Here are some literary events to jump-start your week. To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.

Janie Hendrix, the sister of legendary rock star Jimi Hendrix, will appear at a signing event for the Jimi Hendrix: The Ultimate Lyric Book. See her on Tuesday, January 8th at Barnes & Noble Northwest starting at 7 p.m. (Las Vegas, NV)

Pen Parentis will host a night of readings, signings and wine. Join in on Tuesday, January 8th at the Andaz Wall Street starting at 7 p.m. (New York, NY)

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In September, Jimi Hendrix‘s bookshelf and our Best Authors on Facebook directory were among our top headlines.

Instead of doing our traditional year-in-review post, we’ve decided to collect the ten most popular stories on GalleyCat each month–sharing the stories that mattered most to our readers. Looking back at these headlines, we can see the hopes, fears, and distractions that obsessed the publishing industry in 2010. Follow this link to see the rest of the year unfold.

1. Haruki Murakami Has 11/1 Odds to Win 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature
2. Emperor Franzen & Evil Wylie Unmasked
3. Worst Day-Jobs for Writers
4. Jimi Hendrix and His Science Fiction Bookshelf
5. Best Authors on Facebook
6. Defense Department Hopes to Buy 10,000 Copies of Operation Dark Heart
7. Tea Party Coloring Book for Children
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Trailer Released
9. Why the ‘Why?’ Behind a Lit Agent’s Rejections are Often Left Out
10. ‘All Joy and No Fun: The Parent’s Paradox’ Author Scores Book Deal

Most people don’t remember anymore, but rock legend Jimi Hendrix was a science fiction book junkie. We caught up with one the guitarist’s biographers to find out more about his science fiction bookshelf.

In the new book, Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius, authors Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber take a deeper look at the guitarist.

According to Schreiber, Philip Jose Farmer‘s Night of Light had a big influence on Hendrix. “Night of Light was a science fiction book that in 1966 inspired Jimi to eventually write ‘Purple Haze.’ Farmer’s story had to do with sunspots having a disorienting effect on a distant planet’s population. Jimi wrote pages and pages of lyrics for ‘Purple Haze,’ originally an epic tale of the history of warfare for the control of the planet Neptune,” he explained.

He added: “Producer Kim Fowley told us that when he met Jimi early in 1967 in the UK, Jimi had a trunk of books, all science fiction.”

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