WORLDS OF EXILE: Ethiopian-American novelist Dinaw Mengestu expands his scope with How To Read the Air. |
OLIVER SACKS | October 28 | Popular science’s favorite face-blind neurologist amazed countless readers with stories of
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and the vagaries of Musicophilia. In his latest collection of case studies,
The Mind’s Eye (Knopf), Sacks discusses how those who have lost their senses live in the world. | First Unitarian Church, 3 Church St, Cambridge | 7 pm | $5 | 617.661.1515 or
harvard.comDENNIS LEHANE | November 5 | With Moonlight Mile (William Morrow), Boston literature’s reigning champ offers the sequel to Gone, Baby, Gone. Years ago, hard-nosed PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro returned baby Amanda McCready to her loutish mother. Alas, Amanda is gone once more — at 16, she has vanished into the gritty streets for a second time, and the detectives must find her — again. | Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St, Brookline | 6 pm | $5 | 617.566.6660 or brooklinebooksmith.com
PAUL AUSTER | November 9 | Critics called Paul Auster’s previous novel, Invisible, a career-defining masterstroke. Word on the street is that Sunset Park (Henry Holt) — set in a phantasmagoric Brooklyn among starving artists — is even better. Whatever, the novel’s relative merits cannot detract from Auster’s status among high-concept fiction’s most handsome practitioners. | Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | 6 pm | $5 | 617.661.1515 or harvard.com
DAVID SEDARIS | November 11 | Sedaris’s Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary (Little, Brown) is a collection of animal fables illustrated by Ian Falconer of Olivia fame, with whom Sedaris collaborated on the staging of The Santaland Diaries. Those who’ve tired of Sedaris’s endless autobiography will love him anew for his bitter fables, especially the one about the cat in AA. This offering marks his first return to fiction since his 1992 debut, Barrel Fever. | Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 7 pm | Book purchase required | 617.661.1515 or harvard.com
MATT TAIBBI | November 16 | While keeping track of the criminal exploits of our nation’s athletes for his late-lamented “Sports Blotter” column in the Phoenix and reporting for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi has managed to write an indictment of the financial sector. Taking off from his celebrated RS rant, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America (Spiegel & Grau) traces America’s current financial woes to Ayn Rand and compares Goldman Sachs to a vampire squid. Like The Great Derangement before it, Griftopia is witty as well as chilling. | Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7pm | Free | 617.566.6660 or brooklinebooksmith.com
AMY SEDARIS | November 30 | Seashell toilet-seat covers and crab-claw roach clips are likely to populate many a stocking this Christmas if Amy Sedaris has anything to say about it. Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People (Grand Central) makes a magnificent companion to Sedaris’s hostess procedural, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence. | Coolidge Corner Theatre | 290 Harvard Street, Brookline | 6 pm | $5 | 617.566.6660 or brooklinebooksmith.com
SALMAN RUSHDIE | November 29 | Salman Rushdie readings have lacked a certain gravitas since the fatwa was lifted, but nothing accords literature a sense of urgency quite like conspicuously armed bodyguards. Rushdie, by all accounts still heartbroken over the loss of one of the great beauties of our time, has with Luka and the Fire of Life (Random House) retreated into a novel of video-game logic and magic carpets. | First Unitarian Church, 3 Church St, Cambridge | 617.661.1515 or harvard.com
