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.Your Booksmith receipt for the purchase of the book is your ticket to the signing line.

This is a book signing only. Barbara will be only signing copies of her new book. In the interest of time, no photos or personalizations will be allowed. For any further questions, please all the Booksmith at 617-566-6660. If you are unable to make the signing, but would still like a signed copy, place an order with us today for no extra charge by calling the store at 617-566-6660.

 GO TEAM BARBARA! Her memoirs are so much dishier than the whole Al divorce and nip-tuck surgery. We mean, really.

“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 . . . Yes, the truth of the matter is there has yet to be a great democratic nation because there has yet to be a great bunch of people.”

So runs a sample from Steve Toltz’s debut novel, A Fraction of the Whole, which, from the excerpts I’ve read, is galloping, ranty, colorful. It’s also, according to some background materials, a dysfunctional family story, a funny-serious take-down of media and politics, a delve into the human psyche, and an articulation of “the near-impossibility of living sincerely amidst other people.” For more of a taste, watch a haunting little video on Toltz’s Australian publisher’s web site.

Comparisons to the Pessls and Shteyngarts and Safran Foers have started (don’t hold it against him?). And the backstory to the writing sounds like a novel itself ― the Australian Toltz wrote the novel while living in Europe, above acrobats in Barcelona, sharing a studio in Paris, and the book arrived on an editor’s desk wholly unsolicited.

Toltz reads from A Fraction of the Whole this coming Presidents’ Day, Monday, February 18, at 7 pm at Brookline Booksmith.   

Editor DAVID FOSTER WALLACE lead a formidable group of contributors  in a discussion of this year's answer to The Best American Essays. And tonight, Elaine Scarry, Jerald Walker, and Robert Atwan will bring their work to the reading stage. So if you've already puzzled over this week's "Modern Love," caught up on all your old New Yorkers, and let your Atlantic Monthly subscription accidentally expire, tonight is your night. That's at 7 pm at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | free | 617.566.6660.

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. In the video above, Hornby discusses the Farrelly Bros adaptation of Fever Pitch, his relationship with Tony Hawk, the cultural significance of skateboarding, and why Slam indulges in a bit of teenage time traveling. Enjoy.

Previously
BOSTONPHOENIX: Brit Wits: As Nick Hornby and Irvine Welsh face 50, two of Brit Lit’s standard-bearers stare down middle age in very different ways.

Tonight!

Steve Almond, Laura Dave, and editor Jenni Ferarri-Adler read from Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone. Twenty-six writers (including Nora Ephron, Ann Patchett, and Haruki Murakami) reflect on their passion for food and solitude. It's probably okay if you bring snacks to the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

TREVOR CORSON has a thing for sea life. His first book, The Secret Life of Lobsters, began as an essay in The Best American Science Writing. Now, he’s turning his attention from Maine crustaceans to “the fast food of Old Tokyo” with The Zen of Fish (click for an excerpt). Corson, a reporter and magazine editor who’s fluent in Japanese, presents the cultural history and science behind sushi through the eyes of Kate Murray and her fellow students at the California Sushi Academy. Not only does he elaborate on how the original concept of sushi became bastardized by America, he provides an insider’s tour of Murray’s three-month apprenticeship — all the while inserting delicious tidbits on the behind-the-scenes characters of sushi preparation. Corson reads and signs at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

We first became enthralled by Audacia Ray’s new book because it boasted a cover with numerical code arranged in the form of an ass. Bloody brilliant, if you ask us. Of course, the inside worked for us as well. Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration is a seriously painstaking peek into the way that women have/are using the internet to explore their sexuality and in some instances getting paid to do so. Ray, a former sex worker, covers the gamut in her interviews — sex bloggers, online escorts, online daters, cammers, and more.

In the following Q&A, the author, emailing from New Amsterdam where she was due to give a talk at the Summer Institute on Sexuality and Culture (among other things, we presume), chats about her favorite sex blogs, how she answers questions about what she does for a living, and porn websites that may or may not be demeaning to women.

