Get Your Read On

“The avant-garde is always just the people with the most energy,” Fairfield Porter once said. If that’s true, Miami's avant-garde would have to include Lauren “Lolo” Reskin, South Florida's only record store owner, event calendar guru, DJ, and ... book club leader? To each town its own Oprah, and Lolo fills the bill quite nicely. In the Sweat Records Book Club's short history, she has shown a serious knack for choosing contemporary books that matter, and for tonight’s gathering she has scored again, selecting Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs by Irvine Welsh. Heroin addicts will remember Welsh as the man who immortalized their otherwise boring lifestyle in the cult classic Trainspotting.

Welsh's latest effort, considered by many critics to be his best in years, is similarly packed with bad behavior, wild sex, drugs, and funny accents. The hero is Danny Skinner, an environmental health inspector who reads Schopenhauer between shots of Drambuie and spends most of his time hazing his geeky fellow employee Brian Kibby. Things get hilariously serious when Skinner discovers that when he drinks, it's Kibby who suffers the hangover. The discussion begins at 8, but there's no harm in stopping in early for a shot at Churchill's, is there?
Wed., Feb. 27, 2008