![]() “I think very few non-bookseller authors get to experience on a regular basis.” “Yeah, it is very fun to be able to see people buy my book,” she says. But if somebody buys it while I’m working the register, I tell them they have good taste. I don’t want to pressure you,” she laughs. But I never tell people that it’s my book. “On occasion, but only if somebody says that they’re looking for an interesting guide to LA – then mine is one of, like, three things I’ll pull down and hand to people. Cain at any given opportunity.”Īs we wind down, there’s one question that must be addressed: You’re a bookseller. So, you know, as a starting point, that was a huge one,” she says, while adding, “I will read and reread Chester Himes and Raymond Chandler and James M. I read it when I was like 11 or 12, and I was like, Oh, Los Angeles is magic I think I want to live there. “My first LA novel – and still, in many ways, the most influential – is “Weetzie Bat” by Francesca Lia Block. We discuss many books, from Helen Hunt Jackson’s “Ramona” to the works of Eve Babitz, so I ask Orphan to name a favorite. And more, much more across the larger Southern California area. Butler, John Fante, Wanda Coleman, Charles Bukowski and Joan Didion explorations of bookstores, author gravesites and neighborhoods. Rodriguez, Naomi Hirahara and Aimee Bender appreciations of Octavia E. The book includes, among others, interviews with writers Michael Connelly, Luis J. It’s all so much bigger than some people who haven’t spent time stuck in traffic here necessarily imagine, but also the ethnic diversity and wanting to really capture that there is a long history of different voices present in Los Angeles.” “Geographically, we’re huge – what life looks like in the San Gabriel Valley versus San Pedro versus Malibu. “This book was looking at the authors and trying to communicate some of the vast diversity of Los Angeles, she says. Why? Because people here “choose to live someplace with a lot of sunshine and good weather they just get taken a little less seriously,” she says. Orphan says “Read Me, Los Angeles” is a way to address the fact that the literary tradition of Southern California – aside from maybe Raymond Chandler – doesn’t get the kind of respect that those of New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston do. There was a certain amount of kismet to how it came together, and she makes sure to call attention to the work of the editors, artists and designers who made the book look as good as it does. A well-designed and colorful look at the books and writers of Los Angeles and Southern California, “Read Me, Los Angeles” is full of interviews, recommendations, photos, anecdotes, lists, and more. Orphan’s work is now available for all and a great way to embrace Southern California’s literary highlights. I believe it was literally the next day I called Chevalier’s Bookstore about a different story and I got Orphan, the store’s manager, on the line, completely unaware she was the author I’d meant to be looking up. (Speaking of surreal: I first encountered Orphan’s book as I briefly passed a store display, making a mental note to seek it out in the future. “It made the entire experience far more surreal than I think it would have been had this not all happened.” “And so I went from like, the most exciting thing is happening I have a book out in the world and we’re going to do all these events around LA” to staying home and baking bread while waiting for the vaccine, she says. On the positive side, she thinks the strange events led to her inclusion in a New York Times story about debuts derailed by the pandemic. “By Friday of that week, the city of LA had basically shut down. My book came out on March 10, 2020, and I think I had my book launch event on March 11, at Skylight Books,” says Orphan. ![]() ![]() “Sometimes I think about it, and it just seems like something that didn’t even happen. The publication of Katie Orphan’s book “Read Me, Los Angeles” was memorable – just not for the reasons Orphan might have imagined.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |