Category: literary life

sinbad spun

Dreamworks’ Sinbad movie bears little resemblance to its Middle-Eastern roots. It’s been Greco-Romanized, says this National Geographic article.




palahniuk on portland

Since visiting the Pacific Northwest last fall, I’ve had this fantasy of moving to Portland someday. A long time from now. So I was quite interested in Chuck Palahniuk’s new book, which is a non-fiction paean to the city–a twisted one (it’s Palahniuk after all.) The Seattle PI has a piece on it.




L.A.’s used-book stores

Could this be a reaction to the survey of America’s “most literate cities” that put L.A. at number 54? The Los Angeles Times has a piece about L.A.’s used-book stores that says “For devotees of the used-book store, Los Angeles has quietly become one of the last bastions, for L.A. has become one of the last great American book towns. New York may be home to the publishing industry and Lewis Lapham’s thesaurus, Chicago still has Saul Bellow, but in both those cities high rents and the Internet have driven many of the venerable used- and rare-book stores out of business. But here, the book business is thriving. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the greater Los Angeles area is the largest book market in the country now with 21.5% of the books sold by independent bookstores, the highest percentage in the country.”