Brookline Booksmith hosts actor CURTIS ARMSTRONG with his memoir Revenge of the Nerd.
A legendary comedic second banana, Curtis is forever cemented in the public imagination as Booger from Revenge of the Nerds— but there’s more to Curtis’ story than that. With whip-smart, self-effacing humor, Armstrong takes us on a most unlikely journey— one nerd’s hilarious, often touching, rise to the middle.
Brookline Booksmith hosts DAVID GESSNER as he reads from his memoir Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth.
Before his rise as an acclaimed essayist and nature writer, GESSNER devoted his 20’s to the cult-ish sport of Ultimate Frisbee. Sacrificing his body and potential career, he spent countless hours in pursuit of fleeting glory. Ultimate Glory is a portrait of the artist as a young ruffian.
This event is not ticketed.
Porter Square Books welcomes local memoirist MARIANNE LEONE with her latest acclaimed work, Ma Speaks Up: And a First-Generation Daughter Talks Back.
Ma Speaks Up is a record of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, with the wrong family, in the wrong religion. Though Marianne’s girlhood is flooded with shame, it’s equally packed with adventure, love, great cooking, and, above all, humor. The extremely premature birth of Marianne’s beloved son, Jesse, bonds mother and daughter in ways she couldn’t have imagined. The stories she tells will speak to anyone who has struggled with outsider status in any form and, of course, to mothers and their blemished, cherished girls.
This event is not ticketed.
Come to Kickstand Cafe to see novelist CRYSTAL KING with her novel Feast of Sorrow, Top Chef judge BARBARA LYNCH with her memoir Out of Line, and Boston Globe’s food critic Ted Weesner.
Set amongst the scandal, wealth, and upstairs-downstairs politics of a Roman family, KING’s seminal debut features the man who inspired the world’s oldest cookbook and the ambition that led to his destruction.
Out of Line describes LYNCH’s remarkable process of self-invention, including her encounters with colorful characters of the food world, and vividly evokes the magic of creation in the kitchen. It is also a love letter to South Boston and its vanishing culture, governed by Irish Catholic mothers and its own code of honor. Through her story, Lynch explores how the past—both what we strive to escape from and what we remain true to—can strengthen and expand who we are.
This event is free and open to the public.
Join Brookline Booksmith as they host debut author JESSICA BERGER GROSS and novelist DAPHNE KALOTAY (Sight Reading, Russian Winter) for a discussion of the process of writing about family and abuse.
In her powerful new memoir, Estranged, reminiscent of Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle, JESSICA BERGER GROSS recounts the internalization of her abusive childhood, the decision to break free from her family, and the difficult road that followed that ultimately allowed her to carve a path to happiness.
This event is not ticketed.
Join Papercuts J.P. and La Rana Rossa pizzeria for an evening with memoirists ALEXANDRIA MARZANO-LESNEVICH and MELISSA FEBOS.
LESNEVICH’s memoir The Fact of a Body captures when she began a summer job at a law firm in Louisiana, working on the retrial defense of death-row convicted murderer and child molester Ricky Langley. She thought her position was clear. Shocked by her unexpected reaction to the case, she digs deeper and deeper, realizing that despite their vastly different circumstances, something in his story is unsettlingly, uncannily familiar.
In her dazzling Abandon Me, FEBOS captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection—with family, lovers, and oneself.
This event is ticketed, and you can purchase tickets here.
Porter Square Books hosts nonfiction author, journalist, and memoirist MADELEINE BLAIS as she reads her newest memoir: To the New Owners.
In the 1970s, Madeleine Blais’s in-laws purchased a vacation house on Martha’s Vineyard for the exorbitant sum of $80,000. A little more than two miles down a poorly marked one-lane dirt road, the house was better termed a shack— it had no electricity or modern plumbing, the roof leaked, and mice had invaded the walls. It was perfect. To the New Owners is Madeleine Blais’s charming, evocative memoir of this house, and of the Vineyard itself— from the history of the island and its famous visitors to the ferry, the pie shops, the quirky charms and customs, and the abundant natural beauty. More than that, this is an elegy for a special place.
This event is not ticketed.
Porter Square Books hosts Vietnam Veteran DAVID HOLDRIDGE, author of the memoir The Avant Garde of Western Civ, an exploration of the complications of “giving.”
HOLDRIDGE served in the Vietnam War in 1969 as an infantry platoon leader outside of Chu Lai. He was wounded and spent eighteen months getting repaired at various hospitals in the United States, culminating with operations at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut where neurosurgeon, Dr. Benjamin Whitcomb managed to free him from his trauma. Subsequently, he spent thirty-five years working with humanitarian organizations amidst populations suffering from war, exploitation, and impoverishment, including assignments in West Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. From 2010 to 2012, he directed an advocacy effort in Washington D.C., which argued for significant transformation of the current systems and approaches of American assistance abroad.
This event is not ticketed.
Harvard Book Store welcomes National Jewish Book Award–winning historian YURI SLEZKINE for a discussion on his latest book, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution. Professor Slezkine will be joined in conversation by TERRY MARTIN, George F. Baker III Professor of Russian Studies at Harvard University.
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, historian Yuri Slezkine tells the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction.
The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges.
This event is not ticketed.
The book will be on sale at the event for 20% off.
Harvard Book Store welcomes KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD, bestselling and acclaimed author of the six-volume novel My Struggle, and literary critic JAMES WOOD for a discussion of Knausgaard’s latest book, Autumn—the first in a new autobiographical quartet based on the four seasons. Boston University’s WILLIAM PIERCE, author of Reality Hunger: On Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle, will provide the evening’s introductions.
Autumn begins with a letter Knausgaard writes to his unborn daughter, showing her what to expect of the world. He describes with acute sensitivity daily life with his wife and children in rural Sweden, drawing upon memories of his own childhood to give an inimitably tender perspective on the precious and unique bond between parent and child. Through close observation of the objects and phenomena around him, Knausgaard shows us how vast, unknowable and wondrous the world is.
You purchase buy tickets here.
This book will be on sale at the event for 20% off.