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What's happening at WORD?
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The stage at Public Assembly has never been sparklier than on September 22nd, when Emma Straub hosted a Hollywood Variety Hour. Special guests included Andrew McCarthy and Stephin Merritt, pictured above, as well as Ira Glass, Maris Kreizman, and Dan Wilbur.
Thanks to all of you who visited us at the Brooklyn Book Festival! Seeing your smiling, book-loving faces down at Borough Hall is always the best part of the weekend. Our jam-packed Fall season continues with an October line-up of which we are particularly proud, since it runs the gamut from literature to nonfiction, sci-fi to kids, graphic novels to sandwiches. |
This month's featured event:
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 Launch Party for Jami Attenberg and The Middlesteins
Thursday, October 25, 7 p.m. As many of you know, Jami has been a fixture in the store for years as both an author and an occasional bookseller. We hope you'll join us in celebrating the publication of her newest novel, The Middlesteins, which is getting rave reviews not just from our staff, but from critics and other authors as well. For example, Jonathan Franzen says: "The Middlesteins had me from its very first pages, but it wasn't until its final pages that I fully appreciated the range of Attenberg's sympathy and the artistry of her storytelling."
She'll be introduced by Kate Christensen (The Astral), and will give a reading, take questions, and sign books. Refreshments will be served; come raise a glass (and eat a dumpling).
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 This month at WORD!
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 For all bibliophiles:
Tuesday, October 2, 7 p.m.
Launch Party for Lauren Leto and Judging a Book by Its LoverTexts from Last Night's Lauren Leto presents her new book, Judging a Book by Its Lover, at a launch party and reading! Riffing on everything from imaginary dinner parties with celebrated literary couples past and present to the dos and don'ts of bookstore hookups and proper at-home use of book critics' go-to words, Leto will share her snarky but spot-on observations about books and the passionate discussions they generate.
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 For those strong in the Force:
Saturday, October 6, 2 p.m.
Star Wars Reads Day
Join author Jason Fry (Star Wars: The Secret Life of Droids) and Star Wars audiobook narrator Marc Thompson as we celebrate National Star Wars Reads Day! Come to American Playground, across the street from WORD, at 2 p.m. for a costumed parade, followed by an in-store reading, complete with prizes and giveaways! Costumes highly encouraged; Star Wars fans of all ages welcome.
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 For Ivys and Beans:
Sunday, October 7, 1:30 p.m.
Ivy and Bean Day with Sophie Blackall
Come celebrate the 3rd Annual National Ivy and Bean Weekend! In honor of the release of the 9th book in the series, Ivy and Bean Make the Rules, illustrator Sophie Blackall will join us for a reading, Q&A, and signing, with lots of fun Ivy and Bean giveaways! Sophie Blackall is also the author/illustrator of several other books for children and adults, including Are You Awake?, Meet Wild Boars, Big Red Lollipop, and Missed Connections: Love, Lost and Found.
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 For all fans of fiction:
Tuesday, October 9, 7 p.m.
Zadie Smith in conversation with Hari Kunzru
Zadie Smith presents her new novel, NW, with a reading and conversation with award-winning author Hari Kunzru (Gods Without Men, The Impressionist).
NW follows four Londoners -- Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan -- as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their London is a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end.
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 For teachers and librarians:
Wednesday, October 10, 7 p.m.
Educator Night
Teachers, librarians, and educators: come one, come all! You'll get a sneak peek at brand new children's books, meet special guest R.J. Palacio (author of the highly acclaimed new children's novel Wonder), and go home with some prizes and giveaways -- because it's not a party without swag. Please RSVP to jenny@wordbrooklyn.com with your grade level and/or specialty, and you'll be guaranteed a giveaway bag.
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 For rebels and cinephiles:
Monday, October 15, 7 p.m.
Cory Doctorow presents Pirate Cinema
Cory Doctorow's new teen novel, Pirate Cinema, has been called his "most cogent, energizing call-to-arms to date" byBooklist. In it, he explores questions of copyright, creativity, and legislation. Come and consider new directions of creativity with a reading, Q&A, and signing.
Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household's access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal. When he gets caught -- and nearly destroys his family in the process -- he takes off for London and encounters a demimonde of artists and activists who are trying to fight a new bill that will criminalize even more harmless internet creativity, making felons of millions of British citizens at a stroke.
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 For sandwich-lovers:
Thursday, October 18, 7 p.m.
Saltie Cookbook Launch
Join Caroline Fidanza, the mastermind behind Williamsburg's nautically-themed sandwich shop Saltie, for a launch and signing for the new cookbook. After a brief talk and Q&A, you'll be able to chow down, mingle, and get your book signed.
The shop (which, if you haven't already visited, you should go to immediately) boasts magnificent sandwiches, soups, egg bowls, drinks, and sweets. This cookbook features 75 recipes for all of these delicious foods, plus more than 50 color photographs and 10 humorous drawings by Elizabeth Schula that capture the sense of commitment, locality, and belonging devoted foodies feel for this amazing local establishment.
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 For those who enjoy an experiment:
Saturday, October 20, 10 a.m. - 9 p.m.
Chris Ruen's Terrible Idea (a marathon reading)
Joe Strummer of The Clash said that "origination is more instinct than intellect," so perhaps Greenpoint's own Chris Ruen can be excused for his categorical abandonment of good sense this October 20th. To "celebrate" the release of Freeloading: How Our Insatiable Hunger for Free Content Starves Creativity, Chris Ruen's Terrible Idea will play out in the basement from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Customers and the curious can drop in and out (and in) as Ruen, along with a smattering of very special guest readers from the Brooklyn music community, reads his new book from beginning to end.
Chris Ruen's Terrible Idea will feature free food and drink from local sponsors at 7pm, with the raspy, delirious author announcing "The End" at around 8 p.m. It'll be wild, man, like the climax of Peter Sellers' The Party, except the psychedelic painted elephant will be replaced by a skinny white guy in a basement ruminating on the deeper meaning of music piracy. Just try to stay away.
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 For teens and teens-at-heart:
Tuesday, October 23, 7 p.m.
YA Not? with Jasper Fforde and Gabrielle Zevin
Readers who think outside of genre and demographic lines, this event is for you! In honor of his new YA novel The Last Dragonslayer, Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair, The Big Over Easy) will give a reading, followed by a conversation with Gabrielle Zevin (All These Things I've Done, The Hole We're In) about the crossover trends between literature and fantasy, teen books and adult books, and more.
In his first foray into literature for young readers, Fforde introduces the grumpy and thoroughly entertaining fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange, as well as a new world packed full of the wit and whimsy Fforde's fans have come to expect.
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 For graduates of the Enfield Tennis Academy:
Wednesday, October 24, 7 p.m.
D.T. Max and Gerry Howard in conversation
Join D.T. Max (Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story) and Gerry Howard, Doubleday editor-at-large, for a discussion on the life and work of David Foster Wallace. This will also be the first meeting of WORD's new DFW Appreciation Society!
D.T. Max is a staff writer for The New Yorker and worked with Wallace's friends and family, using hundreds of his unpublished letters, manuscripts, and audio tapes, to create this portrait of one of the most influential contemporary American writers. Gerry Howard acquired and edited Wallace's first novel, The Broom of the System, when he was at Penguin in the mid-1980s, and his first collection of short stories, Girl With Curious Hair, a few years later at Norton.
Our new DFW Appreciation Society will meet at various points throughout the year to discuss all the works of David Foster Wallace. You can join the group on Facebook, via email, or by coming to this event!
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 For connoisseurs of the strange:
Saturday, October 27, 7 p.m.
Relics of the Weird with Colin Dickey and Morbid Anatomy
Get your creep on early! Colin Dickey (Afterlives of the Saints, Cranioklepty) and Brooklyn's own Morbid Anatomy will host a night in honor of some of the weirder relics in history, complete with slideshow and Halloween candy.
Afterlives of the Saints moves from Renaissance anatomy and the Sistine Chapel, to Borges' "Library of Babel," to the history of spontaneous human combustion, the dangers of masturbation, and the pleasures of castration, each essay focusing on the story of a particular (and particularly strange) saint.
