“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 [...]

The San Francisco Chronicle serves up its list of gift cookbooks .

Rupert Murdoch kills O.J. Simpson’s book and Fox TV interview too. From the LAT:
The decision meant that hundreds of thousands of copies of the Simpson book stored in warehouses soon would be destroyed, according to a News Corp spokesman. Standard industry practice dictates that the copies would be pulped, booksellers would be refunded any orders [...]

Suzan-Lori Parks came up with a big idea composed of 365 little parts. She would write a play a day. For an entire year. “A daily meditation, a daily prayer celebrating the rich and strange process of a writing life.”
The LAT’s Christopher Reynolds explains:
Parks had never been one to let go of outlandish notions [...]

“I never lost my desire for his conviction. And if Marcia Clark couldn’t do it. I sure wanted to try.” — publisher Judith Regan on the new O.J. Simpson book
[via Slate]

Seattle writer Timothy Egan wins the nonfiction prize for The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. The other winners are: Richard Powers (fiction) for The Echo Maker; Santa Cruz writer Nathaniel Mackey (poetry) for Splay Anthem; and M.T. Anderson (children’s literature) for The Astonishing Life [...]

• Would you buy O.J.’s book? “Only if I had the opportunity to throw it at that stupid man and hit him square in the face.”
• Can billionaires and newspapers mix? “If you’re lucky, you get the right one…”

This handy pointer comes from Cool Tools: “We’ve all had those moments when we know there’s a word for some concept, but we don’t know what it is. We need something more than a thesaurus, because we don’t know an equivalent word. Onelook.com’s reverse dictionary helps.”

“Noted editor Tom Jenks solicited submissions from a few of his writer friends, then published six in the inaugural issue of Narrative Magazine …. There was no test marketing, no promotion, no advertising, no nothing other than a new Web site that had a two-page editors’ note and six pieces with some formidable bylines, [...]

Spend the evening with Michael Chabon at UC Davis, where the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay talks about the beginning of his writing career. Afterward, he’ll be signing books, including My California: Journeys by Great Writers.
His contribution to the anthology is “Berkeley,” a wonderful essay about the joys [...]

The Chron catches up with Ben Lerner, the 27-year-old poet from Berkeley and a National Book Award finalist for his second book of poems, Angle of Yaw. Edward Guthmann calls Lerner “cool, laconic and brilliant.” We’ll find out next Wednesday if the National Book Foundation agrees.

The National Endowment for the Arts has just handed out 72 grants for community reading programs during 2007. California recipients include the Santa Clarita branch of the Los Angeles Public Library (Fahrenheit 451); the Fresno County Library (The Joy Luck Club); the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga (Fahrenheit 451); the National Steinbeck Center in [...]

Josh Getlin writes in the LAT today about Wendy Werris and An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books. “It is an unabashed love letter to literary Los Angeles.”

Dont miss our one-of-a-kind list of new California Books. Updated today with 13 new entries!

LAT columnist and mystery novelist Steve Lopez gets a pre-election makeover from the governor’s go-to guy in Beverly Hills. “You’re gonna look like a sex pistol when I’m done with you, Steve-O.” Very funny reading here.