From the inbox:

Brookline Booksmith is pleased to announce that broadcasting legend Barbara Walters will be appearing at your favorite local independent bookstore on Thursday, May 22nd at 7pm.

She will be signing copies of her best-selling book Audition from 7-9pm.

If you would like to attend the signing, copies of Audition must be purchased through the Brookline Booksmith.

The Harvard Book Store has some lovely events and readings scheduled for early June -- the main one we're excited about is David Sedaris on June 6, though we just found out it was sold out! Oi. Obvs the HBS would have hosted the former Christmas elf at a larger venue -- like, say, the Orpheum?!? -- but due to the literary rock star's contractual obligations he can only read from his new book of pseduo-memoirish stories, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, in small locations.

“The world is getting hotter, the ice caps are melting, because man keeps saying to nature, Hey, our whole idea of a cozy future is to have jobs. That’s all we’ve got planned. What’s more, we will pursue this aim at any cost, even, paradoxically, if it means the eventual destruction of our workplace. Man says, Sacrifice industry and economy and jobs? For what? Future generations? I don’t even know those guys! I’ll tell you something for free ― it makes me ashamed that our species, which is so finely ennobled by its sacrifices, winds up sacrificing it all for the wrong things and comes off looking like a race of people who like to use their hair dryer while taking a bath .

Thanks to Brookline Booksmith for hosting the Nick Hornby reading

Just to make sure, we decided to wait until the Curse of the Hornbino had been demolished by Your 2007 Boston Red Sox before posting the rest of Nick Hornby's Q&A at the Devotion School in Brookline, where the patron saint of record-store geeks and football obsessives appeared last week to read from his so-called young-adult novel Slam, about a Tony Hawk-worshipping teenager named Sam who flees his hometown after knocking up his girlfriend.

If our posting schedule seems irregular in the next week or so, it's because we're really busy listening to "Save Ginny Weasley" on repeat and blushing over novel-length Harry Potter fan fiction that involves...naughtiness:

"Please stay."

Heavy breathing. Then a sigh. "Why would I stay, Potter? I'm sweaty, I'm filthy, and we have classes tomorrow."

Having taken meticulous notes and planned the novel during his cross-country travels, JACK KEROUAC wrote the first draft of On the Road in a three-week burst of creativity, taping sheets of paper together so they could run through his typewriter uninterrupted. After a cross-country exhibition tour, the original scroll has returned to Lowell’s Boott Cotton Mills Museum, where its display will be part of "ON THE ROAD IN LOWELL,” a festival of readings, musical performances, and art exhibits (see www.

The Nature of Photographs is stuffed with gorgeous prints, from classic images to contemporary pieces and found negatives, not to mention a smattering of work by STEPHEN SHORE, the book’s author and a pioneer in the field of color photography. Nature isn’t merely an collection of iconic pics, it’s a primer on the key elements that make a photograph work.

Friday night, March 16, Grub Street hosts one of their "Grub Gone . . ." parties. Tomorrow evening's theme: Grub Gone Silly. Besides being boozey affairs (free beer for anyone who brings a book to contribute to the Grub library!), the parties involve a few quick readings. Jonathan Ames, Kris Frieswick, and Leslie Talbot bring on the guffaws for this installment.

"Read late Amis -- maniacally alert, secular in timbre but religious in the fidelity of his observations -- and stay on your toes," writes James Parker in reference to Martin Amis's latest novel, House of Meetings, set in the deep, dark of Stalin's Russia. Amis came to Cambridge to read from the book, with our own Peter Kadzis giving the introduction.

In his introduction to Paul Auster's reading at the Brattle Theatre last night, poet and Phoenix contributor William Corbett compares Auster's lastest novel, Travels in the Scriptorium, to an episode of the Twilight Zone. In the opening of the book, Mr. Blank finds himself in an empty room, and begins to be interrogated by people, people who turn out to be characters he's created.

Sam Rosen stumbled across the Paper Cut Zine Library in Harvard Square earlier this fall because he was at a "speed friending" event in a neighboring room. "We were like 'whoa, what's this place about?'" he says. And so began his love for zines. He's a librarian at the Mount Auburn Street spot now ("anyone can be a librarian," he says), and he's organized one of the library's monthly benefits taking place this Sunday at 6 pm.

In between trying really hard not to nod off (whoever cranked up the heat at the Brattle, heads up -- it was hella sweaty in there), we took a general sense of great pleasure in sitting in a big room full of New Yorker dorks last night. Ah, NYer-heads are a great breed. The jolly Matthew Diffee, Drew Dernavich, Eric Lewis, and we <3 him long-time Phoenix cartoonist David Sipress were on hand to showcase the cream of their crap.

Aside from the Steve Almond/James Joyce dirty business at Great Scott that Nina will be attending (and we can't wait to hear what she thinks of Almond's recitation), here are four more options for your Wednesday. Two of them are naughty omg!

How did Tom Brady go from being a sixth-round draft pick to the Patriots’ star quarterback and one of football’s most celebrated players? Ah, the warm-fuzzy story of the underdog.

In letters to his wife Nora, James Joyce addresses her as “my naughty little fuckbird,” “my little cuntie,” and “my sweet little dirty farter.” And that’s the G-rated stuff. Tomorrow night, Steve Almond (who else?) leads a reading of Joyce’s filthy letters with a team of local writers and musicians; Hallelujah the Hills frontman Ryan Walsh, Hands and Knees, and the Juliet Kilo provide musical interludes to the literary raunch. That's at Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, in Allston.