A Bibliophile's Dream Day

Last weekend my friend Suzanne and I made our annual pilgrimage to the LA Festival of Books. This year it was held at USC instead of UCLA and the smaller campus worked well for the event, though there weren't enough food and beverage concessions. Of course, if you get lost leaving UCLA, you end up in Beverly Hills. At USC, you end up at the intersection where Reginald Denny was beaten during the LA Riots of 1992.

In the first photo is panelist Jennifer Egan, who has won just about every major book award this year for her experimental "novel" (she never called it that, the publisher did) A Visit from the Goon Squad. Our next panel with non-fiction writers who disprove popular misconceptions (like the MMR vaccine causes autism) was fascinating but also off-limits to cameras because C-SPAN was recording live.

Other authors in the photos below include Patti Smith and Dave Eggers -- definitely the place to be that day. Jillian Michaels from "The Biggest Loser." Danica McKeller (Winnie from "The Wonder Years"), who now writes math books. And some people who were singing that I don't know but whose picture I felt compelled to take.