The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled and posted by Lauren Cerand, that usually appears Mondays at 12:30pm and highlights the best of the week to come. Special favor is given to New York’s independent booksellers and venues, and low-cost and free events. Please send details to Ms. Cerand at lauren [at] maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication. Due to the volume of submissions, events cannot be considered unless the date appears in the subject line of your message.
Updated: Don’t miss Javier Pinon’s Don Quixote and Other Stories at ZieherSmith in Chelsea, through January 12.
TUESDAY Jan 8: Gabriel Cohen says: ” I’d like to invite you to a reading/happy hour event I’m doing in Central Park on Tuesday, January 8. It’s free, and there will be refreshments, and the location sounds pretty coolâ€â€in a building right next to the Harlem Meer, the little lake at the northeast end of Central Park. I’ll be reading from my new books The Graving Dock and Boombox, and there will be time to mingle and schmooze after. It will be presented by the Central Park Conservancy as part of their Harlem Meer Social Hour series, and also by Reading New York, an ongoing series from La Lutta NMC. The event will run from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center, just inside the park at 110th Street between Fifth Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard/Lenox Ave.”
WEDNESDAY Jan 9: Jami Attenberg reads from her new novel, The Kept Man, at Barnes & Noble Chelsea. 7PM, FREE. Also, there’s a Bonjour Tristesse/Saint Joan double-bill at Film Forum. Yes yes.
THURSDAY Jan 10: “Upstairs at the Square” returns, with Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl) and Nicole Atkins & The Sea [Full disclosure, as always: I am very involved with this series]. 7PM, FREE. Plus, in the “Glaringly apparent questions I wish I’d asked every guy I had a crush on between the ages of about 19 – 23” category, “Anarchists and Marxists believe it possible to do away with the state, but what then would take its place?” Ruminate moodily on our dystopian future (and make me love you forever, oh boys of the Black bloc) at Bluestockings. 7PM, FREE.
FRIDAY Jan 11: Ayres & Tittsworth, the DJ duo behind “Old Bay Seasoning,” “Balmer Loosies” and other instant classics (The Jeffersons theme, remixed!), bring the beats from Baltimore and beyond to Brooklyn’s Studio B. 10PM, $10.
SATURDAY Jan 12: At MoMa, “Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings.” Uptown, “Talents II: New Photography from Berlin” continues at the Goethe-Institut New York [Full disclosure, as always: I am the publicist for this show].
SUNDAY Jan 13: Sundays at Sunny’s features Joshua Furst (The Sabotage Cafe , Short People), Francis Morrone (An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn) and Rebecca Pawel (Death of a Nationalist, The Summer Snow). The curating philosophy as I understand it is to make the readers so different that attendees are guaranteed to enjoy some aspect of the event. I often enjoy that there is booze and food and I can stuff my silly little face while listening quietly. Highly recommended (obviously). 3PM, “Suggested donation: $4. The bar (cash) will be open. Free coffee and Italian pastries and cookies will be provided.”
Note to Washington, DC, area readers: I’ll be discussing my work as part of the WNBA’s “Promotion and Publicity for New Authors” on Monday, January 14.