Book Soup Turns 40!

With our 40th anniversary just around the corner, Julia Callahan of Rare Bird Books and former Book Soup glory shares not one, but TWO tear-jerking remembrances from ye olde bookshop: 

"I started working at Book Soup when I was 22. I was working as a Page at Paramount Pictures, made no money, and decided working at a bookstore for extra money was the way to go. I had been in LA for about a year and I had some friends, but not many (I knew no one when I moved here). My Book Soup co-workers became family. I remember Ruth and Sue and Amy bringing a bit of extra food with them and making me eat healthy because I was making so little money, I could barely afford to eat. I remember Nancy giving me dating advice. Manny and I fought like siblings. Scott and I talked baseball. Fawn always made me tell her what I was reading. I remember walking into Book Soup and feeling like I was home. It felt like someone would care for me there. Like there were people that asked how my daw was going and what was new in my life. 

I still fully believe Book Soup is the reason I stayed in Los Angeles. I would have hauled myself back to San Francisco by now if it weren't for the amazing people I am lucky enough to call friends. Of course, the most significant relationship that came out of my time at Book Soup was with Tyson Cornell, with whom I've helped build Rare Bird Books & Lit. I was his assistant at Book Soup and now here we are, five years and hundreds of books later, with a company that just keeps growing.

That store was truly a blessing for me."

&

"It's no secret that the Marketing and Publicity department used to drink a lot. In our defense, on a good day we worked 12 hours, but normally we were there for 14-16 hours. Still, we drank a lot. I'm not sure when it began, perhaps before I ever came to Book Soup, but at 5pm every day we had what we called Draper Time (after Don Draper from Mad Men). We'd all go over to Red  Rock or Mirabelle and have a few drinks, chat for a while, and then go back to work.

It's a memory that seems like it can only happen in your 20s. Going to that bar across the street from your office where everybody knows your name. We drank whiskey and talked books and got to know each other in that special way that people who work closely together for very long days go. It is one of my favorite memories. Every time I drive by State (which used to be Red Rock), different memories flood back. Great times. Great friends. Learning some of the most important lessons of my life."

Email your own Book Soup to info@booksoup.com to be featured here on our blog!

Author Meredith Maran Remembers Book Soup When...

Have a favorite Book Soup story? In anticipation of our 40th anniversary party on June 12 (that's right -- 40 years!), we're collecting memories from Book Soup-ers everywhere.

First up is author, book critic, and journalist Meredith Maran, who finally (finally!) clarifies what the hell a Book Soup is.

Meredith writes:

"My most profound experience of Book Soup happened long before I'd ever set foot in the store. As an Oakland writer, each time I published a book I'd eagerly await my tour itinerary, hoping to find that enigmatic venue on the list. Again and again, I was disappointed, leaving me to wonder, "What's a Book Soup? Is it like alphabet soup? Stone soup? Duck soup?" It wasn't until I moved to LA that I finally entered that hallowed ground -- as an author/bookseller on National Independent Bookstore Day -- and realized what a Book Soup is: Soup's on!" 

Aw. Thanks Meredith. I totally get it now.

You can submit your own Book Soup story here.

And if you haven't read Meredith Maran's Why We Write or A Theory of Small Earthquakes yet, you're missing out, dude. 

5 Questions with Author Kevin McEnroe

[Photo: Kevin McEnroe]

1) Our Town is your first novel. How long have you been writing?

I started taking writing seriously when I was about nineteen. I wasn’t a great student, and, floating through college, I took a fiction writing workshop simply because it met once a week, and at night. I didn’t think much of it until our first assignment, which was to write a story from the opposite sex's point of view. I thought, then, of a time when I was young, and I was left alone with my grandmother – my nana – one of my earliest memories. She died soon thereafter, and it’s the only time I remember her at all, but it must have stuck with me, because after that my professor came to me and told me I had something. He told me not to stop. So I didn’t – I’ve been trying to breathe life into her, and thus myself, ever since – and it was because of him that I finally understood what school is for. 

2) Your novel shares a title with Thorton Wilder's famous play, Our Town - although Hollywood is obviously very different than Grover's Corners. Was this a conscious decision of yours?

