A Reading Series of Biblical Proportions

For all those who missed it, Brooklyn's autumn of weird and wild weather continued last night with a full-blown Old-Testament style hailstorm that left Crown Heights littered with leaves and mothball-sized ice cubes (the lady reports there were still piles on the ground in Prospect Park this morning). ILFA was safely ensconced in the cozy environs of Franklin Park's Big Bar for the reading series, but even glass and steel couldn't keep the hailstones from intruding, which they did by unleashing a machine-gun rattle on the patio furniture and the glass garage door just as poor Alyson Gerber was finishing a reading from her upcoming novel Gracie Garber Loves Goys. To her immense credit, Gerber had the grace and poise to smile through the noise that drowned her out (and the crowds of idiots who took pictures - see above), and then crack wise ("Please don't blame this one on the Jews") and read onward.

All four readers were excellent, as usual, and headliner James Hannaham even read an excerpt from his new book God Says No that included a hailstorm. Organizer Penina Roth outdid herself as usual and offered a welcome editorial at the opening of the event, saying (in reference to the LGBTQ-friendly theme of Hannaham's book) "Well, we've got a synagogue across the street, so consider tonight the answer to Paladino." Zing!