Shakespeare and Company's new literary mural

The English-language bookstore on Paris' left bank, Shakespeare and Company, has been a draw for generations of expatriate writers. That goes for both its first iteration, owned by Sylvia Beach, who was the original publisher of James Joyce's "Ulysses," and the more recent version, opened in 1951 by George Whitman. And those writers are rendered in portraits in a new mural in the shop, on the stairwell between the ground floor and the upstairs browsing/reading room.

On its website, Bomb Magazine has a slideshow of the mural's creation, and an interview with the artist, Badaude (a.k.a. Joanna Walsh). 

I’m somewhere between being a writer [and] an illustrator. I look with envy at other artists’ sketchbooks which are full of pictures and are beautiful objects. Mine tend to be pages of scribbled notes with the odd sketch thrown in....

In drawing the Shakespeare & Company writers -- looking at the way they presented themselves in the reference photos I used -- I became interested in how the image of being, and the story of becoming, a published writer in Paris was so central to the myth [of] their lives; a myth so hugely attractive it frequently became their subject matter ("Quartet," " A Moveable Feast," "Tropic of Cancer"). This is why I chose the quote from "Ulysses" ...  hidden in the wallpaper design of the mural, in which Stephen Dedalus remembers his “Latin Quarter hat,” “puce gloves,” and other “Paris fads” with which he -- and no doubt his hipster-goatee’d creator -- furnished his Paris persona.

Today, the shop is run by George's daughter Sylvia Whitman -- George, now in his 90s, is mostly retired. It continues to offer events with French and American writers, like Jhumpa Lahiri and Mavis Gallant in June and Charles D'Ambrosio later this month.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo credit: Paul Morris / Bomb Magazine

Kids bookstore Storyopolis heading toward adulthood

Someone's turning 14 this weekend, but that doesn't mean it's time for it to set aside childish things. Located in Studio City, Storyopolis has been going strong for more than a decade, and it will continue to host story times and play with stuffed animals after celebrating on Saturday.

The independent bookstore has been a favorite of children's book authors. "It's a tough job to be a bookseller," Cornelia Funke ("Inkheart") told the L.A. Times three years ago while helping the bookstore celebrate its 11th birthday.  "For me, it's always special to do something for an owner of a store who I know has worked hard to keep their business."

This year, the celebration focuses on "Mitzi's World." Author Deborah Raffin and artist Jane Wooster Scott will both be at the store at 1:00pm on Saturday to sign books.

There will also be food, drinks, games, and activities for kids -- it is a birthday party, after all.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Story time at Storyopolis. Credit: Ken Los Angeles Times

Michael Connelly will say happy birthday to the Mystery Bookstore on Saturday

The Mystery Bookstore in Westwood celebrates its first birthday with new owners Pam Woods and Kirk Pasich on Saturday. All day, they promise food, drink, fun and authors.

Michael Connelly tops things off at 6 p.m. He'll be signing his latest Harry Bosch novel, "Nine Dragons," as long as you purchase your copy at the store.

"To say that 'Nine Dragons' is coiled tight with suspense understates Connelly's accomplishment in portraying Bosch at the cusp of a new world," our reviewer writes, "And though Connelly remains a master at detailing the intricacies of 'the job,' it is Harry's longing for reunion and connection with his ex-wife and daughter, the overwhelming vulnerability he feels as a father, that makes 'Nine Dragons' another standout."

At 5 p.m., James Ellroy will sign "Blood's A Rover," alongside the real-life Don Crutchfield, who appears, fictionalized, as a young wheel-man in the book. The adult Crutchfield, who became a private detective, will sign copies of his memoir "Confessions of a Hollywood Private Eye." Ask him about the drugs and the Beatles.

Things get underway at 10:30 a.m. with Joseph Kanon ("Stardust"), to be followed by Susan Kandel ("Dial H for Hitchcock"), Charlie Huston ("My Dead Body") and Frank Beddor, whose amped-up graphic-novel retellings of the Alice in Wonderland story are geared for young adults.

The Mystery Bookstore has been around in a couple of locations and under different ownership for 20 years. And if it was somewhat mysterious for Pasich and Woods to take over last year, during a particularly dark time for independent bookstores, this first birthday celebration shows that they're on the right track.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Michael Connelly in Echo Park. Credit: Terrill Lee Lankford / Little, Brown & Co.

L.A. bookstores are big in the Twittersphere

Throw another big shining coin in our overflowing treasure chest of evidence that Los Angeles is a highly literary city. Turns out that of the 10 most popular bookstores on Twitter, four are based in Los Angeles. In descending order, that's Skylight Books with 2,426 followers, Vroman's with 2,248, Book Soup with 2,175 and newcomer Metropolis Books in downtown Los Angeles with 1,820.

