The film adaptation of his Coraline is Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Feature Film, his Graveyard Book won 2009’s Newbery Medal, and his bees won him a blue ribbon for honey in the county fair. Neil Gaiman, ladies and gentlemen, is a talented man.
During his appearance at UCLA Live on Feb. 4, Gaiman assured the audience [...]
What are comics? The Sunday funnies are one thing; franchised superheroes are certainly another. Between World War II and the rise of television, a pastiche of super-heroism and sexy, gory pulp fiction made the heyday of widely read comics, but the period was quickly censored into obscurity.
R. Crumb, UCLA Live’s most recent literary guest, is [...]
Literary classics can be given new life with new artwork, and the Bible itself has undergone a re-inking or several to appeal to new, or younger, audiences. “The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb,” though – “all 50 chapters!” brags the cover – is not illustrated for kiddie appeal. God’s wrinkled brow and the [...]
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
The Pasadena Museum of California Art kicks off Written in California, its new reading series co-sponsored by Vroman’s Bookstore, on Thursday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. Sarah Shun-lien Bynum will read from “Ms. Hempel Chronicles,” a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award. “Ms. Hempel Chronicles” is a novel-in-stories about a seventh-grade English teacher [...]
Leave it to 826LA to come up with a book event as clever as the Dead Author Panel, in which writers like Sylvia Plath and Henry Miller will discuss current issues in literature. That is just one of the hundreds of events scheduled as part of the eighth annual West Hollywood Book Fair on Sunday, [...]
Well, okay, we really mean take books by local authors to the beach, or wherever you do your summer reading. Here are a few quick picks from books written by fellow Angelenos, specifically USC faculty and staff. Admittedly, the non-fiction titles might be a little heavy, but who said summer reading has to be light [...]
Did you catch any of the Scripps Spelling Bee last night? If you did, you might be feeling that your vocabulary is sorely lacking, let alone your spelling abilities. A 13-year-old won with Laodicean, meaning lukewarm to religion. Try using that one in a sentence this week.
One guy who might have enjoyed the challenge of [...]
Tickets for panels at the LA Times Festival of Books (April 25 and 26) became available today. Tickets are free, but Ticketmaster charges 75 cents. Panels on Saturday and Sunday at the UCLA campus feature authors talking about every genre of fiction and non-fiction, including comedy, horror, sci-fi, crime/mystery, history, biography, and science. Plus, there [...]
There is a time to celebrate just about everything in this country. Among the more obscure celebrations listed in my calendar are National Teacher’s Day (May 5), Adopt a Cat Month (June), Parent’s Day (July 26), and Kiss and Make Up Day (Aug. 25). I mention those because National Poetry Month may be just as [...]
On Monday, April 6, George Preston, director emeritus of the Carnegie Observatories, talks about that stuff that covers two-thirds of the Earth’s surface and rarely falls from the sky in LA. His Carnegie Astronomy Lecture at the Huntington Library is titled “How the Earth Got Its Water.” A reception begins at 7 p.m., and the [...]
