The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books will be held this week on Saturday & Sunday, April 28 - 29th. Monday Cathryn Jakobson Ramin signs Carved in Sand 7pm @ Dutton's Tuesday Jeff Hobbs presents The Tourists 7pm @ Book Soup Jeffrey Lewis signs Theme Song for an Old Show 7pm @ Dutton's Santa Montefiore discusses and signs The Gypsy Madonna 7pm @ Vroman's Wednesday Kristen Buckley presents Tramps Like Us: A New Jersey......

If you're reading this, it means you survived the various horrors of Christmas. No, we don't mean drunk Aunt Cindy's hair catching on fire at the dinner table. We're talking about the horrors of Santa's helpers... the ones our loving American parents don't tell us about. Knecht Ruprecht, who stuffs bad children in his sack and throws them into a river. The cloven-hoofed Krampus, known for raping young ladies (or even your mom) with his......

New York writer-performer Jonathan Ames is gracing our fair city this week and while he's in town he's doing some good. His performance at 826LA tonight will benefit the fab literacy organization, and your part is just 10 bucks. Ames' latest book is I love You More Than You Know, essays that are funny (college swordsmanship), scary (cockroach in the bathtub) and geniunely racy ("her ass was round and firm and white.") Some are......

WEDNESDAY • Tonight at the Henry Fonda Theater, Sleater-Kinney will be performing with Mary Timony. Doors open at 8 PM; tickets are $18. • Celebrate the grand opening of the Knitting Factory Front Room at 9:30 PM, featuring Monarch (Kill Me Tomorrow with DJ Pubes), DJ Statutory (of KXLU) and DJ Blake Miller (of Moving Units). Tickets are $5. [18+] • Enjoy a night of comedy with Eugene Mirman, Paul F. Thompkins, Ron Lynch,......

Kevin Smokler is a book man. He writes about contemporary literature all over the place and talks about it on NPR. He consults and lectures across the country about what we read and how and last year, when the NEA announced that reading was in decline, he got a little sad and then he got a little mad. He had run a very popular site about books and had created virtual book tours that......

LAist caught David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell last night in Royce Hall on the UCLA campus, and was happy to renew our stock of wry, witty, and cynical humor. Both are favorites of the NPR scene, frequent contributors to "This American Life" (although Sedaris got his start on "Morning Edition"), and authors as well - Sedaris with several books out already, and Vowell with her fourth book just published, "Assassination Vacation". Vowell also provided......