The Read: July 13-July 19, 2010

 

8pm, 66 Greenpoint Avenue

Join the WORD crew at Coco 66 tonight as they celebrate the launch of Chuck Klosterman's new book, Eating the Dinosaur. The best-selling author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs will be joined by friend and fellow-writer Rob Sheffield, author of the newly released Talking to Girls about Duran Duran. The pair will shoot the shit and sign books, so buy your ticket now! The $20 includes a copy of Eating the Dinosaur.

 

 

7:30pm, 126 Franklin Street

Matt Gallagher, who read at last month's Franklin Park Reading Series, will read from his war memoir Kaboom tonight at WORD. The book is based on Gallagher's blog that he started when he was deployed to Iraq in 2005. Originally meant for keeping his family and friends informed about his experiences, the blog reached far beyond his intended audience. The U.S. Army shut down the blog in June 2008, and there were more than 25 congressional inquiries regarding the matter as well as reports that many high-ranking officials and officers at the Pentagon were disappointed that the blog had been ordered closed.

 

7:30pm, 686 Fulton Street

In his new book, The Hundred-Foot Journey, Richard Morais takes us on a journey from a small family eater in Mumbai to an elegant restaurant in Paris. Born out of the friendship between Morais and the late Ismail Merchant of Merchant & Ivory Films, the book speaks to their shared love of French and Indian cuisine. Join the author tonight as he reads about family, nationality, taste, and claiming one’s true destiny in life.

 

 

7:30pm, 686 Fulton Street

In this month's installment of Greenlight's new literary humor series, three hilarious authors join funnymen Bob Powers and Jason Reich for a night full of laughs. The line-up includes Erin Bradley, whose byline appears weekly on Nerve.com for a sex and dating column, Damali Ayo, a satirist who writes about the new "post-racial" America, and poet Pamela Russell, who mocks, chides, teases, jokes, and laughs at the world around us—and at anything that takes itself too seriously.

 

7:30pm, 65 4th Avenue

What's better than a good book and a cold brew? Join the new Brooklyn Book and Beer Club tonight for their monthly meeting at The Cherry Tree bar in Park Slope. this month, the group discusses a novel by one of Brooklyn's own: Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. If you've read this hard-boiled crime novel, take a few hours tonight to talk about it with your fellow Brooklynites.

 

 

7pm, 163 Court Street

As part of his book tour for A Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchells stops at BookCourt tonight to read from his new novel. Set in Japan at the turn of the 19th century, the historical novel tells the story of Jacob de Zoet, a member of a contingent of Dutch East Indies officials charged with cleaning up the Dejima trading station's culture of corruption. The tale brings to life the ordinary people caught up in a tectonic shift between East and West.

 

 

7pm, 7518 13th Avenue

When zombies attack, you'll want to be near Roger Ma, author of The Zombie Combat Manual, a comprehensive guide that demonstrates how anyone can become an effective warrior in the inevitable battle against the undead. Today, Ma will be at Boulevard Books in Dyker Heights for a zombie combat demonstration. Following the reading and demonstration will be a viewing of the zombie-cult movie classic, Dawn of the Dead.