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Event Calendar
A Garbology themed book club at From Landfill Harmonic to Basura at the Ethical Society. Watch Landfill Harmonic, the documentary about a Paraguayan children's orchestra playing instruments built from landfill trash. Then dramaturg Ken Cerniglia (Hadestown) explains how it became Basura, a Gloria and Emily Estefan musical headed for Broadway. Humes follows the 102 tons of trash each American leaves behind. Free, RSVP.
- From Landfill Harmonic to Basura: A Musical Journey to Broadway: Sunday, Oct 4 · 2:00 PM–4:00 PM EDT
A Metamorphoses themed book club at Relic's The Blood of the Rose at Corpus Christi Church. The program adapts La Púrpura de la Rosa, the first opera performed in the Americas (Lima, 1701), for Baroque instruments and readings from Calderón's libretto. Ovid tells the Venus and Adonis story in Book X. Read it, then hear what colonial Peru did with it. Tickets at the door from 4:30.
- Relic: The Blood of the Rose: Sunday, Oct 4 · 5:00 PM–6:30 PM EDT
A Butch Queens Up in Pumps themed book club at a screening of T.V. Transvestite at the Maysles Documentary Center. The 1982 film, long thought lost, shows a House of LaBeija ball in a Harlem bingo hall, years before Paris Is Burning. Marlon Bailey's ethnography explains the house and ball system those queens built. Tickets.
- T.V. Transvestite (de Bagno & Capozzi, 1982): Sunday, Oct 4 · 7:00 PM–9:30 PM EDT
A Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance themed book club at a shakuhachi workshop at New York Zendo Shobo-Ji. Marco Karaku Burmester teaches the bamboo flute monks play during zazen, and everyone gets a PVC flute to try. Pirsig chases Quality through a carburetor. Suizen chases it through one breath. Ichion jobutsu, enlightenment in a single note.
- NYZ: Shakuhachi Workshop: Sunday, Oct 4 · 7:00 PM–9:00 PM EDT
An Ornament of the World themed book club at Getting Loud at the Library, where IRCPL's Seth Kimmel and Burke librarian Jeffrey Wayno pull rare books showing how rival religious communities argued in the same reading rooms. Menocal's history of Muslims, Jews, and Christians sharing libraries in medieval Spain is the warm-up. Free lunch. Non-Columbia guests register by 11:59pm Oct 4.
- Getting Loud at the Library: Interfaith Dialogue in Old Books: Monday, Oct 5 · 12:00 PM–2:00 PM EDT
A How to Write an Autobiographical Novel themed book club at Panic, Politics, and Policy: New York City During the AIDS Crisis, 1981–1996 at Roosevelt House. Tom Duane, C. Virginia Fields, and Deborah Glick talk stigma, needle exchange, housing, and the groups that stepped in when government didn't. Chee's essays include his years with ACT UP. Free, in person or online.
- Panic, Politics, and Policy: NYC During the AIDS Crisis, 1981–1996: Monday, Oct 5 · 6:00 PM–7:30 PM EDT
A Who Wrote the Bible? themed book club at Introduction to Law in Catholicism and Judaism at Temple Emanu-El, the first session of Jewish and Catholic Law in Dialogue. Fr. Michael Hilbert, S.J. and Rabbi Emma Dubin ask where religious authority sits and how binding it is today. Friedman's question comes first, who wrote the text being interpreted. Registration required by email to interfaith@emanuelnyc.org.
- Introduction to Law in Catholicism and Judaism: Monday, Oct 5 · 6:30 PM–8:00 PM EDT
A Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World focused book club. We will meet at Brooklyn Museum's Art of Manga Exhibit and will also watch (some of) the first season of One Piece together (meeting biweekly on Zoom).