Q: If somebody asked what you did for a living, what exactly would you tell them? Would it change depending on who asked the question?

A: I’m always straight-forward about what I do for a living: I’m an editor, writer, researcher, blogger, curator, and filmmaker who works in sex. I usually like to leave the conversation kind of open-ended and let people ask questions if they have them or gloss over it if they don’t want to know.

Q: I'm wondering what prompted you to write this book. Has there been very much research done into this sort of thing?

A: Most of the books about sexuality and the internet so far tend to be either kind of fluffy how-to’s about hooking up and using technology for naughtiness, or really heavy-hitting clinical studies of Internet sex addiction (though the jury is still out on whether the latter actually exists). I wanted to write a book that was a critical analysis of what’s happening with female sexuality online — both good and bad — but I also wanted it to be fun and readable. I think it’s also significant that I am part of many of the communities I write about — that’s definitely an added dimension to the whole thing.

Q: Tell me a little bit about your academic background.

A: I just finished my MA in American Studies at Columbia University this spring. I also have a BA in Cultural Studies from Eugene Lang College. I got pretty fascinated with sexuality when I was an undergraduate, though some of my academic interest was a bit of a cover for my naughty side. That said, I love both information about sex and sex itself.

Q: Do you think that the internet gave birth to the sexy nerd thing going on right now?

A: The Internet didn’t create the sexy nerd, but it definitely opened up the possibilities for her. It’s kind of weird and funny to me that knowing a lot about computers and the Internet has actually become a cool thing.

Q: What are two of your favorite sex blogs?

A: I don’t read as many personal sex blogs as I used to. These days two of the sex-related blogs that I look at the most are Dirty Found ( http://dirtyfound.typepad.com) which is basically an online collection of dirty pictures, notes and drawings that people find and send in. Also, the blog by filmmaker Tony Comstock, The Art and Business of Making Erotic Films (http://www.comstockfilms.com/blog/tony/)

Q: What do you think about websites like Bang Bros, and other sites that are demeaning to women?

A: This is a bit complicated because there are really two dimensions to porn and the degree to which it is demeaning — there is what you see (the performance) and there is what you don’t see (the production). Just because a scene looks demeaning doesn’t mean that the woman participating felt demeaned or that the male performers or production company were nasty and abusive to her off-camera. People like doing and watching all kinds of sex. On the other hand, there is definitely ugly stuff that happens in the porn industry, and that shouldn’t be downplayed.

Get ready to talk dirty with Audacia this Thursday, June 7th, at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline |7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Brookline Booksmith hosts a double bill with both ANDREW O’HAGAN and CLAIRE MESSUD reading from their fourth novels. The Scottish-born O’Hagan’s Be Near Me is narrated by David Anderton, an Oxford-educated Catholic priest who obtains a parish near his elderly mother in working-class Scotland. His “posh” behavior and cultural tastes alienate his parishioners, and then there’s his relationship with a young boy. The characters in Messud’s The Emperor’s Children don’t quite self-destruct the way Anderton does, but they’re living in post-9/11 New York City with career issues, broken dreams, and media obsessions. Religion and social satire rule at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

AMY FUSSELMAN was raped by her babysitter’s husband when she was four years old. In 8: A Memoir, she forgoes describing the violation in favor of chronicling the snowballing fallout it had on every aspect of her life. Her debut, The Pharmacist’s Mate (click for an excerpt), was a series of vignettes and musings on the death of her father and her own pregnancy; 8 — which is named after the figure eights she skated as a child — strives for a similarly unfiltered intimacy, as Fusselman recalls her experiences with her rapist (whom she refers to as “my pedophile”), the birth of her son, and her foray into alternative healing methods. But the real revelation here is Fusselman’s tender and often fearless voice. She’ll read and sign at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Given all the books on Princess Di in the pipeline for next season, it seems fitting that Salon founder DAVID TALBOT has gone against the grain to focus on America’s version of a royal family. Brothers: A Hidden History of the Kennedy Years is an in-depth look at John and Robert that sheds fresh insight on their administration and their ambitions. Interviews with more than 150 persons close to the brothers plus the release of concealed government documents put Talbot in a prime position to uncover new truths. The Kennedy saga lives on Tuesday at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Boston | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

