A shirtless man walked toward them along a mud pathway. His muscles were young and hard, but his face was devastated with wrinkles. His eyes were so red that they appeared to be burned by fire. A naked boy ran happily toward him from a little plot of dirt. The man grabbed his young son in his arms, turned him upside down, and put the boy’s penis in his mouth.

And then we were poised to burn Webb at the cross because even in fiction there should be other ways to describe things than thru nude boys, running, and penises.

But then we ran across this seal of approval of "Lost Soldiers", from which the quote comes from, by no other than Republican John McCain who said this of the apparent sleaze:

“James Webb’s new novel paints a portrait of a modern Vietnam charged with hopes for the future but haunted by the ghosts of its war-torn past. It captures well the lingering scars of the war, and exposes the tension between the dynamism of a new generation and the invisible bondage of an older generation for whom wartime allegiances, and animosities, are rendered no less vivid by the passage of time. A novel of revenge and redemption that tells us much about both where Vietnam is headed and where it has been.” - Senator John McCain

Go ahead, call it a comeback.

The world's most famous film reviewer Roger Ebert, on the heels of recovering from cancer surgery will be reading from his latest book "Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert".

Although we haven't always been a huge fan of the guy, much preferring Gene Siskel, how can't you give a guy some props while on his road to recovery?

A true lover of film and a television icon and ground-breaker, Ebert will be reading at 447 N. Canon Dr. in Beverly Hills at 7pm. And for those of you who read his columns, he has returned to giving thumbs up and thumbs down to Hollywood's masterworks and can be seen on his website.

Google has unveiled a new Web site dedicated to literacy. It's an online resource for teachers, literacy organizations and anyone else who might be interested in finding books online, promoting literacy and education at all age levels.

Titled The Literacy Project, the site was set up through an agreement with UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning and LitCam, the Frankfurt Book Fair literacy campaign. The site provides users access to literacy resources from around the world, including videos about projects to increase literacy. It also allows patrons to create a reading group or blog about literacy-related topics.

The site's videos are especially interesting: today's include a Bollywood video, a British literacy project, and a U.S. inner-city school project. Google is taking a stance with this site, saying it's not about piracy of books, but about everyone having access to them, which is a public library's mission. Doesn't everyone deserve to read good?

We're not going to sit here and tell you how thought provoking or intellectually stimulating Michael Connelly's Echo Park is. Or how the soon-to-be top ten bestseller will change your life. Because, it won't do those two things.

But we'll tell you this: there's nothing better than this fun and adventurous crime novel that winds you through the streets of modern day LA chasing serial killers, crooked cops, city attorneys and cute FBI agents. And we totally dig LA + fun + books.

Echo Park is the 13th book in the Detective Harry Bosch series (short for Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch) by the LA expat, Connelly. Bosch, an LAPD detective in the Open-Unsolved Unit in the Robbery/Homicide Division, is passionate about his job. So much, he retired and came back, not letting go of certain cold cases he's personally attached to (and to him, this passion is what makes him a true detective). One of these cold cases becomes the focus of Echo Park - Marie Gesto, a young girl who disappeared in 1992. It's now 2006 and there's a fresh lead that begets the story.