This week in the literary world revolves quite simply around the bare essentials - opportunities for personal verbal expression, used book sales, and hearing the colorful experiences of recognized talent. We’ve also included directions to a coffeehouse-type establishment in the Valley, in effort to assist you in the ongoing search of somewhere else to read at your leisure, outside of the painfully obvious and over-populated.

• Open Mic | Thursday, September 18, 2008 | 8:00 pm | Tribal Cafe - Map | Poetry, spoken word, and a bevy of beverages - consider it all a less expensive brand of group therapy. For more info, call (213) 483-4458, or email info@tribalcafe.com.

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• U·to·pi·a: any visionary system of political or social perfection.

• ni·hil·ism: total and absolute destructiveness, esp. toward the world at large and including oneself [...].

Gotcha. Considering we were to be in the company of active members of a Utopian Nihilist movement, I figured it best to come armed with sufficient vocabulary. In celebration of the release of poet Milo Martin’s book, “Poems for the Utopian Nihilist”, an eclectic group of writers representing a vast expanse of the literary world took to the floor of Skylight Books, bringing equal parts light and darkness to all in attendance.

Martin opened up the evening with “Velocity” - the first poem in his collection - showcasing talent in molding strange beauty from figurative gutter debris, and therefore laying a suitable foundation for the readings to follow. Unfortunately, Chris Tannahill was unable to show, so at his suggestion Martin read his “Zero Gravity Fire, or the Slaughterhouse Waltz”, referred to as “the finest death poem of the 21st century”. Short story writer Mary Otis read a story from the opening pages of “Yes Yes Cherries” entitled “Unstruck”, a childhood interpretation of the adult world in which regret is referred to as “the useless emotion”, and where “‘fix me’ always led to marriage”.

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This week in the literary world revolves around the idea of exposure. Plenty of opportunities are available for you to be exposed to others’ experiences - in the form of a memoir composed around rebellion and lust, stirring public performances by established talent, and a few bound thoughts and ideas in the form of books. But also, we’ve an open poetry/prose/spoken word reading, so as not to leave you pent-up and wanting for release.

• Signing and Tasting | Thursday, September 11, 2008 | 7:30 pm | Village Books - Map | Nancy Mehagian signs and discusses Siren’s Feast: An Edible Odyssey. Described as “part memoir, part cookbook, large part raucous adventure”, it’s bound to include the very best parts this life has to offer, but I’m definitely curious to know how much raucous adventure one can get. To order a copy, click here or pick one up in-store. For more info, call (310) 454-4063.

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However slight the undertones, this week in the literary world rests on the notion of benefiting self by giving back to others. Do unto others; what goes around comes around; the George Bailey principle. However you choose to phrase it, what we do, give, or say doesn’t go unnoticed by the universe, even in seemingly minuscule instances. And in a society whose measure of value seems to be how well we function in its machine (and its machine only), that’s not too shabby a consolation.

• Used Book Sale | Thursday, September 4, 2008 | 1:00 - 4:00 pm | Chinatown Branch Library - Map | Offerings at sales largely consist of donated books, so if you’ve a few novels that you think might fare well in a new residence, it might be worth it to find out whether or not they can offered for others to rummage through. For more info, call (213) 620-0925.

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How Washington Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude
By Robert Baer
Three Rivers Press, CA; 238 pp.; 2004
Reviewed by Mark Biskeborn

Baer delivers an intriguing memoir about his glory days as a CIA operative in the Middle East. He writes in an informal style, telling his operations stories like a thriller novelist while overdosed on those dark-green Turkish espressos.

The premise ties his stories together in one neat package: It’s all about the oil. Obviously, were there no oil in the Saudi Peninsula, the have-nothings would have no reason to resent the billionaire princes. The Royal family pays off the radicals to avoid massive revolts. ’Let them eat cake,’ as Marie Antoinette once said. Without these petrol-dollar pay-offs from Royalty, the extremists would have no money to arm and indoctrinate their young. Without petrol-financing, the fundamentalists would have hardly any means to carry out coordinated operations.

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This week in the literary world is centered on reading - not that it has never been, but let’s be honest here: have you ever just wanted to sit down and read without being distracted by a well-intentioned last call when the library is closing for the day? Have you just wanted to be somewhere with your book, your editorial, your script or newspaper without interruption, outside of the bus station or your living room?

Last Friday afternoon I was in a spot. The afternoon was free for all sorts of tearing apart of a pristine copy of The Shining, but the thought that my choices for parking my caboose were in the form of a Starbucks or Coffee Bean brought me down. Nothing against either of the locales, but I’ve found that focus is much better attained outside the realm of the generic and pretentious.