We’ve had our eye on writer-on-the-verge NATHAN ENGLANDER since devouring his debut short-story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (click for an excerpt). Englander, a former Orthodox Jew, travels from Jerusalem to read and sign copies of his first novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, in which he weaves humor and desolation into a story of fathers and sons during Argentina’s Dirty War. To suffer is to be blessed at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Boston | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Read Dana Kletter's Ministry review here.

Three young writers are forgoing good manners and decent content tonight for “BAD BEHAVIOR 2007.” JAMI ATTENBERG (Instant Love), JANICE ERLBAUM (Girlbomb, A Halfway Homeless Memoir), and WENDY MCCLURE (I’m Not the New Me) have highlighted the smuttiest phrases, dirtiest character developments, and filthiest of plot climaxes in their respective tomes. And God help them if their moms show up, because they’ll be reading their chosen passages aloud to you as part of a Brookline Booksmith–sanctioned evening of scandal. Literary-minded HALLELUJAH THE HILLS, who recently penned a real version of “Monster Eyes” (a song Jonathan Lethem fictionalized in his new rock-and-roll novel You Don’t Love Me Yet), will judge the girls in their lewd-excerpt battle and perform afterward. We don’t know what the prize is, but feel free to get your mind in the gutter at Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, Boston | 617.734.4502.

WHAT IS THIS THING?

A Circle Is a Balloon and Compass Both: Stories About Human Love is BEN GREENMAN’s third book, and this New Yorker staffer has chosen the most wonderful and infuriating of human emotions for his muse. The current editor of “Goings On About Town,” Greenman has a taste for both the profoundly cultural and the inherently quirky, and the tales he tells in Circle share these themes: romance, sentiment, sex, and heartbreak are extolled with humor and several dips into experimental form. Love conquers all when he reads and signs at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline| 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

The author of the bestselling The Perfect Storm turns out another mindbender with A Death in Belmont. SEBASTIAN JUNGER grew up in Belmont, and he calmly inquires into the facts surrounding the murder of Belmont resident Bessie Goldberg and its possible link to the Boston Strangler killing spree. A plot this chilling could be written only by someone who was acquainted with the confessed Strangler himself. Junger reads and signs at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Boston | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Mrs. Andy Richter, a/k/a actress and writer SARAH THYRE, was dubbed the “family liar” by her father almost as soon as she learned to talk. In her attempt to live up to this infamous nickname, high jinks and hilarity ensued, and she resurrects all her old raunchy anecdotal ghosts in the new memoir Dark at the Roots, which comes packaged with breathless plugs by the likes of David Sedaris and David Rakoff. Take an absurd trip down memory lane with Thyre at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Boston | March 26 at 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660 | or at the Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Ave, Cambridge | March 27 at 7 pm | free | 617.499.2000.

Emerson creative writing teacher and Post Road co-founder JAIME CLARK once went through a phase where he believed himself to be Ferris Bueller. He’s come full circle in editing Don’t You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, which includes essays by Elizabeth Searle and John McNally. Clarke appears at the Coolidge Corner Theatre for a signing event that includes a screening of FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF and a panel discussion with his Molly Ringwald–obsessed contributors | 290 Harvard St, Boston | 7 pm | $9 | 617.566.6660.

