Santa Monica Pier Aglow | Photo by biskuit via Flickr Monday The Call of the Wild by Jack London film review & book discussion 6:30pm @ Vroman's Diahann Carroll presents The Legs Are the Last to Go 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Michael Connelly presents The Brass Verdict 7pm @ Vroman's Christopher Paolini presents Brisingr 7pm @ Beckman Auditorium, Caltech Orson Bean signs M@il for Mikey 7pm @ Barnes & Noble, 3rd Street Promenade... [continue]

Orpheum's Backside | Photo by muehpro via Flickr Monday Naomi Wolf discusses Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries 7pm @ Central Library Adam Tokunaga presents and signs Slow Sex Secrets 7pm @ Book Soup Arthur Nersesian and Joseph Mattson read their work 7pm @ Vroman's Tuesday Naomi Wolf discusses and signs Give Me Liberty 7pm @ Vroman's Savannah Knoop presents and signs Girl Boy Girl 7pm @ Book Soup Peter W. Galbraith... [continue]

Union Station Appreciation | Photo by jeffkingla via Flickr Monday Candace Bushnell discusses and signs One Fifth Avenue 7pm @ Vroman's Tuesday No bookish events scheduled today. Wednesday Robert J. Wagner signs Piece of My Heart 7pm @ Borders, Northridge David Henry Sterry presents and signs Master of Ceremonies 7pm @ Book Soup Graeme Base presents and signs Enigma: A Magical Mystery 7pm @ Vroman's Polly Grose signs A London Scrapbook 7:30pm @ Village... [continue]

Triforium Sculpture Underbelly Downtown | Photo by Omar Omar via Flickr Monday Todd Komarnicki discusses and signs War 7pm @ Vroman's Tuesday Amy Arbus & Alan Cumming present The Fourth Wall 7pm @ Hammer Museum Sarah Lyall discusses The Anglo Files:A Field Guide to the British 7pm @ Central Library Sandra Tsing Loh presents Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting! 7pm @ Skylight Books David Fuller discusses and signs Sweet Smoke... [continue]

DFW at a 2006 Reading | Photo by Steve Rhodes via Flickr David Foster Wallace, formidable literary talent and sharp-eyed cultural critic, was found dead in his Claremont home at 9:30pm on Friday night. He will be sorely missed. Wallace received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 1997 and taught writing at several institutions over the years, most recently at Pomona College. Wallace is mostly known for his sprawling and ambitious novel... [continue]

Vibrant Chinatown Architecture | Photo by LWY via Flickr Monday Nathaniel Mackey presents and signs Bass Cathedral 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Susan Squire presents and signs I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage 7pm @ Book Soup Wednesday Debra Ginsberg discusses and signs The Grift 7pm @ Vroman's Joie Davidow presents and signs I Wouldn't Leave Rome to Go to Heaven 7pm @ Book Soup... [continue]

Former Angeleno Jonathan Evison is in town this week to read from and sign his debut novel, All About Lulu. It is a that novel examines the quirky world of Venice beach bodybuilding, the life of a talented DJ, the mess families can make without even trying, a love found and then lost, and so much more. There are moments of great tenderness, of gaping sadness, and then, out of nowhere, moments of such recklessness... [continue]

Down and Out Bear in Atwater | Photo by Zabowski on Flickr Monday Kitty Felde discusses and signs The Theatre of Genocide 7pm @ Vroman's Billy Taylor presents and signs Based on the Movie 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Adam Davies discusses and signs Mine All Mine 7pm @ Vroman's Paul McComas presents and signs Planet of the Dates 7pm @ Book Soup Wednesday Daniel Silva discusses and signs Moscow Rules 7pm @ Vroman's... [continue]

Jack Pendarvis, author of the hilarious Your Body is Changing, which we reviewed last year, will be reading from his equally funny, Pendarvisly quirky new book Awesome tonight at 5pm @ Book Soup. Ever wonder what it would be like to be 50-feet-tall and be totally into robots and nearly lose the maybe-love of your life who is not a giant such as yourself? Pendarvis clearly has, and the result of such dreaming is Awesome:... [continue]

Little planes at NBTA conference stay put during last week's earthquake | Photo by Dan... via Flickr Monday No readings today. Tuesday Bruce Hulse presents and signs Sex, Love, and Fashion 7pm @ Book Soup Michael S. Gazzaniga discusses & signs Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique 7pm @ Vroman's Wednesday Ernest Borgnine signs Ernie: The Autobiography 7pm @ Vroman's Karin Slaughter signs Fractured 7pm @ Borders, Torrance Maria Belknap presents and... [continue]

