Los Angeles has an anti-literary reputation, but it's really undeserved.

Sure, Hollywood treats their writers notoriously shabbily, but L.A. has more writers making an actual livin' at it per capita than any other place in the world. Also would ya believe -- Angelanos buy more books per capita than New Yorkers. So don't think dumb blonde; think Joan Didion.

More evidence? How about the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Only in its seventh year, the book fair attracts over a hundred thousand folks for a vibrant literary weekend packed with hundreds of author lectures and panels, storytelling events, music and dance, and cooking demonstrations,

The book festival takes over the UCLA campus: the quads are turned into a tent city of hundreds of bookstores, publishers and readerly organizations. Outdoor food vendors and stage events like storytelling, music, and live cooking demonstrations round out the outdoor part of the festival.

But don't stay outside all day. University classrooms become air conditioned venues for hundreds of author panel discussions on topics from 'Jihad vs. McWorld: The Paradox of Terrorism' to 'Beyond the Crabgrass: True Tales From Suburbia' to 'Getting Your Kids to Read: Grades 4 - 8'.

And how's this for civilized: unlike most outdoor festivals you have a whole campus full of actual bathrooms instead of port-a-loos. Makes me wonder why every university campus isn't turned over to the community for a book fair once a year.

And did I mention the festival is free? The panel discussions tend to fill up to capacity (especially ones like 'Selling Celebrity: The Truth about Hollywood Lives') so you may need tickets to get into them, but the tickets are free and you can get them from any Ticketmaster outlet the week of the festival. As sponsors of the festival they even stop being Ticketbastards for one day out of the year and don't charge a fee.

Heather had somehow been living in LA for years and never seen the Venice canals. So we took a drive to Venice, got lost and drove around aimlessly until we saw some bridges, which is the only way I can ever find the canals even when I have a map.

The canals were built by an eccentric visionary named Abbot Kinney around the turn of the century. Instead of streets and sidewalks, this neighborhood was planned around a seaside resort casino and a network of 16 miles of canals.

A man, a plan, a canal, a casino: Venice Beach!

 

I love this whimsical haunted house along one of the canals. Click to see the larger photo and check out the wavy stained glass soldering and metalwork.