Sacramento author, Joan Didion. AP Photo/Kathy Willens

Sacramento book lovers can try the following five ways for looking beyond once-a-month book club meetings to scratch their local literary itch:

1. Subscribe to our local literary series – California Lectures. Join other regional book-lovers for a season of author lectures at the Crest Theater.  This season looks especially promising: Booker Prize-winning author of Possession, A.S. Byatt, Thursday, October 22, 2009; National Book Award and Academy Award winning author of The Cider House Rules, John Irving, Thursday, November 5, 2009; National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and bestselling author of Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese; James Beard Award winning New York Times Food Critic and memoirist of Tender at the Bone (one of the Arden Dimick's fall book club choices), Ruth Reichl, Friday, March 26, 2010; and NPR’s Peabody Award-winning host of Weekend Edition Saturday, and author of Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, Home and Away, Scott Simon, Monday, April 26, 2010.
2. Nurture your own inner novelist, in small-group fiction-writing workshops led by Fulbright-winning novelist and short story writer writer Valerie Fioravanti, who offers several writing workshops at her midtown location. She will be leading a six-session beginners writing workshop for six students, starting Monday, October 19th, 7-9 pm. The individual fee is $200 ($175 if paid-in-full by September 19th) This particular workshop is designed for writers with no previous writing instruction or workshop experience.
3. Attend One Book Sacramento events sponsored by Sacramento Public Library, Sacramento Bee, and Capitol Public Radio.  This year's activities, centered on Steve Lopez's The Soloist, will culminate with the author speaking to the Bee Book Club 6 p.m., Thursday, September 24, in the Tsakopoulos Library Galleria, at the Central Library, 828 I Street, Sacramento. Admission is free. Doors open at 5:15 p.m.
4. Read local authors. Some examples include: short story master Raymond Carver, (What We Talk About When We Talk About Love); former Bee reporter and National Book Award-winning novelist and screenwriter Pete Dexter (Paris Trout); National Book Award-winning, novelist, screenwriter and essayist Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem); Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dale Maharidge (And Their Children After Them); essayist and PBS commentator Richard Rodriguez (Hunger of Memory); muckraker and investigative journalist Lincoln Steffens; novelist and humorist Mark Twain;  National Book Award-winning William T. Vollmann (Europe Central); and controversial public intellectual Cornel West (Race Matters).
5. Shop at locally owned Sacramento bookstores, coffee houses and restaurants that nurture our literary life. Among them:

• The Avid Reader at the Tower, 1600 Broadway
• Beers Books, 915 S Street
• The Book Collector, 1008 24th Street, between J & K Streets
• Butch N Nellie's, 1827 I Street, (19th & I Streets)
• Carol's Books, 1913 Del Paso Blvd.
• The Coffee Garden, 2904 Franklin Blvd
• La Raza Galeria Posada, 1022-1024 22nd Street, between J and K streets, Sacramento
• Luna's Café, 1414 16th Street, Sacramento
• Queen Sheba's Restaurant, 1704 Broadway, (17th and Broadway), Sacramento
• Timed Tested Books, 1114 21st Street, Sacramento
• Underground Books, 2814 35th Street, next to the Guild Theater, Sacramento

Raymond Carver biography.