Read Me, Los Angeles

 

While I'm not *quite* out of books about King Richard III, I am pretty close, and I do have other books I want to read. So I took a break and read this book, "Read Me, Los Angeles", about the rich and vibrant culture of books and writing in L.A. Everyone always thinks of movies and TV when they talk about Southern California, but we also have our fair share of writers (the amazing James Ellroy immediately pops to mind--although he no longer lives here, he did and most of his books are about this area). L.A. tends to be polarizing: people either love it or hate. Some of my favorite writers hated it: Faulkner called it "the plastic assshole of the world" (ouch) and Truman Capote said it was "redundant to die in Los Angeles". But there are other writers who love it, like Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner. It was a quick, fun read and I learned about some interesting places to potentially visit if I ever want to brave traffic. If it didn't take an hour to go five miles, I would visit more often :)