Yes, we’re a few days into it, but you know, there are *three* whole days remaining to get your summer stash of used books at the annual Newberry Library Book Fair.  Stock is replenished daily, so don’t even think that all the good stuff is gone already. (Psst, here’s a hint: this year’s overwhelming bounty necessitated a separate area just for photography books, so don’t look for them in the art section!)  Browse, buy, and support the Newberry from noon to 8pm on Friday, July 30, and from 10am to 6pm on Saturday, July 31 and Sunday, August 1.  Be a good green citizen and bring your own bag, and try to bike or take public transit if you can- it can be difficult to park around there.  Check the Newberry’s site for more information, including links to the entertaining & informative Book Fair blog & podcast.

And if you’re coming on Saturday (and you really should come on Saturday), don’t miss this year’s Bughouse Square festivities from 1-4pm.  The library first honors Kartemquin Films with the annual Altgeld Freedom of Speech Award at 1pm, then the very timely main debate over gun control in Chicago kicks off at 1:30.  Also present will be a host of soapbox speakers holding forth on health care, Sarah Palin, Chicago government, and a variety of other topics.   And soapboxer extraordinaire, Mr. Ben Reitman, returns to his old stomping grounds to expound upon “The Art of Soapbox Oration, with an Historical Survey of the Most Distinguished Chicago Boxers.”    The fun & fantastic Black Bear Combo will be there too, with accordion, horns, drums & tuba.  Check the Newberry’s Bughouse Square page for a complete rundown of the day’s events.

As always, hecklers welcome.

Date: Tue, 7/20
Time: 6pm
Location: The Hideout/1354 W. Wabansia/773-227-4433
What: A brawl. Just kidding: A “Write Club,” reading, which we featured back in January when the series began, and which features writers with opposing ideas debating for 7 minutes per topic.

With Pitchfork over, we think you’ll be looking for another venue to expend that ornery energy, no? Then get thee to the Hideout on Tuesday for The Write Club, where the audience decides the “winner” of a spirited debate. This time, they’ll be fightin’ over “MIND” (Steve Heisler) vs. “BODY” (Ali Weiss); “FIGHT” (David Kodeski) vs. “FLIGHT” (Edward Thomas-Herrera); and “HEAVEN” (Emily Rose) vs. “HELL” (Ian Belknap).

When you read the reader’s bios below, we think you’ll be impressed enough to drag your tuckered britches out, Pitchfork-induced haze or not.

Ian Belknap hosts/curates this reading series that features a rotating lineup of some of Chicago most gutsy writer/performers to engage in literature as bloodsport. To the winning idea goes the glory and cash purse for their charity. The losing idea gets to pick its teeth off the canvas.

Emily Rose is a Chicago-born and raised poet and performer. She performs at poetry readings, open mics, and Poetry Slams around Chicago and nationally. An organizer in her community, she is currently a Real Talk Avenue Resident, member of the 2010 Mental Graffiti Team, a board member for Chicago Slam Works, a regular contributor and producer for The Encyclopedia Show, Tournament Director for Louder Than a Bomb, occasional host at The Green Mill, and much much more.

Edward Thomas-Herrera is a playwright and performer living and working in Chicago. He is currently working on a musical entitled “Hell is for the Very Hot.” He listens to a lot of opera and that makes him gay. Please visitwww.boygirlboygirl.org.

Ali Weiss is a freelance writer and videographer with a long-standing performance habit. A New York City native, Ali is a proud resident of Chicago’s Lincoln Square, where she produces a spoken word show called The Paper Machete at Ricochet’s every Saturday at 3pm. More info at alisonweiss.com.

Steve Heisler is a freelance pop culture journalist who writes for The AV Club, GQ, Details, Variety, TV.com, and the Chicago Reader. He’s also a comedy producer with Just For Laughs, a writer and performer with the Neo-Futurists, a regular at The Paper Machete, and a former member of the Time Out Chicago action squad. He’s a baller, shot caller, brawler—steveheisler.com 4 life, yo.

David Kodeski is the creator of “David Kodeski’s True Life Tales,” an ongoing series of critically-acclaimed solo performances. He is a founding ensemble member of BoyGirlBoyGirl and is currently working on a libretto in collaboration with Chicago Opera Vanguard based upon a suitcase full of mysterious letters bought via the internet. The opera is slated to premiere in 2011 at Queen’s College in Belfast.

