UPDATE: The three winners have been notified by email. Losers: thanks for entering! You can buy a ticket for $5, and the Booksmith is giving away a free ticket if you buy your copy of Black's book from them, so go and get one already. You can get your book and/or ticket online here.)

This Saturday, comedian and Twitter-er par excellence MICHAEL IAN BLACK will appear at the Coolidge Corner Theatre to talk about his new book, YOU'RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT, and the Brookline Booksmith is giving away three pairs of tickets to three lucky winners.

From the inbox:

Brookline Booksmith is pleased to announce that broadcasting legend Barbara Walters will be appearing at your favorite local independent bookstore on Thursday, May 22nd at 7pm.

She will be signing copies of her best-selling book Audition from 7-9pm.

If you would like to attend the signing, copies of Audition must be purchased through the Brookline Booksmith.

From the inbox:

Brookline Booksmith is pleased to announce that broadcasting legend Barbara Walters will be appearing at your favorite local independent bookstore on Thursday, May 22nd at 7pm.

She will be signing copies of her best-selling book Audition from 7-9pm.

If you would like to attend the signing, copies of Audition must be purchased through the Brookline Booksmith.

“The world is getting hotter, the ice caps are melting, because man keeps saying to nature, Hey, our whole idea of a cozy future is to have jobs. That’s all we’ve got planned. What’s more, we will pursue this aim at any cost, even, paradoxically, if it means the eventual destruction of our workplace. Man says, Sacrifice industry and economy and jobs? For what? Future generations? I don’t even know those guys! I’ll tell you something for free ― it makes me ashamed that our species, which is so finely ennobled by its sacrifices, winds up sacrificing it all for the wrong things and comes off looking like a race of people who like to use their hair dryer while taking a bath .

Editor DAVID FOSTER WALLACE lead a formidable group of contributors in a discussion of this year's answer to The Best American Essays. And tonight, Elaine Scarry, Jerald Walker, and Robert Atwan will bring their work to the reading stage. So if you've already puzzled over this week's "Modern Love," caught up on all your old New Yorkers, and let your Atlantic Monthly subscription accidentally expire, tonight is your night. That's at 7 pm at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | free | 617.566.6660.

Just to make sure, we decided to wait until the Curse of the Hornbino had been demolished by Your 2007 Boston Red Sox before posting the rest of Nick Hornby's Q&A at the Devotion School in Brookline, where the patron saint of record-store geeks and football obsessives appeared last week to read from his so-called young-adult novel Slam, about a Tony Hawk-worshipping teenager named Sam who flees his hometown after knocking up his girlfriend.

Tonight!

Steve Almond, Laura Dave, and editor Jenni Ferarri-Adler read from Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone. Twenty-six writers (including Nora Ephron, Ann Patchett, and Haruki Murakami) reflect on their passion for food and solitude. It's probably okay if you bring snacks to the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.

TREVOR CORSON has a thing for sea life. His first book, The Secret Life of Lobsters, began as an essay in The Best American Science Writing. Now, he’s turning his attention from Maine crustaceans to “the fast food of Old Tokyo” with The Zen of Fish (click for an excerpt). Corson, a reporter and magazine editor who’s fluent in Japanese, presents the cultural history and science behind sushi through the eyes of Kate Murray and her fellow students at the California Sushi Academy.

We first became enthralled by Audacia Ray’s new book because it boasted a cover with numerical code arranged in the form of an ass. Bloody brilliant, if you ask us. Of course, the inside worked for us as well. Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration is a seriously painstaking peek into the way that women have/are using the internet to explore their sexuality and in some instances getting paid to do so.

We first became enthralled by Audacia Ray’s new book because it boasted a cover with numerical code arranged in the form of an ass. Bloody brilliant, if you ask us. Of course, the inside worked for us as well. Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration is a seriously painstaking peek into the way that women have/are using the internet to explore their sexuality and in some instances getting paid to do so.

Brookline Booksmith hosts a double bill with both ANDREW O’HAGAN and CLAIRE MESSUD reading from their fourth novels. The Scottish-born O’Hagan’s Be Near Me is narrated by David Anderton, an Oxford-educated Catholic priest who obtains a parish near his elderly mother in working-class Scotland. His “posh” behavior and cultural tastes alienate his parishioners, and then there’s his relationship with a young boy.

AMY FUSSELMAN was raped by her babysitter’s husband when she was four years old. In 8: A Memoir, she forgoes describing the violation in favor of chronicling the snowballing fallout it had on every aspect of her life. Her debut, The Pharmacist’s Mate (click for an excerpt), was a series of vignettes and musings on the death of her father and her own pregnancy; 8 — which is named after the figure eights she skated as a child — strives for a similarly unfiltered intimacy, as Fusselman recalls her experiences with her rapist (whom she refers to as “my pedophile”), the birth of her son, and her foray into alternative healing methods.

Given all the books on Princess Di in the pipeline for next season, it seems fitting that Salon founder DAVID TALBOT has gone against the grain to focus on America’s version of a royal family. Brothers: A Hidden History of the Kennedy Years is an in-depth look at John and Robert that sheds fresh insight on their administration and their ambitions.