26

THURSDAY

You should know, when you come to hear Michael Capuzzo read from his new book, Close to Shore: A True Story of Terror in an Age of Innocence, that the chapters of blather about American life in 1916 along New Jersey’s Atlantic coast are just there to add a patina of respectability to the subsequent descriptions of people getting chewed on by a man-hungry shark stationed just offshore. Does it sound as if you might prefer to wait for the movie to find out whether a New York ichthyologist succeeds in killing the brute? No need: Check it out at your local video store; the incident Capuzzo describes was apparently the major inspiration for Peter Benchley’s Jaws. Capuzzo appears at 7 p.m. at Olsson’s Books and Records, 1200 F St. NW. Free. (202) 347-3686. (Eli Muller)