Many remember Melissa Anderson as “the blind sister” on frontier family drama Little House on the Prairie. But the sweet lady with the bright blue eyes has done much more, and now she can add “author” to her credits.

The Great Los Angeles Novel, much like the Great American Novel, is certainly its own subgenre, and every aspiring author who has resided in that city for any length of time has felt compelled to write one. It doesn’t mean every aspiring author who has felt compelled to write one indeed should, but that is another matter entirely.

Mary Oliver, winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, was back in Los Angeles after five long, barren years, speaking again at historic Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. Presented by UCLA Live, the event was nowhere near the sellout it should have been for a night of such inspirational and beautiful weaving of poetry and prose. Mary Oliver has been writing for over fifty years now, and the stunning growth of her new work proves that she isn’t feeling complacent, nor has she lost her voice, as she reaches her 75th year on the planet.

Eric E. Olson’s novel The Procession of Mollusks begins with a quote from Ween’s The Mollusk. For those not initiated into the mindmeld fuzz-pop euphoria of the legendary underground band, being on the wavelength with a great Ween album is like either being part of the best inside joke you’ve ever heard or realizing that the inside joke isn’t even a joke at all

I know it is summer by the usual indicators: the kids are out of school and the glorious free Santa Monica summer concerts are underway (thanks Amoeba Records!).  But this summer, two items landed on my desk with an intriguing thud, and both are putting me in mind of summers past

You can learn about a person by what that person does and what that person says. But you can also learn a lot about a journalist by the company he keeps. One of the great rewards in writing arts journalism, it seems, is to praise those who you admire with complimentary analysis. When the journalist has some kind of direct relationship with the subject, then it is obligatory to use the term, “full disclosure.”

Visting the country’s biggest book fair, the L.A. Times Festival of Books at UCLA, is like one’s attitude about reading books: You’ll never get to everything. Nevertheless, circumnavigating the booths, readings, panels and 140,000 or so bibliophiles who crowd the Westwood campus is both a challenge and an opportunity like no other in the US.

If one needs a welcoming indication of Spring, other than pretty nature photos on one’s calendar or the insane, chattering mockingbirds behind my home in the Sherman Oaks hills, there is always the L.A. Times Festival of Books, which completed its 12^th incarnation April 27-28.

The WWW was still a glow in computer geeks’ eyes, and Teen, YM and Seventeen were the mags of choice for American girls in the late 1980s.Long after the rise of feminism and the sexual revolution, even several years after Madonna had exposed her belly and bangles for girls to emulate, mags for young women still focused on diets, prom dresses, and recipes, not the reality of everyday teen life in America.

In Farley Granger's newly published memoir ''Include Me Out,'' the former screen idol makes a revelation that is unusual among Hollywood tell-all books: He was bisexual. Granger describes a Honolulu night that epitomized his life. A 21-year-old virgin and wartime Navy recruit, he was determined to change his status. He did so with a young and lovely prostitute. He was about to leave the premises when he encountered a handsome Navy officer. Granger was soon in bed again.