The place seemed to be verging on chaos
Getting seated is a hassle, and then the food is not worth the wait
Ian Anderson 11:30 a.m., July 21
Reading
Local literary stories
Jim Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Alexander Theroux, Janet Flanner, Max Miller, Amy Gerstler, Ken Kuhlken, Tom Larson, Nathanael West, Emily Dickinson
God’s Country Remembered My wife and I are driving up El Cajon Boulevard. It hasn’t changed much, not really. Businesses come and go (there wasn’t anything remotely like the Hung Vuong Pho restaurant back then), ...
Musicians kick out the books
"I wrote it in honor of my son Dillon and our cat Cake."
“I work eight hours a week for a yoga studio, but the rest of my money is currently made playing music on the streets, in venues, and selling my first book,” says Martin Stamper, aka ...
Investing for Dummies goes into a lot of depth
Investing can be very overwhelming, so being able to simplify it is good.
Name: Taylor Whitworth Age: 25 Occupation: Entrepreneur Neighborhood: Mission Valley Interviewed at: Barnes & Noble, Hazard Center What are you reading? “Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest In, That the Poor and ...
UCSD literature majors — why they exist
I read. And I know things.
As a sophomore at UC San Diego, I went home for the summer to get a cavity filled in at the dentist’s. I lay there, saliva ejector hanging out the side of my mouth like ...
San Diego booksellers succumb
Book ends
Amazon’s got everything, but some illusions must be kept alive.
Celebrity authors in San Diego
Meltzer unmasks Cameron Crowe, Hunter Thompson plays self at SDSU, Susan Sontag not that nice, zoo not that nice to David Sedaris, Luis Urrea deals with fame, John Steinbeck IV's final days in SD
John Steinbeck Was My Father One of us, a doctor's son, mentioned that his father had urged him to follow in his footsteps. Was there pressure on John to become a writer? He shook his ...
We had to read before we could do anything else
Helen Paris loves a good series
Name: Helen Paris Age: 19 Occupation: Student Neighborhood: La Mesa Where interviewed: Barnes & Noble, Grossmont Center What have you read lately? Hush, Hush; it’s a series by Becca Fitzpatrick. The books are about fallen ...
Audiobook-listening is not the same as reading
Why it matters if the words go through your eyes as opposed to your ears
Dear Hipster: My friend and I have a longstanding dispute, and I’ve unilaterally decided to bring you into it (you’re welcome). It began years ago, when that book Born to Run came out. I remember ...
The tale of Fastball John
Former Saint Augustine and Padres hurler remembers when...
In the spring of 1970, former baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Carl Hubbell came to Patrick Henry High School for a baseball game between the home team and Saint Augustine’s High. As a representative from ...
Best of Reading interviews 2003-04
Geoffrey Wolff, Thomas Lux, Russell Banks, chefs’ favorite books, and more
Abe Opincar (Fried Butter) Ruth Reichl, editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, invited me to talk with her about Fried Butter. I went to the Conde Nast building at 4 Times Square. I was ushered ...
Best of Reading interviews 2001-2002
Mark Halperin, V.S. Naipaul, Janet Malcolm, Alice McDermott, and more
JD McClatchy "And I think now in the last 10 or 20 years, there’s been a quite remarkable resurgence and readings and performances of high and low quality, from hip-hop or slams and whatnot, to ...
Best of Reading interviews 1999-2000
Susan Cheever, Annie Dillard, Anita Brookner, David Sedaris, and more
Wallace Stevens I remember why I bought The Collected Poems. Stevens’s “Anecdote of a Jar,” from his first collection, Harmonium, published in 1923, was in an anthology I owned. I read and reread “Anecdote of ...
The King is dead
In his new book, Swim Through Darkness, local rocker/writer Mike Stax examines the mysterious decline of '60s pop hopeful Craig Smith
In 1966, Craig Smith was friends with Beach Boy Mike Love and Monkee Mike Nesmith. Smith was a successful songwriter and singer marked as a potential pop star. By 1969, he believed he was the ...
Best of Judith Moore Reading interviews 1997-98
Anne Lamott, Jamaica Kincaid, Ved Mehta, Paul Theroux, and more
Czeslaw Milosz on Anna Swir Milosz explained that he set about translating Swir’s poems, “in order to repair injustice, because she was underestimated. I consider her a very important poet. But she was somehow in ...
San Diego characters in education and book publishing
John Theobald of SDSU, Roger Revelle of UCSD, book agent Sandra Dykstra, translator John Woods of Mission Hills, ex-spy D.G. Wills
What Greater Curse Than Life Without Verse Theobald opened a correspondence with Ezra Pound that lasted for years. Throughout this time, the poet was an inmate at St. Elizabeth’s mental hospital in Washington, D.C., having ...
