Nothing to do tomorrow night? Tired of plowing through Against the Day? Head over to the Village Voice Bookshop to hear South African author Denis Hirson read from his latest work, White Scars: On Reading and Rites of Passage. The book examines what Hirson was reading at key moments in his life, including the arrest of his anti-apartheid activist father, his move to Paris in the 1970s, his father's death, and the end of the year-long period of kaddish, or mourning, for him.

Thursday, March 15th, 7 pm
The Village Voice Bookshop
6, rue Princesse
75006 Paris

More of a bard fan? Friday's your night. Get thee hence to the Red Wheelbarrow, for the launch of Richard Wilson's Shakespeare in French Theory (The event has been timed to coincide with the 2007 Congress of the "Société Française Shakespeare," to be held this week, 15 to 17 March. Institut National d'Histoire de l'art, Galerie Colbert, 2 rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris.) Wilson, a professor of English literature at Cardiff University and the author of Secret Shakespeare: Studies in Theatre, Religion and Resistance, has taken up the challenge of examining the influence of Shakespeare on such philosophers as Derrida, Foucault, Bourdieu, Cixous, and Deleuze, as well as the way their postmodern, post-strucutralist thought can be brought to bear on the greatest of English writers, "highlighting the importance of both for current debates about borders, terrorism, toleration and a multi-cultural Europe."

Friday, March 16th, 7 pm
The Red Wheelbarrow
22, rue Saint Paul
75004 Paris

Maybe you're sulking in your apartment, bitter because you still haven't had your French naturalization approved? Don't despair! All you have to do is write a novel in French and win the Prix Goncourt. Then they'll approve you, just like Jonathan Littell.

In need of something good to read? Celebrate the election of Dominique Fernandez to the Académie Française by picking up Porporino, ou les mystères de Naples, for which he won the Prix Medicis in 1974, or Dans la main de l'ange (Prix Goncourt 1982) or his most recent work, L'art de raconter.

Still not motivated to leave the house? Perhaps poetry is more your speed? Don't forget the Printemps des poètes is going on right now. Surely something there will tempt your refined palate?

If all of this doesn't float your boat, then you probably should just stay on the couch with Thomas Pynchon. At least you have Parisist to keep you in the loop.