Taking advantage of a Hollywood vacation my wife won at her office Christmas party this past December, I decided to visit a few West Coast indie bookstores with copies of my novel, Tamper. This was our first time in California and we loved everything about it. In between sightseeing and dining, I dropped in on four bookstores I had chosen from a list provided by L.A. resident Wanda Shapiro, author of Sometimes That Happens With Chicken, whom I recently befriended on Facebook.

First, I have to say, the printed book is far from dead. On the flight from Jacksonville, Florida and throughout our stay in the Los Angeles area, I lost count of the number of people I saw reading books (not ebooks) at the airport, on the plane, in the hotel lobby, in coffee shops, and on the beach. Once, on my flight back to Jacksonville, I saw no less than three people in a row, all reading books at the same time. I managed to sneak a snapshot of them with my iPhone before the flight attendant reminded me to shut the gadget down while we were in the air.

(Guest blogger Dedi Felman's analysis of screenwriting techniques for this year's popular Oscar-worthy films continues. Previous entries discuss The King's Speech and The Social Network. -- Levi)

Action movies and hyperarticulate idea movies don’t usually go hand in hand. So when Inception blasted onto screens last summer, its unholy marriage of genres at least partly explains why it was accompanied by a white hot publicity streak. Would Chris Nolan forge a bridge between Charlie Kaufman, king of idea-filled films such as Being John Malkovich, and Michael Bay, master of summer popcorn action fare? And could that bastard child possibly be any good as a script? After several reads of Nolan’s screenplay, my unequivocal answer is yes. And the more I dig into this complex script, the more enthusiastic I get. What makes Inception such a daring and well-executed juggling act? And how does Nolan make it all work?

1. Carolyn "Pinky" Kellogg is in Istanbul! Nice to see a busy blogger getting away for a literary journey.

I was approximately ten years old the first time I read Madeleine L'Engle, the award-winning author of over sixty books, including A Wrinkle In Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and A Wind In the Door, who died on September 6, 2007 in Goshen, Connecticut.

Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, author of "Eden" and "Solaris" (filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971 and by Steven Soderbergh in 2002) has died at the age of 84 today.

The satirical and philosophical science fiction writer -- to whom the future had always been suspect -- had foreseen many technological achievements in his utopias. His stories tell of the difficulties of communication between humans and other civilizations and of the limitation of human understanding. They portray the human indecision between curiosity and xenophobia, and the tragedy and comedy of future machines, human intellect and emotion and their relation to each other.

Has anybody heard about this John Twelve Hawks guy? According to his official biography, he lives off the grid and only speaks to his publisher via untraceable cell phone.

I don't usually follow the fantasy/sci-fi genre, but I have to admit I find this biographical concept (or conceit) intriguing. A few great writers have lived off the grid (Rimbaud and Thoreau come to mind). Anybody else know anything about this disconnected author, or has anyone read the book?

As you may or may not know, a film version of the Douglas Adams classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is opening in theaters this weekend. I know this book remains a popular favorite among many, so I thought I'd ask what you think about it being adapted into film. Do you plan to see it? Why or why not? If you catch it this weekend, be sure to give us a short review.

But now, because I'm fond of changing the subject, I'm going to, uh, change the subject. Even though it's often like the proverbial comparison of apples and oranges, the subject of books on film is capable of spurring debate among devotees of each form. (No, really. It is.) But beyond that, I think we can all agree that there are some film adaptations that shouldn't have happened, like, ever. (The Scarlet Letter, anyone?) We can all agree on this, yes?

It's common among Beat aficionados to scorn the popular media version of the Beats, especially the term "beatnik", and the stereotypical goatee-sporting hipster. But to a youngster growing up in a small town, like me, sensing there was more out there than what they taught in middle school, even the cliche hints of downtown jazz and nightlife and hip lingo were welcome. I could tell right away that Rod Serling was cool, from the subdued bongo drums in the opening theme to his sly, out-of-this-world countenance. He almost seemed to wink knowingly when he shared his imagination and vision with me, the viewer.

I remember the episode about the trumpet player, down on his luck and questioning his very reason for living. In a kind of jazz version of It's A Wonderful Life, the musician is hit by a car, killed, then finds himself hanging out with another, older, trumpet player whose chiseled features, goatee, and night club suit are a sharp contrast to the pudgy angel Clarence in the Frank Capra classic, though he is an angel, nonetheless. After giving the young musician a new lease on life, we learn the angel's name as he makes his exit.

"I didn't catch your name!"

"Just call me Gabe," says the goateed veteran horn-blower. "Short for Gabriel." He holds up his trumpet to illustrate his point. Gabriel is the trumpet blowing angel in the Bible. But this wasn't my parents' church, it was the concrete-neon jungle where the hipsters dwell and Doctor Sax blows jazz in a smoky bar room.

The 12th Planet is book one in the Earth Chronicles series. Originally published in 1977, it is the original and most well known. The premise of his work, simply, is that life originated outside planet earth. It was transplanted to and genetically modified on here by an alien race of supermen-gods, know collectively as the Nefilim. If one can wrap his head around this concept, the research and work following is marginally easier to accept. Sitchin seeks to support a number of scientifically unpalatable and unpopular theories.