If you’re hankering for yet another tale of an adolescent loner with major family issues, consider dipping into The God of Animals. New writer ARYN KYLE pulls off a YA/adult-fiction crossover with her tale of a young girl living on a Colorado ranch who’s fixated on a drowned classmate and then finds herself spending extra time with her unpopular English teacher. Sounds to us like an interesting plot mix of Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia and Jennifer Egan’s Look at Me. Decide for yourself when Kyle reads and signs at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Boston | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Our obsession with Radar (now in its third print incarnation thanks to yet another relaunch) notwithstanding, we know the voice of its Fresh Intelligence blog, or Gawker, for that matter, couldn’t have existed without Spy. KURT ANDERSEN co-founded the original media/celebrity/politics satire rag, but he’s written a surprisingly serious historical novel called Heyday. The book’s protagonist? A 19th-century English aristocrat whose fascination with all things American includes a prostitute named Polly. Yeah, well, no one having anything to do with those “Separated at Birth” and “Celebrity Math” features could ever be too serious. Andersen reads and signs at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

In Him Her Him Again the End of Him, former Saturday Night Live writer and current New Yorker humor scribe PATRICIA MARX offers up a close study on how far a girl will go to get over her hideously self-indulgent college boyfriend. Marx’s unnamed enraptured narrator falls in love with Eugene, a fellow Cambridge University student who has a wandering eye and an ego big enough to fill a singles cruise ship. Will our girl triumph over her obsession, complete her graduate degree, and meet a nice boy who doesn’t treat her like shit? Will she make it on her own as a writer in New York and swear off men forever? Or will she win over the cad/bore/love of her life, who maybe isn’t so bad after all? Find out when Marx redefines the meaning of what it is to be a narcissistic jerk face at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

KEN KALFUS’s latest black comedy pegs the September 11 fallout against the consequences of small-scale domestic terrorism — better known as the nasty urban divorce. A Disorder Peculiar to the Country follows Joyce and Marshall Harriman as they sue for custody of their two children and their Brooklyn Heights co-op. Both are required to live there till a settlement is reached, so it’s no surprise that when the planes hit the World Trade Center, each rejoices in the possibility that the other has perished. As America struggles to save face and fight back, so do the Harrimans: seducing best friends, sabotaging weddings, faking anthrax scares, etc. Kalfus sweet-talks a national disaster into an intensely funny family portrait, and he reads and signs at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Journalist and short-story writer ELIZABETH GILBERT had it all — a cool career, a husband, and a nice house in the ’burbs — but she wanted none of it. Following a nasty divorce and a mind-numbing period of depression, Gilbert went to Italy and stuffed herself with the finest food and wine she could find. Then she moved on to an ashram in Mumbai for endless hours of meditation. Finally to Bali, where she studied with a medicine man and let things get hot and heavy with a new guy. It’s all chronicled in Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. Gilbert has written quirky pieces about cowboy saloons and her search for the Last American Man. In her writing about herself, however, her prose becomes truly irresistible. She’s at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Hey pop-culture savvy kit kats. We made an embarrassing mistake over at our other gig. Silly us!

To recap:

Former Guided by Voices bassist and biographer JAMES GREER was married engaged to Sonic Youther* Kim Deal, he used to write for Spin back when it put bands other than My Chemical Romance on the cover, he’s originally from Boston, and his first work of fiction, Artificial Light, is meta to the extreme, with three books-within-a-book forming the story’s ambitious narrative plus a character named Kurt C- who fronted for a band Greer refers to as N. Despite the prose tricks and the unconventional style, Greer treats the Midwest’s alternative-music scene with the sort of seriousness that might impress even C. Love. He reads at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

*Of the Pixies and the Breeders, not Sonic Youth. Snap!

KIM DEAL:
Was Engaged, Not Married, to Greer

KIM GORDON: 
Sonic Youther, Thurston Moore's boo

We regret the error, sincerely, and we've sufficiently been shamefaced by someone who felt the need to write in and tell us we made him wince -- wince! -- as a result of us mixing up the coolest Kim in rock music with the other coolest Kim in rock music. We will now get our head out of our ass and go memorize every Breeders song ever written as penance. Totes.