- One Piece Watch Party on Zoom: Every other Monday, Oct 5–Nov 20 · 7:00 PM–9:00 PM EDT
- Brooklyn Museum: Art of Manga Exhibit: Thursday, Nov 5 · 12:00 PM–3:00 PM EST
An At Home in the Universe themed book club at Learning Dynamics, and Dynamics of Learning, a Rockefeller physics-and-biology seminar with Emory's Ilya Nemenman. He shows where the classic Rescorla–Wagner model breaks on songbirds and worms, then demos an agent that learns interpretable dynamics from data. Kauffman's book is about order emerging from simple rules, which is roughly what Nemenman is trying to measure. Open to the public.
- Learning Dynamics, and Dynamics of Learning: Tuesday, Oct 6 · 4:00 PM–5:00 PM EDT
A Timeless Way of Building themed book club at Nowicki's Unbuilt Chandigarh: An Ecology of Everyday Life, an Archtober panel at the Center for Architecture. Maciej Nowicki planned Chandigarh around shade, orientation, and planting before he died in 1950 and Le Corbusier took over. Alexander argues buildings should come out of how people actually live, which is close to what Nowicki drew. Register.
- Nowicki's Unbuilt Chandigarh: An Ecology of Everyday Life: Tuesday, Oct 6 · 5:30 PM–7:00 PM EDT
A Day of the Locust themed book club at Scream Scene's Pearl screening and horror hangout at Clara's in Gramercy. Pearl is a farm girl in 1918 who wants to be in pictures and kills whoever stands in the way. West wrote the novel about the people Hollywood leaves behind and what that does to them. Free, no ticket, 21+.
- Pearl Screening & Horror Hangout: Tuesday, Oct 6 · 8:00 PM–10:30 PM EDT
A Designing Data-Intensive Applications themed book club at the Northeast Carpentries intro to qualitative data, a free online workshop from Columbia, Harvard, Buffalo, and Rochester. Kleppmann covers how systems store numbers at scale. This session covers the messier data, interviews and focus groups, and how to code it into themes. Register.
- Introduction to Working with Qualitative Data: Wednesday, Oct 7 · 2:00 PM–3:30 PM EDT
A Supergods themed book club at New York Comic Con at the Javits Center. Grant Morrison argues superheroes are the gods a secular culture made for itself. Spend four days in the temple and decide if they're right. Cosplay encouraged.
- New York Comic Con (Day 1): Thursday, Oct 8 · 10:00 AM–7:00 PM EDT
- New York Comic Con (Day 2): Friday, Oct 9 · 10:00 AM–7:00 PM EDT
- New York Comic Con (Day 3): Saturday, Oct 10 · 10:00 AM–7:00 PM EDT
- New York Comic Con (Day 4): Sunday, Oct 11 · 10:00 AM–5:00 PM EDT
An On Photography themed book club at Reflections in Black, a SoHarlem conversation with Deborah Willis, NYU photography chair and 2026 American Book Award winner. Sontag asks what the camera does to the people in front of it. Willis has spent a career on the Black photographers who answered by picking the camera up themselves.
- Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present: Thursday, Oct 8 · 6:00 PM–7:30 PM EDT
A The Book Against Death themed book club at Sam Roberts on Are They Dead Yet?: The Art of the Obit at Roosevelt House. The Times obituarist has written about 1,500 of them and says no life is ordinary. Canetti spent fifty years refusing to accept death at all. Bring both positions. RSVP or watch online.
- Sam Roberts: Are They Dead Yet? The Art of the Obit: Thursday, Oct 8 · 6:00 PM–7:30 PM EDT
A Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons themed book club at Cartoonists Celebrate America 250 and the Republic of Satire at the Society of Illustrators, a month before the midterms. Steve Brodner, Ann Telnaes, Adam Zyglis, and Pedro X. Molina talk about drawing power and what it costs now. Nast's cartoons helped bring down Boss Tweed. Free.
- Cartoonists Celebrate America 250 and the Republic of Satire: Thursday, Oct 8 · 6:00 PM–9:00 PM EDT
A Joy of x themed book club at MoMath's Ask a Mathematician, Anything! with Dr. Tiago Hirth, recreational mathematician and co-founder of the Mathematical Circus. Strogatz writes for people who never got why math matters. Bring the question you were too embarrassed to ask in school. Online and free. Register.
