Known for our fascinating selection of titles, stunning author events, enthusiastically diverse staff, and urban California aesthetic, DIESEL is the cutting-edge, high octane, community-radiating, independent neighborhood bookstore we all dream of hanging out in, getting imaginally turned on in, and literarily inspired by. We opened in 1989 in Northern California and now have two stores in Southern California ~ one in LA (in Brentwood) & one in San Diego (in Del Mar).
Authors we've hosted have included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Daniel Alarcón, Annie Barrows, Charles Baxter, David Byrne, Fritjof Capra, Alexander Cockburn, Robert Crais, Edwidge Danticat, Chitra Divakaruni, James Ellroy, Richard Ford, William Gibson, Barry Gifford, The Guerrilla Girls, Thom Gunn, Gregg Hurwitz, Ken Jennings, JT the Brick, Stacy Keach, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jeff Kinney, Michael Krasny, George Lakoff, Chang-Rae Lee, Annie Leibovitz, Terence McKenna, Anne Michaels, Czeslaw Milosz, Michael Moore, Camille Paglia, Chuck Palahniuk, George Pelecanos, Ian Rankin, Gabrielle Reece, Adrienne Rich, Mary Roach, David Sedaris, Gary Snyder, Norman Solomon, Paul Theroux, Marianne Williamson, Jeannette Winterson, Tobias Wolff, and many more.
Under our dieselbooks imprint we have published our first book Read 'Em and Weep: My Favorite Novels by Barry Gifford. It is an engaging collection of Gifford's anecdotes, reviews and responses to his favorite novels. At turns deeply moving, humorous, insightful and poignant, they are each prompting literary takes, intimate and accessible.
How have you stayed culturally alive without us? Hopefully by visiting other neighborhood bookstores, but now that you know...