A busy week of readings and book events kicks off tonight with celebrations of the hipster’s holy trinity: sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. Dorianne Emmerton, Leanne Cusitar, David Findlay, May Lui provide the sex content with an event entitled “Oral: Adventures in Erotica” at Renegade (1266 Queen Street West, FREE). The readings begin at 7 p.m. and include an open mic session, which may or may not be code for a literary practice we at Books@Torontoist are too square to be in on. Over at This Ain’t the Rosedale Library (86 Nassau Street), aging punks and those who wish they were there can relive those lazy hazy glue-huffin’ days of yore with an in-store launch of Liz Worth’s Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History Of Punk In Toronto And Beyond (1977-1981). The free event begins at 7 p.m. and will include reminiscences of the oral and musical variety.
And speaking of oral pleasure, the Commensal vegetarian restaurant (655 Bay Street) hosts the monthly Toronto Reading Series event on Tuesday night with an evening of food and foodie books. Edible City contributors Kathryn Borel Jr. and Erik Rutherford join Dr. Joey Schulman (Healthy Sin Food) and Rick Gallop (The 2010 Revised G.I. Diet) (7 p.m., $5) for an undoubtedly stimulating reading experience. Eunoia author Christian Bok reads at the weekly Artbar Poetry Series at Clinton’s (693 Bloor Street West), where he’ll be joined by fellow poets Weyman Chan, Sonya Greckol and Patricia Young (8 p.m., FREE), while over at the Tinto cafe (89 Roncesvalles Avenue) Emily Schultz, Shaista Justin and other local authors read from their latest work (7:30 p.m., PWYC).
Pivot Readings continues its Wednesday night reading series at the Press Club (850 Dundas Street West) with authors Chris Eaton, Lynn McClory and Lindsay Zier-Vogel (8 p.m., PWYC) taking the stage. The Park Hyatt (4 Avenue Road) is the site for a fundraising event for World Literacy of Canada with authors Michael Winter, Anthony de Sa and Lauren Kirshner on hand for readings, signings and plenty of book chat (6:30 p.m., $60).
Descant magazine launches its winter issue on Thursday night at the beautiful Arts and Letters Club (14 Elm Street). The event will feature readings from contributors Vickie Fagan and Andrew Smith and plenty of other eclectic authors (7:30 p.m.. FREE). And because we love closure here at the books site, we’d be remiss to overlook an event devoted to an esoteric strain of voyeurism: dinosaur pornography. Indie publishers Ferno House launch the long-awaited fiction and poetry collection, Dinosaur Porn, at Supermarket (268 Augusta Avenue, 7:30 p.m., FREE). Sorry folks, you’ll have to supply your own Jurassic-themed punchlines.
For even more literary events listings, be sure to check out Torontoist’s daily installment of Urban Planner.