Cambridge-based novelist ALICE HOFFMAN s one of those deeply psychological writers who we depend on to bore into the individual minds of an ill-fated family. Once there, she unearths the sort of romantic desperation and weird, mystical secrets that most households would do anything to keep hidden. For her 19th novel to date, Skylight Confessions, Hoffman focuses on just how much an event of complete randomness can determine one’s fate. At 17, Arlyn Singer decides she’ll marry the next man who walks down the street. Too bad it results in a completely screwed up union, a physical (but not spiritual) death, and several dysfunctional kids raised in a creepy Connecticut house called The Glass Slipper. Court destiny when Hoffman reads and signs at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newton | Jan 16 @ 7 pm | free | 617.244.6619 and at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | Jan 17 @ 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

It’s not that we need Hollywood gossip to lead a fulfilled life -- but it sure does help keep things interesting when taking back overdue library books registers as an 8.8 on our personal Richter scale of scandal. What a shame JAKE HALPERN doesn’t quite see it our way. This frequent All Things Considered commentator explores the dark side of celebrity in Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America’s Favorite Addiction, the research for which included partying with professional assistants (we can’t prove they included Lindsay Lohan’s former one, who is now said to be happier working for Jessica Biel) and making nice with Rod Stewart’s biggest fan (could it be his daughter Kim, formerly engaged to a certain Laguna Beach player with a horrible singing voice?) Build a roaring bonfire out of your US Weekly back issues and revive what’s left of your brain cells when Halpern reads at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Celebrate “A YEAR OF POETRY” at Brookline Booksmith with famous local scribe and BU Creative Writing prof ROBERT PINSKY, the Phoenix’s own LLOYD SCHWARTZ, 11 other local poets, plus Alhambra’s Poetry Calendar 2007 editor SHAFIQ NAZ. What would the next 365 days of your life be without some free verse and iambic pentameter? The gang will read and sign their own works and read from those of the masters at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

And now, for a fun game we're stealing from our super-special OTD friends. We'll call this one Odd Couples Part III: Separated-At-Birth Poet Laureates: 

Just ignore the haircut because obvs if you Google the Pinsky you'll find a ton of pics of him with a floppy mop. However:

1. Smoldering "Come hither, I'm an artist of sorts and I can caress your soul" eyes. Check.
2. A chin so square you could bounce a penny off it. Check.
3. Same schnoz. Check.
4. On the brink of an "I know it all" smirk.
5. Holy hotmess eyebrows. Check.

Yup. When we're right, we're right.

Brookline Booksmith dedicates an evening to literary zeitgeist with a killer double bill. First up is local academic LEORA LEV, whose Enter at Your Own Risk: The Dangerous Art of Dennis Cooper is the first critical collection of essays on the author of the George Miles novels (Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, Period), which typify his wall-of-assault psychosexual prose. Enter includes a never-before-published piece by William S. Burroughs as well as essays by Michael Cunningham, John Waters, and Pitchfork and Village Voice contributor BRANDON STOSUY, who knows a thing or two about NYC’s erstwhile avant-garde literary community, having compiled photographs, old poems, short stories, and work from journals, ’zines, and magazine covers to chronicle 18 years in Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, which doubles as a visual and written subculture archive. Accounting for both the recognizable — like Dennis Cooper — and forgotten figures who ran in NYC’s literary bohemia, Up Is Up is part gallery, part cultural map. Get downtown with Lev and Stosuy at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

THE HOSTESS WITH THE MOSTEST

Not everybody hearts AMY SEDARIS (particularly reviewers of her latest film, Strangers with Candy), but we’ve been glued to the trajectory of her career ever since reading about her bizarre lifestyle in brother David’s essays. Amy’s first solo book project, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, harks back to the days when a hostess’s duties were “charmingly old-fashioned, like courtship or back-alley abortions.” Her tongue may be stapled to her cheek, but I Like You does come with practical advice and recipes -- even if some etiquette not-to-dos would make Ms. Emily Post roll over, and then projectile-vomit, in her grave. You can ask her about that and about her imaginary live-in boyfriend, Ricky, when she reads at Borders Books and Music, 10-24 School St, Boston | 5:30 pm | free | 617.557.7188, or at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | 9:30 pm | $3 | 617.499.2012.

