Congratulations – you can read! (Presumably. Unless you just look at Londonist for the pictures.) Literacy is sexy. Hyper-literacy, even sexier. Or so we at Londonist tell ourselves as we don our Coke-bottle glasses and curl up each night with a bottle of wine and a dictionary. But enough about our steamy Valentine’s Day plans. What have you got planned? Now, you may have inferred that we’re a jaded lot over here at Londonist.......

The Book Club is dead! Long live The School for Gifted Children! Robin Ince's Book Club, for the unacquainted, was a delightfully ramshackle evening of intellectual mirth and experimentation, which was given a grand farewell in December at the British Museum. Tonight The School for Gifted Children kickstarts the glorious sounding N20 Comedy Festival for show, stories, songs and outright lies in the dinky Studio 68 at Battersea Arts Centre. Robin Ince is in......

This week’s events are top-heavy with poetry readings. Have our novelist friends squirreled themselves away to write tomes in their Christmas cards, we wonder? Monday: Head to the RADA Foyer Bar for a reading from the Poetry School’s third anthology, I am twenty people! All inferences to the contrary, there will actually be six, not twenty, new poets reading from their work. Free, 7.00pm. Tuesday: We were reminded last week that poetry isn’t just......

After a 2-month hiatus spent reading Finnegans Wake (alright, would you believe rubbish romance novels?), The Book Grocer returns, with a continually evolving format and its diary stuffed full with book-ish events. Here are our picks for the week: Tuesday: Anne Sebba, author of Jennie Churchill, Winston’s American Mother, in conversation with Hugh Whitemore, playwright and writer of the Emmy-award winning Winston Churchill drama The Gathering Storm, at Waterstone’s Notting Hill Gate store, 7pm,......

Fresh this Week: Amr Gharbeia and Hari Kunzru consider the internet as a space for free expression and censorship at this event tonight. Amr Gharbeia is a leading Egyptian blogger, currently facing a legal campaign to block his website along with other blogs and human rights sites in Egypt. Hari Kunzru's novels and non-fiction engage with the theme of new technology and his recent writing highlights the complexities of internet censorship as a source......

Fresh Next Week John Lanchester's third novel Family Romance is the story of an extraordinary family - from his grandparents’ beginnings in rural Ireland and colonial Rhodesia, through his father’s wartime separation from his parents and his mother’s tragic first love, her decision to become a nun and her adoption of a new identity. Next Wednesday, 7pm, £6, The London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, WC1A 2JL, 020 7269 9030. Givin’ ‘em away: Tomorrow......

Just out the Van: Lights, Music, Words, Action - It’s Book Slam time again with Guatam Malkani, author of the Londonstani, Salena Godden, writer, singer, and raconteur, and Iman, winner of the National Music Award. This Thursday at Neighbourhood, 6.30pm till late, 12 Aclam Road, W10 5QZ, £5 in advance or £6 on the door. Fresh Next Week: Michael Palin leads a reading from Another Sky, a new collection of work by writers whose lives......

Just out the Van: Penned in the Margins is an evening of "music-cum-literary delights" this Thursday, featuring spoken word artist Ventriloquist, Bristol-based SJ Esau, Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip and Tim Wells. Spitz, 109 Commercial Street, E1 6BG, 020 7392 9032. In Next Week: Tarquin Hall (Salaam Brick Lane), Melanie McGrath (Silvertown), and Will Self (The Book of Dave) discuss the wealth of stories to be found in London’s East End, especially, in......

Robin Ince is a stand up comedian and writer. By all accounts he is very good and has had his fingers in many pies. Robin is also the founder of The Book Club, a nomadic club night. The club has proved to be so successful that Robin took it on a full UK tour this year and also won the Time Out Award for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy. This weekend, on the 17th December,......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Londinstani has stirred up more talk than any other book this year, and on Thursday, you'll have a chance to see the author -- Gautam Malkani -- for yourself and decide if the whole thing is worth all the fuss. In addition, ppearances by Ali Smith, Sarah Waters, and Will Self, among others, make......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. There's a wide range of events to choose from this week, with something on offer nearly every night of the week. We also have new releases from, among others, Douglas Coupland (pictured), Peter Carey, Monica Ali, Will Self, and A.M. Homes... Events Around London: Tonight, Turkish author Elif Safak celebrates the English translation of......

Londonist was very pleased to hear that the long-running feud between Piers Morgan and Jeremy Clarkson had reached such a level that Grosvenor House was requestiing an exclusion zone between the two at the British Book Awards at the end of next month. After all, the last time there was a good exclusion zone in London was when Bush came to visit and we were forced to 'work from home'. Fingers crossed eh? The......

We like the Daily Show. We liked it when we had to download it off the internet every day, but now it's beamed daily into our living rooms by More4 we like it even... more. And what makes it so good of course is Jon Stewart. Yes he's American and he shouts a lot...but we can forgive him because he's very very funny. We know that Stewart will one day be lured away from......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. It's finally here -- this year's Booker Prize winner will be announced this Monday in a ceremony at Guildhall. The finalists, for those who may have forgotten, are Kazuo Ishiguro, Juliane Barnes, Zadie Smith, Ali Smith, John Banville, and Sebastian Barry. This year's has been quite a contest, and we can't wait to see......