Happy choosing Seattleities, you really can’t go wrong with tonight’s options.

• In a magazine blessed with incredible writers, Atul Gawande’s pieces in the New Yorker always manage to be stand-outs. Writing frequently about medicine, the surgeon’s prose is exceptionally crafted. Tonight, you can hear him read at the Central Library. 7 pm, free. [SPL]
• It would be easy to dismiss Arctic Monkeys as a pure phenomenon of an overactive hype machine if the young Sheffield quartet wasn’t so damn good as what they do. With their second album, they avoid a predictable sophomore slump with another collection of tightly-crafted, rhythmically-urgent, and lyrically-engaging tracks. Openers Be Your Own PET threaten to make tonight’s lineup competitive with last night’s in terms of high energy, exhausting, but thrilling musical experiences. 8pm, SOLD OUT, but it’s worth mentioning that the first time I saw Arctic Monkeys was after begging strangers for a spare ticket on a rainy Leidseplein alleyway. I got both a ticket and a swollen lip from a collision with an English girl’s skull in the churning Amsterdam dance pit. So, I’m just saying that it might be worth your time to test your ticket karma. [showbox]
• When it rains, it pours. This week is just thick with choices that are better than we deserve. If you can’t make it to Arctic Monkeys, there’s more brit-punk down the street with the Kooks 8:30p, $12 [crocodile] and insouciant dance-rock that will leave you just as sweaty from !!! just up the hill. 8p, $13adv [neumos].