Soup’s On for Book Lovers on the Strip

Jennifer shrieked, elbowing her girlfriend, Marla, in the ribs. “Did you see this ?�

The teen-age girls gawked at the cover of Moda, a splashy Italian fashion magazine. It was adorned with a crowd of rock stars assembled for British pop hero Bob Geldof’s wedding.

Nick Rhodes and Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran . . . David Bowie . . . all in tuxes and tails.

“I can’t believe this!� Marla sighed. “Look at Nick Rhodes. He’s. . . .� Marla held her breath as she stared intently at the magazine. Finally, she sputtered: “He’s gorgeous !�

Who says kids don’t read anymore. At Book Soup, a delightfully eclectic bookstore on the Sunset Strip, everyone reads--even if they’re just catching up with the lastest pop gossip.

Open Till Midnight

On a Friday night, Book Soup has almost as much action as Tower Records across the street. And no wonder--how many bookstores in early-to-bed Los Angeles are open until midnight, seven days a week?

Who cares if some of the imported fashion and celebrity magazines cost as much as half the books on the shelves (Moda goes for $10, while Mondo Uomo, a bimonthly fashion design publication, sells for $14.50).

Book Soup has something for everyone. The magazine rack by the door is stocked with everything from garish rock fanzines (Blitz) and weighty British periodicals (New Scientist with a cover feature on nuclear medicine) to much more exotic fare.

Outside, expatriates can pick up recent copies of hometown newspapers from London, Paris, Rome and Frankfurt. Back inside the store, literary hounds can snoop around the store’s extensive paperback fiction collection, which houses everything from Jean Auel to Evelyn Waugh.

Poetry Department

Book Soup also has a respectable science-fiction section, a sprawling poetry department and an outstanding mystery novel area, with lots of hard-to-find Jim Thompson thrillers. Other good bets include its well-stocked nonfiction department (with everything you wanted to read by John McPhee), a great theater section (including such obscure tracts as “Shakespeare on Sable: A History of Black Shakespearian Actors�) and a lively pop and classical music area, which offers everything from racy rock star biographies to a Glenn Gould Reader.

The store also has lots of oddities, including a fascinating mythology shelf, Maurice Sendak posters and such goofy gift items as “The Gumby Authorized Biography.�

Book-Signing Events

Happy to offer advice about locating rare volumes, the store proprietors also provide customized gift certificates as offerings for special occasions. The store also has frequent book-signing fetes--actor-director Dennis Hopper was on hand recently to sign copies of his new photography collection.

But the real appeal of Book Soup is its amicable, informal environment. Our bet is that business is good--if they’re 8 million stories in the Naked City, most of them are here, between the covers.

Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood; (213) 659-3110.