What To Do...

There's always so much going on around Boston that it's tough to choose what to spend your precious little time on. As far as readings go, this is my advice:

At the Booksmith in Brookine:
Wednesday April 26 7PM
RICH COHEN - Sweet and Low
Rich Cohen is the bestselling author of Tough Jews and The Avengers. He was also disinherited from millions when his grandfather - patriarch of the Brooklyn-based Sweet & Low empire - passed on. Droll and declarative, Sweet and Low is the effervescent tale of post-war Jewish Brooklyn, dieting trends in America, corruption, a small business that became a windfall, and a family that became an unnatural disaster.

At Newtonville Books(...in Newtonville, yes):

The debut novel from the author of the highly regarded and acclaimed collection, Esther Stories.

Truthfully, I'm not a big fan of short stories, so I can't tell you much about Peter Orner. However, I trust Tim Huggins' taste in authors and books and think that lots ofyou may, too. Add to that the fact that this evening is part of the "Books and Brews" series, so afterwards you can go with the author and all his local fans, for a beer! Great way to get a kind of intellectual jump on the weekend, no?

If you're still not sure, here's what Booklist said about this novel...
"Talk about stories never told. Larry Kaplanski from Cincinnati is a volunteer teacher in a small, rough all-boys Catholic school in the Namibian desert in 1991, just after independence. He shares a shack with colleagues and is in love with beautiful Mavala Shikongo, who is a kindergarten teacher and veteran guerilla fighter from the antiapartheid 'struggle.' The weight of the brutal colonial and apartheid past is always there, but the freedom story is never reverential, and the taut vignettes, anguished and sometimes hilarious, are about ordinary people now. The novel is more situation than story, but there are scenes that will stay with you forever: the three illegal refugee children from across the border, who only want school, and then are gone after three days; the drought stories; the fence building (Why? How?); the farce of the Cincinnati community that sends an old broken piano "for the adorable little school somewhere in deepest Africa." Orner, a prizewinning short story writer, has lived in Namibia, and his debut novel brings close those far from the centers of power. Hazel Rochman"

Get on out and support your local, indie bookstores!
~Fischlipps