Here is what is coming up at Book Soup, and what has already happened there. Concerts, games, festivals and the smaller nights that never surface in a generic search — no account needed.

Ellen O'Connell Whittet w/ Melissa Seley, "Book of Hours"

Coming Soon

19h away

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Ellen O'Connell Whittet w/ Melissa Seley, "Book of Hours"

Tomorrow · Oct 8 Free Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Boulevard, …

Anyone who trained seriously at something as a child and then had to stop knows the particular grief of a body that was built for one purpose and then released from it. Whittet was a ballet dancer until an injury ended it, and she has spent two books now writing about what the discipline does to a person - the obedience, the pain tolerance taught as virtue, the way beauty gets extracted from young women who are not asked. The new one takes the title from the illuminated devotional books, which is the right frame: the daily practice, the hours kept whether or not anyone is watching. Seley joins her. The audience for this at a West Hollywood bookstore is reliably interesting - dancers, former dancers, and people who did gymnastics or music or anything else that demanded everything at twelve years old. Free, Thursday at seven, thirty chairs between shelves. Sit near the front; she reads quietly and does not reach for the microphone.

Lyndsay Faye in conversation with Leslie Klinger, "Raven"

Coming Soon

4 days away

Lyndsay Faye in conversation with Leslie Klinger, "Raven"

In 5 days · Oct 12 Free Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Boulevard, …

Some people never got over the first time a detective explained the solution and it turned out better than they had guessed. They are a whole secret society, and they have annotated everything. Tonight two of their high priests are in a bookstore on Sunset: Faye, who writes Victorian crime well enough that the Sherlockians accepted her as one of their own, and Klinger, who produced the annotated editions of Holmes and of Dracula that sit on those same people's shelves like scripture. Faye's new novel goes at Poe, which in this company is not a casual choice - it is picking up the other founding father of the form and asking whether the raven was ever really the point. If you hold opinions about which Holmes adaptation is defensible, you will find your people in this aisle. Book Soup runs its events crammed between the shelves on a weekday evening: thirty chairs, no stage, the author more or less standing in the true-crime section. Free, and the mystery shelf here is stocked by somebody who clearly reads it. There is another writer on that same small stage tomorrow, and the night after; the rest of the week is just as full.

Emily Yahr in conversation with Sarah Rodman, "Taylor Swift: The Debut Years"

Coming Soon

5 days away

Emily Yahr in conversation with Sarah Rodman, "Taylor Swift: The Debut Years"

In 6 days · Oct 13 Free Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Boulevard, …

You can date your own life by whichever album you were ruining yourself to at the time, and for an enormous number of people the first one arrived with a banjo and a MySpace page attached. Before the stadiums there was a teenager in Nashville nobody was betting on, and the story of those years is messier and more interesting than the mythology built on top of it since. Yahr covered that stretch in real time for the Washington Post, which is the difference between a book about fame and a book by somebody who was in the room while it was not yet fame. Rodman sits across from her, and both are music journalists rather than fans with laptops, so expect actual reporting and some unflattering specifics. The crowd on the Sunset Strip will be the interesting part: people who have argued about track-five placement for fifteen years, standing in a narrow aisle thirty chairs deep. Free. Arrive early, because Book Soup's events fill from the front and the shelves do not move. Book Soup puts a writer in that room most nights of the week, and the Sunset Boulevard regulars treat the schedule like a subscription.

Abigail Savitch-Lew w/ Emdash, "Livonia Chow Mein"

Coming Soon

6 days away

Abigail Savitch-Lew w/ Emdash, "Livonia Chow Mein"

In 7 days · Oct 14 Free Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Boulevard, …

Every immigrant restaurant in America is also an argument about what America will eat, conducted quietly, over decades, by people nobody interviewed. Savitch-Lew's novel sits inside one of those places and takes the argument seriously - the family, the neighbourhood that changes around them, the dish that gets adjusted year after year until it belongs to somewhere new. She covered housing and neighbourhood politics as a reporter before this, and it shows in how carefully the block is built. The conversation partner is billed only as Emdash, which is the sort of thing that happens at a first-novel event and is part of why these nights are worth attending - nobody has decided yet what the book is, including the people presenting it. Free, Wednesday at seven, on the Sunset Strip, in a store where the staff still hand-write the recommendation cards. Thirty chairs. Eat before you come, or the book will make it worse.

