Here’s the lead from an NYT Sunday story, “Overfeeding on Information.”
Yana Collins Lehman, a film production accountant who lives in Brooklyn, knew something was amiss when her 5-year-old son, Beckett, started to announce to no one in particular, “I’m John McCain, and I approved this statement.”
Ms. Collins Lehman, 36, thought: “Oh my God, I’m watching [...]
Stories in Media:
Suddenly, a nation of news junkies
Authors 4 Babe, media moguls & lit world villians
Alice Sebold, Alice Walker, Michael Chabon, and Michael Pollan are among the authors speaking out in support of Proposition 2, the November ballot initiative requiring that farm animals in California have enough room to stand up, turn around and stretch their limbs. Read more about the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act.
Plus…
Seven media [...]
Author mines SoCal’s cold-case files
Pasadena author Weston DeWalt was researching jogging trails near his home when he heard about a boy who disappeared while hiking along an Arroyo Seco trail. Eight-year-old Tommy Bowman had run ahead of his family on a spring day in 1957 and vanished forever. “I was intrigued by the story that a child [...]
Bringing books to the poorest corners of the globe
Embedded video from CNN Video
CNN’s Road Warriors series features
Nerd-o-licious cookbook
Cory at BoingBoing tips us off to the just-released Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies by Patrick Buckley and Lilly Binns.
Co-author Buckley is a an MIT grad and mechanical engineer from San Francisco. His expertise helps transform your ordinary kitchen into a mad scientist’s [...]
Litquake & a few notes from the fall bookscape
Litquake, San Francisco’s freewheeling storytelling festival, opens on Friday. The San Francisco Chronicle previews.
Michael Pollan is the Diesel Books choice for “Author of the Month.”
Kevin Roderick shares a slice of Sunday’s West Hollywood Book Fair on video.
Ayelet Waldman wraps up her Books for Barack campaign, $68,000 later.
Susan Paterno triumphs against Santa [...]
Attention book editors and book lovers too
Help Wanted: San Francisco needs a new book editor.
This weekend: Check out Saturday’s Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival. Highlights include an impressive line up of poets reading their work and the city’s Pass it Forward Book Exchange.
Sunday in the sunshine: This year’s West Hollywood Book Fair features headliner Ray Bradbury and three hundred [...]
Monday morning miscellany
Five thousand book lovers savor the 9th Annual Sonoma County Book Festival in Santa Rosa. Press Democrat.
Diesel Books opens in Brentwood. Adrienne Crew.
Harper’s opens its archives of David Foster Wallace stories. Browse here.
Hearst Castle welcomes overnight guests for the first time in fifty years. SoCal SoCool.
OJR is back. LAObserved.
A few new Bay Area [...]
An odd tale of poetry appreciation
Gregory Cowles at Paper Cuts stumbles upon the “the most dangerous book of poetry ever written.” It’s also become one of the priciest.
Best-selling Southern California novelist Dean Koontz released The Book of Counted Sorrows in 2003. Just 1,250 copies were published. This week, Cowles noted that Koontz’ book is selling online for [...]
Going State by State, Iraq, book banning & football too
Yay. The September books have landed. A few choice offerings:
State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, edited by Mark Weiland and Sean Wilsey. Fifty states. Fifty writers, including William T. Vollmann on California. Plus, a companion dvd showing at indie bookstores.
Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s [...]
Summer break at CaliforniaAuthors
I’m getting ready for my trip to Denver to experience the historic hoopla of the DNC and Donna is out exploring new destinations for her faithful travel readers. So, CaliforniaAuthors is taking a little late summer break this week. In the meantime, enjoy:
Ray Bradbury’s future prunes commercial.
Eating LA goes with author Denise Hamilton on a [...]
Notebook: Hugo, Zell, Facebook Hamlet, Orangeless
Hugo awards best novel: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. Tor books has nice coverage of the awards. [Thx Cory D.] More: hugoawards.com.
Fishbowl LA: Will the Zell Book Sell?
M&M points us to Sarah Schmelling’s acutely cool HAMLET (Facebook News Feed Edition). We pay it forward to you. BTW: Michelle Nicolosi’s smart Google [...]
A California dream weekend
This weekend, the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas hosts a summertime fiesta that explores Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck’s connection to Mexico in his travels and writings (such as Log from the Sea of Cortez, The Pearl, and Tortilla Flat). Monterey County Herald.
