On Thursday, November 17th at 7:30 p.m. ET, Rebecca Joines Schinsky and I will be hosting the first-ever FridayReads Live event. We will be discussing a new title from Crown Publishing: Enjoy Every Sandwich: Living Each Day As If It Were Your Lastby Lee Lipsenthal, MD.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve read the book, or not–come join us!

If you’re able to join us in person, come to Housing Works Bookstore at 126 Crosby Street (just south of Houston) between 7pm and 9pm, where Rebecca and I will be on our computers to host a Twitter Book Tour chat. Thanks to the good folks at Crown Publishing, we will have wine, beer, and sandwiches available. Meet me, Rebecca Schinsky, Iris Blasi, Erin Cox, and others as we chat, quaff, nibble…and tweet.

If you’re able to join us online, please connect with us online via Twitter by using the hashtag #EverySandwich. The easiest way to do this is to go to Tweetchat.com and log in using your Twitter name. Then enter the hashtag in the empty field at the top of the page and start reading and/or tweeting. (Tweetchat automatically adds the hashtag for you, so there’s no need to worry about watching the length of your tweets. If you “go over,” it will tell you “Too Long.”) If you don’t have a Twitter account, you should be able to track the #EverySandwich via Twitter’s search function here: https://twitter.com/?lang=en&logged_out=1#!/search/%23everysandwich

Before the chat, we encourage you to view the trailer for the book http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UIFbOfWwYE. We’ll be publishing a new blog post tomorrow with some suggested questions about the book/things to consider/bits of inspiration, so please watch for that, too.

If you have any questions at all, please email me: TheBookMaven at gmail dot com.

What’s a Twitter Book Tour? Basically, it’s a clever name for a live online author chat. At 3:00 p.m. Eastern time today (all times listed below), William Eamon and I will hop on Twitter and start chatting, using hashtag #ngsecrets. (For those of you who aren’t sure, a “hashtag” is simply the “hash mark” or “#” sign combined with any word or phrase relevant to a particular discussion. Adding the hashtag to a tweet makes it possible for people to search on that tweet. If you just want to see tweets in the chat, I recommend TweetChat.com, a site that is quite simple to use.)

Now, more important: Allow me to introduce Eamon and his book!

William Eamon is Regents Professor of History and dean of the Honors College at New Mexico State University. A specialist in the history of science and medicine in Renaissance Italy and Spain, he is the author of “Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture” and the co-editor of “Beyond the Black Legend: Spain and the Scientific Revolution.” In addition, he has written more than 50 scholarly articles, essays, and book chapters.

“The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine, and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy” is Eamon’s latest book, from National Geographic, and it’s a fascinating look at a Renaissance doctor named Leonardo Fioravanti who hoped to find the ancient panacea that would cure all illnesses. One of my favorite aspects of this historical jigsaw puzzle Eamon puts together is how much Fioravanti had to struggle against the political and academic mores of his day — just like modern mavericks in medicine. 

Join William Eamon today at 3 p.m. Eastern, Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern, and Friday at noon Eastern. Each day we’ll have a one-hour chat about Fioravanti, mysteries, medical history, and more. There will be giveaways, too — so even if you don’t have a specific question, stop in using #ngsecrets. Anyone who visits is eligible to win a copy of “The Professor of Secrets.”

If you have any questions, find *me* on Twitter: @thebookmaven. “See” you soon!

One of those is conducting a Twitter Book Tour (basically, I made it up last year, so I get to toss the term around loosely) for Juliet Schor, the author of “Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth” from The Penguin Press.

I’ll be chatting with Juliet — and hopefully a few of you! — on Twitter tomorrow at noon, using the hashtag #plenitudebook.

UPDATE: Today, Wednesday May 19th, Juliet Schor and I will be chatting live again at 3 p.m. Eastern. Join us!