March 24, 2008
The Book Grocer
Tuesday: You can’t overdose on chocolate – we checked. Know what else you can’t overdose on? Poetry. (Humour us our feeble attempts at analogies after the long weekend.) RADA’s Farrago Easter Slam! (their exclamation mark, not ours) promises to pull together the “cream [Cadbury?] of the UK’s new poetry talent”, with an open invite to poets from the floor. So if you’ve been jonesing to test your metrical mettle (free versers welcome, too), perhaps tonight’s your night. Every poet wins a prize. Chocolate apparently. Oh no. 7.30pm, £6 tickets, £5 concessions.
Wednesday: Lots to choose from tonight, but we’re feeling most inclined towards getting a bit of post-Easter exercise and going on the Stanfords-sponsored “guided tour of the capital’s dead”, led by London’s Dead author Ed Glinert (6pm, £3, tickets should be bought in store). The British Library’s Will the web be good for us? (6.30pm, £6 tickets, £4 concessions) also intrigues. Shall we revel tonight in London’s past or ponder instead the future of cyberspace? Tough call.
Also on tonight: Alan Sillitoe discussing his 1970 novel (recently reissued) A Start in Life at Foyles (6.30pm, free, but e-mail Foyles to reserve a ticket); biographer Claire Tomalin on the poetry of Milton, with readings by Simon Russell Beale (at the National Theatre, 6pm, £2.50–£3.50); and Utter! Feminism (again not our exclamation mark) poetry at the Salisbury Hotel (7.30pm, £4).
Thursday: Will Self has a new book out. You think, Didn’t Will Self have a new book out just a few months ago? Why, yes, he did, but the man is apparently a dervish of creative activity right now and even hopes to publish another before the end of the year. You can catch Self reading from his latest, The Butt, at Clapham Books tonight (7pm, free). If that doesn’t strike your fancy, you might try the Guardian Newsroom’s Pixels vs Paper: Does short fiction belong online or in hard copy? (7pm, £5 tickets, £3 concessions). Weighing in on the topic: a group of editors representing various London literary mags, both print and online-only, including our friends at Litro.
Also on tonight: Poet Simon Armitage, reading from his latest collection, Out of the Blue, at Foyles (6.30pm, free, but e-mail Foyles to reserve a ticket); Book Slam at Neighbourhood (doors open 6.30pm, event starts 8pm; £6 advance tickets or concessions, £8 at door); Geoffrey Nowell-Smith signing copies of his study of 1960s filmmaking, Making Waves: New Wave, Neorealism, and the New Cinemas of the 1960s, at Borders Express Fulham (6pm, free); and the launch of the London International Documentary Festival at the London Review Bookshop (7pm, £6).
Friday: Forward prize-winner Daljit Nagra reads at Somerset House as part of the lunchtime series That Mighty Heart: Poets’ Visions of London (1.10–2pm, free, but e-mail ahead to reserve a ticket) – a far more rewarding way to spend a lunch hour than window shopping on the high street and balking at the return of ‘80s fashions (and balk we do).
Sunday: A mini literature trail around Shoreditch? Love it. Perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon. A Get London Reading event, Turn Over the Page will take you on an East End jaunt, with book swaps, readings, interviews, and author appearances along the way. Among those featured: Deborah Moggach, Bernard Kops, Dan Cruickshank, and Michael Palin. Wait, we get to wander around Shoreditch with an ex-Python? Fahhbulous. Free, 2–6pm.
Sugar crash. And we’re spent.
Know of an event that belongs in the Book Grocer listings? Please e-mail us at londonist-at-gmail-dot-com.
Demented choco bunny pic courtesy of (appropriately enough) Dirty Bunny’s Flickrstream
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