Neighbors in the News: Summer Reading

photo via Michele Filgate/Community Bookstore

Three Park Slope authors have books (or books-in-progress) making waves this week, and in response, we’re feeling itchy, socially-conscious, and apocalyptic.

Itchy:

Park Slope science journalist and bed bug survivor Brooke Borel is at work on a history of the city’s least popular residents, tentatively titled  “Bed Bug: The Return of the World’s Most Reviled Household Pest.” In the meantime, she’ll be lecturing on the critters at the Brooklyn Brainery a week from today.

Socially-Conscious:

In her just-released book, “Ethical Chic: The Inside Story of the Companies We Think We Love,” investigative journalist Fran Hawthorne (previously, “The Overloaded Liberal” and “Inside the FDA,” among others) takes on feel-good consumption and corporate social responsibility. She’s reading tonight at (the air-conditioned) Community Bookstore at 7pm, so put down you Starbucks, close up your MacBook, put on your American Apparel, and head over.

Apocalyptic:

Next Tuesday, Karen Walker Thompson‘s much-anticipated debut novel “The Age of Miracles” hits the shelves, and already, the Ray Bradbury-esque coming-of-age tale is garnering strong reviews — the New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani calls it a “genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary with impressive fluency and flair.” You’ll have two days to read before the 6/28 book launch party at Greenlight.