Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, UCLA

You never know what you’ll find at this annual rite of spring spread across the venerable UCLA campus and this year was no exception. An A-list panel of author appearances (highlighted by Ray Bradbury, Gore Vidal, James Ellroy, Mitch Albom, Dr. Phil, Lee Iacocca, Arianna Huffington, former Time/CNN guru Walter Isaacson, Ralph Nader, Michael Isikoff, Mary Higgins Clark, Joseph Wambaugh and even M*A*S*H’s Capt. Hinnicutt, Mike Farrell!) more than made up for the lack of attendance of several of the big name East Coast houses. In the meantime, we also met a slew of local authors including humorist Sue Ann Jaffarian, Orange County vet turned author, Bernadine Cruz (“The Secret Sex Life of Dogs and Cats”), Sarah Symonds (“Having an Affair: A Handbook for the Other Woman”) and former LAPD cop Steven Rose, whose book, “155 Ways to Beat That Traffic Ticket” attracted a lot of patron’s attention. What makes for a perfect westside family outing is the plethora of children’s book publishers who attend this event that for them covers two large outdoor areas and features bouncy playthings for the kids while the parents decide just how to feed the little one’s heads. All the local booksellers came out again this year from the big national names of Borders and Barnes & Noble to the specialized L.A. outlets like the Getty Book Store, Book Soup and the Bodhi Tree. All in all, a fun, breezy afternoon near Royce Hall and Janss Steps enjoying all that book publishing has to offer and despite the somewhat limited national presence, where else can you munch on a corn dog while being offered a free copy of the Koran?

The Folly of Downsizing Book Reviews (LA Times)

Noted mystery author Michael Connelly recently opined on the declining space devoted to book reviews in the nation’s daily print media and how the slack is being taken up online through various blog sites. (sound familiar?) Of course, as you might imagine, here at Blog on Books, we found this to be particularly resonating.

Here is a link to his article: The Folly of Downsizing Book Reviews

Boomsday, Christopher Buckley (Twelve)

Without a doubt, the funniest political novel of the year, Christopher Buckley’s “Boomsday” is as spot-on a prediction of the oncoming doom of the Social Security system as any other current prognosticator’s view; just as ridiculous perhaps, but much more riotous. The story revolves around Cassandra (“Cass”) Devine, a political blogger and Capitol Hill operative whose real passion is, in Buckley’s words, “instilling in members of her generation outrage against the members of the previous one and toward a government that still, in the language of her generation, didn’t get it.” While railing against everything from her father to sleazebag P.R. to beltway conflagrations (where Buckley, ironically, also lives), Devine manages (with her sponsor, Massachusetts Senator Randolph K. Jepperson) to incite a movement called “transitioning” which is essentially a government sponsored euthanasia program designed to save Social Security by providing tax breaks to those who take their lives by Boomsday, the day when the baby boomers will first receive benefits. The idea seems to actually take hold in some quarters, creates a generational divide and even makes it’s way to the status of a fulcrum issue in the next Presidential campaign! It’s the West Wing meets Six Feet Under and with it’s various (and hilarious) twists and turns, it’s hard not to see this one (like Buckley’s recent “Thank You For Smoking”) making it’s way to the big screen someday soon. – Tim Devine

Pulitzer winner Halberstam Killed in Crash

(NY Times) David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and tireless author of books on topics as varied as America

Crazy Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap! – Edward Hallwell, M.D. (Ballantine Books)

Ever wonder how you get through the day in the modern high-tech communications world in which we live? If Blackberrys, PDAs, voice mail, text messaging, e-mails, longer workdays and information overflow are making you crazy, Dr. Hallowell has some news for you. (like, for starters, you’re not alone.) This Massachusetts author and ADD psychiatrist, begins by taking you through a rather extensive, yet easy-to-read, analysis of the current trends that have foisted themselves on society through technological advances (?) and the societal impact of change in our increasingly fast-paced world. By exploring both the macro view and the micro implications, Hallowell makes the reader stop in his tracks to observe the effects of modern life that are washing over us, often times without us even having the time to stop and consider their ever-increasing impact. He uses his self-coined term, Gemmelsmerch, to describe the kinds of distractions that attack us against our will (the sound of a jackhammer, IRS audits, angry rants on the radio, nearly everything on TV) and deplete our resources for deep thought and the appreciation of the human experience. The second half of the book offers a variety of recommendations to help the reader work through the cluttered life of the 21st century in ways that focus on what’s important in life, as opposed to what is unwittingly coming at us, someone else’s agenda or somehow merely categorized as urgent. As much of an observation of society (based on clinical experience) as it is a self-help book, “Crazy Busy” is a must for anyone who has become the victim of the modern busy society, yet wants to turn it’s inevitable by-products into assets. – Tim Devine

Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed, Paul Trynka (Broadway)

This lively survey surprisingly represents the first full biography of Iggy Pop, one of rock and roll’s major figures, and provides a fun collection gathering the experiences of fellow rock musicians, members of the public and media, and any who encountered Iggy Pop. From song releases and the rise to fame to Iggy’s involvement in the drug culture, this is a top pick for any fan of Iggy and the Stooges who wants to know more about the musician and his contemporaries. Black and white photos round out a pick highly recommended for any general lending collection strong in modern music histories and biographies. – Midwest Book Review

The Label: The Story of Columbia Records, Gary Marmorstein (Thunder

Barely a chapter into this almost 600-page long history of the venerable record company, which sports its famed red label on the cover, I’ve already learned more than I ever knew about the origins of the modern recording industry. Columbia Records was actually founded in 1888 by Edward Easton, a stenographer and principal in the company based in Washington, D.C. (hence the name), which manufactured Graphophones, an early forerunner of the victrola, originally used for office dictation. Just like today, the technology came first, and uses for the invention only came later. The fact that music could be recorded and played back on wax cylinders was virtually an afterthought (Thomas Edison, with his competing phonograph, felt music “demeaned” his invention), as the label was launched with a selection of John Philip Sousa marches recorded by the U.S. Marine Band and black singer George Washington Johnson, dubbed the “Whistling Coon” after his hit of the same name, brought to the label by prototypical 19th century A&R man Victor Emerson. What’s striking is the role technology played in the growth of the industry, and how the format affected what was recorded and distributed, a factor still in place today in the wake of the digital revolution. A fascinating read that I have just dipped into, but will keep you abreast as I get deeper. – Roy Trakin

An American Icon: Kurt Vonnegut: 1922 – 2007

(LA Times) One of the last of a generation of great American novelists of World War II, Vonnegut died Wednesday night in New York City. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries in a fall several weeks ago, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz. He had homes in Manhattan and Sagaponack, N.Y.

“There was never a kinder and, at the same time, wittier writer to be with personally,” author Tom Wolfe, a friend and admirer of Vonnegut’s, told The Times. “He was just a gem in that respect. And as a writer, I guess he’s the closest thing we had to a Voltaire. He could be extremely funny, but there was a vein of iron always underneath it, which made him quite remarkable.

An obscure science fiction writer for two decades before earning mainstream acclaim in 1969 with “Slaughterhouse-Five,” Vonnegut was an American original, often compared to Mark Twain for a vision that combined social criticism, wildly black humor and a call to basic human decency. He was, novelist Jay MacInerny once said, “a satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion.”

When he was asked to identify his cultural influences, he would often name serious writers such as Twain, Jonathan Swift and James Joyce. “But the truth is that I am a barbarian, whose deepest cultural debts are to Laurel and Hardy