Salon has a smart review of Dangerous Doses: How Counterfeiters Are Contaminating America’s Drug Supply, an important new book by Katherine Eban (that Donna helped edit).
The fact that Americans pay more for their drugs than anyone else in the world paradoxically makes U.S. citizens more vulnerable to receiving counterfeit or degraded drugs, not less, Eban [...]

Heidi Benson of the Chronicle profiles departing LA Times Book Editor Steve Wasserman, whose reign ends today.
While book-world buzzsters speculated about the physics of Wasserman’s leave-taking (”Did he jump or was he pushed?”), the answer appears to lie in series of unfortunate events.
San Diego literary agent Sandra Dijkstra sees it this way: “Steve’s [...]

Jennifer Smith Hale, the owner of Santa Barbara Magazine, has teamed up with Michael Coady, formerly of the Fairchild publishing empire, to launch a new California women’s lifestyle magazine to be known simply as C, the New York Post reports. Coady is president and editorial director, while Hale is the chairwoman and CEO.
News Corp., [...]

“I could write a better book if I were locked up for a while.” — Grant Bailie, one of three novelists ensconsced in a box for the next month and limited to 90 minutes of daily bathroom, laundry and snack breaks.

Veronique de Turenne writes in the LA Times today about George and Gracie, a pair of peregrines raising four chicks on a 33rd floor ledge of the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. building — under the watchful eye of a hidden camera.
They are one of an estimated 300 breeding pairs in California, a [...]

LAObserved reports: “It’s official —the L.A. Times’ ill-conceived experiment with charging a fee to read stories about film, music art, culture, style, and books ends at 5 a.m. Tuesday.”
Also, LA novelist Roger L. Simon says he’s signed up 250 blogs for his new Pajamas Media. [another tidbit from LaObserved, which celebrates its second [...]

Beach House Bingo. “A woman I know — a financial guru by trade — says that if you want prosperity to come your way, you should repeat the mantra ‘People love to give me money’. If you say it over and over again, she suggests, eventually the universe hears and responds accordingly. I tried this a couple of times, and quickly became self-conscious. Even thinking the phrase made me feel slightly slimy; I quickly switched the mantra over to ‘Peace on Earth, Peace on Earth’ to assuage my guilty feelings. The weird thing is, the money chant seemed to work. …”

The June 2005 Book Sense Picks include Isabel Allende’s Zorro and Pamela Holm’s The Night Garden, a quirky novel set in San Francisco. Browse the complete list here.

Friends of the San Francisco Public Library has posted photos from its recent Laureates fundraising dinner, which raised more than $220,000 for the library. We were delighted to be part of such a wonderful and worthy event.

The Union Tribune rolls out Race for Literacy Weekend, an annual 8K that follows Highway 163 through Balboa Park and ends in downtown San Diego’s Pantoja Park. Proceeds benefit the San Diego Council on Literacy, which provides reading programs to more than 100,000 San Diegans.
Browse other weekend events around California here.

Euros fear the Google Print project — an ambitious plan to scan and post millions of books online — will marginalize European literature, says the Associated Press.
Europeans have long bemoaned the influence of Hollywood movies on their culture. Now plans by Google Inc. to create a massive digital library have triggered such strong fears [...]

Dawson’s Book Shop — 535 N. Larchmont Blvd. in L.A. — celebrated its 100th anniversary in April. Read about it in the Larchmont Chronicle and see a cool pictorial history at dawsonbooks.com … Orange, California high school student Shauna Fleming is a newly minted California author. A Million Thanks — her book chronicling her [...]

(and publishers) were a major presence in the 2005 James Beard Foundation Awards for culinary excellence, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Ten Speed Press‘ Rick Stein’s Complete Seafood Cookbook won Cookbook of the Year and its Foods of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions took the American Food category. Other winners: San Franciscan Joanne [...]

San Francisco writer Andrew Sean Greer has won the New York Public Library’s $10,000 Young Lions Fiction Award for his novel The Confessions of Max Tivoli.

LAPDauthors.com, a website packed with books written by cops and former cops, claims “the Los Angeles Police Department has produced more authors than any other law enforcement agency.”

has resigned as Editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, sez LaObserved, quoting sources inside the paper.
Tuesday a.m. update: It’s official: Wasserman is off to New York to work as a literary agent.

What California is reading. Our ever-expanding Literary Events Links. Our Latest California Books column. Enjoy!

as our new release of the week: The Other Side of the Postcard. Edited by devorah major (from City Lights Publishing, May 2005). When she served as San Francisco’s poet laureate in 2002, major asked people to send her poems about life in the city. She heard from children, seniors, the homeless, working folks [...]

J.D. Lasica on Steve Jobs’ ban on Wiley books from Apple stores:
As it happens, my book Darknet, published by Wiley, goes on sale next month, and its subject matter is aimed squarely at the innovation-loving technology crowd that the Apple stores target.
Nice going, Steve. Punish your customers.

By Kathi Kamen Goldmark. Backup singer Sarah Jean Pixlie got her own song on the radio and that got her nominated for a coveted Patsy award. And that got her fired by country star Cindy-Lu Bender. What to do? Head home to California and the warm, weird embrace that awaited her at the Dewdrop Inn. [...]