A list of book-related events in New York City.

· Young Cuban-American novelist Ana Menéndez (Loving Che) and young Indian/Irish-American whirlwind fabulist Neela Vaswani (Where the Long Grass Bends) knock them dead as they say at KGB, 85 East 4th. 7pm.

· Novelists Colin Harrison (The Havana Room) and Helene Stapinski (Baby Plays Around: A Love Affair, with Music) join poet Steve Healy at Sunny's Bar, 253 Conover Street near Beard, somewhere in Red Hook, BKLN. 3pm.

· Hard-core magazine journalist Mike Sager, who has gotten his hands dirty investigating the lives of everyone from the late porn stars John Holmes and Savannah to the late Eazy E to the murdered Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, has compiled his pieces into a book called Scary Monsters and Super Freaks: Stories of Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll and Murder. Meet the dude at the Astor Place B&N. 7:30pm.

· Roddy Doyle (The Commitments), Colum McCann (Dancer) and Frank McCourt (Angela's Ashes) celebrate Mr James Joyce's 122nd b-day with readings from the man's work (including some Ulysses, hopefully) at NYU's Glucksman Ireland House, 1 Washington Mews. 7:30pm.

· Christopher Phillips travels the planet starting philosophical discussion groups with random individuals. Six Questions of Socrates: A Modern-Day Journey of Discovery Through World Philosophy recounts his experiences. Ask him how he funds these journeys at the UWS B&N, 82nd & Broadway. 7:30pm.

· Author Daniel Mendelsohn joins critics Archie Burnett and Christopher Ricks for a celebration of the influential poet and classicist A. E. Housman at the 92nd Street Y, 92nd & Lex. 8pm, 16 bucks.

· Novelist Peter Smith tells us how a mutual love of the Beatles enabled him to reconnect with his estranged son in Two of Us: The Story of a Father, a Son and the Beatles, and inadvertently illustrates how only a Baby Boomer could like Paul McCartney better than John Lennon. Live at KGB, 85 East 4th. 7pm.

· Rachel Simmons -- author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls -- discusses her new study, Odd Girl Speaks Out: Girls Write About Bullies, Cliques, Popularity, and Jealousy at the Astor Place B&N, and advises young odd girls not to "IM your way through a fight." 7:30pm.

· Barbès (Ninth Street & Sixth Ave in Park Slope) hosts a prose-centered open mike for emerging writers. Email Michael Ewing at mewing23@earthlink.net if you're interested in showing your stuff, and get in there.

· The almost-always interesting internetworked science writer Steven Johnson explains his new book, Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, at the Astor Place B&N. 7:30pm.

· Poet/biographer Daniel Mark Epstein discusses his new dual biography, Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington at the UWS B&N, 82nd & Broadway. 7:30pm.

· Peter Robinson reads from his suspenser Playing With Fire at the Chelsea B&N, Sixth Ave & 22nd. 7pm.

· Annoyingly angsty but talented graphic novelist Adrian Tomine shows off the newest issue of Optic Nerve at Housing Works Used Book Cafe, 126 Crosby Street in Soho. 7pm.

· Novelist Darin Strauss joins blasphemous eroticists Lillian Slugocki and Erin Cressida Wilson at the Happy Ending Reading Series, 302 Broome at Forsyth (J/M/Z/F to Delancey). 8pm.

· Anthropologists Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana Dizerega Wall discuss their fascinating account of what urban archaeologists have uncovered in New York City soil, Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City, at Rocky Sullivan's Pub, 28th & Lex. 8pm.

· Nelson George discusses his study Post-Soul Nation at the South Street Seaport Museum, 12 Fulton Street in downtown money-making Manhattan. 7-9pm.

· Ben Greenman (Superworse) and Gabe Hudson (Dear Mr. President) read 'n' drink at Pete's Candy Store in Williamsburg, 709 Lorimer near the Lorimer stop on the L. 7:30pm.

