Kathryn Shulz reads up at Third Place Books tonight. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error is about how you should give up trying to be right all the time because it just makes you boring and stupid.
And Bret Easton Ellis reads at Elliott Bay Book Company this evening. In the books lead this week, I experience a little flashback of my history with Ellis's books:
When I first read Less Than Zero, in my teens, I was enraged by it. It's the only book I have ever literally thrown against a wall in disgust, and I held on to that copy for half a decade just so I could inflict damage upon it—kicking it, punching it, throwing it at the floor. Whenever I was sitting idly around my apartment and I felt the sudden need to just hate something, I would pick up my copy of Zero and torture it for a little while. I hated its smugness, its intentional apathy, its blatant upper-class sheen. Later on, I reread Zero and discovered that it was not the book I thought it was. Instead, it was a competent, reasonably well-written satire of apathy and the smugness of the upper class. Perhaps I needed to shake, the way most angry young men need to shake, the idea that you need to Really Mean Everything You Put Down on Paper, Man.
You can find out what I think about his new one here.
The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here. And if you're planning on staying in and you're looking for personalized book recommendations, feel free to tell me the books you like and ask me what to read next over at Questionland.
