Tag Archives: Los Angeles Magazine

LA Magazine’s “Best of the West”

Jason Kehe at Los Angeles Magazine  has chosen his four Critic’s Picks for January, and Hannibal and Me is “Best of the West”.

He’s also captured the same issue with “genre bending” that Andres Martinez noted the other day. Kehe calls it a “shelving” challenge. How true. I plan to reflect on this in due course.

Here is Kehe:

[…] Kluth, the West Coast correspondent for The Economist, mines a veritable who’s who of history’s winners and losers for life lessons, from Einstein to Steve Jobs, Cleopatra to Eleanor Roosevelt. Booksellers will have an interesting time shelving this one. What is it? Memoir? Bio? Self-help? Pop psych? Here’s a better question: Who cares? It’s fascinating.

Thank you, Jason Kehe!

A sort-of memoir

Los Angeles Magazine, a sophisticated West-Coast glossy, has just put Hannibal and Me on its “reading list” for January.

I’m in the non-fiction category, obviously. More interesting is perhaps the one-line description they’ve given me. I still struggle to say in one breath what my book is; so I’m endlessly curious how other people do it in one breath.

The editors at LA Mag went with:

Hannibal—remember the guy who invaded Rome on elephants two thousand-plus years ago?—is the starting point for this sort-of memoir from the West Coast correspondent of The Economist.

A sort-of-memoir. Hmmm. Why not?

Let’s see what the next one kicks up. 😉