Tuesday
Meet Chris Ware, the man behind the graphic novel “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth,” which Time called a “haunting and unshakable book” that will change the way you look at your world. Get your own signed copy, and while you’re at it maybe get some tips on how to read it, because this isn’t your ordinary book — it comes with instructions, an index, paper cutouts and even a brief apology, which all converge to suck the reader into the world of Jimmy, an emotionally stunted everyman who at age 36 is provided with an opportunity to meet his father for the first time. Ware is also a regular contributer to The New Yorker, and his work has also appeared in McSweeney’s and This American Life.
6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 21. Brooklyn Academy of Music, Peter Jay Sharp Building, 30 Lafayette Avenue (Forte Green). Tickets are $60.
The creators of Armchair/Shotgun – listed by The New York Times as a notable “literary heir” – is celebrating the release of its fifth issue with a night of readers from Britt Gambino, Rob Hill, Devin Kelly, Liv Lansdale and Aleksander Zywicki. The magazine was founded in 2009; from its website: “We feel that good writing does not know one MFA program from another. It does not know a PhD from a high school drop-out.” The magazine has refreshing take on choosing what gets published –submissions are read anonymously, and the author’s name is concealed until the work has been selected for publication on “real honest-to-goodness paper.”
7 p.m. Tuesday, April 21. St. Mark’s Bookshop, 136 East Third Street (East Village).
Wednesday
Kate Bolick is having a reading and discussion about her book Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own. Part biography of early feminist thinkers, part memoir, the book (based on Bolick’s Atlantic article) purports to be a “revelatory and slyly erudite look” at 
the pleasures and possibilities of remaining single.” For Bolick those pleasures seem to include wearing high heels while drinking tea by one’s self on a fancy couch, but who are we to judge a book by its cover? There must be more to it than that for Malcom Gladwell to call it “a provocative and moving exploration of what it means for a woman to chart her own course.”
7 p.m. Wednesday, April 22. McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street (LES).
Thursday
Join Kenji Yoshino for a discussion of his new book Speak Now, a detailed account of Hollingsworth v. Perry, the groundbreaking federal lawsuit against Proposition 8 that resulted in gay marriage being legalized in California. As described by the publisher, the 12-day-long trial “interrogated the nature of marriage, the political status of gays and lesbians, the ideal circumstances for raising children, and the ability of direct democracy to protect fundamental rights.” The author brings complex legal concepts to life by interweaving his own story of finding love, marrying and having children as a gay man.
7 p.m. Thursday, April 23. WORD Bookstore, 126 Franklin Street (Greenpoint).
Saturday
This Saturday night get ready for a curated review of hilarious tales from… Mormondom? Who knew there were so many funny Mormon people with stories to tell, but according to Eventbrite just about every person in NYC fitting that description is coming out for a night of “entertaining and uproarious stories from life in the Mormon universe.” Elna Baker will be there; George Dawes Green, creator of the MOTH, says her “memoirs of Mormon chastity and self-denial are presented with such passion and wit and unbridled effervescence that somehow her life comes out as pure erotic adventure.” The man knows his storytelling, so we’re inclined to believe that this evening should be entertaining.
6 p.m. Saturday, April 25. The Farm, 447 Broadway, 2nd Floor (Lower Manhattan). Tickets $15.
