August events have just been announced!

Don't forget, Corey Taylor is at Book Soup tonight!

Sunset Strip Music Festival Saturday, Agust 3rd

Don't forget about the Sunset Strip Music Festival which takes place again on Saturday, August 3rd just down the street from us on Sunset between San Vicente Boulevard and Doheney Drive.  This year's bill features Wale, Asher Roth, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and headliners Linkin Park.  And while you are in the neighborhood stop in at Book Soup to peruse the best music books selection on this or any coast!

A few of our favorites:

Rock 'N' Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip by Robert Landau

Landau was born & raised in Los Angeles and steeped in the urban landscape, particularly the Sunset Strip which he has photographed extensively since the seventies.  This is essentially viewing for classic rock fans!

Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess by Danny Sugarman 

Embraced by rock & roll at a very young age, Sugerman escaped a troubled family life to the only world he could ever imagine living in.  He followed The Doors closely, first as a fan, then a kind of roadie, and eventual manager.  He pushed it to the limit too, throwing himself into the rock & roll lifestyle with all he had.  This book recounts a remarkable journey and offers a backstage look at a tender Jim Morrson and wild Iggy Pop.

The Art of Punk by Russ Bestley & Alex Ogg

Starving artists forging a new sound with no rules and no idea what they would do after the next gig.  Captured brilliantly by Bestley & Ogg, this book lovingly illustrates the histories of iconic bands from homemade gig flyers to major and indie record label deals.

between San Vicente Boulevard and Doheny Drive

between San Vicente Boulevard and Doheny Drive

5 Questions with Matthew Specktor, author of American Dream Machine

1. You are a founding editor of LA Review of Books.  Tell us how that came about.
As you know, Los Angeles is one of the largest book markets in the country. All of us were a little surprised there wasn't a Los Angeles Review of Books already. (After all, New York has one, London has one . . . ) Tom Lutz, LARB's editor in chief, had a strong belief that books coverage was declining in many traditional venues--newspapers cutting or shrinking their Sunday book review supplements and so on--but that readership, and interest in books, hasn't declined in the slightest. As it happens, he was absolutely correct. But we saw a need for it, for an expansive site that would provide essays and cultural commentary of all sorts, including thoughtful, provocative pieces about books. Between the five of us (the original founding editors of LARB: Tom, myself, Evan Kindley, Julie Cline, and Lisa Jane Persky), we knew a lot of writers we felt might be willing to contribute to such a site, if it existed. And so we started working the phones, so to speak. It was that simple.

2. Favorite stop in LA?

Besides Book Soup? Well, I have to give a certain amount of credit to King's Road Cafe, since I wrote most of American Dream Machine there at a corner table, under the influence of their astonishingly strong coffee. I'm partial to Musso & Frank, when I want to old school it. Pizzeria Mozza when I'm feeling flush.

3. Who are your literary influences?

Too many to mention. Writers to whom I return often include Philip Roth, Wallace Stevens, Henry James, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Denis Johnson, Nabokov, Saul Bellow, James Salter, Pynchon. Contemporaries I love would include Jonathan Lethem, Dana Spiotta, Maggie Nelson, John Jeremiah Sullivan. Right now I'm reading the first volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's "My Struggle" and it's thrilling me to bits.

4. American Dream Machine is about many things, but very much an LA book.  Do you have a favorite book about Los Angeles or the film industry in particular?

Again, there are so many. It really varies according to mood. Ones I've enjoyed (or re-enjoyed) recently include Robert Stone's Children of Light and Steve Erickson's Rubicon Beach, though I guess the former is more an "industry novel" than a "Los Angeles" one. I just started David Freeman's A Hollywood Education, which I'm told is quite wonderful as well.

