. Dutton's closing in North Hollywood

"There are certain writers that find us in youth, or in a moment of youth when we're bent-backed and hoary, who cause a strange and irreversible reaction... William Saroyan is such a writer," William E. Justice writes in the introduction to Essential Saroyan, a collection of stories by the Pulitzer Prize-winner Fresno author and playwright. Read more here. It took a remarkable outpouring of generosity to make My California: Journeys by Great Writers a reality. This anthology of travel and adventure stories donated by 27 of California's most talented writers benefits the beleaguered California Arts Council. Learn more about the project and author events at mycaliforniaproject.org. Read Pico Iyer's introduction here. Read contributor Hector Tobar's essay, "Ode to Caltrans" here. Buy the book here. When worlds collide: In his new book, Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation, J.D. Lasica explores the new age of prohibition. In this excerpt, he shares the story of three Mississippi teens and their labor of love: a movie Steven Spielberg praised and you'll probably never see. Read the excerpt here. "There are plenty of toxic places in the gated enclaves and McMansion wastelands of America. They don’t have enough of the play between life in public and life in private that I see choreographed by design in my suburb." D.J. Waldie writes in the new introduction to Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir. Read more here. "His story was a real-life noir. ... It involved gangsters and nightclubs and baseball from Mexico to Canada and mostly behind prison walls. There were girls and guns and gambling and booze and ballgames ..." Read more from Eric Stone's introduction to The Wrong side of the Wall: The Life of Blackie Schwamb, the Greatest Prison Baseball Player of All Time. California Uncovered: "The Californian adventure is a marvelous one — with manifold outcomes," writes novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni in the introduction of this anthology which features prose from twenty-five California writers. Read more here. A novel memoir: M. Allen Cunningham's The Green Age of Asher Witherow, is a novel-styled-as-memoir set in the boom and bust years of an immigrant coal mining town in nineteenth-century California. Read an excerpt here. A survey of stoke lit: From its first written record more than 200 years ago, surf literature traces a surprisingly broad arc, but, Matt Warshaw puts it all into historical and cultural context in this must-read intro to Zero Break: An Illustrated Collection of Surf Writing 1777 - 2004. Read it here. The real you in 750 words: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and School of Dreams author Edward Humes gives us a window on the angst behind college admissions essays here. Enjoy a previous excerpt here. Blooming late: In Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett has created "a practical, inspirational guide for fitting serious writing into stolen moments." And, she says, it is never to late to begin. Read an excerpt here. California Girl: Novelist T. Jefferson Parker shares an excerpt of California Girl, a page turner set in 1960s Orange County. Read it here. Golden Game/Golden State: For decades California has produced more major league ballplayers than any other state. As impressive as this may be, it is not the central story of California baseball. Read from the introduction to The Golden Game: The Story of California Baseball. Bear stories: Once the most powerful creature in the lush California landscape, the grizzly bear now prowls only in our imaginations. Read the intro to the new historical collection Bear in Mind here. Photographer Roman Loranc brings the ancient, still soul of the Great Central Valley into exquisite focus. Taste the timelessness in our excerpt of Two-Hearted Oak. Literary 101 (and 405 and PCH, too): How many hours do we sit in traffic, working through the expanding and contracting snake of cars on the freeway? For many of us, literary radio gets us there and back. In an essay from The Misread City, author Marcos M. Villatoro is our tour guide and reminds us that Angelenos actually buy more books than New Yorkers do. Read it here. Plus: our own quick guide to California literary radio The accidental author: Thomas Steinbeck's Down to a Soundless Sea traces the fates and dreams of an eccentric cast of characters as each struggles to carve out a living in the often inhospitable environment of rocky cliffs, crashing surf, and rough patches of land along the California coast and the Big Sur. In his essay, the author tells the story behind the publication of his collection of Big Sur stories. The Real Gidget. Deanne Stillman tells the story behind the story of the original California girl — an essay featured in the new book, Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing. San Francisco Stories. Derek Powazek shares Twenty-five cents and counting, his first-person slice of a freshly minted author's life and his pilgrimage to the neighborhood bookstore. A honky tonk love letter: An excerpt from Kathi Kamen Goldmark’s cool and quirky debut novel, And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You. Read a selection from Heyday’s impressive and enjoyable California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present. Picturing L.A.: Photo excerpts from Sacred Spaces and Barbie Loves L.A. Have it all: Click here to browse a complete index of excerpts and essays published here at CaliforniaAuthors.com, including excerpts from the anthology Dog is my Co-Pilot, Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cris Mazza’s Indigenous, William Rehder and Gordon Dillow’s Where the Money Is, Danyel Smith’s More Like Wrestling Mark Lee’s Canal House and Bob Bakers Burn, Baby! BURN! Plus: Bestselling author Rochelle Krich offers her personal guide to California’s mystery scene. And, Gerald Haslam writes about reading Grapes of Wrath as a boy growing up in the Great Central Valley. More first person. What California is reading: Check out our list of community reading programs. Is your city or county reading “one book?” Find out here, or use our handy form to tell the world about your town’s effort.

