Books

John Scalzi's appearance at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was preceded by a visit to our video booth, where he talked about his new project, a return to his "Old Man's War" series. Fans may have already read much of the fifth book, "The Human Division," which has been published in 13 e-book installments. Scalzi tells L.A. Times staff writer Carolyn Kellogg how that worked, and what additional material readers will be getting if they purchase the hardcover. At 432 pages, it's the longest book Scalzi has written.

On the night of Nov. 7, 1938, at the German Embassy in Paris, a 17-year-old Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan gained access to the office of a low-ranking Nazi named Ernst vom Rath by promising to turn over an "important document. " Instead, Grynszpan fired five bullets at Rath; only two of them hit their target, but one proved fatal. Despite multiple transfusions of good French blood and the ministrations of Hitler's personal physician, Rath died two days later in a Paris clinic. As would become painfully evident, this assassination was immediately exploited by the Nazis as a pretext for launching a massive pogrom against the Jews of Germany.

Before her panel at the L.A. Times Festival of Book, journalist and author Amy Wilentz dropped in at our video booth to talk about how she came to write her latest book, "Farewell, Fred Voodoo. " Written after Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake, this book, she explains wryly, "is about what happens when outsiders come to help you. " Wilentz's history of traveling to and writing about Haiti goes back more than 20 years, she tells L.A. Times staff writer Carolyn Kellogg. "I didn't want to go back," she says.

A.S. King won the L.A. Times book prize for young adult literature with "Ask the Passengers" on Friday night. Wearing the same high green boots Saturday morning, she stopped by our video booth at the L.A. Times Festival of Books to talk with features editor Alice Short about the inspiration for her young adult novel. "'Ask the Passengers' was born out of 25 years of thinking about being a questioning teenager. It also was born of a habit I've had since I was a very young girl. I used to lay in my backyard -- my yard was in the middle of a cornfield -- so I would lie there in the afternoon and watch the airplanes fly overhead," King says.

Jason Segel is taking his goofy sensibility and packaging it for middle-schoolers in the form of a three-book deal with Random House, the company announced Wednesday. The first installment of "Nightmares!," co-written with “The Eternal Ones” author Kirsten Miller, is due out next year, the publisher said in a news release . Segel first turned his inspiration, an adventure about kids who have to save their town from fear, into a screenplay, according to CBS News . That got stuck in turnaround, but the "How I Met Your Mother" actor bought back the rights recently and converted the screenplay concept into a three-part book series.

Take a walk in certain corners of Southern California this evening and you might find someone trying to give you a book. It will be free. And it will also be a very good book. Shirley is going to the pier and beach in Venice, to give away copies of “My Antonia” by Willa Cather, to fishermen and surfers and anyone else who's interested. Hope, from Beverly Hills, is going to her nearest Department of Veterans Affairs facility to pass out copies of Sandra Cisneros' “The House on Mango Street” to veterans.

Janet Fitch's first novel, "White Oleander," hit big when it was picked by Oprah for her book club. Before that happened, she was just another aspiring writer in this big city. She sat down with me at the L.A. Times Festival of Books and talked about who she used to come to see. Sometimes, when she couldn't get tickets to see an author, she'd sit on the grass and watch readers and writers pass by. Once, when her own writing wasn't going well, she couldn't bear to attend. That time passed -- she published "Paint It Black" in 2006 and is now hard at work on a new, very different novel.

At the L.A. Times Festival of Books, Kelly Oxford sat down with Times columnist Robin Abcarian to talk about her book “Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar,” the Twitter star's first collection of humorous essays. VIDEO: AUTHOR INTERVIEWS FROM FESTIVAL OF BOOKS The book is about "things that have happened that in my life that were mostly horrifying but I found the humor in them," she says. She liked reading books by David Sedaris and Chelsea Handler, she explains, because of the stories that are both depraved and funny.

Olive & Thyme: The Toluca Lake cafe will be offering a wine and cheese tasting from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday.  Attendees will sample more than a dozen cheeses with cheesemonger Tyler Schwarz and learn about cheesemaking from aging and texture to methods of making and region of origin. The wine and cheese tasting is $45 per person. Call or email gayle@oliveandthyme.com for reservations. 4013 Riverside Drive, Toluca Lake, (818) 557-1560, www.oliveandthyme.com . Modern Art Desserts: On Saturday, the Craft in America Study Center will present the third installment of “Food as Medium for Craft,” with a talk and book signing by Blue Bottle pastry chef Caitlin Freeman.

Is it any surprise that on a warm spring day, thousands of Southern Californians went in search of a good book - and a chance to meet the person who wrote it? Not to Susan Burton, a retired school librarian from Fontana, who was among the crowds that converged Sunday morning on the USC campus for the final day of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. "I think this is a fabulous place to be," she said as she stood in line with a friend to hear a discussion about crime writing with former L.A. Deputy Dist.