The new Skylight Books 1814 Space about to become our new favorite haunt | Photo by Tom Andrews/LAist First Dutton's closed, then Beyond Baroque was in trouble, but then wasn't, but might be again soon. It was only last December when Village Books was having a "we might have to go out of business sale" that was sucessful enough they didn't have to close. For a town that is closing its beloved bookstores and... [continue]

Red Velvet Remnants | Photo by pink_fish13 via Flickr Monday David Maraniss discusses and signs Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World 7pm @ Vroman's Christopher Reich signs Rules Of Deception 7pm @ Barnes & Noble, 3rd Street Promenade Tuesday Christian Lander presents and signs Stuff White People Like 7pm @ Book Soup Kai Chen discusses and signs One in a Billion: Journey to Freedom 7pm @ Vroman's Adrienne Barbeau signs Vampyres of... [continue]

The last stand-alone LAT Book Review, on July 27, 2008, with Doris Lessing on the cover In the spring of last year, we lamented the shrinking of the LA Times Book Review. We waxed poetic about waking up on Sunday mornings to get our paper. We lovingly detailed thumbing through the big hulk of Sunday newsiness and adverstising to pull out our favorite part of the paper: the Book Review. We were deeply saddened,... [continue]

L.A.'s very own debut novelist and litblogger extraordinaire, Mark Sarvas, will be reading from his first novel Harry, Revised tomorrow night at 6pm @ Hotel Cafe as part of the Tongue & Groove reading series. Harry, Revised is set in L.A, features several of your favorite & not so favorite neighborhoods, highlights the darker perils of plastic surgery, examines a bevy of relationships gone awry, and offers a hilarious take on the bizarre and... [continue]

MOCA-Goer | Photo by shearforce via Flickr Monday Elizabeth Brundage discusses and signs Somebody Else's Daughter 7pm @ Vroman's Daniel A. Helminiak presents and signs What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Barry M. Goldwater Jr. signs Pure Goldwater 1pm @ Village Books Adam Nimoy presents and signs My Incredible Wonderful, Miserable Life 7pm @ Book Soup Bret Lott discusses and signs Ancient Highway 7pm @ Vroman's Wednesday Brent... [continue]

LA-based food writer Jeanne Kelley knows her way around a recipe (she develops them for Bon Appétit) and knows how to present food in its most glorious state (she's a food stylist) - so it should be no surprise that her just-out cookbook, Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden, perfectly combines these talents. The book is beautiful with its stunning photography, subtly patterened backgrounds and thick, matte pages. It is... [continue]

The vermin are back this weekend as Jim Ruland's must-attend night of readings, Vermin on the Mount, features four indie writers tomorrow at 8pm @ Chinatown's Mountain Bar:Jim Krusoe, who teaches fiction at Santa Monica College, will read from his just-out Girl Factory which we highlighted not so long ago for its wacky incoroporation of LA yogurt culture.Sean Carswell, novelist, short story writer and publisher, will read from Train Wreck Girl.Tosh Berman, publisher of Tam... [continue]

Oh Those Dangerous Girl Scout Cookies | Photo by aka_kath via Flickr Girl Scouts got a rude awakening in March when Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor told them to scram after they'd setup shop on the street corner outside her office. While Taylor claims she was merely worried about their safety, the Girl Scout troop leader, Maia West, was furious that Taylor had taken what is usually such a positive, empowering, entreprenurial skill-building experience and... [continue]

Suede Bar, downtown's newest lounge, opened last week with little fanfare. Can the red suede bar that promises "beautiful staff" and a "sexy ambience" save The Westin Bonaventure from its tacky self or is it just more of the same? Downtown's Westin Bonaventure Hotel is odd. While it was perhaps a shining beacon of commerce and luxury travel when it first opened in 1976, the fading hotel now reads more like a bad 70's porn... [continue]

Wet Vantage Point | Photo by maverick2003 via Flickr Monday Jess Winfield discusses & signs My Name is Will 7pm @ Vroman's Donald Welch presents and signs The Bachelorette Party 7pm @ Book Soup Tuesday Don Felder signs Heaven & Hell: My Life in the Eagles (1974-2001) 6:30pm @ Vroman's Stan Lee presents and signs Election Daze: What Are They Really Saying? 7pm @ Book Soup Denise Hamilton signs The Last Embrace 7pm @... [continue]