Paperback L.A.

Paperback LA is a casual anthology of tales and riffs, of words and pictures. It's like having a friend who tells you about this great book or article they just read and then sends you some good bits so you don't have to wait to get the flavor. You can read it by the pool if you're staying in a motel, and talk to your friends in between selections. You can put it on your nightstand and read a little to get your mind moving in a different direction when you wake up in the middle of the night worrying about something or other. We've been saving up the good bits for years, and we keep finding more. You know: those phrases or passages or chapters or moments or jokes that just seem right. Descriptions or scenes that strike us as true, whether or not we've been in the place or lived the scene. Paperback LA will include pieces by Eve Babitz and Susan Sontag; Vin Scully's call of Sandy Koufax's perfect game; excerpts from such seminal LA fiction as Hector Tobar's Barbarian Nurseries and seminal humor as SNL's "The Californians"; photography essays; and new work by such writers as Gary Phillips, Victoria Dailey, and Gustavo Arellano.

Paperback LA Book 2 continues the engaging "Casual Anthology" series with genre-crossing writing gems, vibrant photo essays, and more. Memoirs, magazine articles, and magic realism all make an appearance. Contributors include Baby Peggy on Holly wood, Ray Bradbury on Venice Beach, Karen Tei Yamashita on freeways, Preston Lerner on auto racing, Naomi Hirahara on Terminal Island, Gina B. Nahai on the Persian Jewish diaspora, Ann Summa on urban cyclists, and Hartmut Walter on shorebirds.

Secrets. Sigalerts. Ravines. Records. In Paperback L.A., A Casual Anthology Book 3, our contributors deftly command fiction, nonfiction, playwriting, magazine writing, memoir and other forms to conjure up visions of a Beverly Hills Wonderbread factory, the founding of the first sustained gay rights organization in the country, early 20th-century wagon-train settlers in Dodger Stadium area, a late 20th-century DTLA traffic tie-up that becomes a kind of symphony, a humorous 1940s novelty song whose refrain buoyed civil rights activists, the 1990s outrigger-team apprenticeship of a Tongva youth, the horrors of the dating life in Silver Lake-and more. Plus, photo essays on "Quiet L.A.," "Delivering Flowers to Grandpa Jack in Long Beach," and "The Gents of Blues and Protest."