Edward Humes (Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream) blogs at the Huffington Post about the Iraq surge and the election — and draws a barrage of comments.
Southern California novelist Dean Koontz makes the Forbes list of the world’s best paid authors.
LAT Book editor David Ulin confesses his ambivalence about Banned [...]

Author Caitlin Flanagan leads a video tour of Patty Hearst’s Berkeley for The Atlantic. “The thing you have to understand about Patty Hearst, the reason that her fantastically sui generis story resonated so deeply within so many millions of ordinary American households, is that back then a lot of girls like her were disappearing,” [...]

Presidential politics roiled this week’s PEN/Faulkner Award gala at the Folger Shakespeare Library, as best-selling novelist Terry McMillan spoke out during the black-tie benefit and left people whispering, “Did she really say that?” Yes, she did.
So many books, so little space. The Washington Post laments and lists four books it didn’t review. [...]

Check out the summer’s most-reviewed books.
Submit your nominations for the Book Blogger Appreciation Week Awards here. (Lotsa categories; deadline is Sunday.)
Grab the last chance to laud California writers and publications that upheld the principles of free speech, free press and public access to government this past year. (Monday is the deadline for California First Amendment [...]

“Sit. Stay. Make up for everything that is wrong in my life.” Terry Caesar digs into the proliferation of canine-inspired memoirs.
[ via Arts & Letters Daily]
Above: Kate’s dog Ajax in her painting Ajax on the Kitchen Floor.

author items this afternoon over at LAObserved: Ray Bradbury incites the folks in Santa Clarita with a weekend Book Burning promo … And Jim Newton takes over as the LAT’s new Opinion editor.

“L.A. people are very sophisticated, and, frankly, I don’t think they wanted a retread of Double Indemnity. They want to be amazed and impressed and told something they don’t know.” That’s crime novelist and anthology editor Denise Hamilton talking about the new Los Angeles Noir collection.
The anthology includes stories by Michael Connelly, Janet [...]

On the April books:
April 4: Eat your words at the International Edible Book Festival at the Portland Public Library. More info.
April 12: San Francisco Literary Journal Instant City celebrates issue No. 4: Love — which the dotcom boom/buster editor/publishers describe as “gritty” — with a reading at City Lights Bookstore. More info.
April 13: Dave Brubeck [...]

Poet Julia Stein offers a lengthy blog ode to Bohemian Los Angeles, Daniel Hurewitz’ new book about the gays, artists and political radicals of Edendale (Silverlake and Echo Park) from the 1920s-50s.
Hurewitz brilliantly shows how these young artists creating both modern art and as well as artistic and literary Los Angeles. Lawrence Powell, [...]

Fill your 2007 dance card from our one-of-a-kind list of current and upcoming California book releases. Updated today with nine new titles.

Dutton’s is shutting down its new Beverly Hills bookstore on Dec. 31. “We’re very sad,” owner Doug Dutton tells LaObserved. “We wish we would have had the time and opportunity to let it grow.”

Downtown Los Angeles has a shiny new indie, Metropolis Books, which celebrated its grand opening this weekend. Scott Timberg explores the store in today’s LAT:
Metropolis Books, at 440 S. Main St. — arriving at a time that sees far more closings than openings in the book business — is being called the first nonspecialty, [...]

The NYT explains Judith Regan’s sudden ouster. Media Bistro recaps the weekend stories.

Aimee Liu and Deborah Jones presented a tribute to the slain journalist at last night’s Pen USA dinner.
They wrote:
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya did not have to die. The child of diplomats in the Brezhnev era, she could have made a career of ease. The mother of two, she could have stayed home without [...]

“I’ve got two boys with two Pulitzers. Not many mothers can say that.” — Myrtle Baquet, in a lengthy E&P profile of sons Dean (the former LAT editor) and Terry (an editor at the New Orleans Times-Picayune)
[pointer from LAObserved]

Elizabeth Stromme, author of the noir novel Joe’s Word, set in Echo Park, has died at age 59. Nancy Peters, her editor at City Lights Books, recalls that Stromme was “particularly good at exploring the lives of people living on the margins, especially in L.A.” Her LAT obit.[via LaObserved]

Red Hen Press has teamed up with the Geffen Playhouse to create a series of Monday night readings and conversations at the Geffen. Red Hen Press Managing Editor Kate Gale is the host of the new series. And the next evening is Monday, Dec. 11, when Carolyn See and John Rechy share their “Los Angeles [...]

In the LAT Book Review, Steve Almond tries to explain Dave Eggers and his new What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel. “Eggers has ditched the ironic cleverness in which he draped previous efforts, including his bestselling 2000 memoir, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” The new novel [...]

“Screw the owls. Boy wizard Harry Potter may have The Order of the Phoenix and the Dementors’ kiss, but Thomas Pynchon, who is man – all man – has Gravity’s Rainbow and the V-2 rocket,” Gendy Alimurung writes in LA Weekly. “On this, the eve of the publication of Against the Day, we have [...]

Novelist and USC Prof Marianne Wiggins on the recent National Book Awards:
This year, I was a judge. What that means is that between the beginning of May and the middle of August, I (and my four fellow judges) read 258 books. Each. The same 258 novels. To put that in perspective, it’s pertinent to [...]