Two really great readings are happening tonight — you’d be nuts to miss out. One, “An Awesome Reading,” is sponsored by featherproof books and Open Books, and will highlight folks with brand-new or about-to-be-released chapbooks. Amy McDaniel, Jamie Kazay, Dave Snyder, and Mary Hamilton are all going to read. It’s at Open Books (213 W. Institute Place), home of the fancy ruby stage, from 7-9pm. All awesome details here.

At the same time and just a little bit north, FC2/Big Other contributors Rob Stephenson, Cris Mazza, David Schneiderman, Kathleen Rooney, Jac Jemc, Tim Jones-Yelvington, and AD Jameson will read at 2542 W Chicago Ave. (The jam’s organized by Green Lantern, but please note that it’s not at their space on Milwaukee.) Spacebook invite here. See you there, squirrelly friends! Let’s all get tacos at 9:30, OK? OK.

… is this weekend, all weekend, and almost everything but the hot dogs are free. There’s a map here, but it’s much more fun to get off the Red Line at Harrison (or Blue, Pink, Brown, Orange, Purple at Library, Green at Roosevelt) and wander. Wonder. Full schedule here.

For the last seven years, journalist and critic Robert K. Elder has listened to the last words of people about to be executed. “Listened” means reading newspaper accounts, combing through prison archives, talking with counselors — and in 2010, Elder published many of these in the straightforwardly titled Last Words of the Executed, available from University of Chicago Press.

What’s most impressive about the book — besides an introduction from the late Studs Terkel and a blurb from Sister Helen Prejean — is its focus on people, not politics.

Last Words is an oral history, including everyone from William Robinson, a Quaker executed in 1659 for religious protests to Aileen Wuornos, put to death in 2002 for killing six men. And while of course anything with a barcode and a Library of Congress entry is somehow political, Last Words, organized by timeline and execution method, stands out for its clear, no bones presentation. Its storytelling. It’s like you were in the room, the square, on the front steps. Parts are funny and parts are sad and parts are nuts.

Tomorrow, Thursday June 10th at 7:00, just off the Damen Blue Line at the Stop Smiling Storefront (1371 N Milwaukee), you can hear Robert Elder fireside chatting about the book with Rick Kogan, newspaperman extraordinaire, for free. The event is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago and Stop Smiling. Full details (and sweet graphics) on the Stop Smiling website.

When I first moved to Chicago, I spent a lot of time reading books on trains. When you’re poor and new and looking for a job, it’s nice, riding the train and reading. It buys time, and it’s cheap. You go in circles through the white noise, reading and reading and making notes. Nobody bothers you.

Dalkey Archive titles were especially great picks, with their good weird weighty stories and summer-colored covers. Plus you looked kinda art and smart, reading them, sometimes so much so that you’d get a missed connection or two.

But you know what? It would’ove been better to actually make the connection in realtime. I shoulda looked up once in a while. I shoulda talked with people about how good those books were. 

Well! Tonight, you can do this! Joshua Cohen, author of the muchly-trumpeted Witz, “the sort of postmo dern epic that arrives like a comet about once every decade,” will be reading from his book (it’s an 800-page novel about a Christmas Eve plague that kills all the world’s Jews, except the firstborn sons — it’s meaty and conflicted and somehow also funny, like all lasting brave books need to be). Seriously, dudes: this is an epic Pynchon-stylee work, and it was published in full, Joycean spit at the end, which makes it renegade in 2010. It’s a Thing, and it is in our time, and you need to hear it read.  

Joining Cohen is Jesse Ball, who wrote Samedi the Deafness, also a good choice for trains. Afterwards, there’s a Q&A with Dalkey’s Martin Riker. 

The event, sponsored by Stop Smiling, starts at 7:00 at 1371 N Milwaukee Ave, just off the Damen Blue Line. It’s free. There’ll be drinks. You should go! and listen and talk, maybe even buy a book and read it, visibly, on the train home. (But geez! Look up, every other stop or so, and wink at someone watching you. See what happens.)

