The Smart Set is a weekly feature, compiled 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 lauren [at] maudnewton.com by the Thursday prior to publication, with the event’s date in . . .
Hilary Mantel admires the “unrelenting Swiftian nastiness” on display in Clare Clark’s The Nature of Monsters.
Gelflog digs up eleven children’s and YA books — beyond this year’s suddenly controversial Newbery Award winner — that contain the word “scrotum.” (Via.)
When I first mentioned the camel library service a few years back, I had no idea how many people rely on it. Since then, author Masha Hamilton has accompanied the camels on trips through Kenya’s isolated Northeastern Province, “near the unstable border with Somalia,” during a drought, and returned with photos and a video showing the crowds of people who . . .