- Ask a Mathematician, Anything! with Dr. Tiago Hirth: Thursday, Oct 8 · 6:30 PM–7:30 PM EDT
A This Is Your Brain on Music themed book club at Music on the Brain: A Change in Mind at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. Columbia neuroscientist Julie Apostolou talks about how small genetic changes rewire perception, and pianist Kelly Green answers with variations on a theme. Free, in person or streamed. Official page.
- Music on the Brain: A Change in Mind: Thursday, Oct 8 · 7:00 PM–8:30 PM EDT
A Murder on the Orient Express themed book club at the Grand Central Murder Mystery Scavenger Hunt. Meet Up Mary died at Grand Central. Teams get clues and 75 minutes to work out how. Christie solved a murder on a train. You get the whole terminal.
- Grand Central Murder Mystery Scavenger Hunt: Thursday, Oct 8 · 7:00 PM–9:30 PM EDT
A My Grandmother's Hands themed book club at Me-Wee's Playhouse at Dixon Place, Nicole Hill's part performance art, part play-date for adults. A monster named Me-Wee and a singing pair of clown-tits invite you to laugh at the "United States of Traumatization" and find your own monster. Menakem argues racial trauma lives in the body, so it fits. Six shows, $10 All Skate tickets available.
- Me-Wee's Playhouse: Thursday, Oct 8 · 7:30 PM–9:00 PM EDT
- Me-Wee's Playhouse: Friday, Oct 9 · 7:30 PM–9:00 PM EDT
- Me-Wee's Playhouse: Saturday, Oct 10 · 7:30 PM–9:00 PM EDT
- Me-Wee's Playhouse: Thursday, Oct 15 · 7:30 PM–9:00 PM EDT
- Me-Wee's Playhouse: Friday, Oct 16 · 7:30 PM–9:00 PM EDT
- Me-Wee's Playhouse: Saturday, Oct 17 · 7:30 PM–9:00 PM EDT
An Age of Homespun themed book club on an ArtTable curator-led tour of Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American "Schoolgirl" Art with Emelie Gevalt at the American Folk Art Museum. About 100 samplers, needlework maps, and watercolors argue that girls were making American landscapes before the Hudson River School. Ulrich reads early American history through objects women made, so she's the right guide.
- Curator-Led Tour: Locating Girlhood: Friday, Oct 9 · 11:30 AM–12:30 PM EDT
A Death and Life of Great American Cities themed book club on AIANY's Madison Avenue walking tour, tracing 1870s brownstones, McKim, Mead & White townhouses, and Rosario Candela apartments that became luxury storefronts. Jacobs fought to keep old buildings in use. Madison Avenue shows what that looks like when the rents get very high. Limited to 17. Register.
- Walking Tour: Madison Avenue, High Fashion, and Historic Preservation: Friday, Oct 9 · 5:00 PM–7:00 PM EDT
A Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times themed book club at a viola and piano recital inside the Nicholas Roerich Museum's Upper West Side townhouse. Violist Laura Sacks and pianist Steven Beck play C.P.E. Bach, Chopin's Variations brillantes and Waltz in A-flat, Robert Fuchs, and Milhaud. Read Alan Walker's biography first and hear the young Chopin's showpiece variations with fresh ears. Program.
- Laura Sacks & Steven Beck: Viola and Piano Recital: Friday, Oct 9 · 6:00 PM–7:10 PM EDT
A Still Alice themed book club at APHASIA, Marc J. Straus's play in verse at The Chain Theatre, three nights only. Straus, a poet and former oncology chair, plays his own mother, Dora, a valedictorian at 76 who wakes from a stroke understanding everything and able to say nothing. Genova's Alice is a linguist losing language to Alzheimer's. Both books are about a sharp mind trapped inside. Tickets from $40.
