Sloane Crosley

Raves from Jonathan Ames as “a 21st century Dorothy Parker”? An über-liked book industry publicist with super-shiny hair garnering lots of genuinely positive attention for her essay collection I Was Told There’d Be Cake (Riverhead, $14)? But it’s by eschewing the discordant characteristics of the essayist and the publicist—i.e., by being genuine—that Sloane Crosley has garnered her parade of good quotes and reviews. (Jonathan Lethem and Colson Whitehead, for Chrissake.) I mean, lines like this don’t write themselves: “Being a New Yorker, I tend to instinctively value my belongings over my own life. I would never, say, liquor up my grandmother’s antique crystal vase and send it by itself down the West Side Highway trying to hail a cab at 3 a.m.” Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way N.E., 366-3333, www.thirdplacebooks.com. 7 p.m. (Also: Elliott Bay Book Co., 101 S. Main St., 624-6600, www.elliottbaybook.com, Thurs., April 10, 8 p.m.) KARLA STARR

Wed., April 9, 7 p.m.; Thu., April 10, 8 p.m., 2008