Closing: Dutton's Bookstore in North Hollywood is calling it quits after 45 years. From the Daily News:

(Davis) Dutton was a grad student traveling through Europe in 1961 when his parents, working at Paramount Studios, sent him a telegram saying, "Come home." They had just bought a little liquor store on Laurel Canyon Boulevard they were turning into a bookstore.

"For the first few weeks after we opened, people would stagger in, take a look around at the bookshelves and ask where the vodka was," Dutton said, laughing.

"It had always been my parents' dream to own a bookstore. When I came home from my trip, I told my dad I'd give the store a year."

[via The Elegant Variation]

Posted on Friday, January 13, 2006

Update: The Los Angeles Times launches its revamped Sunday magazine, West, on Feb. 5. Novelist Amy Tan has signed on as literary editor and other California authors will be contributing writers. "We're aiming to capture California in the grandest sense imaginable," says magazine editor Rick Wartzman.

Posted on Thursday, January 12, 2006

San Francisco has a new poet laureate: social activist Jack Hirschman. He starts his new job on Thursday. From the Chronicle:

Hirschman, who at 72 has been a prominent figure in American poetry with a half-century of published work, is scheduled to accept the post at noon at a City Hall ceremony. Four hours later, he plans to be reading poetry on the steps of the State Building in San Francisco at a demonstration against the death penalty.

That should surprise no one. For Hirschman has used his words and his body to protest injustice for decades.

Posted on Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Counter intelligence: Powells bookstore employees share their favorite books from 2005.

Posted on Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Cityscapes: Steve Brown of The Chico Enterprise includes a nice mention of My California and Michael Chabon's "Berkeley" essay in his column today about cities preserving their identities: "One of my most enjoyable recent finds is a collection of essays called "My California," he writes.

[thanks, Scott]

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2006

Winter crop: Browse our one-of-a-kind list of latest California books, updated today with 16 new titles.

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2006

Passages: The LAT's Mary Rourke remembers Ofelia Fox, the first lady of Havana's Tropicana nightclub who died this past week in Southern California. She was 82. "In her memoir, "Tropicana Nights, The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub," co-written with Rosa Lowinger and published last fall, Fox recounted life at the casino and dance club owned by Martin Fox, whom she married in 1952." Read more.

• Both the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle pore over the latest Reagan bio, President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination by Richard Reeves.

• Dave Mitchell, Marin's muckraking publisher for thirty years, is selling the Point Reyes Light. The weekly won a Pulitzer Prize in 1979.

• Michael Kinsley moans about the decline of newspapers.

• NYT Managing Editor Jill Abramson reviews Journalistas: 100 Years of the Best Writing and Reporting by Women Journalists. "I first picked up the volume with annoyance - I hated the title and still do," says Abramson. "It sounds silly and is redolent of all sorts of dopey words for female journalists, including one of my least favorites, editrix. And I'm not a fan of anthologies....But most of the pieces collected by Eleanor Mills (an editor at The Sunday Times of London) and Kira Cochrane (a novelist and former journalist) are so marvelous that I quickly cast aside my doubts."

• Big Hair rules. And so do California writers, as the Pulpwood Queens hosts its annual Girlfriend Weekend Author Extravaganza, the third weekend in January in Jefferson Texas. Authors Iris Rainer Dart, Loraine Despres, Kerry Madden, and M.L. Malcolm join this year's event. Says Queens founder Kathy L. Patrick, "I just seem to have a propensity to select California authors for my Pulpwood Queen Book Club selections including: Mark Lee, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Sharon Boorstin, Linda Bloodworth Thomason, Edward Humes, Holiday Reinhorn, Cathryn Michon, Bruce Cameron and more."

• Wanna blog? JD Lasica and others host a Jan. 21 class for aspiring bloggers.

Posted on Monday, January 9, 2006

Previously featured: as our new release of the week: Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan (Putnam). "An intoxicating air of romantic folly haunts much of the action in Amy Tan's latest novel... a modern twist on a 'A Midsummer's Night Dream'-style yarn, follows the travails of a group of art-loving friends who journey from San Francisco to Burma only to get lost in the jungle on Christmas morning and bizarrely entangled in a refugee tribe's ancient prophesy..." Sara Peyton writes in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Tan's hilarious new novel arrives at a time when we aren't laughing much at the news of the day. How much you enjoy Saving Fish From Drowning may have to do with how willing you are to be bewitched by a superbly executed, goodhearted farce that is part romance and part mystery with a political bent." Read an excerpt here. Read more about the author here.

