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Of all the things we expected Los Angeles to be known for...it wasn't "the best city in the country for booklovers." According to a study by Eventful.com, New York is the city for singles, San Diego is the city for pet lovers, and LA is, crazily, the best city for bookish types. We're also the best city for music events...but that's hardly a surprise.
While we do love our books, we find it hard to believe that with all the other industries that make our fair city what it is, we rate as the best book city in the country. What about Boston? What about San Francisco? We hear Houston is quite bookish. How can it be?
The study found that Los Angeles has "more book-related activities than any other city in the country." If you do a quick comparison of music events to bookish events on any given night in LA, music wins out everytime. So if LA has more book and music events than any other city in the US, what on earth happens each night in other cities? Family, school, alumni, education and political events, according to the study results.
While we're still skeptical about the results, we're not shy about touting the supreme greatness of LA. If you tell us we've got more music and more book events than any other city in the country...well, color us very happy to live here. The question now is: how many of those book events are for books about music?
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it seems like somebody from NYC or SF wrote this. is it really that surprising that LA is big for book lovers?
No - not at all. I'm thrilled that we've been given that designation. But a little skeptical because looking at the types of "events" that are listed for Los Angeles, I see that they are mostly children's reading hour events each day, whereas the reading listings for New York (a city that DOES have many literary events per evening and often has MORE than Los Angeles) don't include the children's reading hours and so by comparison has less book events per night than Los Angeles. That doesn't seem to be an entirely apples to apples comparison. Hence the "skepticism."
As I do the book listings every week for LAist, I'm not at all surprised that LA ranked highI believe we deserved to be. We are very lucky to have so many great bookstores that work hard to get excellent writers in from all over the world.
new york has 92y...we have...zocalo?
glad my two favorite cities are on top!
I can see that...most of the events I want to go to or either book or music things. And now living on the eastside where more people read the type of books I read life is much happier. This isn't the first time LAs been listed as The Book Place, but as I said a few years ago, it's not quantity, it's quality and judging from what I see people buying at bookstores, it's quality that's severely lacking. I'll never quite get the dichotomy of having first-rate author/literary events here and seeing troves of people buying Dr. Phil books.
LA is a crap city for booklovers.
There are very few independent bookstores here. And though some of them are very good (my heart goes to Skylight, Vromans, and Acres of Books), many are (in typical LA-style) all show no substance. They typically have meager inventory, and devote much of their floorspace to ceramics or other crap like that. I find myself going to megachains far more often than I'd like.
San Francisco is one of the best book-cities in the world--Green Apple, City Lights, Booksmith.... There are so many great independent options. Mediocre bookstores in SF would stand out as wonderful in LA. And some of LA's best would flounder in the Bay Area.
New York and Boston used to be great. But they both still outrank LA.
Hearing that LA is great for book lovers is like hearing it's great for its air quality and traffic.
Claire,
LA has many events going on, and your listings do prove that. But I wish we had more fun, browsable bookstores!
Four fun, browsable bookstores that don't sell ceramics:
Family
Skylight Books
Small World of Books
Acres of Books
Seriously. Go check them out and let me know what you think. They're all located near other great stuff...totally walkable, good food right next door, etc.
It isn't surprising. LA is the biggest book market in the country. We always rock in the National Novel Writing Month and LA Times Festival of Books is the one of the largest book festival in the nation.