OK, we're not home to the biggest bookstore on the Twitter block. That place is claimed by Powell's, the independent, Portland, Ore.-based bookseller that went online early and in a big way. Powell's beyond-Portland online presence is reflected in its 10,132 followers. It's in a class by itself.

Although the four L.A. bookstores in the top 10 total fewer than 9,000 followers, they still make an impressive bundle. The second-most popular bookstore is Tattered Cover in Denver (3,359 followers), the only Denver bookstore on the list. Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge (3,182) is the only Boston-ish store. And Bookpeople in Austin (1,966) is the lone representative for the Lone Star state.

The two New York bookstores to make the top 10 -- Word and Book Culture -- are both in Brooklyn. Together, they total 3,937.

If you look into the entire top 20 list, more New York and Boston bookstores begin popping up -- as do stores in New Hampshire, Maryland, Minnesota and Vermont. Not so much Los Angeles -- it appears we have a handful of bookstores that have already established themselves as strong Twitter players.

Which means next time you go to a reading, don't turn off your cellphone, as they always advise. Instead, turn off your ringer, and feel free to Tweet, as long as you mention where you're at -- @skylightbooks, @vroman's, @metroplisbooks or @booksoup.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Author Damion Searls reads at Book Soup in Los Angeles. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg

Is browsing a dying art?

Pianist and author Charles Rosen, now in his 80s, praises browsing in bookstores at the New York Review of Books blog:

I almost never want to buy a book until I have held it in my hands and riffled through the pages. ... When I was a teenager, I used to spend a lot of time on 4th Avenue in New York, where there were more than a dozen secondhand stores, all of which have now gone. I spent all my pocket money there, and my browsing is responsible for most of my literary education. On nearby Broadway, there is still the Strand, of course, but also in the neighborhood, the great shop of Dauber and Pine on 5th Avenue and 12th Street was long ago taken over by the New School for Social Research. Mr. Dauber and Mr. Pine hated each other and never spoke, one staying on the ground floor, the other reigning in the basement. They bought up scholarly libraries and sold the books at very reasonable terms. Most of what I know about literature from 1500 to 1700 is due to them.

Rosen celebrates the joy of hand-held intrigue and serendipitous discovery. And while there are no longer the used bookstores he remembers in New York, and Acres of Books in Long Beach is gone, there are still bookstores in which we can browse, stop and riffle through pages. It's one of the best things about large chain bookstores -- lots of books.

But as he notes, the success of online booksellers indicates that getting our hands on a book really isn't necessary anymore. We buy online using different criteria -- cover design, publishers' blurbs, four stars from James in Minneapolis.

Does this mean we've lost our need for the physical encounter with a book? Like a child saying "let me see" and extending an open hand, touching a book seemed to carry with it a kind of knowledge. Holding the thing meant knowing the thing. Having a personal, chance encounter made it yours -- say, your eyes caught on the line "This morning I go to the Big Slot and find it goatless," and you thought with a start, Wait, slot? Goat? for just a moment before deciding you must read on to know what, exactly, this George Saunders person was up to.

Seeing with our eyes and our hands, having our own individual interaction with a book's pages, used to be important components of making a decision about what we wanted to read or buy. But maybe we don't need to let our fingers do the stumbling anymore. Perhaps the only kind of browsing we need comes from Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Barnes & Noble, Union Square, New York City. Credit: eflon via Flickr

Vroman's and Book Soup, sitting in a tree

Two major independent bookstores in Los Angeles are about to become partners: Pasadena-based Vroman's has signed an agreement to purchase Book Soup in West Hollywood.

Glenn Goldman, Book Soup's longtime owner, began looking for a buyer when he fell severely ill, and the fate of the store has been up in the air since his death early this year. "Glenn and I had talked about it," Vroman's President and chief operating officer Allison Hill told The Times Friday night, "and we've been in conversations with the seller since January."

Although both Book Soup and Vroman's are landmarks of L.A.'s cultural life, they're not an obvious match. 115 year old Vroman's is the Auntie Mame of Los Angeles bookstores: a bit frowsy on the surface but sassy underneath. Located east of Old Town in Pasadena, it's got room to spread out and offers a deep, rich stock of literary fiction, travel books, cookbooks, kids books and toys, local history, stationery and -- yes, already -- holiday cards. It's done so well with this model that it opened a branch in Hastings Ranch in 2001 to serve the deeper east San Gabriel Valley.

