Photo by Lush.i.ous via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr PARTY Pop shop Japan L.A. celebrates their 2 year anniversary at Rise at the Highlands. Come decked out in your best Lolita and Japanese street fashion and get your picture taken with Hello Kitty. 10 p.m. // Rise at The Highlands // 6801 Hollywood Blvd. Suite 433 Hollywood // (323) 461-9800 // Free ART For one night only, Billy Shire Fine Arts will......

Junot Diaz at the Hammer Museum/Osmany Rodriguez for LAist The thing about author Junot Diaz is, one minute he’s on the phone with you, rapping about meringue, Malcolm X, comic books, and how shit never gets done on time in the Dominican Republic – and the next minute, he’s winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. He describes himself as just another ordinary, poor immigrant......

When a novelist first publishes relatively late in life, one wants to applaud his or her persistence, as well as the fact that the writer retains the stamina to turn out a sustained piece of work. One also hopes for the best, wanting to believe that the publisher recognized quality and not just a curiosity when accepting the manuscript. Of course, with examples like Penelope Fitzgerald and Harriet Doerr to pave the way, one......

When's the last time a book made you cry? And I don't mean a slight welling in the tear ducts, I don't mean a sniffle here or there, I mean a REAL god damn cry, the leaky, sobbing, snotty kind of cry, the likes of which you haven't experienced since your fourth grade teacher read Where the Red Fern Grows aloud to the class and even the boys were sniveling into their t-shirts when......

First off this LAist was running late this morning and left his camera at home. Since I had to go to the Grove straight from work to make it on time, there is no photo of the event. No photo of me planting John Amaechi a wet sloppy kiss. So sorry folks. Amaechi’s appearance at Barnes & Noble at the Grove concluded his whirlwind promotional tour for his memoir Man in the Middle which......

Apparently the book didn't fit either. When even Bill O'Reilly said that the fictitious book and made-for-tv interview were in bad taste you knew there was trouble in sleezadise. Today Rupert Murdoch himself, a man so old he could drive a Buick through a serene Farmers Market crowd and get away with murder, canceled plans to publish the fiction by ReganBooks called "If I Did It", and the subsequent two-part interview of O.J. Simpson......

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.......