Nancy Pearl

In the two years since an action figure modeled after Nancy Pearl first went on sale, owners of the 5-inch plastic toy have sent Pearl photographs of the mini-Nancy at the Eiffel Tower, the base camp of Mt. Everest -- even atop a wedding cake. The Pearl figurine outsells models of Da Vinci, Einstein, Freud and Houdini, and currently runs second in sales only to Jesus Christ. Not bad for a librarian.

In the two years since an action figure modeled after Nancy Pearl first went on sale, owners of the 5-inch plastic toy have sent Pearl photographs of the mini-Nancy at the Eiffel Tower, the base camp of Mt. Everest -- even atop a wedding cake. The Pearl figurine outsells models of Da Vinci, Einstein, Freud and Houdini, and currently runs second in sales only to Jesus Christ. Not bad for a librarian.

Book Lust Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason Nancy Pearl Sasquatch Books: 304 pp., $16.95 From the time she was 10, Nancy Pearl wanted to be a librarian. Since then, she's lived her dream and then some, and read more books than it seems possible to read in a lifetime. Give a book 50 pages, she advises. If you still don't like it, move on to the next one.

Book Lust Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason Nancy Pearl Sasquatch Books: 304 pp., $16.95 From the time she was 10, Nancy Pearl wanted to be a librarian. Since then, she's lived her dream and then some, and read more books than it seems possible to read in a lifetime. Give a book 50 pages, she advises. If you still don't like it, move on to the next one.

Bus fares translated into dinner for more than 1,000 impoverished San Gabriel Valley families this holiday season. Foothill Transit offered a free ride to customers who brought at least one canned food item when boarding the agency's buses last week. The more than 5,500 cans collected from boxes installed in buses went to the Salvation Army in Pomona and the Foothill Unity Center in Monrovia.

Riviera Country Club is expected to be chosen as host club for the 1995 national PGA tournament, according to information sent to members of the Pacific Palisades club. "We notified the membership with a letter of intent to host the tournament," Riviera executive Nancy Pearl said. No contracts have been signed, but a formal announcement might be made this week in Carmel, Ind., where the 1991 championship will start Thursday.

Foothill Transit says it is listening to its riders. In a meeting next month to determine rate and and other changes throughout the San Gabriel Valley, the executive board of Foothill Transit is expected to present a proposal culled from the public's suggestions, officials said. Changes in bus fare were scheduled for implementation in January.

Donald Tecumseh "Tee" Carson, 70, a jazz pianist who replaced Count Basie on piano in Basie's legendary big band after his death in 1984. A native of Washington, D.C., Carson performed with some of the most renowned bands and singers of the last century. Besides fronting his own trio for decades, Carson accompanied such notable vocalists as Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Williams, Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Pearl Bailey and Tony Bennett from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Foothill Transit, the county's second-largest bus operator, expects to resume full service today to riders around the San Gabriel Valley and those commuting to Downtown Los Angeles after drivers voted to end a 13-day-old strike rather than be fired. "It's been hit or miss whether there would be a bus," said a relieved Vincent Moreno, a Caltrans employee who is among the passengers who have had to squeeze on fewer buses during the strike.

On the surface, everything had seemed OK. Calvin Peete had always been able to play on any golf course where the PGA Tour stopped. None of the professional players had ever been denied access to a locker room. No fan had ever been turned away because of color. "So it was a slap in the face to us when the Shoal Creek situation happened," said Sid Wilson, director of public relations for the PGA Tour. "But as our commissioner said, it wasn't a tough decision for us to make, at all.

Seattle did it first. Los Angeles is doing it next. But this city of ethnic neighborhoods and exaggerated blue-collar grit--former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka likened the town and the team to "a bunch of guys named Grabowski"--is where the nation's hottest intellectual trend really took off. Mayor Richard M. Daley last fall asked every citizen in this city of 3 million to read Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." The response to One Book, One Chicago was electric.