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…
If you are a fan of Percival Everett, his most recent novel is for you. If you love satire then this novel is for you. It is satire on fire, by way of Everett’s genius and ingenuity to riff on various subjects: the competitive, snooty know-it-all attitude among professionals who...
Ballerina Misty Copeland was the first Black ballerina to become a principal ballerina in the American Ballet Theatre. In her autobiography, Life in motion: an unlikely ballerina, she wrote about her early life and how she became involved in ballet, and was accepted into American Ballet Theatre. In itself, her...
"Bond's the name, Jame Bond," is how he introduces himself. In the books and films we learn that he has a license to kill, which he uses to get any number of baddies who stand in his way of eliminating super villains. He is helped in this endeavor with an...
We all know him as a master French chef, sidekick to Julia Child in many cooking television programs, and a TV presenter for his own cooking programs. Among his many accomplishments, which include innumerable cookbooks and magazine articles, he is a prodigious artist. It is unlikely that the chicken has been...
Kliph Nesteroff, known as a comedy historian, covers aspects of the entertainment industry that are not well known, specifically the contributions made by Native Americans to comedy and humor. All of which debunks the stereotypes of Native Americans, who were, and still are, often depicted as sinister, poker-faced, sometimes grim...
On November 30, 2021, forty-six years after her death, there was a momentous, somber yet joyous, celebration as Joephine Baker was inducted into the Panthéon in Paris, France. She was the sixth woman and fourth person of color to be honored in this way. Best known as an internationally acclaimed...
The term “bad Mexicans” (malos Mexicanos) was not coined by Anglos from the United States, instead it originated with President Porfirio Díaz, the authoritarian President of Mexico who ruled for almost three decades beginning in 1876. It was a derogatory name for any person or group who opposed him. At...
When is a restaurant more than a place to eat? How and why does this happen? Why is this significant? In the “Introduction: Placemaking in a New Homeland,” Natalia Molina, researcher and scholar, says it is because people recognize, “ … their home is about a feeling rooted to a...
What a glorious cookbook and memoir. A little larger in size than the average book, which is perfect for the overall layout and presentation of photographs, maps and recipes. Every page is graced with marvelous color photographs, with text pages printed on lighter shades of colorful paper. Chapters are organized by...
This is the second series of books that I rediscovered during the early months of COVID lock-down,The Two Fat Ladies. My mind is blank about how I gravitated to this one, maybe because of a book at home, or looking longingly at a collection of VHS tapes, and no longer...
