Choose your own adventure: Nell Freudenberger or Annie Liebovitz

Don't be jealous!

Why. Does. She. Have. SOMUCHFUCKINGHAIR?!

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
We’re tearing through NELL FREUDENBERGER’s debut novel, The Dissident, at a crazy pace, pausing only to marvel at how this white, Harvard educated, ex-New Yorker editorial assistant managed to capture the voice of Yuan Zhao, a Chinese performance artist and political firecracker spending a year in Los Angeles teaching at the St. Anselm’s School for Girls. Alternating with his narrative is a third-person POV that circles around the dysfunctional Traverses, the family hosting the Yuan’s stay. Gawker may have slammed Freudenberger for inspiring the ire of the literary world when her gorgeous face helped make her award-winning short story collection, Lucky Girls, even more palatable to the industry, but her good looks have nothing to do with the fact that she’s one of the most compelling young voices around. She’ll read at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | Oct 77 @ 6 pm | $3 | 800.542.READ. If you miss Nell tomorrow, you can haul it over to Newtonville books and see her on Wednesday 18 @ 7:30 pm for free.

A BLUE-EYED BEAUTY
Yes, Baby Suri lives, except by our calculations she looks about a year older than she’s supposed to be. In fact, we’re convinced Mr. and Mrs. Cruisazy bought her — there’s got to be a Scientology-approved baby-black market squirreled away somewhere. Celeb photog ANNIE LIEBOVITZ was the lucky lady to snap TomKat in all their domestic bliss, and her A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 is packed with provocative portraits (a fetal and stripped John Lennon wrapped around Yoko, a naked and knocked-up Demi Moore) culled from her career at Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. Famous people really enjoy being naked and with child, don’t they? Someone please ask if Suri’s was wearing a tot-toupee when Liebovitz speaks at the Coolidge Corner Theatre | Oct 17 @ 6 pm | 290 Harvard St, Brookline | $2 | 617.566.6660.

Just make it happen.