It’s 2044 and pink fog is enveloping Los Angeles. Chaos ensues
Mason Daunt said he would pick up the flowers himself. Like Mrs. Dalloway, he spends the day leading up to his big party — in his case a baby shower ...
Tag: Book reviews
Poignant Desi Arnaz bio spotlights drive and showbiz innovations of Lucy’s comic foil
Desi Arnaz’s life ricocheted between privilege and economic hardship, creative peaks and alcoholic lows — the stuff of high drama. But it was comedy that secured his legacy. The Cuban ...
Tash Aw’s epic Malaysian tale gets off to a promising start in ‘The South’
It’s 1997, the Asian financial crisis is tanking stock markets and “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans is playing in the market of a southern Malaysian ...
Mark Twain is known for his sense of humor — but he also savored revenge
Mark Twain was America’s first celebrity, a multiplatform entertainer loved and recognized all over the world. Fans from America to Europe to Australia bought his books and flocked to his ...
What would Malcolm X say about Trump? New book argues his legacy is more important than ever
If you were around in the early ’90s you saw a whole lot of baseball caps emblazoned with a simple capital “X.” They marked an ingenious marketing stroke on the ...
Wally Lamb’s latest protagonist is a messy dad — and may be too realistically flawed
Wally Lamb’s first novel in nine years, “The River Is Waiting,” opens with a devastating scene in which a troubled but devoted stay-at-home dad spikes his coffee with two splashes ...
In this novel inspired by G.W. Pabst, Leni Riefenstahl is among the bit players
Daniel Kehlmann’s latest novel, “The Director,” an engrossing meditation on the exigencies of art and the dangers of artistic complicity, lands in the United States at a good time. Which ...
10 books to read in May
Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles, fiction and nonfiction, to consider for your May reading list. Each year in a sign of hope, garden perennials return, even when they’ve ...
Aimee Semple McPherson dazzled Angelenos with flamboyant sermons. Then she disappeared
There are two kinds of Angelenos: Those who’ve heard of Aimee Semple McPherson and those who should. She was a showperson, a radio star, a publisher and writer, a beloved ...
Joan Didion’s ‘Notes to John’ may be a gift. And yet, I wish her the privacy she relished
Joan Didion’s persona has loomed as large as her literary canon. That photograph of her holding a cigarette just so, daring the camera to reveal what she’s thinking, says it ...