- APHASIA: A Play in Verse: Friday, Oct 9 · 7:00 PM–8:25 PM EDT
- APHASIA: A Play in Verse: Saturday, Oct 10 · 7:00 PM–8:25 PM EDT
- APHASIA: A Play in Verse: Sunday, Oct 11 · 3:00 PM–4:25 PM EDT
A Power Broker themed book club on Untapped New York's Met Opera Backstage Tour: the 4,000-seat auditorium, the wig, costume, and carpentry shops, the armory, and the dressing rooms. Lincoln Center exists because Robert Moses cleared San Juan Hill to build it. Caro tells that part. Up to 12 guests, ages 8+.
- Met Opera Backstage Tour: Saturday, Oct 10 · 10:30 AM–11:45 AM EDT
A Silent Stars themed book club on an ArtTable curator-led tour of Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film with co-curator Emma Cormack at Bard Graduate Center. It's the first major show on how early Hollywood went from actors wearing their own clothes to the costume designer. Basinger profiles the stars who wore them.
- Curator-Led Tour: Goddesses in the Machine: Tuesday, Oct 13 · 12:30 PM–1:30 PM EDT
A free public presentation and group discussion at Brooklyn Central Library on treating reading as a system — learning to read more widely and deeply without relying on motivation alone, reducing phone distractions, juggling multiple books, building a commonplace book, and balancing print, ebooks, and audiobooks. Paired with Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book, the 1972 classic (co-authored with Charles Van Doren) on critically reading great books across genres, from poetry and history to science and fiction. Event details.
- Reading is a System: Monday, Oct 19 · 5:30 PM–7:30 PM EDT
Past Events (19)
A Orality and Literacy focused book club. We will take a look at modern verbal storytelling as it exists in spoken word poetry.
- Nyuorican Bowery Slam: Monday, Sep 28 · 6:00 PM–9:00 PM EDT
An official Commonplace.NYC meeting at McCarren Park — come to New York's only book club that creates new book clubs!
- Official Commonplace.NYC Meeting: Friday, Sep 25 · 6:00 PM–7:00 PM EDT
A screening of Jia Zhangke's 2006 Golden Lion winner Still Life at Anthology Film Archives, set in Fengjie during the Three Gorges Dam demolitions — paired with Ezra Vogel's Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, chronicling the pragmatic architect of China's radical economic opening who "creatively destroyed" much of the system he'd helped build under Mao. Both works grapple with transformation's human cost: Jia's digital-video documentary aesthetic captures a town literally below the waterline, its buildings marked with red flood warnings, while Vogel disentangles the contradictions of a leader who lifted hundreds of millions from poverty yet ordered the Tiananmen crackdown. Event details.
- Still Life (Jia Zhangke, 2006): Monday, Sep 21 · 7:00 PM–9:00 PM EDT
A one-time genre showdown at Brooklyn Book Festival where St. Francis College MFA faculty and students face off in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction — paired with Angus Fletcher's Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature, which treats literature as a technology for solving problems science can't touch: how to live, love, and maintain courage in the face of death, tracing narrative breakthroughs from ancient Mesopotamia to Elena Ferrante that alleviate grief, spark empathy, and engineer enhancements to the human heart. Event details.
- Battle of the Genres: Monday, Sep 21 · 12:50 PM–2:00 PM EDT
A The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family focused book club. We will visit the Jewish Museum — housed in the historic Felix M. Warburg House on the Upper East Side — to explore the Warburg family legacy and Jewish culture in New York City.
- Visit to the Jewish Museum: Saturday, Sep 19 · 11:00 AM–1:00 PM EDT
An album-release show for World Enough and Time, the second record from Brooklyn electronic art-rock duo Vuzz, joined by cinematic industrial artist Metamyther and Maxx Klaxon at The Sultan Room Rooftop in Bushwick — paired with Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life, chronicling the American indie underground from 1981–1991.
- Vuzz: World Enough and Time Album Release: Thursday, Sep 17 · 7:00 PM–10:00 PM EDT
A decision-theory salon at CUNY Graduate Center with Columbia philosopher Melissa Fusco — tackling Newcomb's dilemma and the Sleeping Beauty paradox after our fifth session spectacularly failed to settle free will. We're moving on anyway, assuming we're free agents who can choose between options. But how? Are there laws of rationality that yield best answers, at least sometimes — or is rational choice a pipe dream? Paired with Jonny Thomson's Mini Philosophy as a companion: 2500 years of big ideas on scary movies, betting on God, pleasure vs. pain, and when a duck isn't a duck. RSVP required.