On Saturday: Big Sur celebrates the publication of Ping•Pong, the Literary Magazine of the [...]
Shrinking CA papers: SF Chron offers buyouts
Editor and Publisher reports: “The San Francisco Chronicle is asking for 125 employees to consider taking a buyout package before the end of the year … The buyouts extend to employees who are represented by the Northern California Media Workers’ Guild as well as non-union staffers.” Read more at E&P. [thx nik]
Notebook: Smut, honors, anger, hope and business
Sunday in San Francisco: Dirty Words: Litquake’s Tribute to Smut, “a giddy homage to titillation and obscenity … a fundraiser starring a who’s who of Bay Area writers.” Details.
Congratulations to Heyday Books founder Malcolm Margolin on his San Francisco Foundation’s Community Leadership Award. From the Heyday newsletter: “The Helen Crocker Russell Award recognizes individuals and [...]
Update: Our latest Book Lotto winner
Librarian Debbie Foster of El Cerrito is the lucky winner of an autographed copy of Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by Santa Barbara neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga.
“Cool! I’m looking forward to reading this book for my blog,” says Debbie, whose online home is called, appropriately, My Mind on Books.
Notebook: fREADom, “real” literacy and black humor
About Uncle Bobby: In Uncle Bobby’s Wedding a niece worries that her uncle’s upcoming wedding will change her relationship with him. P.S. The characters are guinea pigs. P.P.S. Uncle Bobby is gay. One Colorado library patron wrote the local paper to say the children’s picture book was a “slap in [her] face” and urged other [...]
They’re California authors, too.
They’re not famous for it, but they are famous, and they’ve got books out this month.
Speaker of the US House of Representatives California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi will celebrate the launch of her book Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters with three TV appearances on Monday (NBC’s “Today,” ABC’s “The View” and Comedy [...]
Can the LA Times Book Review be saved?
Author Celeste Fremon talks about the prospects for an eleventh-hour turnaround with former LAT Book Editor Steve Wasserman at her Witness LA blog. Freeman also cites some key facts about why keeping the Book Section is a smart business move.
Curious as to where Los Angeles stands as a book buying market, yesterday I called the [...]
Suddenly, a nation of news junkies
Authors 4 Babe, media moguls & lit world villians
Alice Sebold, Alice Walker, Michael Chabon, and Michael Pollan are among the authors speaking out in support of Proposition 2, the November ballot initiative requiring that farm animals in California have enough room to stand up, turn around and stretch their limbs. Read more about the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act.
Plus…
Seven media [...]
Author mines SoCal’s cold-case files
Pasadena author Weston DeWalt was researching jogging trails near his home when he heard about a boy who disappeared while hiking along an Arroyo Seco trail. Eight-year-old Tommy Bowman had run ahead of his family on a spring day in 1957 and vanished forever. “I was intrigued by the story that a child [...]
Bringing books to the poorest corners of the globe
Embedded video from CNN Video
CNN’s Road Warriors series features
Nerd-o-licious cookbook
Cory at BoingBoing tips us off to the just-released Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies by Patrick Buckley and Lilly Binns.
Co-author Buckley is a an MIT grad and mechanical engineer from San Francisco. His expertise helps transform your ordinary kitchen into a mad scientist’s [...]
Litquake & a few notes from the fall bookscape
Litquake, San Francisco’s freewheeling storytelling festival, opens on Friday. The San Francisco Chronicle previews.
Michael Pollan is the Diesel Books choice for “Author of the Month.”
Kevin Roderick shares a slice of Sunday’s West Hollywood Book Fair on video.
Ayelet Waldman wraps up her Books for Barack campaign, $68,000 later.
Susan Paterno triumphs against Santa [...]
Attention book editors and book lovers too
Help Wanted: San Francisco needs a new book editor.
This weekend: Check out Saturday’s Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival. Highlights include an impressive line up of poets reading their work and the city’s Pass it Forward Book Exchange.
Sunday in the sunshine: This year’s West Hollywood Book Fair features headliner Ray Bradbury and three hundred [...]
Monday morning miscellany
Five thousand book lovers savor the 9th Annual Sonoma County Book Festival in Santa Rosa. Press Democrat.
Diesel Books opens in Brentwood. Adrienne Crew.
