As the pages of history turn, we find ourselves reflecting on a remarkable milestone—the 30th Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the largest book festival in the United States, held on April 26-27, 2025. Set against the stunning backdrop of the University of Southern California campus, this annual celebration of literature brought together thousands of book lovers, authors, and industry professionals for a weekend brimming with literary magic.
Attracting around 150,000 attendees from Southern California and beyond, the festival was a testament to the enduring appeal of literature and the community it fosters. Each event, each conversation, and each shared moment contributed to a rich tapestry of experiences that celebrated the diverse voices and stories that shape our world.
This year, Citi of Books was thrilled to be part of this vibrant gathering, where the love for literature was palpable in the air. Whether you were a lifelong bibliophile or a curious newcomer exploring the world of books, the festival provided a unique opportunity to connect with fellow enthusiasts and share our passion for the written word.
As we look back on this unforgettable weekend, we invite you to join us in reliving the highlights of Citi of Books’ gallery during the 30th Los Angeles Times Festival of Books—a true celebration of the literary arts! A book included in the gallery “According To My Father” by Andrew Grof.
Andrew Grof was born and raised in Hungary. After fleeing the communist regime with his family, he emigrated to the United States. He is the author of four critically acclaimed novels, all published by Sunstone Press: The Goldberg Variations (also translated and published by Argumentum Press in Hungary, 2014), Everyone Loves Ronald McDonald, Artists, and Lost Loves. He currently resides in Miami, Florida, after retiring from Florida International University as a humanities librarian and adjunct professor of English and Honors Studies.
In the book, “According To My Father,” the narrator welcomes readers to an absurdist realm that knows no bounds to space or time. Seldom do we reach the carnage of the Crusades before a zeppelin fly over Renaissance Florence’s Arno, and before we can even gather our thoughts, Allied bombing reduces Cologne to ruins. Next, we find ourselves in fin-de-siecle Vienna sharing an espresso with Freud.
According to the narrator’s father, appropriately unnamed and unnamable, historical time is a flow of events endlessly repeating themselves, where what is true one moment is false the next, and what was once beautiful is now hideous. Everything is both earthly serious and as airy as life itself. Put another way, true survival consists in this: trust nothing and no one yet loves everything and everyone.
This is how the narrator’s father achieves perfection. He is the perpetual student, unbound by place and time, who learned the art of love from Sappho, war from Napoleon (“call me Boni”), and climbed the steep scaffold with a refreshing drink for the hard-working Michelangelo. In his many incarnations (learned from Merlin, no doubt), Father’s ongoing struggle is on behalf of the downtrodden and against the obscenely powerful. The history of the world itself is too short to fully contain such an individual, just as it was too short to enfold Cervantes’ great Don.
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