FACIST DREAMS

Leslie Epstein, director of the Boston University Creative Writing Program and an wonderful novelist in his own right (we lurved San Remo Drive but unforch don't have time to tell you more about the dude right now -- Google him, the answers are all on the Internets) will be reading from his latest, The Eighth Wonder of the World, at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | Free | 617.566.6660. Read Dana Kletter's Phoenix review here.

Option I:

AMONG THE BELIEVERS
In the vibrant San Francisco literary scene, you haven’t made it unless you can play six degrees (or less) to David Eggers. HEIDI JULAVITS can do it in just two. She edits the Believer with author Vendela Vida, who’s married to Eggers, the force behind McSweeney’s and the student writing center 826 Valencia. Anyway, Julavits’s third novel, The Uses of Enchantment, traces the aftermath of 16-year-old Mary’s alleged abduction from a New England prep school and her subsequent push into therapy. Everyone from Michael Chabon to A.M. Homes praises Julavits’s gifts as a prose stylist and says this book is her best yet; find out for yourself when she reads at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St, Newton | 7:30 pm | free | 617.244.6619.

Option II:

GIVE IT YOUR BEST
Another year, another “best of” essay collection. Yawn. Well, Best of American Essays 2006 guest editor LAUREN SLATER has selected “birthing, dying, and all the business in between” as the theme this go-round, so this isn’t your usual batch of self-reflective reflections. Contributors include newcomer Laurie Abraham and her “Kinsey and Me” plus guaranteed-to-please veterans like SUSAN ORLEAN, who chronicles her hunt for a stolen border collie. Orlean will read along with Slater and series editor ROBERT ATWAN at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Given that sequels have become almost more common than originals, it’s no wonder that MICHAEL TOLKIN is attempting to get back in the game with a decade-late follow-up to his satire The Player. In The Return of the Player, old Griffin Mill is down to his last $6 million. He’s also got erectile dysfunction and the hots for his ex-wife, and he’s paralyzed by his fear that the world will end before he can escape to his very own private island. He needs more cool cash for this last, so a bank robbery is clearly in order. Tolkin dishes on Hollywood at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

ELSEWHERE:
A shitton of celebs made cameos in Robert Altman's adaptation of The Player.
Listen to NPR's Day to Day review of The Player.

Morgan Spurlock did it with Super Size Me and later 30 Days on FX. Now, rather than gorging on McDonalds to see if it has adverse effects, Seattle public radio commentator JON MOE decided to hang out with a bunch of Republicans for a month straight. Conservatize Me: How I Tried to Become a Righty with the Help of Richard Nixon, Sean Hannity, Toby Keith, and Beef Jerky is the result of his month-long immersion in Conservative Country. Moe visited a trancendentalist church, discussed issues with National Review editor Rich Lowry, and spent down time at the Regan museum and a gun-range to discover whether his decidedly liberal values are capable of a sudden turnaround. There’s no shock-and-awe transformation here, but Moe will share what he learned at Barnes & Noble at Boston University, 660 Beacon St, Boston | 7 pm | Free | 617.267.8484.

Also tomorrow, and also free, a panel talk at the Coolidge Corner Theatre and the Brookline Booksmith: (via Coolidge.org)

"Ever wonder what authors think about movies based on their books? Or, why moviemakers took your favorite novel and turned the girl into a boy, killed the dog, or added a love interest? Do authors get any say in the matter? Well, they're about to, albeit after the fact. And a moviemaker will tell us why changes are made when a story moves from one medium to another.

The NO, BUT I SAW THE MOVIE panel will be moderated by Lois Lowry, author of The Giver, which is currently being adapted for film. The panel will include two other children’s authors whose books have been portrayed on screen -- Phyllis Naylor, Newbery Award winning author of Shiloh, and Newbery Honoree Natalie Babbitt, author of Tuck Everlasting -- along with Randy Testa of Walden Media LLC, the company that has produced such adaptations as Beacuse of Winn Dixie, Hoot, Holes, How to Eat Fried Worms, and The Chronicles of Narnia, among others."

