signs saying "full to capacity" last night, after so many people crowded on to the street to see hit author Dave Eggers talk about his new book and sign copies. I know he's a bit of a cult celebrity, but come on, this is hardly the latest Harry Potter -- it's a non-fiction account of a Muslim bloke who lived through Hurricane Katrina with the help of a canoe. Then there's Family, an intriguing shop that celebrates local underground talent, selling writing by a bunch of old drunks like Charles Bukowski and a generation of DIY-published new ones. I'm currently reading Bukowski's Post Office for the third time, lost in his reckless journeys around this very town weighed down by anger, hangovers and a sackful of letters that he hurls at his ungrateful customers and the schmucks who employ him. And then there's the wonderful and enormous Book Soup, stocking 60,000 hand-picked titles on that same Sunset Strip where Hugh Grant hand-picked his prostitute. These shops are seriously cool places to hang out -- some stay open until midnight on Fridays, full of hip young things with their nose in a book. Imagine! And people say that books are dead. If bookshops are thriving like this in LA, surely they can thrive anywhere. Ah, but what about the Kindle, you might ask, and all the other electronic book devices that are coming to kill off humble papyrus and steal our souls. Well, yes, change is the only constant and electronic