Reading in LA

The desert is insane. 29 Palms is insane. Giant Rock isn’t as giant as I thought it’d be. This is really insane.

Back to reality. I picked up the new Slake today. I’m really hoping this issue is better than its inaugural. Los Angeles needs and deserves what Slake aims to do; I just don’t know if they can do it. That’s all I’ll say on it until I finish this issue. Ask me about it next week.

In Book Soup, I picked up the paperback edition of Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America, to see the design, and the girl behind the cash told me a guy around my age (by which she may have meant 18, as that often happens) had just been in raving about it. I told her I could barely get through it. Formal prose is one thing; haughty and needlessly archaic is another.

I was also looking for books about the desert. I was hoping to find some photography, and while I was seriously impressed with Book Soup’s Photography section (I usually never leave the Fiction shelves), my mission became impossible when I discovered it’s organized alphabetically. I’m not sure how else they could do this, but I figured there’d be some kind of…I dunno…Americana section? Or American landscapes? Something that like. Alphabetical by photographer means I’m going to have to do research, and I hate doing research. See every report card I ever got to confirm this. I settled for a Frommer’s and eagerly await someone telling me where to look for some badass photographs of desert suburbs.

In other Reading news, have you heard of Counterpoint Press? Me neither. They contacted me about reviewing two books slated for March release. I’m excited to do this because, I’ve discovered,  Counterpoint is an independent California publisher, and the two books I’ve been asked to review are by local authors. Exciting!

Here they are:
This Vacant Paradise, Victoria Patterson (who, incidentally, also has a piece in Slake Vol. 2)
This River, James Brown

The former is a debut novel. The latter is a memoir and picks up where Brown’s previous, and very much acclaimed, The Los Angeles Diaries left off. While I don’t generally reserve much mental energy for non-fiction, I can’t say no to a local. I’m just hoping This River can stand on its own: memoir sequels don’t work. I got this one in the mail today, so I have a date with James Brown tonight. Oh shit.