Cars, food, Nazis and a Red Robin

Political satirist P.J. O’Rourke is one of our finest writers these days, but did you also know he’s a total gearhead? O’Rourke loves him some cars, and has for decades. At 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Politics and Prose downtown, O’Rourke will be signing copies of his new book “Driving Like Crazy,” a paean to his automotive adoration, from tooling around the South in a beat-up Buick to facing the off-road classic Baja 1000 in a decidedly on-road contraption. Let’s hope the tales he regales you with live up to his excellent written standards. Also in the store this week: Annie Barrows, who’s in town at 7 p.m. Thursday to talk about the book she took over from her late aunt, “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society,” where a collection of letters chronicles World War II survivors who fought off Nazi occupation on their quaint island; and at 7 p.m. Friday, Mark Kurlansky discusses the regional and seasonal edibles that Americans enjoyed prior to the fast-food revolution that make up his latest effort, “The Food of a Younger Land.” If you want to stay a little closer to suburbia, though, Claire Shipman is stopping by the Tysons Corner Borders at 7 p.m. Thursday to pronote her and Kitty Kay’s females-in-business tome, “Womenomics.”

How’d you like that “Batman and Robin” premiere from last week? Good stuff, huh? Gotham City is getting interesting again, with ace comic writer Judd Winick taking over “Batman” with issue 687, co-starring the other members of the big three (namely, Superman and Wonder Woman). And now, the mysterious Red Robin has surfaced in his own ongoing title and is hot on the trail of finding Bruce Wayne. (Might the Red Robin be Tim Drake, the last Robin before Damian? That’s my guess.) Supes also shows up in “The Flash: Rebirth” No. 3 for another one of those “who’s faster?” arguments that we nerds like to get into, the Justice Society faces off with an old bunch of baddies in the “JSA vs Kobra: Engines of Faith” miniseries, “X-Men Noir” collects the best X-Men tale I’ve read in a while, and Chris Claremont (who wrote my favorite X-Men storyline, “The Dark Phoenix Saga”) returns to the world of the mutants with “X-Men Forever.”

What’s your favorite X-Men epic: “Messiah Complex”? “Fall of the Mutants”? “Days of Future Past”? “Inferno”? “Mutant Massacre”? Let me know in the comments section.

Tags: book signing, books, comics