Callie Miller

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 @...

Eco-friendly books and guides to living a sustainable life are published at a breakneck pace these days. From what you should be eating, to what you should be wearing, to what you should be composting, there is a green guru that can guide you. Several of these green gurus live in Los Angeles and their new books are on our radar to check out this summer: The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in...

A Lawrence Weiner piece graces the Vienna Skyline | Photo by Gastev via Flickr If you've been waiting for the hype to die down and waiting for the crowds to thin before visiting the Lawrence Weiner retrospective, you've almost waited too long. Weiner's conceptual art show at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA ends on Monday and this weekend is your last chance to get in and see As Far As the Eye Can See...