It was, indeed. It was for a long time called Serenity Side Down – a turn of phrase I liked, and which meant something to me. So, when my editor approached me about calling the book Our Town, I was nervous at first, both legally – not sure whether or not one was even allowed to co-opt a classic name, as such – and in that I didn’t want to disrespect such a legendary work. But, when I thought more about it, it began to feel as though Our Town was always the name, in some ways. From moment one I felt as though a narrator – or “stage manager” – was necessary to guide the action. And I felt that the hope of fame that Hollywood of old could provide a certain type of person was similar to the way people, when reading of Grover’s Corners, could hope for an easier, simpler life. The value systems that the two places offered up were no less than entirely opposite, but I found the hope that life could be better was in some ways the same, and so it began to feel right. Both right, and necessary.

3) Your novel is fiction, but you also come from a long line of Hollywood actresses who have struggled with addiction. How much or how little did your own family history shape this story? 

I’ve always known that Dorothy is based on my nana, Joanna Moore, who is my mother’s mother. However, outside of some attempt to honor her spirit, or, at least, attempt to realize what connected her and I, I view the rest of the novel’s landscape as entirely fictionalized. In many ways, I see the rest of the characters, and in some ways Dorothy, too, as just an extension of me. In the end, I do think I found out what connected her and I, and thus why I was so interested. Her ability to get in her own way – to do the wrong thing because you don’t believe in yourself, because you don’t believe someone like you deserves to be happy – is something that lives in me, too. And I hope, in honoring her, that it will be as though she’s finally able to gain some of the recognition that she should’ve believed she deserved from the beginning.

4) Who (or what) have your writing influences been? Where do you get your inspiration from? 

I have a tack board where I pin up ideas, when I have them. My influences are not all literary, as well. With this book, reading Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust and Joan Didion’s The White Album provided the feeling that I needed to write. But music also helped me – I would find songs that suited the tone and rhythm that I needed for a particular scene, and play them over, and over, and over, until it was right. And movies – The King of Comedy comes to mind. Oh, and lastly things like Bravo, for I found the vapidity of that sort of programming has existed in Hollywood since it’s inception, and it helped for me to attempt to incorporate that tone. 

5) Do you have any more novels on the horizon?

Yes. I am working on a New York book now. I think of Our Town as my LA book, and I want to treat the city that I now live in with the same reverence, and also disrespect. Both idealizing the romance of the New York streets at night, and fearing what happens if you continue walking on them until the morning. I’m working now, so I’m not sure, still, if I'll  be able to get this balance right. But I’m going to try, and I can’t wait to do so.

[Photo: Counterpoint]

Kevin McEnroe will sign and discuss Our Town on Thursday, May 14 at 7pm.

http://www.booksoup.com/kevin-mcenroe-2015

Visit Book Soup at the LA Times Festival of Books!

Book Soup will be haunting Booth 88 at the LA Times Festival of Books at USC this weekend (Saturday, April 18, 10am - 6pm & Sunday, April 19, 10am - 5pm)! We'll be selling a selection of Penguin books, books about LA, tshirts, and other fabulous goodies, so be sure to stop by!

For more information, please visit: http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

August 28 @ The Echo: Lit Crawl 2: It's a F*cking Read-Off

Be sure to check out "Lit Crawl 2: It's a F*cking Read-Off" @ The Echo in Los Angeles August 28th (brought to you by PEN Center USA & Stories) with MCs Laurie Ochoa & Joe Donnelly (editors of SLAKE) plus Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times. Competing in the read-off? James Greer, Joseph Mattson, Allison Burnett, Katie Arnoldi, Dennis Danziger, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Samantha Dunn, Edan Lepucki, Graham Moore, Neal Pollack & Rachel Resnick... Rowdy judges, 8 minute compositions, screaming & yelling, booze = "I'm attending".

For more info, be sure to visit the event's website: http://litcrawlla.com/

The Ferus Gallery by Kristine McKenna

In the late 1950’s when America was looking at New York as the art capital of the world, Los Angeles was doing things their own way – for instance The Ferus Gallery. Started by visionary Walter Hopps and artist Ed Keinholtz with Art dealer Irving Blum jumping in the second half of its history, the Ferus was responsible for introducing artists Robert Irwin, Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell and Wallace Berman (I knew him) as well as countless others. And they even had the first solo Andy Warhol exhibition. This book covers the entire history of the Ferus with fantastic text/interviews as well as remarkable photographs of an era that seemed fun, and totally new.  Down below Ferus Artists.


Photo by Patricia Faure/Los Angeles 1958
Copyright the Estate of Patricia Faure

Tosh Talks: The Ferus Gallery

Our Book Buyer Tosh Berman has started his own book show! Here we have Tosh's first episode... sharing in a series about art books on art in LA. We begin with the Ferus Gallery... Let us know what you think and please make requests of future books!