- The Analytic Salon: Decision Theory: Thursday, Sep 17 · 6:00 PM–7:30 PM EDT
A If on a winter's night a traveler focused book club. We will meet at the Drama Book Shop.
- Book Club Discussion at the Drama Book Shop: Thursday, Sep 17 · 4:00 PM–6:00 PM EDT
Are Prisons Obsolete? focused book club. We will attend Attica is All of Us at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — a commemoration of the 55th anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising and Massacre.
- Attica is All of Us at Schomburg Center: Saturday, Sep 12 · 5:30 PM–8:30 PM EDT
An I Robot focused book club. Asimov attended Columbia University for graduate studies. We will walk through the Columbia campus and discuss the book and its impact on science fiction.
- Walking at Columbia University to Discuss I, Robot: Thursday, Sep 10 · 6:15 PM–8:00 PM EDT
An Anti-Oedipus-themed book club on gender abolitionism, anchored by Grace Lavery's discussion of Personal Demons at BISR Central — exploring possession narratives, neoliberal personhood, and queer emancipation beyond the body-versus-consciousness binary.
- Personal Demons: A Conversation with Grace Lavery: Wednesday, Sep 9 · 7:00 PM–8:30 PM EDT
A Reading Together focused book club. We will attend a Quiet Reading event at the McCarren Park in Brooklyn for a communal reading session.
- Quiet Reading at McCarren Park: Monday, Sep 7 · 6:00 PM–7:30 PM EDT
A River of the Gods themed book club disguised as a pulp adventure expedition through Central Park — because what better way to discuss 19th-century European scrambles for the Nile's headwaters than by scrambling through the park yourself, fedora in hand, dodging betrayal and cryptic clues in search of a lost artifact? Colonialism meets cosplay meets literary analysis.
- Raiders of the Local Adventure: Saturday, Sep 5 · 2:00 PM–3:30 PM EDT
An Open themed book club visiting the US Open Player Tunnel and Champions' Photo Experience at Hudson Yards — walk through a recreation of the iconic entrance players make before stepping onto Arthur Ashe Stadium, and strike a pose like a US Open champion!
- US Open Player Tunnel and Champions' Photo Experience at Hudson Yards: Saturday, Sep 5 · 12:00 PM–1:00 PM EDT
A Mythical Man-Month focused book club. We will visit the original Bell Laboratories Building to see a historical technological marvel in New York City.
- Visit to Bell Labs Building: Friday, Sep 4 · 2:00 PM–3:00 PM EDT
An Anti-Oedipus themed book club meeting at The Fifth Place — an invitation-only space described as "nightclub meets absurdist behavior lab, dramaturgical glitch swarm, interpersonal derangement LARP." A 90-minute collider that twists instincts and suspends everyday habits through engineered rules of communication and behavior.
- The Fifth Place: A Room With New Rules: Thursday, Sep 3 · 8:00 PM–9:30 PM EDT
An Anti-Oedipus focused book club. We will attend a screening of Dead Man at Anthology Film Archives — a surreal Western in a space dedicated to surrealist cinema.
- Dead Man Screening at Anthology Film Archives: Sunday, Aug 30 · 8:30 PM–10:30 PM EDT
An Orality and Literacy focused book club featuring a walking tour meets street theater exploring New York language and slang in the Lower East Side, with special guest performers from PMT House of Dance.
- The City Speaks: Languages and Slang of NYC (with Special Guest Performers): Sunday, Aug 30 · 3:00 PM–5:00 PM EDT
A No-Nonsense Spirituality focused book club. We will go to The New York Society for Ethical Culture to join in one of their Humanist Happy Hours.
- Humanist Happy Hour at The New York Society for Ethical Culture: Friday, Aug 28 · 7:00 PM–9:00 PM EDT