Book It: The Five Best Literary Events This Week

It’s one of those seriously annoying years when the Fourth of July falls on the least attractive day of the week —Wednesday, right smack in the middle. This effectively bifurcates the time into two small, equally annoying weeks — and also encourages people to take time off from work, because who wants one week split into two? That's just exhausting.

Because so many people will be busy (on vacation, or eating leftover potato salad, or starting a hot dog twelve-step program), literary events are wisely concentrated on the weekend following the holiday – including a couple by occasional Westword writer Jason Heller, who is celebrating the release of his new book, Strange Stars, at three separate events we've written about here. All this week's offerings are pretty cool — and one of them includes nothing but silence, reading, and wine. America: fuck, yeah.

Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking
Friday, July 6, 7 p.m.
Tattered Cover Aspen Grove
7301 South Santa Fe Drive, Littleton
Free
Pushcart Prize-winning novelist Brandon Hobson comes to Tattered Cover Aspen Grove to read from, discuss and sign his new coming-of-age Native American tale, Where the Dead Sit Talking. Hobson, a member of the Cherokee Nation tribe, brings an authentic voice to this lyric and startling book set in rural Oklahoma in the late 1980s.



Michael Isikoff & David Corn, Russian Roulette
Saturday, July 7, 2 p.m.
Tattered Cover
2526 East Colfax Avenue
Free
What does the 24-hour news cycle fail to offer us in terms of political news and the fallout of the election of 2016? In-depth reporting. Even the best of the news networks just don’t have time for the long view of current events and the lens of history — which is why noted political journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn are coming to the Tattered Cover. Their new book, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, tells the incredible and harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow — and perhaps how America can begin to recover.

Karen Auvinen, Rough Beauty
Saturday, July 7, 7 p.m.
BookBar
4280 Tennyson Street
Free
Colorado author Karen Auvinen records the time spent living alone for a decade at 8,500 feet in this powerful and meditative book. With essays that explore solitude, trauma and a deep commitment to place, the book (we excerpted a chapter here) seeks to inspire readers to look both outward and inward. Auvinen comes to BookBar to read from and sign copies of Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living, which author Luis Urrea called “vital, wild, and true.”


Aaron Schneider, Renew Orleans?
Sunday, July 8, 2 p.m.
Tattered Cover
2526 East Colfax Avenue
Free
University of Denver associate professor Aaron Schneider comes to the Tattered Cover to discuss and sign his book Renew Orleans?: Globalized Development and Worker Resistance After Katrina, which focuses on urban development after the 2005 disaster, the fading of political power in the black community, and the onset of gentrification. Through interviews and surveys, Schneider uncovers the truths of the labor markets in the new New Orleans.

Silent Book Club
Sunday, July 8, 6:30 p.m.
BookBar
4280 Tennyson Street
Free
You know the old joke that everyone makes when they get back from a vacation? “I need a vacation from my vacation.” Yes, and people will have a case of the Mondays when they head back to work after the Fourth of July festivities, too. But not yet. Because Sunday night at BookBar — and continuing every second Sunday of each month — is quiet reading time. That's just what you need after what was probably a busy week of barbecues, family gatherings and fireworks. Meet up at BookBar, don’t say a word, enjoy half-price drinks from the bar, and turn the pages as slowly as you care to…all in blissful silence.