Elaine Dundy reads in LA on 8/14, and a brief review of The Dud Avocado

It's a little last minute, but I just got a heads up that Elaine Dundy is reading at one of our great local bookstores, Book Soup, Tuesday night (8/14) at 7pm.

At the Book Soup website entry for this event, it says:

ELAINE DUNDY, with film critic KEVIN THOMAS, discuss and sign copies of THE DUD AVOCADO
The Dud Avocado follows the romantic and comedic adventures of a young American who heads overseas to conquer Paris in the late 1950s. Edith Wharton and Henry James wrote about the American girl abroad, but it was Elaine Dundy' s Sally Jay Gorce who told us what she was really thinking.
Charming, sexy, and hilarious, The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status when it was first published and it remains a timeless portrait of a woman hell-bent on living. (NYRB)

My fabulous book group picked The Dud Avocado (New York Review Books Classics)as one of our summer reads, and I really enjoyed it. Someone had pitched it to me as Breakfast at Tiffany's in Paris, and that's not too far off the mark. I found the book's narrator, 21-year-old Sally Jay Gorce, to be a witty force of nature, by turns naive and knowing, and her adventures are very entertaining. I laughed out loud, which, for me, is high praise for any book. And the writing is not just funny, it's smart. I also was fascinated to read a little bit about the author's life in the afterword. I'd love to hear her speak, so if I can get a babysitter, I'll be there.

Only In L.A., Charles Bukowski Week

I was flipping through a very local paper and saw that on August 15th, there is a meeting to discuss Charles Bukowski's novel post office: A Novelheld by the "Nobody Reads in L.A." book club. Gotta love the name! I'm not a big Bukowski fan, but in light of the name, great book to choose, the cult classic about a boozy gambler who stumbles through his job at the downtown L.A. post office.

The Nobody Reads in L.A. site says: "Nobody Reads In LA is a loose-knit group of individuals striving to create a stronger cultural, literary and historical sense of downtown Los Angeles." Looks like they will be discussing several other downtown L.A. classics, including James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce, Reyner Banham's The Architecture of Four Ecologies, and Nathanael West's Day of the Locust.

If anyone's in town, the meeting is at 7pm at Charlie O's Bar in the Alexandria Hotel at 501 South Spring Street.

I found that the organizers include a whole group dedicated to honoring Bukowski during his birthday week, August 15-19. They're at www.bukday.com

The best-laid plans...

Well, after all my posting about the Los Angeles Festival of Books, my family and I didn't make it there this weekend. It's a long, boring story, but my husband both had to work and was ill, so there was no way it was going to happen. It was a nice idea, though.

So my good friend J said why don't we go to the L.A. Central Library ALOUD reading series and hear Michael Ondaatje to make up for missing the Festival? I said, "Great, where do I sign up?" Well, the tickets are free, but you do have to reserve ahead. This is an amazing reading series with lectures, readings, and performances by writers that are like rock stars to me--check out the calendar. I would go to hear Michael Chabon on May 9th, but it's already sold out.

But as I investigated the site, I found that if I can't go in person, our local public TV station, KCET, has a podcast you can subscribe to!

And further investigating the podcast archives, I saw that I can listen to past lectures or readings that sound great, like Michael Pollan talking about The Omnivore's Dilemma, the late, great science fiction writer Octavia Butler, or Jane Smiley and Marianne Wiggins talking about Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel...

I'm feeling a little better about missing out on all the fun this weekend...

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a reminder

The L.A. Times Festival of Books is coming up this weekend (Saturday and Sunday, April 28th and 29th). If you’re in the L.A. area, it’s a must-see. I just checked out the list of panels at this link, and wow, there are some great people speaking. Here’s a link to the list of authors attending, too.

It’s all free, but for some events you need to get tickets ahead of time, which you can do through Ticketmaster, and parking is $8. There are panels on every genre of literature, plus all kinds of other book-related topics. Here are a few highlights, but really, check out the website.

Joseph Wambaugh and James Ellroy in conversation

Ellen Burstyn in conversation with Leonard Maltin

Ray Bradbury introduced by M.G. Lord

Jim Lehrer in conversation with Sander Vanocur

Children's Books: Creating Today's Classics, with moderator Ms. Lois Sarkisian, and Ms. Cornelia Funke, Mr. Hilary Knight and Ms. Laura Numeroff.

Fiction: Jumping Off the Page, with moderator Ms. Susan Salter Reynolds, and Mr. Chris Bohjalian, Mr. Peter Orner, Mr. Gary Shteyngart, and Ms. Marianne Wiggins

T.C. Boyle with an Introduction by Jerry Stahl

Gore Vidal in conversation with Jon Wiener

Mitch Albom in conversation with Frank McCourt

And many, many more interesting panels and speakers...

I often feel that L.A. is a wonderful place to live, and then there are the other times, when I feel it's a cesspool. This is one of the good times. This event is one of the perks of living in a big city, and sometimes I need to be reminded of those perks...

The Art of Fred Marcellino at L.A. Central Library

For those of you in the Los Angeles area, my friend Miss Julie told me about an exhibit at L.A.'s Central Library that I am going to check out soon. It's called "Dancing by the Light of the Moon: The Art of Fred Marcellino", and it includes the covers of record albums, contemporary fiction, and children's books illustrated by Fred Marcellino, and it runs through July 29.

From the press release:
The exhibit features some of Marcellino’s most prominent artwork including book covers for Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”; album covers for artists such as Loretta Lynn, Manhattan Transfer and Fleetwood Mac; and children’s book illustrations from Charles Perrault’s “Puss in Boots” and Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Steadfast Tin Soldier.”

Click here to view a couple of his children's book illustrations, one from Puss in Boots, the other from I, Crocodile...

L.A. Festival of Books

Hey all you Angelenos, the L.A. Times-sponsored Festival of Books is coming to the UCLA campus the weekend of April 28th and 29th. No joke, it's billed as "the country's largest celebration of the written word." They're open Saturday from 10 to 6, Sunday from 10 to 5. Normally I don't actually go, having three kids to wrangle and all, but I'm going to try to make it this year. The list of authors includes a whole bunch of people I don't care about, plus some I'm really interested in: Vikram Chandra, T.C. Boyle, Jane Smiley and Gore Vidal. They also advertise two children's areas, so if your kids are more amenable than mine, you could try it.