Monday Shalom Auslander presents Foreskin's Lament 7pm @ Vroman's Valerie Plame Wilson presents Fair Game 7pm @ Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Long Beach Barbara Firestone presents Autism Heroes 7pm @ Dutton's Slash presents Slash 7pm @ Borders, Torrance Lawrence Wright presents The Looming Tower 7:30pm @ UCLA Tuesday David Plante, with host Mark Danielewski, presents ABC 7pm @ Book Soup Michael Lent presents Christmas Letters from Hell 7pm @ Vroman's Tommy Lasorda & Bill Plaschke......

We've covered the LA Times Book Prize nominees for the past few weeks and quietly rooted for our picks. The winners, announced at the annual hob-nob affair on Friday night, surprised us. We highlighted our picks weeks ago. What more did the committee have to do other than - you know - pick them? To wit: Biography We said Daniel Mendelsohn for The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (Daniel freaking Mendelsohn, the......

The New York Times has launched a new Best Seller List for Political books and it's available online only. This move is surely meant to drive more traffic to their site and also the political list being online will hit a smaller number of people - including those who are say savvy to politics, being online, and the New York Times. So just what are the pundits reading these days? Here are this week's......