Then there's Book Soup. Located on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, it was founded by Goldman in 1975 and shaped by his electric, artistic sensibility. It's equally fascinated with the edgy, the glamorous and the smart, packing sometimes disparate books into its tight space and towering shelves. This is where Patti Smith signs and shops. If a bookstore can be a pair of skinny jeans, Book Soup is one, and they're black.

And that's just how it's going to stay. "I don't believe that just anyone could have come in and taken over Book Soup," Hill says, and she should know: she was its manager for six years. "There is an authenticity to what Book Soup is that we intend on honoring. We would be crazy to do this otherwise." Closure of the deal is still pending.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photos: Left, Tom Brokaw signs "The Greatest Generation" at Vroman's in 2000. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times. Right, Book Soup's marquee after longtime owner Glenn Goldman died in 2009. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg

Insta-book machine to debut in Boston today with E.L. Doctorow's help

The independent Harvard Book Store is gearing up for this afternoon's unveiling of its new Espresso instant book machine, which can print a library-quality paperback book in just 4 minutes. Author E.L. Doctorow -- who is doing a reading later in the evening -- will be on hand to celebrate the machine's debut, and to give it a new name.

Sadly, he won't be cracking a bottle of Champagne over the Espresso's bow -- the bookstore decided a ribbon-cutting would be less sticky.

The Espresso machine, still fairly rare, heralds a possible new direction for bookstores. It addresses two of the boggy areas of the publishing business. First, publishers have always had to print and ship books to stores, which is costly and time-consuming. With a machine like the Espresso, all that needs to be shipped is a digital file. And at the end of book's shelf lives, those that go unsold are returned to publishers, who, according to the traditional business model, buy them back. Again, this is costly, and for years authors' royalty statements will show the cost of returns deducted from the money earned from sales of their books. With an Espresso, the bookseller would only print a book when a customer was ready to buy it, and returns would become moot.

That's still largely hypothetical, however. Only a few publishers have signed with OnDemandBooks, the company that makes the Espresso, to deliver digital files to its bookstore machines. But its offerings expanded significantly -- to the tune of 2 million public domain books -- when it signed an agreement with Google earlier this month.

One of those public domain books is "Facsimile of First Edition of The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre." Commonly known as the Bay Psalm Book, it was the first book ever printed in the American colonies, in Cambridge in 1640. Honoring that history, it'll be the first book to roll off the Espresso machine this afternoon.

"The level of response from our community has been amazing," Heather Gain, the bookstore's marketing manager, told Jacket Copy on Monday. "We received over 500 entries in our machine-naming contest." In that phone interview, as the machine was going through its final calibrations, she admitted that the staff was excited about the machine. "We've been playing with it all day," she said, "and it's absolutely fantastic."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: OnDemandBooks

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John Krasinski and David Foster Wallace's endless summer

As summer winds to a close, so too has Infinite Summer -- the online readers group that challenged the brave and the bold to take on David Foster Wallace's 1,088-page novel "Infinite Jest."

To celebrate, Skylight Books is hosting a closing party tomorrow at 8 p.m. Joining in will be actor John Krasinski ("The Office"), who makes his directorial debut with the upcoming film "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" -- based on another Wallace book -- to read some excerpts and sign posters. Appearing also will be Wallace's longtime literary agent Bonnie Nadell; Kathleen Fitzpatick, who taught with him at Pomona College; and other special guests.

The 29 year-old Krasinski, whom most everyone knows as Jim from "The Office," got permission to film Wallace's story collection from the author himself before Wallace died a year ago.

"I remember him being so soft-spoken and so nice," said Krasinski during an interview with Rebecca Harper on Hulu.com. "He put me at ease right away. I remember him being flattered that someone had taken up this book and tried to run it up the hill."

Krasinski started his adaptation of "Brief Interviews" while waiting tables in New York. When he was cast in the pilot for "The Office," he used the money to buy the rights to the book.

Written as a series of 23 short stories, "Brief Interviews" lends itself to easy transcription into other media. Vince Passaro's review in Salon notes that "Wallace writes of young boys at the pool, middle-aged men in uncomfortable sexual situations and [a] woman who unbearably narrates her pathologies in the neo-vocabulary of healing and therapy."

For Krasinski, the book arrived with "almost near-perfect dialogue and the biggest challenge was editing it down to a piece that could actually fit into a watchable movie rather than an epic miniseries or something."

