The holiday shopping season is officially in full swing, so the literary reading cup runneth over and ruineth your coffee table with big names. Message from Big Literature: Books make great gifts! Message from DCist: Free readings help keep your entertainment budget low, which is helpful since you already have to spend your entire bonus on gifts for other people.
MONDAY:
Joan Collins is 73 years-old and still fabulous. We’re not sure how she does it, but something tells us being married to a man in his early 40s probably has something to do with that special glow that’s helped her sell countless cheaply-made Old Navy sweaters. The Dynasty diva herself will read and sign copies of her new autobiographical self-help and tips book, The Art of Living Well at Borders Books & Music in Vienna. 8027 Leesburg Pike. 7:30 p.m. Free.
New Yorker‘s Adam Gopnik has a new collection of essays about growing up in Manhattan, written mostly about his children, and no doubt sprinkled with enough observations about the lives of plucky yet overindulged kids of wealthy and fabulous New Yorkers to make us all believe that Adam Gopnik is the coolest dad who ever lived. Fortunately, Luke and Olivia Gopnik’s forthcoming collection of essays, If Paris is So Great Why Don’t You Go Back There, promises to set the record straight and is due in February. Gopnik, père, will read from and sign copies of Through the Children’s Gate: A Home in New York at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. 7 p.m. Free.
TUESDAY:
Pretty much anytime Michael Crichton gets up behind a podium he’s likely going to toss out an idea that is somehow simultaneously both completely insane and entirely pedestrian. Watch as he manages this unique rhetorical feat at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW., 13th Floor. at 6:30 p.m. Free. For reservations call (202) 662-7564.
Former President Jimmy Carter is in town to move some minds as well as some units. He’ll read from Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at the Borders way out at 5871 Crossroads Center Way. 6 p.m. Free, and get there ridiculously early if you expect a seat.
Kate O’Beirne takes a break from her rigorous schedule of plastic surgery and lying to remind us all that there are liberal women in this country who are more successful than she is and she’s never, ever going to stop being upset about it. She’ll read from and sign copies of Women Who Make the World Worse at the Independent Women’s Forum, 1726 M St. NW. 5 p.m. Free.
