Festival of Books - Not dead yet!

Los Angeles Times is hosting it's best event of the year, Festival of Books, at the UCLA campus this weekend.  An estimated 200,000+ readers, writers and wannabees have shown up to drink deeply from the well of intellectuality.  Common sense tell us that Los Angeles is not known for it's intellectuals.  But they are around, hidden, squirreling away in some corner of this vast Lotusland.
So it's always a surprising pleasure to listen to local intelligent people talk intelligently about writing, story structure, fiction vs non-fiction, noir genre, female noir genre, self-serving fiction categorized as biographies and of course the Hollywood writer who devoted a portion of his life converting a 9-page picture book know as "Where the Wild Things Are" into a Hollywood semi-successful movie.

I sat in on two panels and was delighted not only with the knowledge and wisdom shared by the panelists, but their READING lists.  What they read for inspiration or structure.

I share with you this list.  Can't wait to get reading...

Any and all short stories by William Trevor.
Short stories by Deborah EisenbergThe series by Elizabeth Strout featuring a character called, "Olive Kittridge"

The 'Noir' panel all agreed that the best Noir movie on Los Angeles is "Blade Runner." I suggest the following culled from the discussion:

"Blind Man with a Pistol" by Chester Himes  (all inspired by Mr. Himes various novels)
"The Last Embrace" by Denise Hamilton (She was the only women on the panel)
"Boulevard" by Stephen Jay Schwartz (this work sounded poetic when the author/panelist read from his novel


"Dark Tales from the Golden State," by Gary Phillips (This writer was fascinating as he wrote about a small section of LA called Los Alamitos, a suburb with citizens completely at odds with each other on every level)
"California Roll" by John Vorhaus. This author kept saying he was on the wrong panel as he wrote comedy not noir.  Irregardless, his novel about a con man sounded fresh and entertaining.

Off again to listen to more writers and wannabees.  Will keep you all posted.