This Authors Night featured its signature mix of celebrity and well established authors, such as Jules Feiffer, Geraldo Rivera, Robert Caro, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Patricia Bosworth, A. M. Holmes, Lee Child, with first time authors such as Elizabeth Flock who researched five marriages in Mumbai for her novel, The Heart is a Shifting Sea. Hilaria Baldwin sat beside her husband with her book, The Living Clearly Method, claiming it had already made the popular benefit last year, but Alec Baldwin insisted. Of course you could not get near their table. His new book provocatively titled, You Can’t Spell America Without Me, with a photograph of him as Donald Trump gracing the cover, was selling like proverbial hotcakes, huge piles set before him dwindling down rapidly. He gamely brought Michael Lally this year, and had him sit cattycorner to them, at every chance hawking the poet’s book, Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017.

With cookbooks such as Mark Strausman’s The Freds at Barneys New York Cookbook and mysteries, such as Helen Harrison’s An Accidental Corpse, selling briskly, you did not need a tarot reading to see that Author’s Night, to benefit the East Hampton library, was a huge success. But Amy Zerner and Monte Farber were busy telling futures, shuffling beautifully illustrated cards from a fresh deck. Choosing the Ten of Pentacles, I was “protected,” Zerner assured me. Maybe from the rain under the big tent set up in an Amagansett field off the highway, but definitely not from the mud that clung to my flipflops.

Changing into ballet flats, I joined a lively crowd at Michael Braverman’s book lined East Hampton residence for cocktails. New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant was guest of honor. Champagne Louis Roederer was served, a refreshing respite from the day’s humidity. I did indeed feel protected—and sated.

Regina Weinreich

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