America's most literate cities and more book news

Cen­tral Con­necti­cut State Uni­ver­si­ty released its annu­al list of most lit­er­ate cities Wednes­day; Wash­ing­ton D.C. took the top spot. As in years past, Los Ange­les didn't fare well. Why should we? We've only got the largest book fes­ti­val in the coun­try, vibrant inde­pen­dent book­sellers, major uni­veristies, a fan­tas­tic pub­lic library sys­tem, high­ly lit­er­ate pub­lic radio shows.... Sigh. We ranked No. 59. Oh well -- New York, the cen­ter of pub­lish­ing, was only No. 22.

The Books are no more! The band, that is.

I had no tick­ets and I must scream. Author Har­lan Elli­son appeared at the Los Ange­les revival house Cine­fam­i­ly last week to talk about his career writ­ing for tele­vi­sion -- "Star Trek," "The Man From U.N.C.L.E," "The Outer Limits," etc. That would have been spe­cial enough, but mid­way through the onstage inter­view, the come­di­an Pat­ton Oswalt inter­ced­ed and took over. Oswalt added hilar­i­ty and upped the lit­er­ary ante too (not that I'm sore about No. 59 or any­thing) -- he's the author of "Zom­bie Space­ship Wasteland," an L.A. Times best­seller, and recent­ly wrote an appre­ci­a­tion of Elli­son's story "A Boy and His Dog" for GQ. At least there's video.

Are you read­ing a book on your iPhone? Let the world know with a $35 lit­er­ary iPhone case. The only catch: for passers-by to be able to judge your book by your iPhone cover, you have to be read­ing "The Great Gatsby," "A Clock­work Orange," "Moby-Dick" or "To Kill A Mockingbird."..........

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2012/01/americas-most-literate-cities-book-news.html