Michael Scott Moore's debut novel, Too Much of Nothing, is very different from Sweetness and Blood, but it is similar in that they are both odes, at least in part, to his hometown of Redondo Beach, CA. Moore is a reporter and chief stage critic for SF Weekly in San Francisco. He has also written for salon.com, San Francisco magazine, Bostonia magazine, and the New York Times, and runs a website at radiofreemike.com. He lives in San Francisco. Too Much of Nothing is the story of a teenage love triangle. The protagonist dies at the hands of his friend and narrates the story as a nefesh, a restless Jewish ghost that wanders the earth until put at ease, or so he believes from his understanding of the Zohar. The novel is rife with Holden Caulfield-esque prose about coming of age in mid-80s LA.

I don't often recommend a soundtrack for reading, but another librarian did a long time ago, for Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, and the idea stuck with me. If I were to recommend a soundtrack for this novel, it would be: Jello Biafra and Dead Kennedys, Bob Dylan, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs (because it’s set at Calaveras Beach and they have a song called "Surfer Calavera").

Incidentally, this past Friday, Australian Owen Wright won the QuickSilver Pro surfing competition in Long Beach, NY. For more, listen to NPR, or read about it in the New York Times. The surprising bit, to me, was that Long Beach not only has sufficient waves, but that Wright described it as having “[...] A-plus conditions out here.” “The first day, the waves were a little small for someone my size, but today was just perfect. This wave reminds me of one of my favorite point waves back home,” Wright said.