The current issue of Los Angeles Magazine includes a list of L.A.'s best "Used Bookshelves," which includes the likes of Melrose's Cosmopolitan and North Hollywood's Iliad. (Thanks to Stephan Clark.)
Not long ago neighborhoods like Hollywood, Westwood, and Long Beach were rife with used bookstores. Wafts of musty leather seduced wayward pedestrians, hinting at the undiscovered texts piled haphazardly inside. But as browsing the aisles has given way to scouring the Amazon, many of L.A.’s best-known purveyors of secondhand books have vanished. (In the last year alone we’ve lost Hollywood Book City, CM in Silver Lake, and Dutton’s in North Hollywood.) Those that remain have a large niche to fill. Where rare and antiquarian bookshops sate the desires of the serious collector, used bookstores serve as part lecture hall and living room, part book club and hiding place.
The same issue also includes Strawberry Saroyan's lengthy look at the Judith Regan fiasco.
Few doubt that Regan, who is 53, will resurface soon. Although she has not spoken publicly, Regan is telling friends that she has lined up investors for a multimedia company. Still, the question remains: How had the woman who’s made it her business to go right up to the line of popular taste—but never cross it—gotten it so wrong this time? And did it have anything to do with her move to Los Angeles?
The first public word that Judith Regan was moving to L.A. came in an April 12, 2005, article on the front page of The New York Times, in which she said that she wanted to be closer to the film and TV industries. The idea that book publishing needed to be in New York was no longer true, she declared. But the comment that generated the most heat was that she “would like to create a cultural center” in Los Angeles. The implication was twofold: L.A. had no culture, and Regan, of all people, was the person to provide it. Within the week The New York Observer ran a cartoon featuring Regan as Gertrude Stein and her authors Jenna Jameson and former baseball slugger Jose Canseco congregating at an “Illiterati” café.
hi
I'm looking for a nice wooden bookshelf about 6inches tall 36 inches wide and deep
enough to put large books. I'm hoping you have something nice under a 100 dollars.
Daisy
Posted by: Daisy Sours | November 23, 2009 at 02:36 AM