· Reluctant mother and feminist kvetcher Faulkner Fox reads from Dispatches From a Not-So-Perfect Life: Or How I Learned to Love the House, the Man, the Child at the Lincoln Center B&N. Judging from the Amazon user reviews, you'll either love this woman or despise her. 7pm.

· Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, discusses her new novel, Holy Fools -- about a 17th-century gypsy acrobat in France who becomes a nun in a corrupt and decadent convent -- at the Astor Place B&N. 7:30pm.

NOTE: THIS IS CAPS WEEK AT BOOKCIRCUIT. IF YOU'LL NOTICE, SOME OF THE MORE ENTERTAINING WEB SITES OUT THERE RIGHT NOW USE CAPS PRODIGIOUSLY TO GREAT EFFECT. I'M TALKING ABOUT TMFTML, OLD HAG, DRUDGE AND EVEN GAWKER. FOR SOME REASON, CAPS ARE ENGAGING. I HAVEN'T FIGURED OUT WHY YET.

· Used, rare and out-of-print "nonfiction book fair" at the Tip Top Shoe Building, 155 West 72nd Street, 4th floor. 10am-2pm. I haven't been to this one but I have been to "record fairs" here that are popular with IRRITABLE, OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DJs WITH BAD POSTURE.

· Rated Rookie is a pretty entertaining magazine about failure, featuring interviews with DEFECATING DUNGEONS & DRAGONS MASTERS. They're holding a sixth-issue release party at OfficeOps out in "EAST WILLIAMSBURG" with Jonathan Ames and others. You should go, you'll have fun. [via Gawker.]

· You're not gonna believe this, but Bush doesn't always tell the truth. Christopher Scheer, Robert Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudry join forces with former NYC mayoral candidate Mark Green (co-author of yet another new Bush-bashing book; see below) break down The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq at CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave at 34th. 3-5pm, POST-BUSH'S MUCH-REHEARSED MEET THE PRESS APPEARANCE.

· Amanda Stern -- who is small -- reads with short-story creationist Jane Avrich, who one Amazon user declares to be "Borges meets Shirley Jackson meets Virginia Woolf meets Italo Calvino!" At KGB, 85 East 4th. 7pm.

· Thomas Mallon reads from his new historical novel Bandbox, about a couple of SCHEMING 1920s NEW YORK MAGAZINE EDITORS in cutthroat competition with one another, at the Astor Place B&N. 7:30pm.

· Actors Philip Bosco, Rosemary Harris and Brian Murray get all Shakespearean inside the 92nd Street Y's Kaufmann Concert Hall for the Unterberg Poetry Center's "This Wooden O": An Evening of Shakespeare. 92nd & Lex. 8pm, 16 bucks.

· Carol Bergman, editor of Another Day in Paradise, recounts some POIGNANT AND DEPRESSING STORIES FROM HUMANITARIAN WORKERS at the Half King, Tenth Ave & 23rd. 7pm.

· Robert Scheer, co-author of The Five Greatest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq, drills his points home at Housing Works Used Book Cafe, 126 Crosby Street in Soho. 7pm

· Doug Wright, author of Quills, reads from his new historical novel, I Am My Own Wife -- which tells the story of a TRANSVESTITE ANTIQUES DEALER who survived both the Nazis and the Communists -- at the 8th Street B&N, 8th Street & Sixth Ave. 7:30pm.

· Kinetic poet and WINTER SEX ENTHUSIAST Katy Lederer joins Albert Zayden at the 11th Street Bar, 510 East 11th between A & B. 8pm. Imbibe.

· Technorati's most-linked-to books.
· Paris Hilton's book proposal.
· Paul O'Neill's files from his time in the Bush Administration, via Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty.

· Sharp and much-praised novelist/American Woman Susan Choi joins emerging writer/Glamour mag articles editor Laurie Sandell for the burgeoning Cupcake Reading Series (WHICH FOCUSES ON FEMALE WRITERS) at Lolita, 266 Broome at Allen. 7:30pm.