So in addition to the familiar melting pot of literary choices for the week, every so often we’ll present to the a place for you to drop your tense shoulders and relax your furrowed brow when you’ve nothing else on your agenda but pages to burn through. [ Read The Full Story -> ]

This week in the literary world serves up a smorgasboard of readings and book sales. Your wandering mind and/or the writing instrument of your choice will be given plenty of opportunities to peer into characters’ minds as well as those who penned them. With your soft n’ sumptuous brain being an active, absorbent organ, the goal is to minimize the curse of writer’s block, to keep any and all creative juices flowing, and to make more available that commodity termed optimism via expansion of your imagination.

• Coffee & Conversation | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 | 7:00 pm | Buena Vista Library - Map | Evan Kilgore - author of “The Children of the Black Valley” - and Eric Stone - author of “Grave Imports” - will be holding a pictorial discussion on the locations that have inspired the stages on which their characters’ thoughts and actions have acted out in respective narratives - in this case, the jungles of Africa and Asia. For more info, call (818) 238-5620.

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This week in the literary world revolves around the power of expression while time is still available; and of personal experiences, of others and of self. Both function seamlessly with the phenomenon of energy exchange, and are of great impact in the auditory realm and on the printed page. Of course, we’ve found yet another book sale for your inner pack rat. Keep hoarding, my pretties.

• Signing and Discussion | Thursday, August 14, 2008 | Book Soup - Map | Josh Frank signs and presents In Heaven Everything is Fine, a book that delves into the unsolved murder of Peter Ivers (and therefore reopening the case), while paying homage to his influence on pop culture in the 70s and 80s by way of the New Wave Theater - most definitely a welcome, chaotic orchestration. For more info, call (310) 650-3110.

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Lolita. Lo-lee-tah. (”Fire of my loins?”).

Fifty-three years after the original publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, the scandalous work maintains its aura of notoriety and, for many readers (or abstaining readers), even just the title Lolita still represents the illicit in modern literature. In this controversial work, Nabokov writes beautifully decorously, decadently, repulsively? about, in an admittedly cursory interpretation, a middle-aged pedophile’s sexual obsession with his twelve year-old stepdaughter and the specie of nymphets in general.

Since the novel’s original publication in 1955 by the French Olympia Press, Nabokov’s work has continued to surface in and inspire other artistic productions. For example, Azir Nasifi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran was published in 2003, Nabokov’s Lolita serving as the memoir’s namesake. Likewise, in 1958, Stanley Kubrick produced the first Lolita movie, advertising with the pertinent question: “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?,” and, in 1997, Adrian Lyne’s cinematic version starring Hollywood stars, such as Melanie Griffith and Jeremy Irons.

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A couple of months ago I had the distinct privilege of reading and reviewing Felicia Sullivan’s memoir A Sky Isn’t Visible From Here.  Admittedly, it was a difficult read, the subject matter being her extremely hard life painted so vividly in detail, but one that I could not put down.  I felt captured by her words and images and it gave me a really sick feeling.  She leads you down the dark tunnel that was her life in which she battles her family, her environment and herself to get a glimmer of light for survival.

This woman whose understandable influences include Vladimir Nabokov, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion and Michael Cunningham to name of few, has created a work of art in attempt to find closure to her past.

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This week in the literary world provides a few opportunities for you to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes - the highlights being a biography briefing the life of a porn star and a moving-picture viewing of his work (as vicarious as one can get without getting a battery of tests); a reading involving two writers who have reached and surpassed literary goals that one could only dream of; and an evening of spoken word, welcoming your listening ear, if not your vocal expression. Of course, we found a used book sale, because as long as there are walls in your abode, there is always room for at least one more bookcase.

• Signing and Discussion | Friday, August 8, 2008 | 7:00 pm | Book Soup - Map | Jennifer Sugar and Jill C. Nelson will present and sign “A Life Measured in Inches”, a biography about John Holmes - a young man from small town Ohio who defined the meaning of ‘porn star’ in the seventies amidst drugs, addiction, and a comeback from a scandal involving homicide. A free midnight screening of “Eruption” (a pornographic interpretation of “Double Indemnity”, starring Holmes) will follow, at The Silent Movie Theatre in West Hollywood. For more info, call (310) 659-3110.

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(Check out Part 1 and Part 2)

NUMBER THREE: SKYLIGHT

Maybe it’s the tree in the center of the bookshop that really does it for me. Or the fun nay, funky (in a purely positive light) staff? The assortment of books and magazines that ranges from wild to classic? Things that you don’t find just anywhere and are just so artsy I haven’t heard of most?

Whatever it is, Skylight’s got it all. Situated in the adorable, quirky Los Feliz neighborhood, the appropriately named bookstore absolutely love the lighting! brings together an interesting and stimulating combination to provide one of the most ideal settings for springtime skimming.

The sunshine streaming through the high ceiling glass, the warm wooden shelves low to provide an open feeling and one of the vastest reading collections in Los Angeles. I sincerely appreciate the clear signage of this extensive almost warehouse-like locale. It’s a friendly, comfortable setting both inside and out.

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