So which characters made the cut from the page to the screen? You'll have to see the film to find out. Due Sept. 25, "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" marks Krasinski's debut as a writer-director. It's also the first time that any of Wallace's fiction has been adapted for the screen.

-- George Ducker

photo credit: Ricardo DeAratanha/Los Angeles Times

John Twelve Hawks will (not exactly) appear

John Twelve Hawks concludes his Fourth Realm trilogy with "The Golden City," which hits shelves Sept. 8. Although he's got an enthusiastic fan following, he won't be going out for any bookstore meet-and-greets. The author has maintained his anonymity since his debut, "The Travelers," was published in Britain in 2004 (it came out in the U.S. a year later).

"John Twelve Hawks" is thought to be a pseudonym, and he -- or she -- has chosen to stay "off the grid," according to a 2005 interview with SFFWorld.com. "It’s an awkward life, but not a difficult one," John Twelve Hawks told the website. "I’m lucky to have a variety of friends who help me."

So with the pressure to publicize a new book, what's an anonymous author to do?

Well, there will be readings, but they'll be conducted by stand-ins. Including Julie Anne Swayze, proprietor of Metropolis Books in downtown L.A., who will declare, "I am John Twelve Hawks" on Sept. 12.

At the reading, which takes place at 4 p.m., the bookstore owner will read from "The Golden City" and hold a raffle for door prizes, including genuine signed editions of the book.

It's John Twelve Hawks' loss that he's not going to make it there. Metropolis Books is just down the block from The Nickel Diner, home of the famous maple-glazed bacon doughnut -- which is so good, it should be able to get anyone to come out of hiding.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Hayden Childs -- who is not, as far as we know, John Twelve Hawks -- reads at Metropolis Books in 2008. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg

Would you like a CD with that? Bookstore-record store convergence

 

The New York City bookstore McNally Jackson sometimes has a small selection of music displayed near the cash register, including the debut album from I'm Not Jim, the 2008 collaboration of novelist Jonathan Lethem with the Silos’ Walter Salas-Humara. "We've only ever carried a handful of CDs ... and yes, it was because of the literary connection," says McNally Jackson buyer John Turner.

Travel across the country to Seattle’s Easy Street Records and you’ll find that display’s opposite: a small but dedicated books section, filled with not just expected music-related titles ("The Pitchfork 500," Continuum’s 33 1/3 series) but also graphic novels and selections from McSweeney’s. The decision to carry specific books is based on "cultural relevance, if it connects with either modern or significant historic threads in music/culture/arts/politics," according to owner Matt Vaughan and printed matter buyer Jefferson Petrey. Easy Street has carried books since 2002. "Music and music-culture books," they say, are its biggest sellers. "A close second [are] the underground culture books like the Vice Guides, Suicide Girls and Graffiti (Banksy's 'Wall and Piece' is our third best-selling book two years in a row, for example) with literature/politics books like...McSweeney's and Adbusters coming in around third."

The Portland, Ore.-based magazine and publisher Yeti steps firmly across borders of multiple forms of culture. A given issue of Yeti magazine might include a Luc Sante essay, a Kevin Sampsell short story, a Carson Ellis illustration alongside coverage of a long-forgotten gospel musician, a contemporary indie-pop band, or an experimental noise artist.Yeti’s recently launched publishing arm covers similar territory, with a collection of essays from Sante, "Kill All Your Darlings"; "Russian Lover and Other Stories" by Jana Martin; and "The Art of Touring," edited by former musicians Sara Jaffe and Mia Clarke. All of this leads to Yeti’s presence in both book and record stores: The publisher navigates both worlds. “A few record stores have accounts with a book wholesaler, but most don't," explained Yeti managing editor Steve Connell via e-mail. "And not many bookstores have accounts with the record distributors we use." He went on to detail the multiple distributors with which Yeti works: "The mix varies a lot from item to item. Yeti magazine sells overwhelmingly through the record distros, plus Last Gasp and Ubiquity, plus mail order. The literary books sell overwhelmingly through book distro channels. The music books sell mostly through the record distros, though we do get some sales through the book trade as well."

Vaughan and Petrey note that, for visitors to Easy Street, "the books [and] mags are another reason to make a monthly/weekly stop-in at the shop, with the customer knowing the new issue of Mojo [or] The Wire is out or let’s say, that psych-rock compendium they've been waiting for or Who biography was just published. Or in some cases being surprised that there are new books out [or] that we stock them and adding a curious new find to their intended music purchases." Sometimes, after all, it's the "curious new finds" that inspire the most devotion.

-- Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll writes about music and books and blogs at The Scowl.

Photo Credit: ocrmid via Flickr