· A NEW ONE FOR THE OVERFLOWING "BUSH-BASHING" SECTION OF YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE: Former mayoral candidate and current NY1 pundit Mark Green collaborated with Eric Alterman to produce The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)Leads America. Green will be at Coliseum Books, 42nd Street across from Bryant Park. 6pm.

· Writers' colony alumna Alison Smith reads from her debut, Name All the Animals -- a grief-stricken and CATHOLIC-GUILT-RIDDEN COMING-OF-AGE MEMOIR about how she dealt with her older brother's death in a car accident -- at the Chelsea B&N, Sixth Ave & 22nd. 7pm.

· Whitney Pastorek, editor of the short-story mag Pindeldyboz, joins short-story award-winner Adam Freedman at Barbès, Ninth Street & Sixth Ave in Park Slope, BKLN. 7pm.

· Mark Obmascik reads from The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession, his tantalizingly titled report on EXTREME BIRD-WATCHING which was excerpted in Sports Illustrated, at the Lincoln Center B&N. 7pm.

· Oft-mythologized Brooklyn-based writer Paul Auster and speculative novelist Laird Hunt read at St. Mark's Poetry Project, 131 East 10th at Second Ave. 8pm.

· Seasoned middle-aged journalist Susan Shapiro spent six months tracking down five of her old boyfriends to see what they had been doing with their lives. FIVE MEN WHO BROKE MY HEART is the result; listen in at the Astor Place B&N. 7:30pm.

· PULITZER-WINNING VERMONT-NEWSPAPER EDITORIALIST David Moats comes with his topical Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage at the Chelsea B&N, Sixth Ave & 22nd. 7pm.

· Lee Gutkind, the "GODFATHER OF CREATIVE NONFICTION," joins new novelist Alison Smith and formerly asexual writer Michelle Orange at the Happy Ending Reading Series. 302 Broome at Forsyth (J/M/Z/F to Delancey). 8pm.

· 91-YEAR-OLD CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST Dorothy Height recounts what it was like to witness every significant event in the civil rights struggle of the last century in Open Wide the Freedom Gates. Meet her at the Union Square B&N. 6:30-7:30pm.

· Graphologist Arlyn Imberman makes her living teaching handwriting analysis to the human resource departments of Fortune 100 companies. She's promoting Signature for Success: How to Analyze Handwriting and Improve Your Career, Your Relationships, and Your Life at the Park Slope B&N. 7:30pm.

· Debra Weinstein SKEWERS AN EASY TARGET in her first novel, Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z: the academic poetry world in New York. Hear some at the Astor Place B&N. 7:30pm.

· Arlen Schumer presents his montage, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art -- WHICH IS INFURIATING COMIC-BOOK NERDS EVERYWHERE -- at the Chelsea B&N, Sixth Ave & 22nd. 7pm. UPDATE: The Silver of Age of Comic Book Art is most assuredly not infuriating comic-book nerds everywhere, Mr. Schumer informs me, just a few early Amazon reviewers. Will Eisner, Alan Moore and The New York Times all just love it.

· Based on the Book: a database of books that have been made into movies.
[via Maud]
· The text of Cory Doctorow's presentation at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference: Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books.
· The full text of Stephen Wolfram's 2002 tome, A New Kind of Science.

· Poetic virtuosos Albert Goldbarth and Mark Strand read at the 92nd Street Y, 92nd & Lex. 8:15pm, 16 bucks.

· In The Forest Lover, novelist Susan Vreeland reimagines the life of painter Emily Carr (1871-1945), who devoted her life to capturing on canvas the totem poles carved by the Indian tribes of British Columbia. Take in a reading/slide show/book-signing at Coliseum Books, 42nd Street across from Bryant Park. 6pm.

· Recent Joyce links: an infuriating grandson, some Ulysses-hating and some more Ulysses-hating. As we all know and as Joyce knew better than anyone: there's no such thing as bad publicity.
· NYT: Amazon Glitch Unmasks War of Reviewers.
· Gallery of network images.