Harper’s opens its archives of David Foster Wallace stories. Browse here.
Hearst Castle welcomes overnight guests for the first time in fifty years. SoCal SoCool.
OJR is back. LAObserved.
A few new Bay Area [...]
An odd tale of poetry appreciation
Gregory Cowles at Paper Cuts stumbles upon the “the most dangerous book of poetry ever written.” It’s also become one of the priciest.
Best-selling Southern California novelist Dean Koontz released The Book of Counted Sorrows in 2003. Just 1,250 copies were published. This week, Cowles noted that Koontz’ book is selling online for [...]
Going State by State, Iraq, book banning & football too
Yay. The September books have landed. A few choice offerings:
State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, edited by Mark Weiland and Sean Wilsey. Fifty states. Fifty writers, including William T. Vollmann on California. Plus, a companion dvd showing at indie bookstores.
Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s [...]
Summer break at CaliforniaAuthors
I’m getting ready for my trip to Denver to experience the historic hoopla of the DNC and Donna is out exploring new destinations for her faithful travel readers. So, CaliforniaAuthors is taking a little late summer break this week. In the meantime, enjoy:
Ray Bradbury’s future prunes commercial.
Eating LA goes with author Denise Hamilton on a [...]
Notebook: Hugo, Zell, Facebook Hamlet, Orangeless
Hugo awards best novel: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. Tor books has nice coverage of the awards. [Thx Cory D.] More: hugoawards.com.
Fishbowl LA: Will the Zell Book Sell?
M&M points us to Sarah Schmelling’s acutely cool HAMLET (Facebook News Feed Edition). We pay it forward to you. BTW: Michelle Nicolosi’s smart Google [...]
A California dream weekend
This weekend, the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas hosts a summertime fiesta that explores Nobel Prize-winner John Steinbeck’s connection to Mexico in his travels and writings (such as Log from the Sea of Cortez, The Pearl, and Tortilla Flat). Monterey County Herald.
On Saturday: Big Sur celebrates the publication of Ping•Pong, the Literary Magazine of the [...]
Shrinking CA papers: SF Chron offers buyouts
Editor and Publisher reports: “The San Francisco Chronicle is asking for 125 employees to consider taking a buyout package before the end of the year … The buyouts extend to employees who are represented by the Northern California Media Workers’ Guild as well as non-union staffers.” Read more at E&P. [thx nik]
Notebook: Smut, honors, anger, hope and business
Sunday in San Francisco: Dirty Words: Litquake’s Tribute to Smut, “a giddy homage to titillation and obscenity … a fundraiser starring a who’s who of Bay Area writers.” Details.
Congratulations to Heyday Books founder Malcolm Margolin on his San Francisco Foundation’s Community Leadership Award. From the Heyday newsletter: “The Helen Crocker Russell Award recognizes individuals and [...]
Update: Our latest Book Lotto winner
Librarian Debbie Foster of El Cerrito is the lucky winner of an autographed copy of Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by Santa Barbara neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga.
“Cool! I’m looking forward to reading this book for my blog,” says Debbie, whose online home is called, appropriately, My Mind on Books.
Notebook: fREADom, “real” literacy and black humor
About Uncle Bobby: In Uncle Bobby’s Wedding a niece worries that her uncle’s upcoming wedding will change her relationship with him. P.S. The characters are guinea pigs. P.P.S. Uncle Bobby is gay. One Colorado library patron wrote the local paper to say the children’s picture book was a “slap in [her] face” and urged other [...]
They’re California authors, too.
They’re not famous for it, but they are famous, and they’ve got books out this month.
Speaker of the US House of Representatives California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi will celebrate the launch of her book Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters with three TV appearances on Monday (NBC’s “Today,” ABC’s “The View” and Comedy [...]
Can the LA Times Book Review be saved?
Author Celeste Fremon talks about the prospects for an eleventh-hour turnaround with former LAT Book Editor Steve Wasserman at her Witness LA blog. Freeman also cites some key facts about why keeping the Book Section is a smart business move.
Curious as to where Los Angeles stands as a book buying market, yesterday I called the [...]
Meet the authors of the California Authors Directory. Visit the directory to discover writers like Christina Meldrum, a Bay Area attorney whose book Madapple was just released this month. “In debut novelist Christina Meldrum's mesmerizing literary mystery, 
You can shop online from your local independent booksellers. 