Arts and CultureNew York

FREE Books, FREE Reading, FREE Show

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Tonight, you can enrich your broke-ass brain with some FREE literary events around the city.

FREE Bushwick Book Club

Bushwick Book Club is to traditional book clubs like sex toy parties are to Tupperware parties. Instead of people discussing a book they all read, the Bushwick Book Club has local musicians write and perform original songs based on a book. Books in the past include The Bible and Breakfast of Champions. Tonight’s meeting at Goodbye Blue Monday is going to tackle short stories written by some of the club’s regulars. The performance is FREE, and even has themed snacks. Also, if you’ve never been to Goodbye Blue Monday, what are you waiting for? With stacks of old books and random plastic objects, the inside looks like a thrift store. The patio looks like my grandparents’ barn.

Bushwick Book Club
Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway, Bushwick, Brooklyn
Tuesday September 1, 8:30pm
FREE

FREE Books at major subway stops

Two things always happen to me on the subway. 1. If I’m hungover in the slightest, I always get stuck on a platform with bucket drummers. 2. If I didn’t bring anything to read, I’m waiting for the train for at least twenty minutes. Thankfully, Choose What you Read NY has our backs. The group collects donated books, and then gives them away to commuters once a month at few subway stations. So grab something from them Tuesday night so you don’t get stuck reading a copy of the Metro covered in mysterious stains.

FREE books from Choose What You Read NY
West 4th St (outside the basketball courts)
Union Square (East Side, under the covering)
86th St 4/5/6 (outside H&M)
Borough Hall (outside the Municipal Building)
Tuesday, September 1,
5:45 to 7:30pm

FREE Wallace Shawn reading

Wallace Shawn is like Steve Buscemi in that they’ve both been in freaking everything. Us youngins probably know Wallace best from playing Vizzini in The Princess Bride, and Mr. Hall in Clueless. But before he was an actor and playwright, he went to Harvard and taught English in India as a Fulbright scholar. In short, he be smart monkey. Wallace just wrote his first non-fiction book, Essays, and it’s full of (surprise) essays about everything from 9/11 to restaurant servers. Go see him read Tuesday night at Barnes and Noble for FREE.

Wallace Shawn
Barnes and Noble
1972 Broadway btw 66th & 67th Sts., Manhattan
Tuesday, September 1, 7:30pm
FREE

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Kiley E - Ragamuffin Researcher

Kiley E - Ragamuffin Researcher

After years of denial, Kiley has finally admitted to baring a striking resemblance to Velma from Scooby Doo. Instead of traveling in a van hunting ghosts, she prefers wandering on foot in search of tacos, cheap beer, and fake birds. Growing up in Portland, Kiley enjoyed the balance of urban and green spaces. Then she spent her four years at Ithaca College, and found herself craving more sprawling asphalt in her life. So she moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where most of the buildings look like they're about to collapse. Kiley's favorite activities include: getting lost, crafting, sewing, biking, and geeking out at museums. Her love of taxidermy probably makes her a terrible vegetarian, but she doesn't care.