paperhaus July 30th, 2008
It hit while I was working away at my kitchen table. My building, which dates back to the 1920s, is 14 stories tall, with a brick exterior and 18-inch concrete floors. Yes, it shook. It kept shaking. I stood in the doorway between kitchen and living room and thought, geez, these concrete floors mean I never hear my neighbors, but there are 11 stories of them above me. I hope they stay there.
Everything held, except for one overloaded shelf which shook itself loose and dropped onto the stuff below.
I’d had this semi-paranoid fear that LA was due for an earthquake and figured that a major one would hit while I was away at grad school in Pittsburgh. If only I’d stayed for the full 3 years, instead of finishing in 2, I would have been right.
I was going to upload my pics from the Northridge quake but I need a scanner to do it. Got any economical scanner recommendations? Got a mac-compatible one you’re not using and feel like offloading? All scanner contributions accepted.
I will not store my scanner below overloaded shelves.
At Jacket Copy, we’re talking about Denis Johnson’s serial Nobody Move again; the second installment appears in the new Playboy.
And Sunday I went to see Mark read (wonderfully, BTW) at Tongue & Groove and shot this video there, asking attendees what books they’re reading.
paperhaus July 18th, 2008
Vermin on the Mount will be at the Mountain Bar in Chinatown this Sunday in LA at 8pm. Featuring work from four independent presses, celebrating its fourth birthday and magnificent host Jim’s 40th, with cake.
Jim provides these details about the literary festivities:
JIM KRUSOE: His fiction workshops at Santa Monica College are legendary. Here’s your chance to listen to him read from his weird and wonderful new novel Girl Factory (reviewed for the LA Times by me) from Tin House Books.
SEAN CARSWELL: Novelist, short story writer, and publisher extraordinaire reads from his latest, Train Wreck Girl from Manic D. Sean always puts on a good show — don’t miss it!
TOSH BERMAN: The publisher of Tam Tam books will regale us with the demented genius of Boris Vian whose “masterpiece of noir-gone berserk” The Dead All Have the Same Skin was recently reprinted by Tam Tam.
DICKY MURPHY: Writes for television and will read from his hilarious collection World Cup Eagle. Dickie is hard at work on his next collection, The Civil War is Funny, based on his experiences in the Civil War.
See you there. Unless current deadline circumstances prevent my appearance.
paperhaus July 3rd, 2008
One of the things I love about Los Angeles is the way we get all the good book stuff. Take Sunday: Nam Le read at Skylight Books in Los Feliz from his debut collection, The Boat. He read part of the first story, which has a character that appears to be himself; this has confused some people, who think this makes the story nonfiction. They should pay attention to the way Le is deliberately playing with literary conventions and expectations. At one point in the story, he introduces a gun, which, shortly later, is fired; if this isn’t a literalization of Chekhov’s dramatic principle (”If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there”), I’ll eat the ARC of your choice. All I know of The Boat is what I heard in that story, and I can tell that Le is a writer who is aware of expectations and works to disrupt them — or at least to churn them up a little.
Le went to the Iowa Writers Workshop and a huge posse of his classmates and friends showed up at the reading. I had no idea so many Iowa MFAs had come to Los Angeles. There are great writers everywhere here, camouflaged as all sorts of normal people.
Not that going to Iowa makes one necessarily a great writer. But it is a motherfucker of a program.
paperhaus June 17th, 2008
That there is Salman Rushdie on the right and Carrie Fisher on the left. I had a question about something she said in during the interview, so afterward I talked briefly to Ms. Fisher. She was surrounded by Sharpie-carrying, memorabilia-wielding StarWarsGeeks, and she nicely signed a bunch of stuff, but still they kept shuffling slowly along behind us as we walked and talked, like so many partially-sated zombies.
Rushdie had a long line of people waiting for him, too.
They also clutched memorabilia — copies of The Enchantress of Florence — and, come to think of it, they were also hoping for signatures. But somehow it wasn’t quite as creepy.
paperhaus June 2nd, 2008
Sunset Magazine has published a series of do-it-yourself books. I had (and de-acquisitioned) vintage books on making mosaics and building outdoor furniture. The one book I kept was the one above on building bookshelves; its contents are useful, but mostly unstylish, even for 1974, when it was published.
So when I found the Sunset booth at BEA, I was excited. They’ve updated many of the DIY books, and Book Expo would be a great place to promote one on building bookshelves. The place was filled with book lovers, many of whom were lugging around bags stuffed with dozens of advance copies of books — copies that have to go somewhere when they get home.
