Looking for a page-turner to distract you from the dog days of summer? ForYourArt’s Bettina Korek is partnering with three experts on the printed word to curate a list of 99 volumes from Brand Bookshop in Glendale on Sunday, July 28. The books will be given to the first 99 guests who join the ForYourArt team for beers at Tavern on Brand from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm, and the race to read will officially begin. Korek, ever the connector, brought together three experts to create the list for the event, Sleeper Hits ForYourArt: Brand Bookshop. Selections will be made by Dagny Corcoran who has run Art Catalogues since 1977 (and has a new location inside LACMA), Lee Kaplan who founded Arcana: Books on the Arts (in Culver City) in 1984 and Wendy Yao of Ooga Booga founded in Chinatown in 2004 and expanded to Boyle Heights this year. Titles selected include Americans Who Have Been Reincarnated, Handwriting of the Famous and Infamous, Food Not Bombs, Ghost Towns of the West, Animal Language, I Could Never Be Lonely Without a Husband, The Shopping Bag: Portable Art, and Honorable Cat. Along with these sleeper hits, Korek says she’s rediscovered the venerable bookshop, a place she calls an “L.A. treasure.” There’s nothing ordinary about the works these art book experts identify—stop by to see what else makes the cut.

By Elizabeth Varnell

Pictured: Bettina Korek
Photo by Stefanie Keenan