Seriously great line-up of YA authors. This is not to be missed, especially if your copy of The Giver is as well-worn as ours. Or if you get really pissed off about movie adaptations of incredible YA/children's lit books. Tuck Everlasting, a gut-wrenching YA novel that somehow involved a very adult-ish love story, did not a have fantastic book-to-film adaptation (though, we enjoyed it anyway -- Alexis Bledel was a really good Winnie). Hopefully The Giver will fare better, because we totally heart that book like whoa.

A long time ago, when we were temping in an office that reduced us to a trained data-entry monkey, the only way we could halt the onset of a mental breakdown was to stream archived episodes of NPR’s This American Life off the internerd. It was in this way that we discovered the delightfully snarky DAVID RAKOFF, who not only dresses better than like-minded contemporary David Sedaris but often delivers the acidic wit with 10 times the panache. And then there’s his Don’t Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems, which, lets face it, kicks major subtitle ass. Nobody’s off the hook in Rakoff’s essays — not even Karl Lagerfield. He’s at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

STREAM our fave Rakoff contributions to TAL:
1. Promised Land: He does a 20-day fast to see if it brings him any form of enlightenment. Weird and disturbing things come out of his body.
2. Meet the Pros: He visits his dream job, the craft department at Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Quite literally, one of the funniest things we've ever heard.
3. Office Politics: He's an editorial assisant at a NYC publishing house, but his boss keeps calling him a secretary. Major dramarama.

Mark Z. Danielewski’s debut House of Leaves – with its unsettling text patterns (scrunched letters, upside-down words, sentences that ran diagonal, blank pages, black pages), its unsettling narrator interaction, and, most of all its unsettling – no, terrifying -- image of an ever-expanding blackness -- ranks as one of the most psychically haunting books I’ve read. Sort of a Twin Peaksy horror show, existentionally creepy and unconventional.

Unconventional also describes Only Revolutions, his second novel, just out, which he’ll be rotating – err – reading from tonight. The book starts at both ends. It’s told by two 16 year-old lovers, Hailey and Sam, over the course of a hundred years. Lists of historic events, all suggested by readers of Danielewski’s web site, line the margins of the pages. It’s suggested that you read eight pages one way, flip the book over and around, and read eight pages the other way. I’ve done six rotations, so I’m close to fifty pages into it. And so far, it’s more Leaves of Grass than House of Leaves – exuberant, exultant, with all sorts of language acrobatics. Does the writing warrant the effort? I’m withholding judgment at the moment. But I haven’t stopped rotating yet. And I’m curious to see how Danielewski will handle it tonight, when he reads at 7 pm at the Brookline Booksmith.

Elsewhere:

Danielewski's little sister is Poe, and she made an album to accompany House of Leaves. It's called Haunted.

Read This Now

In Jennifer Egan's first novel, Look at Me, it was difficult to identify with 35-year-old Charlotte Swenson, a bitchy, beautiful Manhattan model who’d been disfigured in a car accident, and whose unnerving sense of entitlement was outdone only by her unmendable emotional fractures. That didn’t stop it from being short-listed for the 2001 National Book Award: Egan has a knack for keeping your rapt attention even with the most unlikable of narrators. Danny, the main character of The Keep, is another New York hipster with a bit of an ax to grind. We meet him just as he arrives at a mediæval castle in Eastern Europe, broke and friendless, on the invitation of his psychologically damaged yet supposedly "recovered" cousin. Heavy paranoia and gothic imagery are the obvious hooks, but Egan’s irresistibly modern prose and effortless POV cuts are what will leave you begging for more when she reads tomorrow at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

BTdubs, we just finished reading The Keep last night. And we're gonna have to go ahead and call it one of our fave new books this year. It's the ultimate recipe for a delicious read: love, mystery, death, hipsters, prisoners in creative writing classes, and European castles. Do not walk, but run, to the bookstore.