The booth’s staff was puzzled. What book was I asking about? No, they weren’t familiar with a bookshelf book. Would I like to see a bathroom book? It’s a brand new, very beautiful bathroom book, they told me. No, I replied, bathrooms are not great places to store books.
(That’s why we call them bathrooms. Not libraries).
Finally they came up with an upcoming book about built-ins. They showed me a one-inch high picture of its cover; it seemed to be geared for built-ins to hold TVs and media (but books could go on those shelves, too, they shrugged).
How sad that nobody at Sunset — a publishing company whose products are books — has thought to create a lovely new bookshelf book. I’d buy it.
paperhaus June 1st, 2008
I can’t keep up with book expo! Please stay tuned. And enjoy this photo of the very nice Michael Silverblatt at BEA.
paperhaus May 31st, 2008
Pretending to pose unnaturally.
paperhaus May 30th, 2008
I won’t actually liveblog the panel I’m attending — there are several authors, and they’re reading, and the first one, I fear, is reading too long. Instead I’ll share some thoughts. (thoughts slightly addled by corporate faux-microbrew, which was both breakfast and and lunch. Welcome to Convention-Center-bound BEA.)
- Sherman Alexie might just be the nicest, most accessible author ever. I have a pic (to be uploaded later) of him with Avalon publisher Charlie Winston, for which I interrupted them mid-conversation.
- “Litbloggers at BEA. And none of us are typing.” should be “Litbloggers at BEA. And not one of us is typing.” Sorry, my nighttime grammar disintegrates.
- There are either fewer people at BEA than last year or I’ve acclimated to the massive crowds.
- I remember there being more kooky characters. The authors dressed as princesses seem to be a thing of the past.
- Meme this year: eyepatches. Not just on pirates.
- Publishers really, really want to hand you a copy of their newest and bestest. Otherwise, they’ll have to carry it home.
- Ron saw Ernest Borgnine!
- If you want to find the NEA at a big book event, look for ever-so-tall David Kipen.
- Richard Nash can be tracked down by following the booming voice with the soft Irish accent.
- If you want to find many others, they are not nearly as easy to spot.
- I continue to adore Moleskine with all my heart.
paperhaus May 29th, 2008
An unplanned convening of litbloggers at Book Expo. From left to right: Dan Wickett (The Emerging Writers Network), Kassia Krozser (Booksquare), Mark Sarvas (The Elegant Variation), Ron Hogan (Galleycat, Beatrice) and me, Carolyn Kellogg (Pinky’s Paperhaus and Jacket Copy).
There’s a second litblogger photo, in which Mark looks worse but Ron looks better; might as well post it, too, so’s they can both be mad at me.
I’ve posted more photos of photos of BEA on flickr, in a set with other literary pics you might like.
paperhaus May 29th, 2008
I’ve gone to Book Expo twice before, and still I feel entirely unprepared for BEA 2008.
The first year, it was in Washington DC. I stayed at an unfortunately expensive shitty hotel; I had to wait in line as an intense guy checked in before me. I had never seen him before. But somehow I knew it was Ed Champion, and when he turned away from the desk, I tried saying “Ed,” loudly. He turned. Yep, it was Ed. This year, Ed will not be at BEA. Seems wrong, somehow.
Last year, in New York, I stayed with non-book friends in Brooklyn — they provided a welcome dose of sanity even though NY transit added hours to my travel time. (Strangely, those same friends will be in LA this year just in time for BEA. Maybe they’re all bookish after all). Last year, the LBC had a party, and I got to meet more fellow litbloggers and publishers and a logjam of authors. Running late the next morning, I worried that I’d miss the panel I wanted to see, but realized one of its members — Christopher Hitchens — was standing right in front of me on the escalator. I followed him. He was grumpy about morning. I walked onto the floor and was dazed by the enormity of it — or maybe by the heat (the air conditioning in Javitz was on the fritz). I had a marvelous time, sort of full-to-overflowing, all of it, including my bags, with books.
This year I have planned. I have a schedule. I am in my own town (yes, I am here, in LA, which I have reclaimed, by the way). I know when William Shatner is supposed to be signing his new book, that Alec Baldwin is speaking at a breakfast, that George Hamilton is throwing a party. That Salman Rushdie is going to be hanging out, cracking jokes. But there’s so so much that I don’t know. I might even see you there.