Lit Bits & A Bit About Gehry

• Isabella's take on The Road is very refreshing, especially given all the hoo-hah about it as of late.
• The week in bookish LA events is up at LAist.
• As noted elsewhere, McSweeny's is selling off the backlist, the new list, and some one-off collector's items to combat the financial pressure caused by the recent AMS bankruptcy. Go give them some love. Which reminds me that my Believer subscription is almost up...
• Toby Lichtig examines the oft-unexamined prize - The Commonwealth writer's prize - for the Guardian book blog. Bonus: in titling his article as he does, he recalls one of my most favorite Jeanette Winterson novels. Clever, natch.
• Since I've been focusing so much an Adichie lately, it would be remiss not to point you toward a fascinating interview-cum-essay on the moment of winning the Orange, the Africa she knows vs. the Africa that is portrayed in American media, and her natural inclination to write in English despite her country's desire for her to write in Igbo.
• Michael Ondaatje will be reading from and discussing Divisadero this evening at the Central Library. The bummer with this is that a) it has been standing room only for months and b) it is my birthday today and so do I really want to stand around, loitering just outside the door, hoping someone doesn't show? Because who wouldn't show?  Ugh.
• Josh Getlin at the LA Times is up to good stuff yet again as he takes a closer look at the Perseus acquisition and then closing of two indie imprints.  I especially love Richard Nash's (of Soft Skull Press) quote that "The best imprints are like sprawling but well-edited anthologies. They resist easy hooks." Ah, so true, which is why we love them.
• Josh Getlin also brings us an odd tale about the Kerouac estate's fight with the biographer Gerald Nicosia.
• Living in the downtown Los Angeles Arts District has been an interesting adventure. Things are still so unformed, streets so unpaved (without signs in many cases!), services so unavailable, that it truly feels as if we're forging our own existence in the last great frontier.  Everyone knows everyone, everyone attends every council meeting and art bid meeting and should we do this meeting. Because it means something, this neighborhood we've all chosen to make our own. It could be something great if we do the hard work it will take to make it great.  If we don't let egos get in the way of sensible city planning. Of deciding we don't want Starbuck's down the street thank you very much, we'd prefer our existing mom & pop that dishes up the best organic coffee and breakfast burritos in a twenty mile radius.  So it both excites and frightens me when I see the ever-expanding plans for Frank Gehry's project along Grand Avenue.  My father is an architect and so you'd think I could get behind this. It's good for the city, it's good for property values, and on and on. Yet, I can't sort out if the proposed coupling of colorful buildings is a much-needed monstrosity or a delicious work of art. Perhaps we need to call another meeting...