I read a book last week that made me remember why I read books. Books are lovely because they’re entertaining and they curl up with me in bed and, as the saying goes, “Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.” But, the reason, actually, that I read is for books like Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael.

It’s an old book, published almost 20 years ago; the copy I found at the Pasadena Library was a bit battered. But, it rocked my socks right off; it knocked and rattled some loose ends in my mind. Great books seem to do that: rattle your loose ends—un-tie them or bind them up, or fiddle with them in some way. It’s a bit of a preachy book, about a wise talking gorilla who predicts how humans are destroying the Earth and all life upon it, but it’s also funny and humble, and though Quinn wrote before environmentalism became mainstream, it still feels revolutionary.

Books like this remind me what books are capable of. Some books are good while you’re in ‘em, while they last. Like a nice meal: you enjoy it, you’re entertained by some lovely flavors, but then you finish up, pay the bill (return it to the library). You move on, and you eat another meal the next day.

Great books stick with you. Great books are like eating the perfect hamburger: that moment of “Aha!” when you realize what hamburgers are capable of, what they’ve always been capable of but had forgotten because they are so often mediocre–why you keep tasting and trying them. Why you’re trying to make one yourself.

I went to the L.A. Times Festival of Books this weekend. Thousands of books, thousands of people who like books–what could be better? Turns out, what could be better was writing about a book festival. It was a sunny Saturday. Families miled, college students strolled, and people looked at books, listened to authors, and munched on Kettle Korn.

While folks were meandering around the UCLA campus, I dashed up hills and power-walked over a rather knobby and beautiful stone walkway, seeking internet to file a story. (File a story! Who says that?) I covered the event for the LAT book blog, which was awesome. And, when I say awesome–though that it was–I also mean insanely stressful, as we had to turn in articles within hours of the events were were covering (as is the practice for, well, all working journalists.) My first exposure to tight-deadline writing was…tense, but, in the end, rewarding.

Woohoo! The skinny on Hungry Girl’s low-calorie success from Lisa Lillien made it up to the actual latimes.com site.

Who says print isn’t dead? Dave Eggers, of course. Speaking of print not being dead, a blurb from that one, above, made it into the print edition yesterday.

My favorite quote of the weekend came from this panel–Curiosity, wonder, and finding a narrative thread.

David Grann, a writer from the New Yorker, said, in response to a question of doom and gloom and the downfall of the written word: “The hunger for stories and the magic of stories isn’t going to go away,” he said. “People still want to be moved and you don’t get moved in a tweet and you don’t get moved in a blog post.”

I walked up my street today for the first time in years. It’s a big hill, our street, a straight shot up to the beginning of the San Gabriel Mountains.

I love walking. I tread the muddy roads of a fishing village for a year, didn’t think twice of clomping down to town and then hiking back up the hill to Hotel Brio several times daily–a sweaty, muddy adventure; yet, for some reason, I haven’t walked up my own street–paved and suburban–in years.

I think I used to walk up and down it a lot. The sis, Dad, and I walked to elementary school every day–up the hill and around the corner–and we walked down the hill to art class and sleepovers at my friend’s house. My friend seemed like she lived so far because her house was past the first stop sign. My mom’s friend lived at the stop sign, and we walked to that house a lot. I remember once, my mom and I were squatting on the curb, waiting for something, and I asked her how many rainbow driveways there were on our street. (A rainbow driveway is defined as a driveway with two entrances, as opposed to those straight-shot, out and back driveways.) I was–still am–biased towards the rainbow driveways, but perhaps that’s because our house sits behind a black cement rainbow arch. They seemed symmetrical, sensical; seemed to flow.

She didn’t know how many rainbow driveways there were on our street. Well, how many do you think there are? I asked. She paused. Twenty–how many do you think there are? she asked, and there I was stuck. Twenty seemed like the perfect number. I knew from playing the ‘pick a number from-one-to-ten’ game with my dad that you always chose a number directly above or below your opponent. So… nineteen or twenty-one? I didn’t know. 19 seemed too few. 21 seemed too many. I don’t remember which one I ended up choosing, but twenty always seemed like the right number–of course there would be twenty.

Today, I dropped my car off for servicing at the 76 Station, less than a mile away from home, hovered for a moment to see if it was worth my while to wait it out, and then decided to just walk home. Mid-afternoon, mid-seventies, and sunny, my exhaustion melted into the nuance of walking, of seeing familiar territory exposed by a different movement; of a progression that correlated directly with output.