Sally Hayden, "This Is Also a Love Story: A Reporter's Search for Goodness in a Cruel World"

Coming Soon

12 days away

Sally Hayden, "This Is Also a Love Story: A Reporter's Search for Goodness in a Cruel World"

In 13 days · Oct 20 Free Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Boulevard, …

Most foreign correspondents write the cruelty because the cruelty is the story, and then spend the rest of their lives quietly unable to explain why they kept going back. Hayden has written the other half of it. She is the reporter who broke open what was happening in the Libyan detention centres - the book that came out of it won most of the prizes there are - and this one is about the goodness she kept finding in places where the reporting said there should be none. It is not a consoling book and it is not a cynical one, which is a narrow line to walk. The evening is co-presented with the Consulate General of Ireland in Los Angeles, which tells you something about who will be in the room: the Irish community here is large, old and almost invisible to the rest of the city, and it turns out for its own writers. Free, on the Sunset Strip, a Tuesday at seven. Thirty chairs between the shelves. Come if you have ever wondered what the people who go there actually carry home.

Cal Hoffman in conversation with Penelope Ann Miller, "Judah Can't Tell"

Coming Soon

13 days away

Cal Hoffman in conversation with Penelope Ann Miller, "Judah Can't Tell"

In 14 days · Oct 21 Free (RSVP) Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Boulevard, …

The secret you kept as a child to protect an adult is the one that follows you longest. You learn early how to manage a room, and then you are forty and still doing it without noticing. Hoffman's novel sits inside a boy holding something he has decided nobody can be told, and it gets the arithmetic of that right - the small lies required to keep the big one standing. Miller joins him in conversation, which is a genuinely odd and good pairing: she has spent a career playing people with something withheld, from Carlito's Way to The Artist, and she reads a scene differently than a critic would. Wednesday evening on the Strip, free, RSVP requested, in a store that has been selling books to people who work in the industry since 1975 and treats a first novel with the same seriousness as a memoir by somebody famous. The staff recommendation cards here are handwritten and worth reading on their own. Thirty chairs between the shelves and no microphone worth speaking of, so sit close.

Marcy Kelly w/ Colin Campbell, "The Porcelain Heart: A Mother's Memoir of Unexpected Loss"

Coming Soon

20 days away

Marcy Kelly w/ Colin Campbell, "The Porcelain Heart: A Mother's Memoir of Unexpected Loss"

Oct 28, 2026 Free Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Boulevard, …

Grief has a social problem: everyone wants to help for about three weeks, and then the casseroles stop and the thing itself is still there, permanent, and you learn to stop mentioning it at parties. Books like this exist for the part after the casseroles. Kelly has written about losing a child, and she is in conversation with Colin Campbell, who lost two and then wrote the book that a lot of bereaved parents in this city hand to each other. That pairing is the whole point and it is not accidental - these events function as something closer to a meeting than a reading, and the people who come are frequently carrying the same thing. It is not a comfortable evening and it is not meant to be. Free, Wednesday at seven, a narrow aisle in a bookstore on Sunset with thirty chairs in it. If you are the person everyone has stopped asking about, or you love someone who is, this is a room where you would not have to explain yourself.

Book Soup Events

Ellen O'Connell Whittet w/ Melissa Seley, "Book of Hours"

Lyndsay Faye in conversation with Leslie Klinger, "Raven"

Emily Yahr in conversation with Sarah Rodman, "Taylor Swift: The Debut Years"

Abigail Savitch-Lew w/ Emdash, "Livonia Chow Mein"

Sally Hayden, "This Is Also a Love Story: A Reporter's Search for Goodness in a Cruel World"

Cal Hoffman in conversation with Penelope Ann Miller, "Judah Can't Tell"

Marcy Kelly w/ Colin Campbell, "The Porcelain Heart: A Mother's Memoir of Unexpected Loss"

Angelica Page discusses "Bountiful: Growing Up with Geraldine Page"

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