5. You wrote a book about George Roy Hill's 1973 film The Sting. Any chance you will publish more film criticism?

I certainly hope so. I love writing criticism, whether of film, literature, music. Really I don't distinguish terribly between fiction and criticism. Writing of any kind is essentially reader-response. I'm talking back to the texts that have made me. Criticism is just a little more direct in doing this, is all. I loved writing about The Sting, which delights me every bit as much today as it did when I was a kid (and I've surely seen it more than twenty times, by now. At least). I'd love to write at length about Altman, or about Hal Ashby . . .



Matthew Specktor discusses & signs his novel American Dream Machine at Book Soup on Wednesday, July 10th at 7pm.

Tosh Berman discusses Sparks-tastic! with the LA Review of Books

https://soundcloud.com/lareviewofbooks/larb-podcast-34-tosh-berman

Space Is The Place - more summer music from Zoie!

Space is the Place! from BookSoup on 8tracks Radio.

5 Questions with Iris Smyles!

Iris Smyles discusses & signs her novel Iris Has Free Time Monday, June 24th at 7pm.

1. Are you a fan of Colt 45?
 “It works every time.” Who am I to argue with Billy Dee Williams?

2. Favorite stop in LA?
The museum of Jurassic Technology and The Griffith Observatory are devoted respectively to my two favorite things: fiction masquerading as truth, and space!

3. Who are your literary influences?
Proust is a big one. Like me, he was a dilettante partier until he was 30 when he decided, seemingly out of nowhere, to retire from social life, retreat to his bedroom, and essentially stay there until he’d completed the semi-autobiographical novels comprising, In Search of Lost Time. A roman a clef, my novel is modeled in part after his; certainly Proust is its patron saint as Iris Has Free Time is about lost time, too.

4. Fictional character you love to hate and/or least admire.
 Larry Darrell is still the worst thing about young people today.

5. Describe your book in a tweet (140 characters or less)
Youth in its twilight.

Easy, breezy tunes for stretching out on the sand with your favorite beach read.

Summer Reading from BookSoup on 8tracks Radio.

Brought to you by Zoie.

5 Questions with Kathy Ebel, author of Claudia Silver to the Rescue

Kathy Ebel is a screenwriter, essayist, blogger and native New Yorker.  Claudia Silver to the Rescue is her debut novel and we are delighted to host her on Wednesday, June 19th at 7pm for her book launch.  She was kind enough to answer a few questions for us.

1. Fictional character you admire?
Daisy Summerfield, the eponymous main character in the YA novel Daisy Summerfield's Style by M.B. Goffstein, that I devoured regularly in the early 1980's.  Daisy heads to NYC in 1959 with matching Samsonite luggage, meets a bohemian girl on the train, switches luggage tags, and reinvents herself as a Greenwich Village sculptress in no time.  Instead of an engagement ring, the happy ending is gallery representation.

2. Favorite LA destination?
It's a 3-way: the cove at the southern tip of Point Dume beach, Din Tai Fung restaurant, Pasquale Shoe Repair.
  
3. Who are your literary influences?
 Edith Wharton, Dawn Powell ("The Powell," the tell-tale Greenwich Village apartment building in Claudia Silver to the Rescue, is named in her honor), Joan Didion, Lore Segal, Michael Chabon, Nora Ephron and Stephen Sondheim.  The paintings of Florine Stettheimer, Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and films of Wes Anderson have also been major.

 4. Your desert island book?
 The Kidpower Hour.  That's the novel I'm writing now.  I hope my island has WiFi.

5. Describe your book in a tweet (140 characters or less)
 In early ‘90s NYC, the biggest mistake Claudia Silver ever makes is the best thing that ever happened to her.  With a beat you can dance to.

Kathy Ebel discusses & signs Claudia Silver to the Rescue on Wednesday, June 19th

Here's a handy chart to help you make sense of the complicated life of Claudia Silver, the heroine of Kathy Ebel's debute novel.  Ms. Ebel is a screenwriter ("Cold Case" & "Law & Order: SVU"), poet and blogger (Fatherland) and we are excited to host her on Wednesday, June 19th at 7pm!