This Wednesday, May 19, at 7 p.m., Literago favorites John Beer and Suzanne Buffam will read poetry from their recent Canarium Books publications. Both books are currently listed in Small Press Distribution’s “Poetry Best-sellers”, with Buffam’s The Irrationalist ranking 7th and Beer’s The Wasteland and Other Poems ranking 9th. The reading will occur in Lincoln Square’s The Book Cellar, located at 4736-38 North Lincoln Ave.

Beer and Buffam will be joined by Whiting Award winning novelist Nami Mun, whose debut novel Miles from Nowhere has garnered her a great deal of industry buzz and established her as a writer to watch.

As always, the event is absolutely free, which means that you should come prepared to buy a book!

You guys! We planned your weekend for you! It will be so much better than Facebooking!

Tonight, Friday, at 9pm at Elastic Arts (2830 N Milwaukee, 2nd floor) for $7, Justin Petertil is hosting Homeroom’s regular (and regularly awesome) Songwriter Showcase, featuring Scott Masson (Office, The Juliets) and Kent Lambert (Roommate). Come be with good people, support a rad local organization, and hear Scott and Kent talk about how they write.

Tomorrow, Saturday, at 7pm at Quimby’s (1854 W North Ave), for free, the whipsmart and fucking murderous Kate Zambreno is throwing a coming out party for her new (and first) novel, O Fallen Angel. You should go. (And you should read this blog entry, which she wrote and is one of our favorites.) Joining Kate are the great John Beer, Daniel Borzutzky, Megan Milks, Jeremy Davies, A.D. Jameson, and James Pate. Come early and read comic books, because there are totally not going to be enough seats.

And on Sunday, be at the Whistler (2421 N Milwaukee Ave) for a free! double-header reading starting at 6pm. First up is The Orange Alert Reading Series, starring Andrew Farkas, Rebekah Silverman, C.T. Ballentine, James Tadd Adcox, and Brian Costello. After that, from 8pm-10pm, it’s Nerves of Steel with Patrick Somerville (and Mark Rader on fiddle), Heather Palmer, Todd Dills (for reals!), and everyone’s pal Harold Ray. The whole night’s lineup kind of reminds us of the final scene in that Sgt. Pepper movie with Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees, only this one’s better because there’s a fiddle.

Come get your spring at Funny Ha-Ha tonight! Literago.org’s very own Jacob Knabb will read along with a bunch of other super rad people. Plus the Hideout has Hamms!

Ever feel like your manuscript’s at logjam? Like editors just aren’t realizing what a special flower you are? Or like your book is so amazing it should be applauded, then launched on a trebuchet? Well! Does the Chicago Underground Library have a deal for you!

On July 10, 2010, from 7-10pm, the Chicago Underground Library will host its second annual Science of Obscurity — a science fair and book launch.

Folks who have just finished writing a book, or reading one, or making something that looks like one – “book” also means zine, magazine, chapbook, textbook, etc. – are invited to read a graf, then launch the text into space. (Last year, there was applause after this happened, and it was really brave and awesome and heartwarming. People were all, “man! I wish I’d sent in a proposal to do that!” 

It’s not too late to do it in 2010! Trebuchet proposals should be sent to info@underground-library.org by June 1st — tell CUL who you are and what you want to throw. Short, sweet, done.) The library is also accepting proposals for  its science fair, happening that same night. Friends! This is your chance to tell the world why your work is special, using a diorama, poster, tri-fold board, or baking soda volcano, all of which trump Facebook fan pages, hands-down.

Ideas include: (1) plotting the effects that prolonged exposure to an audio recording of your poetry has on Orange Line passengers between 8 and 9 am on Mondays, (2) showing how paper airplanes made from your manuscript pages fly more gracefully than ones made from phonebook pages, or (3) designing the ideal cape for your novel’s hero’s archnemesis, whether or not s/h/zhe actually has one. (NB: Tabletop space is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis, however there is nearly unlimited room for wall poster displays – out-of-town writers are encouraged to participate!)

The Science of Obscurity will be at the Jupiter Outpost (which sounds like the most awesome carnival ride ever) (1139 W Fulton) and will also feature something called “scientist speed dating.” Food and drink will be available for sale, and you are welcome to BYOB, too. (OMG Chicago is going to be sunny by then, too. We cannot even wait.)

(For more about CUL, visit the FAQ.) (For all this info in a more linear format, visit the Facebook Event Page.)