From all of us at the Los Angeles Public Library, at the Central Library, and the 72 branches, we are pleased to announce the best books of 2023 as selected by our staff, who volunteered their…
Over the centuries, various forms of expression have been banned or destroyed, and their creators have been censored, imprisoned, tortured, killed, exiled. At the present time, all types of libraries…
From all of us at the Los Angeles Public Library, at the Central Library, and the 72 branches, we are pleased to announce the best books of 2022 as selected by our staff, who volunteered their…
From all of us at the Los Angeles Public Library, at the Central Library, and the 72 branches, we are pleased to announce the best books of 2021 as selected by our staff, who volunteered their…
The novels and poetry of Charles Bukowski continue to have devoted, admiring fans, who can never get enough of his books. We have those books in hard copy, and there is a good representation in…
It is a good thing that the lives of children’s authors are not always reflected in the books they wrote. Some of the most enduring and well-loved of these books were written by people whose lives…
Other than indigenous peoples, we are a nation of immigrants, those who came by choice and those who came by force. As our country keeps growing and changing with new people arriving all the time…
As Women’s History Month ends, we would like to offer you a few e-books and e-audiobooks about intrepid, adventurous women who traveled for the sheer joy of doing something different, to escape from…
The TV serialization of two novels, Sharp Objects and Big Little Lies, has brought attention to a new crop of novels. They are edgy, psychological, thriller, suspense stories with distinct…
In retrospect, it is ironic that the fire took place when it did: April 29, 1986. On that day, progress was quietly continuing with plans for a renovation of the original Central Library and a new…
True-to-life love stories are a challenge to write because, as anyone who has been in a relationship knows, real life experiences have no predictable beginnings with neatly tied up endings. The opposite of that is what makes romance and rom-com novels so appealing, and they certainly have a place in...
As the 2024 Olympics in Paris ended, and the torch and flag were handed over to Mayor Karen Bass for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, I find it delightfully serendipitous to have read this book (a PhD dissertation, originally in French and now in English, about the beaches of...
Rod Nordland was one tough, determined, and well-respected war correspondent who had been in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones, where there was not too much that could scare him and from which he emerged relatively unscathed. On July 5, 2019, one particular event would definitely be life-threatening...
The novel’s plot is recounted in alternating chapters, told from the perspectives of two librarians in two different eras: Jessie Carson during World War I and Wendy Peterson during the late 1980s. Each of them has a connection to the New York Public Library and to the work of a...
Actor Dame Judi Dench has portrayed many characters (in comedies and in tragedies) in different formats (stage, screen, TV, sound recordings); in the James Bond franchise, she was featured in the role of M (the first female to do so), whose character gave it all for Queen and country, and...
For all her candor, no-holds-barred way of expressing herself, we may think we know all there is to know about Whoopi Goldberg. How wrong could all of us be, as you will discover in this autobiographical memoir. This remembrance is primarily about Whoopi's immediate family (her mother Emma Johnson and...
The novel is divided into four chapters: First notebook: Fog; Second notebook: Patches of Sunlight; Third notebook: Moorings; Fourth notebook: Disappearance. It covers one month, beginning on November 9 and ending on December 9, with no year specified, but is definitely in the present.
Graphic artist Alexandre, aka Alec, has...
Lafcadio Hearn, a man with unusual origins and a complex life, whose early life gave no indication as to what he would later achieve, as he repeatedly overcame obstacles and controversies that became a part of his life until his death, and even after. The subtitle of the book is...
“Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden appointed Ada Limón as the 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress on July 12, 2022 and reappointed her for a historic two-year second term on April 24, 2023. Limón’s second term will begin in September 2023 and conclude in April...
Billy Collins is a former U.S. Poet Laureate (2001 - 2003). Over the years he has become very well known for poems and for his poetry readings. "In 2002, as US poet laureate, Collins was asked to write a poem commemorating the first anniversary of the fall of the Twin...