Don't miss our current New Release of the Week and our one-of-a-kind list of latest California books, updated today. Know of a new California book, but don't see it in our list? Use our handy New Release Form to tell us about it.

Posted on Wednesday, January 4, 2006

The word of the year is... hubris.

Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005

Great stories: Andy Bowers at Slate points us to the Little Toe Radio Show, a BBC production that brings classic children's books to life.

Here's what Little Toe is not: fatuous, cloying, product-pitching children's "entertainment" that parents fear is secretly programming their spawn to become consumer zombies.

Here's what Little Toe is: an hour a day, seven days a week, of very nice-sounding British people reading great children's stories. It's as simple, and as wonderful, as that.

Read more of Bowers' column here.

Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005

In this season of giving, you can do something real for a real New Orleans family. Find out how you can help one venerable Creole family return to the "hallowed ground of its ancestors" when you visit inthegumbo.org The site benefits the family of Lynette Johnson -- a much-loved, one-time graphics editor at the Los Angeles Times. Read her insightful columns on life after Katrina here. To send some much-needed Christmas cheer, you can donate via PayPal, help support the cause by clicking through on your way to Amazon.com, or just spread the word by sharing the link with friends. Happy Holidays!

Posted on Saturday, December 24, 2005

Finding truth in fiction: The Oakland Tribune is asking readers to mail in copies of George Orwell's 1984 to send a message to U.S. lawmakers. From the paper's editorial:

Bush is unapologetic. The president believes he has the legal authority to spy on American citizens without a warrant, and he plans to continue to reauthorize the program "for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens." But when the enemy is poorly defined, who determines when the threat is over? In this case, the same government that secretly taps our phones.

Turns out the truth is no stranger than fiction. We think it's time for Congress to heed the warning of George Orwell. To that end, we're asking for your help: Mail us or drop off your tattered copies of "1984." When we get 537 of them, we'll send them to every member of the House of Representatives and Senate and to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Send books here: The Oakland Tribune, 401 13th St., Oakland, CA 94612.

[via boingboing]

Posted on Friday, December 23, 2005

Dear Book Biz Santa: Authors share their holiday letters and laments.

Posted on Thursday, December 22, 2005

The writer and the immigration service: Beijing-born writer Yiyun Li tries to explain to the federal bureaucracy what the word 'extraordinary' means. Read more in the Washington Post. [via artsjournal]

Posted on Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The giving season: From Ghost Word: "Debi Echlin, the late, lamented owner of A Great Good Place For Books, made an amazingly generous gesture in her will: she left her store to one of her employees..."

Posted on Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Monday Miscellany:

• NYT Ombudsman Byron Calame pens a wishy washy column about how the paper reviews books by its own writers.

• Anne Rice quits New Orleans for Paradise West.

• Michael Chabon, Tom Wolfe, and Jonathan Franzen are crushed to death by a boulder in an upcoming Simpson's episode.

• Gloria Velásquez is the new poet laureate of San Luis Obispo.

• Union-Tribune Books Editor Arthur Salm has fun with David Foster Wallace's new book, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays.

• San Francisco Chronicle Book Editor Oscar Villalon compiles a roundup of memorable books in a year of war and anxiety.

• Derek Powazek dissects the season in a new essay.

• San Francisco's independent booksellers have enveloped BART riders with Book Sense this holiday season.

Posted on Monday, December 19, 2005

This week in fREADom: Headlines from this morning's Amercian Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression newsletter say it all: Senate Blocks PATRIOT Conference Report, New York Times Reveals Federal Government Spying and FBI Official Blasts "Radical Militant Librarians."

Posted on Saturday, December 17, 2005

Revisiting.. "A California Christmas"

Behold where Beauty walks with Peace!
Behold where Plenty pours her horn
Of fruits, of flowers, fat increase,
As generous as light of morn.

Read the rest of Joaquin Miller's classic poem here.

Posted on Friday, December 16, 2005

Operation Homecoming: Next fall Random House will publish Above and Beyond: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Homefront in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, the anthology of wartime writings launched by Dana Gioia and the National Endowment for the Arts. The project paired returning soliders with well-known authors such as Tobias Wolff and Tom Clancy. The collection will feature about 100 selections, from letters and emails, to short stories, memoirs, and poems. Read more.

Posted on Friday, December 16, 2005

Twelve months of torture, disaster, hubris, the goat rodeo, etc.: Vote here for Word of the Year.

Posted on Thursday, December 15, 2005

Browse past entries

Keep tabs on the biggest book market in the nation. Sign up for our newsletter below.

top . contact us . about . privacy policy

all material © californiaauthors.com, 2002-2004