Three to see

Ted Sorensen, special counsel, adviser, and speechwriter for President Kennedy, was a vocal supporter of President-elect Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign and often compared him with his former boss. "Kennedy, like Obama, was one of those extraordinary individuals who was completely authentic, at home with himself and in his skin," Sorensen said in an interview last year.

Now, just over a week before Obama is sworn in, Sorensen will be weighing in again, this time with his thoughts about the new president's inaugural address. He will appear Sunday at the John F. Kennedy Library from 2 to 3:30 p.m., with historian and former Clinton speechwriter Ted Widmer. (Admission is free; go to www.jfklibrary.org or call 617-514-1643.)

Sorensen, dubbed the "poet of Camelot," will also discuss the writing of Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address. He does not claim authorship of its most famous line - "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." "Certainly the line reflected J.F.K.'s lifelong philosophy, calling for sacrifice and dedication for the good of the country, emphasized by his own life of service - that makes it his line," Sorensen wrote in his 2008 memoir, "Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History."

A great believer in the power of rhetoric, Sorensen dismisses the criticisms of Obama's eloquence that were often heard on last year's campaign trail. "Kennedy's rhetoric when he was president turned out to be a key to his success," he told an interviewer. "His mere words about Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba helped resolve the worst crisis the world has ever known without the US having to fire a shot."

Sorensen, 80, began working for Kennedy in January 1953, when he was 24, shortly after Kennedy had won election as US senator representing Massachusetts. Among the works that the two authored collaboratively were "Profiles in Courage," Kennedy's acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic National Convention ("We stand at the edge of a New Frontier"), the 1961 inaugural address, and three notable orations in June 1963: at American University, to the nation on civil rights, and to a crowd in Berlin.

Author, Harvard Divinity School student, and pediatrician Chris Adrian reads tomorrow at 6:15 at the Hotel Marlowe, 25 Edwin Land Blvd., Cambridge. Adrian's most recent work is the story collection "A Better Angel"; he has also written two novels, "The Children's Hospital" and "Gob's Grief." Of his impressive resume, Adrian told an interviewer, "I think I sound fancier than I actually am. I've just tried a lot of different stuff, but I'm not necessarily very good at any of it."

Kate Jacobs discusses her new book, "Knit Two," at 7 p.m. tomorrow, at Hingham Public Library, 66 Leavitt St., Hingham. "Knit Two" is a sequel to Jacobs's best-selling "Friday Night Knitting Club," about a small yarn shop in Manhattan and its owners and devotees.