ELSEWHERE:
There's a long list of fantastic reviews over at Jennifer Egan dot com
Enjoy your stay at The Keep hotel

Gloom patrol: Every Visible Thing lures The Crow fans with its jacket art

Girl next door:
Lisa Carey doesn't need black lipstick to write dark

No matter how you cut it, somewhere between ages 12-18, you’re guaranteed to enjoy at least a couple of “Hell years.” Emotional breakdowns are unavoidable, parental conflicts are routine, and the opposite sex is a confusing, terrifying force to be reckoned with. Lisa Carey, a Boston College grad and author of the much-adored Love in the Asylum, is no stranger to the pitfalls of adolescence. Every Visible Thing, her fourth novel, follows the Furey family as siblings Lena and Owen come of age. And they have more than typical teen angst to contend with, since their older brother’s disappearance and the paralyzing grief that his absence has brought push them and their parents down lonely paths of self-destruction. Carey’s lush prose ensures that we’ll have no choice but to watch it all unfold; she reads Thursday, Aug 31 at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.739.6002.

Marisha Pessl: Hot & High-Rollin'

Book critics and the lit bloggers are all a-buzz over the huge cash advance Marisha Pessl was paid for her debut, Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Despite what most agree is a disappointing, rocky start, the novel blooms into an addictive, Nobokov-esqe (and god knows Word Up will sink its teeth into anything Nabokovian--seriously, anything) thriller about a boarding school with a sinister past. Comparisons to Donna Tartt’s excellent The Secret History (another fave) are well-justified, and the Jonathan Safran Foer references (Nina hearts JSF, but we've grown bored of his wunder-kid status--bring on the fresh meat!) make sense, too. Pessl employs a series of (some might say gimmicky) narrative tricks to spellbound readers, and she’s the latest doe-eyed literary marvel to watch. Go see her tomorrow night at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Ave, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

Now that our BFF Ash is wasting away, we feel a new girl-crush on Marisha coming on...

ELSEWHERE:
* NYTBR: "Whoever coined the phrase 'everybody loves a winner' probably wasn’t one. When the news came out that a distractingly pretty actress, playwright and Barnard College graduate named Marisha Pessl, only 27, had sold her first book (which she also illustrated)...for a substantial sum, the pick-a-little, talk-a-little publishing blog brigade went into conniptions."
* Salon: "Special Topics, for all its overeager freshman infelicities, is a real novel, one of substance and breadth, with an arresting story and that rarest of delights, a great ending."
* The Globe: "Part mystery, part suspense, and part psychological drama, this is, at its heart, a book about relationships--both real and imagined--and the desperate need to belong."

"When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it. There is a kind of mysticism to writing. Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have. I enjoy the freedom of the blank page. You have to respect the mysticism of writing; you're always going to learn things that will work subconsciously and stuff that won't. You can't tear yourself apart with it either. If you become too self-conscious about it, it shows up in the work, so you've got to enjoy it as well."

A few weeks ago we gave you the heads up that Irvine Welsh would be rolling into town to promote his latest, The Bedroom Secrets of Master Chefs. Your obligatory reminder, since he's a literary supastar, and also, we'd hate for you to miss it just so you can sit home and wait for the hella anti-climactic Real World finale. He'll be at the Coolidge Corner Theatre tomorrow night at 6 pm and tix are only 2 bucks. Reserve them over the phone (617.566.6660) or buy them at the Brookline Booksmith. If you wind up going, please let us know how many f-bombs or c-words Welshy drops. And we'll let you know if Svetlana gets smacked in the face.*

*Editor's note: OMFG how could we have messed that up?! Real World is on tonight. Tomorrow night is the friggin awesome to the max premiere ep of Laguna Beach: Season 3. Welshy or Cali dramarama x 1000?!! Sigh.