Occult squiggles

Kat Balkoski has written a very nice piece for the Columbia Spectator about my new book Breeding: A Partial History of the Eighteenth Century. Thanks, Kat!

Here is the information for the event this evening at Book Culture (112th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam - I believe the advertised start time is seven, and we will probably get going around ten minutes past the hour or perhaps quarter past).

Afterwards we will adjourn to my apartment for a housewarming party of sorts. Everyone is welcome!

The wine has been delivered....

The cupcakes have been iced....

(Hmmmm, the decorative scheme was a bit hasty, it has not come out quite as I'd have liked - I think really you want pink-on-pink and dark-brown-on-light-brown, but I was working in haste and with limited supplies! I enjoyed making the occult squiggles, but those little tubes of gel icing are not perfectly suited to the job. A bad moment last night: I got home with bags of groceries around 10:30pm, after an evening work obligation, and laid out the cupcake-making equipment. Then I opened the oven - I never cook, I literally had not opened it since I moved here in mid-December - only to realize that there were no racks! That is one of life's minor mysteries - I had to dig out another cake tin and use it to create a kind of shelf for propping the cupcake pan onto. I could only bake one tray at a time...)

I even have a haircut appointment at five so that I will look respectable - now I must go and have some frantic last-minute tidying and cleaning!

I will hope to see some of you later on this evening, though...