Editor Tom Lutz has a grand vision for LARB, which can be found on the publication’s facebook page:

We will have regular columnists, a book news compendium, and a vast array of multimedia content—not just video and audio interviews, but readings, audio book excerpts, Skype mini-interviews, video interchanges, recorded readings, live reports from book festivals and other events—and all sorts of things we haven’t thought of yet. We’re hoping, in other words, not just to be an alternate delivery form for the dying print book review, but to help develop new ways of fostering the conversation about books and culture.

No print review could contain all of this, but we hope to eventually publish a ‘best of’ print edition; it may start as an annual, turn into a quarterly, and wind up a monthly.

To this end Lutz has recruited a cast of notable contributors, including Janet Fitch, Michael Tolkin, Hector Tobar, Cecil Castellucci, Mark Sarvas, and Laurie Winer.

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Full announcement below:

The Writers Junction To Host 24-Hour Literary Marathon

Santa Monica, CA July 20, 2010-The Writers Junction along with WordHustler and The Nervous Breakdown are pleased to announce the 24-Hour Literary Marathon this Saturday, July 24 from 9:00 am through 9:00 am Sunday, July 25.

This creative celebration of prose readings, poetry performance, stand-up comedy, music, panels and more will star some of the literary, entertainment, and music world’s best and brightest.
Jose Rivera, Academy Award nominated screenwriter for The Motorcycle Diaries, will premiere an excerpt from his debut novel and Jillian Lauren, New York Times Best-Selling author of Some Girls: My Life in a Harem will read from her work.

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THURSDAY 1.31.08
WHAT: Reading and signing of The Long Embrace
WHO: Author Judith Freeman
WHEN: 7 p.m.
WHERE: Book Soup
WHY: For Raymond Chandler fans, this book will illuminate many of the darkened corners of his life.

SATURDAY 2.2.08
WHAT: John Cage’s Roaratorio: A Verbivocovisual Celebration of James Joyce’s Birthday
WHO: John Cage, John Snyder, Dolores Stevens, Marjorie Perloff and Robert Winter
WHEN: 4 p.m.
WHERE: Hammer Museum
WHY: When tackled in large groups, James Joyce is less confounding. Plus, it’s free. “yes i said i will yes!”

TUESDAY 2.5.08
WHAT: NBCC GoodReads Winter List Panel
WHO: Poet Amy Gertsler, NPR book critic Veronique de Turenne, novelist Katherine Taylor, novelist and critic Darcy Cosper, and blogger and novelist Mark Sarvas
WHEN: 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: Skylight Books
WHY: Not only will a bunch of smart, talented people recommend a bunch of books to you, they’ll discuss the art of recommending books. It’ll be meta and lots of fun.

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Emily Gould, over at Gawker, snipes at Mark Sarvas, our 20 Questions mark.

Does she have some personal issues with him, left over from her career in publishing? Or did he pan her YA book? (Her granny loved it.)

Or does he remind her of Jimmy Kimmel?

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The fragrant Mark Sarvas hosts the popular and controversial lit. blog The Elegant Variation. His debut novel, Harry, Revised, will be published by Bloomsbury in May 2008. He was able to find time to answer our pointless questions, and we hope that no weak, cowardly review escaped his gaze as a result.

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning? The New York Times–it’s my home page–and email, to see who I’ve offended now.

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? David Lebovitz blogs about Parisian food, with which I am obsessed, and love to torture myself with his pictures in between my own Paris trips.

3. What job do you fantasize about having? Yours.

4. Last movie you saw? The Rape of Europa, a documentary about the looting of Nazi Art. I’ve wanted to see it for ages but it’s been hard to catch up with in guerilla distribution. It finally arrived in LA last week (for a day) but I saw it a week earlier in NY.

5. Last book you read? Hah! You’re kidding right? Books I just finished include Phillip Knightley’s The First Casualty and Kevin Sites’s In The Hot Zone for a review I’m working on. The last book I finished for pleasure was Jane Gardam’s wonderful novel Old Filth from Europa Editions. Other recent remarkable reads include David Leavitt’s new novel The Indian Clerk, and Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop.

6. Best show legendary biz/movie star encounter. Meeting Paul McCartney when I was sixteen. You can find the whole story here, replete with embarrassing photos.

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LA Observed’s posts about the LA Times move to combine the stand-alone book review and the op-ed section made the SF Chronicle. Heidi Benson got this quote out of former book review editor, Steve Wasserman:

Despite all the seductions of the “infotainment industrial complex,” more people are reading and buying books, and more bookstores are thriving in Los Angeles, than ever before.

Because publishers aren’t at all part of the infotainment world. Or at least they weren’t on Wasserman’s watch, as Mark Sarvas, of The Elegant Variation, reminds us:

The core problem with Steve Wasserman’s tenure as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review was writ large in his answer to a question I put to him at the recent Los Angeles Festival of Books. I used the occasion of the “Celebrating the Book Review” panel to inquire about LATBR’s propensity for tedious reviews. Wasserman responded that tedium was in the eye of the beholder, and the piece that he’d been proudest of running was a “6,000 word essay on the Spanish Civil War untethered to any existing book.”

Which might be one reason Wasserman isn’t at the LAT.

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