· If television has taught us anything in the past year or so, it's that gay people are here to help straight people. They love to fix straight people up on dates and they offer great grooming tips. (If Gawker has taught us anything, it's that "faghags have become the new fags," but anyway.) Ted Allen, Kyan Douglas, Thom Filicia, Carson Kressly and Jai Rodriguez (otherwise known as the Fab 5) are signing copies of the book version of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy at the Chelsea B&N tonight. 7pm.

· "New York is a glamorous city, constituted mostly of nobodies," says NYT reporter Charlie LeDuff in his introduction to Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts. Hear some of his stories about light-bulb-changers and Sinatra imitators at the Park Slope B&N on Seventh Ave in BKLN. 7:30pm.

· Tom Lombardi, M. David Hornbuckle and Daphne Gottlieb do the Happy Ending Reading Series, 302 Broome at Forsyth (J/M/Z/F to Delancey). 8pm.

· Carol Bergman and Patrick Dillon, contributors to Another Day in Paradise: International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories, get serious and startling at Rocky Sullivan's Pub, 28th & Lex. 8pm.

· Brooklyn bard Paul Auster reads and discusses some of the poems he penned in his pre-novelist days (compiled in Collected Poems) at the Union Square B&N. 7pm.

· Winners of the 2003 National Book Award -- Carlos Eire (Nonfiction: Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy), Shirley Hazzard (Fiction: The Great Fire), Polly Horvath (Young People's Lit: The Canning Season) and C.K. Williams (Poetry: The Singing) -- gather at the New York Public Library for a reading, 42nd Street & Fifth Ave. Free and open to the public, but you'll need reservations, which you can make by emailing nationalbook@nationalbook.org or calling 212-685-0261.

· William Gibson promotes the paperback edition of his astute and pop-culture-saturated novel, Pattern Recognition, at the Union Square B&N. 7pm.

· Ben Greenman (Superworse) and Shawn Shiflett (Hidden Place) read at the Court Street B&N, 106 Court Street in BKLN in what tactless real estate professionals are now referring to as the BoCoCa area. 7pm.

· 2003 National Book Award winners Carlos Eire (Waiting for Snow in Havana), Shirley Hazzard (The Great Fire) and C.K. Williams (The Singing) congregate at the new Columbus Circle Borders on the second floor of that massive, well-lit mall inside the new Time Warner Center, which is doing a fine job of transforming my neighborhood into something eerily similar to the rest of America. 1pm.

· Ben Greenman brings copies of Superworse and Shawn Shiflett follows suit with Hidden Place and public reading commences at Bluestockings, 172 Allen at Stanton on the LES. 7pm.

· Danyel Smith reads from her debut novel More Like Wrestling -- about two sisters coming of age amidst the hella violent drug culture of 1980s Oakland, California -- at the 8th Street B&N, 8th Street & Sixth Ave. 7:30pm.

· Sonia Rivera-Valdes, author of The Forbidden Stories of Marta Veneranda, returns to Bluestockings for an encore reading of her strange and entertaining erotic interlinked vignettes. 172 Allen at Stanton. 7pm.

· Celebrities read, according to the American Library Association's new ad campaign. Christina Ricci's favorite book is The Fountainhead, Nicholas Cage digs Siddhartha, Mel Gibson is feeling 1984 lately, LL Cool J for some reason enjoys The Children's Health Food Book, and Stephen Hawking is deep into Marilyn Monroe biographies. [via Fimoculous]
· Note: Reading Series links to your left now. Got a new series going? Send me a link.
· If you're still wondering why David Remnick hired much-reviled LA homemaker Caitlin Flanagan (no relation), I'd say the decision was related to the fact that you can't go to a good lit blog lately without reading about the woman.
· The power of semicolons.
· Map o' Readings.
· Black Table's guide to making your own pruno (prison wine, featured in that great article in The New Yorker this week about the Aryan Brotherhood).
· Public user profiles on Bloglines.

· Unnerving miniaturist Nelly Reifler and novelist Beth Bosworth (Tunneling) do KGB, 85 East 4th. 7pm.

