Janice Zarro Brodman has been collecting tidbits about strange cultural practices – strange to us, anyway – since her time at Harvard, and has just published them as “Sex Rules! Astonishing Sexual Practices and Gender Roles Around the World.”

While some might think twice about bringing a book with “Yale” in the title to Harvard territory, Michael Danziger has a different set of standards: He’s the guy who stuck with the college crew team for a full four years despite total athletic ignominy.

A series of free evening readings by poets, authors and playwrights is offered Friday to Jan. 11 at Lesley University. The readings feature visiting writers Megan Marshall, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and playwright Kia Corthron.

Try to find the literary journals in a big-box bookseller and you’ll find yourself crouched and digging through the lowest display case in its most remote corner. Not so at Porter Square Books, which hosts monthly readings led by five top local journals.

Though she doesn’t live in Cambridge anymore – she was priced out in 2004 – Louie Cronin has written perhaps the best breakup note ever in “Everyone Loves You Back,” a novel that publishes Friday.

Lots of people need a drink by the time Thursday rolls around, but a PBR doesn’t always cut it for the smarties of Cambridge and Somerville – the kinds of people who know the difference between Shakespeare’s “Timons of Athens” and “Titus Andronicus.”

The Cambridge Public Library has announced its citywide book club’s selection for the year: “Brown Girl Dreaming,” a memoir in verse by Jacqueline Woodson. The author will read Nov. 18.

Why are the Cambridge equivalent of rock stars coming out for the retirement party of a Harvard clerk – the guy who books rooms as a scheduling assistant for Harvard’s Center for Government and International Studies?

The sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird” arrives Tuesday with questions about whether reclusive author Harper Lee wanted it published at all, but Cambridge readers are embracing the new novel.

It’s not just short fiction wanted for the March 1 publication of “Microchondria II: 42 More Short Short Stories.” Editors want original art for its covers.