Traveling in a car, on the other hand, enjoys no correlation between energy output and movement. Crawling traffic or seventy miles an hour–neither feel quite natural. I now find myself commuting to downtown LA four mornings a week for a rather mundane part-time job that pays me next to nothing, yet that puts me smack dab in the middle of my professional mecca. It’s neat. (Neat like neat-o, not tidy.) My identification badge doesn’t label me as an editorial assistant–it just says ‘Editorial,’ same as every other reporter, editor, and writer, high and low, corner office and basement cubicle.

It  does feel like I’m in some sort of epicenter, wandering below skyscrapers and past bustling businessmen in suitable suits. Downtown LA has energy, normally noisy honking but occasionally sweet and subtle. This morning, I glided down the hill in foggy darkness–today’s shift starts at 6:30–wound along a mountain freeway in soft grey, crawled behind red brake lights up a narrow freeway exchange, glided through Chinatown in uncommitted cloudy blue. I walked out of the parking garage and turned left on Spring Street at 6:25 a.m. The sun slanted over the buildings, dawning.

Six hours later, I hurtled up our street, frustrated because of uncontrollable yellow-brown traffic (caused by the overlap of a famous-person funeral procession and a Dodger’s game, but there’s always a cause). I hurtled away from the epicenter, up the hill, and the rainbow driveways melted into the straight ones, undistinguishable out a car window.

After I had dropped my car off and started walking home, it occurred to me, already a third of the way up the street, that this was the time. That I should count the curved, two-ended driveways–today! So, I started counting, but found it to be a little tricky. Some driveways curve in rotunda-like round-abouts, but don’t technically have two-ends–what category were they in? Some can’t even be classified as driveways–short, stubby things that don’t even have room for a pair of cars. Some are grand, loping cement byways, descending down into the bowels of a home, never to be seen again. Apparently driveways on my street come in more than two varieties. I found myself distracted by details, obvious and obscure. Peeling paint and bright lawn sets. Toys strewn in a front yard. 4789′s flowers are bursting. There’s a life-sized plastic horse in the corridor between 4890′s house and their neighbor’s fence. Everyone’s flowers are bursting, actually. It’s spring, and it smells like spring.

So, I didn’t count them, and that seemed an appropriate way to leave it–in the logic that there would be twenty, rainbow driveways; uncounted.

I was standing in line at Zeli’s Coffee a few weeks ago, mid-afternoon, leaden with a heavy shoulder bag and the heavy task of writing cover letters, updating my resume, and applying for writing jobs that don’t exist. The women in front of me–middle-aged, groomed, wearing shiny ballet flats–finished ordering, turned and smiled at me.

“Oh!” she said, looking me up and down. “You play basketball at the high school. How neat.”

The High School she was referring to (without a question mark) was La Canada High School; the playing of basketball, I could only presume, to their varsity high school team.

“Huh?” said I, looking myself up and down. I was adorned in cover-letter writing attire–gym shorts, a sweatshirt, and a frizzy-hair ponytail–and had not yet showered. Schlumpy as I looked, I didn’t think I looked like a high school student, however athletic such student might be. (The varsity basketball team at LCHS is quite good.)

“You play for LCHS?…Are you on varsity?” she asked.

“No.”

“Oh.” She turned back to the counter, quietly embarrassed for the 6’1″, twenty-three year-old woman who had, apparently, not made the cut to a high school varsity basketball team.

Last week, I pulled into the YMCA parking lot–driving a super-cool, hipster Toyota Sienna minivan–and swung into a parking spot next to a similarly recently arriving fellow. He hoped out of his green sedan licitly-split and jogged up the stairs leading to the gym facilities.  I pulled myself out of the car a bit slower and heave-hoed up the steep stairs. (It was 5:00. I was tired.) Even so, this green-sedan driving, college-aged fellow and I arrived to the gym entry gate at the same time, and like a gentlemen, he paused to let me go before him. I smiled thanks. He then said, fumbling for words, “But you’re too young to be a mom!”

“Huh?” said I.

“Oooh!” he said, awkwardly panicked. “You don’t have kids. Sorry. The van threw me off.”

“No,” I said, once again, and then chuckled to myself all the way into the cardio room and up onto the elliptical machine.