Morbid Anatomy operates from The Morbid Anatomy Library and Cabinet, a research library and private collection available to the interested public. The library/cabinet makes available a collection of books and catalogs, photographs, fine art, taxidermy, ephemera, and artifacts relating to medical museums, anatomical art, collectors and collecting, cabinets of curiosity, the history of medicine, death and society, natural history, arcane media, and curiosity and curiosities broadly considered.
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For art fiends:
Tuesday, October 30, 7 p.m.
Graphic Novel Night with Mark Siegel, Fred Chao, Ryan Dunlavey,
and Grady Hendrix
   
Join Brooklyn graphic novelists Mark Siegel (Sailor Twain), Fred Chao (Johnny Hiro), Ryan Dunlavey (Comic Book History of Comics, Dirt Candy), and Grady Hendrix (Dirt Candy, Satan Loves You) as they present their newest works, discuss the state of graphic novels, take questions, and sign books.
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All events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.
Facebook RSVPs appreciated but certainly not mandatory.
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Book groups
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 Next up for Book Group is Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon's Daytripper, which sounds morbid and creepifying but which Jenn assures you is actually beautiful and fascinating. Each chapter views a moment in Bras de Olivia Dominguez's life -- and each chapter ends with his death. In every chapter, Bras dies at different moments in his life, as the story follows him through his entire existence - one filled with possibilities of happiness and sorrow, good and bad, love and loneliness. The discussion will be on Saturday, November 3, at noon.
 Classics Book Group will continue its discussion of Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier, a collection of some of the strangest short stories you'll ever read from one of the best authors you haven't read yet. With a cast of characters that ranges from man-eating flora to disgruntled devils and suburban salarymen (not that it's always easy to tell one from another), Collier's stories explore the implacable logic of lunacy. The second discussion will be on Saturday, November 10, at noon. (And if you want to check out the rest of the year's picks, the full list is up online!)
 Music Writing Book Group will be reading Love Goes to Buildings on Fire. Will Hermes traces five years of New York musical history, exploring eveything from punk and hip-hop to minimalist composition to salsa and avant-garde jazz. In taking a broader focus, Hermes's book looks at ways in which these different styles of music affected one another, charting their development as parts of a whole rather than as isolated movements. Please note: the discussion has been moved to the first first Saturday, just for this month! Saturday, November 3, at 3 p.m.
Wodehouse Book Group returns with Uncle Fred in the Springtime! Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, Fifth Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred, journeys to Blandings Castle to steal the Empress of Blandings before the ill-tempered, egg-throwing Duke of Dunstable can lay claim to her. Disguised as the eminent nerve specialist Sir Roderick Glossop, and with his distressed nephew Pongo in tow, Uncle Fred must not only steal a pig but also reunite a young couple and diagnose various members of the upper class with imaginary mental illnesses, all before his domineering wife realizes he's escaped their country estate. Join the discussion on Sunday, October 28, at 3 p.m.
Calling all policy wonks, campaigners, and West Wing fans! We've got a new Politics Book Group. They'll be meeting on the second Sunday of each month, at 11 a.m. Come and help decide the reading list on Sunday, October 14.
As always, all book group picks are 10% off in the month before their discussion. And if you need help remembering to mark your calendar, or can't make the discussion but still want to complain about that thing that happened on page 210, you can join our Facebook groups! There's one for the regular group, one for Classics, and one for Music Writing.
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WORD's September bestsellers
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- Big Mean Mike, Michelle Knudsen
- F*ck! I'm in My Twenties, Emma Koenig
- This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz (ebook available)
- Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (ebook available)
- Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon (ebook available)
- Suri's Burn Book, Allie Hagan (ebook available)
- NW, Zadie Smith (ebook available)
- The Longest Way Home, Andrew McCarthy (ebook also available)
- The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides (ebook also available)
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Quick links
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This email not enough WORD for you? No worries, we're all over the Internet:Visit our website
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This has been another production of the book-lovin' fools at: WORD 126 Franklin St Brooklyn NY 11222 Open for your reading needs from: 11am to 9pm, seven days a week Available during those hours at: 718.383.0096 And always open at: wordbrooklyn.com |
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