Lit 101

The illustration crowning this weekend’s LA Times Festival of Books doubles as a jolly green homecoming for USC alum Bob Staake. And who better to paper the in-between years than a reporter for The Daily Trojan?

Staake, who drew cartoons as a non-student for the Trojan for two years before landing a USC scholarship, tells Alexis Driggs that the above illustration came from his unused pile:

Not every image he sketches ends up in a book, such as the image of a dinosaur on the Empire State Building reading a book that he recently re-designed as a dinosaur on top of a stack of books to promote the Festival of Books. Staake said one of his publishers, Random House, asked him to design art for the festival, but there was no question for him that the dinosaur was the right fit.

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The A-List Collection is off to a great start at audible.com, with $14.95 offerings ready by Susan Sarandon, Samuel L. Jackson, Anne Hathaway and Kate Winslet. Intriguingly, Hathaway’s rendering of The Wizard of Oz has the reader-reviews edge so far, ahead of her fellow celebs by a half star.

As with all things Hollywood related, the coming attractions are as important a part of the package as the feature presentation. And in that respect, audible has got it going on.

Nine more tantalizing titles are currently teased. Everything from Colin Firth reading Graham Greene to Meg Ryan dropping into William Saroyan‘s The Human Comedy.

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Tuesday afternoon local time at Powerbooks in Makati City, Philippines, Hollywood Foreign Press Association member Ruben Nepales (pictured) will be joined by Tony DeZuñiga, a pioneering artist with Marvel and DC Comics, for the launch of his book My Filipino Connection: The Phillipines in Hollywood. This collection of updated Inquirer interviews showcases several dozen individuals with ties to the country who have found Tinseltown success.

Alongside DeZuñiga, others covered in the book include: Pixar animation artist and co-director Ronnie del Carmen, part of a group of Filipinos at the studio affectionately known as “Pixnoys;” Ronnie’s brother Louie (who works at Dreamworks Animation); and True Grit Oscar nominee Hailee Steinfeld. There’s also a bonus, never-before-published profile, which Nepales tipped over the weekend:

Darren Criss, the hot Glee actor who took over Daniel Radcliffe’s role in a limited three-week run on Broadway’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying last January… It’s an extensive interview about his Filipino roots and many other facets about the actor.

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To celebrate the arrival of the second issue of the Grantland Quarterly, Skylight Books in Los Feliz will host a quartet of the Web publication’s staffers for an April 9 reading and Q&A event. Attending Monday night will be Katie Baker, Rafe Bartholomew, Tom Bissell and Molly Lambert.

The publication is a combination of Web best-of and print exclusives. Lambert could be in for a fun time in particular, as her contribution to Issue #2 is all about the Kardashians.

Baker writes in the latest issue about female marathoners, Bartholomew profiles Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra while Bissell takes stock of Dead Island, the latest release from Techland. The issue retails for $25.

The event begins at 7:30pm. More info here.

Give how dramatically the events of September 11, 2001 stretched the U.S. geopolitical landscape into Iraq and Afghanistan, the above headline is very upsetting. It comes from a press release promoting today’s arrival of the book The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, written by Josh Meyer and Terry McDermott.

The authors are both former LA Times reporters. Meyer was at one time the paper’s chief terrorism reporter, while McDermott was a national correspondent and has authored another 9/11-focused book. From the press release:

Meyer and McDermott give the first comprehensive account of the search for KSM and what happened after he was captured, including how his torture prompted false confessions that sent U.S. agents on a wild goose chase across the world. Throughout, Meyer and McDermott draw on unprecedented access to key sources, many of whom have never spoken publicly, as well as jihadis and members of KSM’s family and support network.

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You may know Gail Simmons from the Bravo show Top Chef and same-network spinoff Just Desserts. Perhaps you have purchased her brand new book Talking With My Mouth Full.

But what you surely don’t know about Simmons, unless you have already read this LA Weekly item, is that she is also the cousin of article author Tibby Rothman. The reporter takes about seven paragraphs to get to that fact, and moves on hilariously from there:

Then, in 2008, the ultimate blow. There she was, younger, getting married. Me, the don’t-have-an-agenda girl, still bereft of a ring. Family intervention got me on a plane to New York. The in-flight entertainment featured Top Chef. I watched CNN.

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Someone in the world of New York publishing is a pretty unhappy camper today. Federal agents in San Diego just intercepted a package with 11 pounds of weed intended for Macmillan’s St. Martin’s Press offices. According to The Smoking Gun, the package was addressed to a fictional employee named Karen Wright. Our cousins at Galleycat ran a search of the nom de plume in question, but failed to turn up any literary allusions which might help reveal the intended recipient.

Estimates are the weed was worth about $70,000 dollars.

Comedian Steve Martin recently visited the Culver City studios of NPR West to talk about his new book The Ten, Make That Nine, Habits of Very Organized People. Make That Ten: The Tweets of Steve Martin. Today’s resulting “Morning Edition” interview with Renee Montagne is a fascinating discourse on the art of 140-character joke writing.

Martin explained that after joining Twitter, he and his wife became enamored by the laugh-out-loud quality of many of his followers’ responses. For example, after Martin tweeted that he was as “happy as a clam. Wait, are clams really happy?” because his LP “Rare Bird Alert” was #3 on Amazon, a follower replied, “The chilling sound of clam laughter has caused many fishermen to quit the sea.”

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Another blow for print: After 244 years, Encyclopaedia Britannica will cease publication of its annual multi-volume book sets. The company is jumping on the all-digital bandwagon.

This is heartbreaking news to those of us nostalgic for the pre-Wikipedia era, and likely meaningless to the average high school student. But it shouldn’t be surprising. The book sets may be what most people think of when they hear the company name, but sales of the print edition account for less than 1% of Britannica’s sales. Digital is much more profitable for the company these days.

That means the 2010 encyclopedia set will be the final print edition. And it can be yours for just $1,395!

Alternately, an annual subscription to Britannica Online costs just 70 bucks, and you’ll have money left over for a trip to Cancun. Nostalgia solved.

Last spring, when Days of Our Lives cast mates Bill Hayes and Susan Hayes (pictured) attended the Romantic Times Readers and Writers convention in LA, they connected with Heather Bennett, the Inland Empire located co-owner of Decadent Publishing.

As Bennett walked up to say hello to Bill, a fire marshal bellowed for everyone to freeze and be counted. In the middle of this soap opera-worthy twist, she learned that the couple had completed a historical fiction manuscript. Long story short—that manuscript is now a Decadent Publishing title, Trumpet, due to for e-book release March 20 and print format a few weeks later.

“Though it has romantic elements, Trumpet is actually a sweeping historical adventure set against the backdrops of London’s stage, Egypt’s pyramids and the America of the early 1800′s,” Bennett tells FishbowlLA. “Bill and Susan have used their extensive knowledge of the theater and combined it with years of on-site research and a unique, sometimes poetic literary voice.”

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