Literacy and Longing in L.A., by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack

I enjoyed this one, mostly because I can relate to the protagonist and her near-addictive love of books. Dora, child of a literary mother and absent father, has a tendency to use books to insulate her from the world at large, which I have been guilty of before, I confess. She goes on book benders the way other book heroines drink, have sex, and do drugs.

As with most books set in Los Angeles, the city itself functions as kind of a character, which is so neat to read, now that we're living there. I'm working on reading more L.A. writers, especially ones I read before we moved here. Michael Connelly is my favorite of these.

The story is pretty standard chick-lit fare. Dora is a pretty neurotic, but mostly good person, who reads herself into a hole of sorts at the beginning, and works her way out of it by building relationships with actual people as she goes, finding love again, etc., etc. It was a really fun read, despite being slightly predictable. Predictability is interesting, since it doesn't necessarily equal a bad book. The Kite Runner, which I read last year, was one of the most predictable books I ever read, but I was glued to the story anyway.

The book teems with interesting literary references; in fact, I began making a list of books and authors Dora mentions. Luckily, I gave up on this gargantuan task quickly, since there is a 9-page appendix listing them. My plan is to copy the list before I return the book and see if I can't make some headway. Reading this list, and considering my reading history has made me aware of some of the gaps in my literary life, so I'd like to try to fill it with a few more classics, some books that I should have read and haven't, and books that I did read, but so long ago I wasn't equipped to make any sense of them. So in a sense, Literacy and Longing in L.A. is an inspirational book for me.