Cass R. Sunstein will be at Politics and Prose to discuss the book Worst-Case Scenarios. No, it’s not one of those books that gives you tips on how to survive if you wake up next to someone whose name you don’t remember or how to retrieve a candy bar stuck in the lunchroom vending machine. It’s actually about scary stuff, like nuclear bombs in suitcases or avian flu. We prefer learning how to jump…

MONDAY: Peter J. Gomes, pastor of Harvard’s Memorial Church, will be at Politics and Prose to read from his book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. Gomes believes Christians should be heeding the messages of Jesus, not objectifying the man. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Washington Post literary critic Michael Dirda wants you to know it’s OK to love Fowler’s Modern English Usage. How else would you learn that the “n” in damning, when it means “fatally conclusive,”…

Salad days are usually something we look back on with a mix of nostalgia and embarrassment, but the folks at Chop’t Salad are embracing them from the get go and celebrating them as soon as they kick off. How? Free salad. Penn QuarterChinatown’s newest resident is throwing the doors of their first Washington location wide open today with free salad for all who stop by. The idea behind Chop’t is customization. With a bevy of…

MONDAY: Makes Me Wanna Holler and What’s Going On author Nathan McCall will be at the Olsson’s in Penn Quarter to read from his new novel, Them. It might sound more like science-fiction than a Marvin Gaye song, but it’s about the complex relationship that develops between two neighbors in downtown Atlanta. 7 p.m. Robert Kuttner, founder and editor of the American Prospect, will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his new book, The…

Pour Out a Forty for the Childe Harold The pilgrimage is at its end. After 40 years nestled on 20th street NW in Dupont Circle, the Childe Harold has closed its doors for good. A victim of increasing rents and lessors unwilling to negotiate, the Harold is one more example of how the face of Dupont Circle is ever-changing. The venerable institution held a lot of history, partly because of its ties to the music…

MONDAY: Jerome Groopman — a New Yorker staff writer, best-selling author and professor at Harvard Medical School — will be at the Historic Sixth & I Synagogue to discuss his latest collection of essays, How Doctors Think. If they’re like our favorite television doctor, it’s probably “What’s the best way to humiliate my employees today?” 7 p.m. $6 TUESDAY: Min Jin Lee will be at the Johns Hopkins University-SAIS Bernstein-Offit Building to read from her…

MONDAY: Peter Behrens will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his latest book, The Law of Dreams. Maybe Behrens can analyze our reoccurring dream where we keep getting lost while driving down some featureless freeway. Wait … His book is about a young man roaming the Irish countryside in 1847? Good thing we read that before we asked about the part where we’re naked. 7:30 p.m. TUESDAY: The one and only Dave Eggers will…

MONDAY: We apparently didn’t pay enough attention in history class, because we never knew Alice Roosevelt Longworth was such a bad girl. The daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, Alice married then Speaker of the House Nicholas Longworth and had a child by Sen. William Borah of Idaho. Stacy A. Cordery will be at Politics and Prose with all the juicy details found in her latest book Alice . 7 p.m. TUESDAY: New York Times columnist…