· Verbose poet Betsy Andrews and sparse poet Nicole Hefner collude at Four-Faced Liar for the Frequency Series, 165 West 4th. 2:30pm.

· Columbia Buddhism professor (and, yes, father of Uma) Robert Thurman discusses his new workbook, Infinite Life: Living Here and Now, Beyond and Forever. Apparently when he was 21 he experienced a lifting of the "push-pressure" around his tail bone that had been pushing him forward all his life. This led to an awakening which led to this book. Ponder the "beginninglessness" of life with the man at the Union Square B&N. 7pm.

· ZZ Packer reads selections from her heavily buzzed and bracingly realistic short-story collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, at the Park Slope B&N, Seventh Ave in BKLN. 7:30pm.

· Masterful storytellers Peter Carey and Edmund White take the stage at the 92nd Street Y, 92nd & Lex. 8pm.

· Lively poets Lee Ann Brown, Lytle Shaw and Raymond McDaniel gather for the Reading Between A and B series at the 11th Street Bar, 510 East 11th. 8pm.

· Cecelia Ahern, the 22-year-old daughter of Ireland's prime minister, reads from her debut novel PS, I Love You, which is getting dissed heartily for its sentimentality but which nevertheless will be made into a movie. At the UWS B&N, 82nd & Broadway. 7:30pm.

· Suki Kim reads from her debut novel The Interpreter, about an ivy-educated, first-generation Korean American girl with a large amount of baggage who is drawn into some highly personal detective work. 7pm at Sulzberger Parlor, Barnard Hall at Barnard College, 3009 Broadway.

· Branch manager Ben Greenman, Spin mag writer and Fargo native Chuck Klosterman and "Manhattan downtown hipster" Amanda Stern congregate at Barbès, Ninth Street & Sixth Ave in Park Slope. 7pm.

· Jen Vogel (Flim-Flam Man: A True Family History) and Susan Shapiro (Five Men Who Broke My Heart) tell their stories at KGB, 85 East 4th. 7pm.

· Fabulist Arthur Bradford is the author of the well-blurbed collection Dogwalker, which features stories populated by hybrid dog-men and cat-faced circus freaks. See him read "The Snow Frog" for Zoetrope at Studio Dante, 257 West 29th. 6pm.

· Camille Paglia surveys the changes in mythology and body type of Western art's most desirable women at the 92nd Street Y, 92nd & Lex. 8pm.

· Graham Robb says the nineteenth century was a golden age for "sodomites, Uranians, monosexuals and homosexuals" in Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century. Get a history lesson at the Chelsea B&N, Sixth Ave & 22nd. 7pm.

· "We live in the worst twenty minutes of someone else's life," writes one cop in Randy Sutton & Bob Gates' collection of police stories, True Blue. Hear some at the Park Slope B&N. 7:30pm.

· Hal Sirowitz, the Poet Laureate of Queens, and Amanda Stern, reading-series host extraordinnaire, talk "Relationships Gone Bad" at the fabulous Makor center of the 92nd Street Y, 35 West 67th. 7:30pm.

· Sam Kashner was a college dropout from Long Island who became the first student at Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He writes about coming of age amidst his aging idols in When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School. Get some American folklore at the Astor Place B&N. 7:30pm.

· Eric Alterman and former mayoral candidate Mark Green, authors of The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)Leads America, bring it to the UWS B&N, 82nd & Broadway. 7:30pm.

· Esquitora dominicana Nelly Rosario reads from her debut novel, Song of the Water Saints, a multi-generational family saga, at the Chelsea B&N, Sixth Ave & 22nd. 7pm.

· Things that are the new black.
· The New York Times offers some perspective on all the recent Joyce bashing.
· Mediachest groups.
· Blogging for book deals.
· When Writers Drink: 71 percent of writers drink too much, according to one famous study. Who knew? [via Maud]
· The Final Decline and Total Collapse of the American Magazine Cover. Thankfully book covers are still alive.
· Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey's book proposal: The Smoking Gun comes through with another entertaining and depressing inside look at the publishing industry.