popularity

In 2015, musician Roberto Carlos launched Boleros de Noche, an annual concert series held in Los Angeles that aimed at preserving and showcasing the Latin American bolero music genre.

This year, the event is celebrating its 10th anniversary with performances at the Ford on Aug. 1 by Puerto Rican singer and former Calle 13 member iLe and L.A.-based bolero trio Voz Bohemia

On Friday, the city of L.A. honored the series’ decade-long run and legacy of uplifting bolero music by declaring Aug.1 “Día del Bolero.”

Boleros are ballads noted for their slow tempo and romantic lyrics accompanied by a crooning vocal style. Though the genre originated in Cuba, it quickly gained popularity across Latin America, with each culture putting their own spin on it. In the early 20th century, the evolving sound of boleros was shaped by the Cuban group Trio Matamoros, Mexican composer Agustín Lara, Puerto Rican artist Rafael Hernández and Ecuadorian singer Julio Jaramillo.

The genre saw a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s and ‘90s when famed Mexican artists Juan Gabriel and Luis Miguel embraced the bolero sound. In recent years, the bolero movement has been modernized and electrified by artists such as Mon Laferte, Romeo Santos, Adrian Quesada and Kali Uchis. In the last five years, Quesada has released two bolero albums, “Boleros Psicodélicos” and “Boleros Psicodélicos II,” that mix the genre’s classic sounds with elements of psychedelic rock.

“Over the past decade, Boleros de Noche has presented numerous concerts featuring both local and international artists, has brought together thousands of people across the city to bask in the lush orchestration of this music,” said City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who presented Carlos with the honor. “For so many in the Latino community and beyond, this isn’t just music, it’s memory, it’s home, and perhaps most importantly, it’s heritage being carried forward.”

Raised in L.A. County by parents who immigrated from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, Carlos says he first fell in love with live performance and bolero music in his midteens, when he would frequent the now-defunct Teatro los Pinos in South Gate.

He yearned for that same level of comfort and awe at music and wanted to share that with a larger audience. The first iteration of Boleros de Noche took place in 2015 at an art gallery in Echo Park.

“Over the years, I have heard countless stories from audience members who tell me how this music reminds them of their parents, grandparents, first loves and family traditions,” Carlos said Friday at City Hall. “Ten years ago, bolero was rarely part of our city’s cultural conversation, and today bolero programming can be found across Los Angeles, and I’m honored that Boleros de Noche has been a driving force behind its growth.”

Boleros de Noche has sold out shows at the Ford over the last few years and has featured artists such as Gaby Moreno, Marisoul and the legendary trio Los Panchos. In 2025, the event made its debut at Chicago’s historic Symphony Center.

The bolero genre’s popularity and cultural significance has been spotlighted outside of L.A. in recent years as well.

On Dec. 5, 2023, UNESCO, the United Nation’s agency aimed at safeguarding social and cultural foundations, recognized the musical genre as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

As part of Friday’s ceremony, Carlos and his bolero group Los Rebeldes Románticos performed several tunes, including the Mexican bolero classic “Sabor a Mí.”

Last year, Carlos spoke with The Times about his ambitions for Boleros de Noche and the mentality that drives the event series.

“At Boleros de Noche, [I want] for us to speak in Spanish, to feel recognized, to do this music as a celebration for all these artists that unfortunately became background music for a lot of like weddings and quinceañeras,” he said. “How about if we celebrate them and give them recognition? How about if, through my events, I can take people back to the 1940s to my experience at Teatro los Pinos?”

Given recent attacks on Latinos on the local and national levels, Carlos said he hoped his events would create a safe and welcoming gathering place.

“It’s about bolero music. It’s about community. It’s about people. It’s about the musicians,” he said. “Many of the musicians were undocumented. They brought this music to L.A. through their hometowns.”

In the age of Ozempic, the buzziest hardcovers are getting smaller — and slip right into your Baggu. At Book Soup in West Hollywood, the bestselling hardcover fiction display is marked with laminated cards that denote the book’s place in the top 10, with each one cut snugly into the popular hardcover frame of 6-by-9 inches. But lately, more of the books rising to the top wear the placard noticeably looser.

I should know, I work at Book Soup so I spend a lot of time staring at this display and can tell you, the answer to this problem is definitely to print out smaller cards cut to the little sister “trim size” of 5-by-8 inches — or 5½-by-8¼ to be specific.

While the New York Times bestsellers from 2025 skew in favor of the 6-by-9 trim, the popularity of 5-by-8 books appears to be on the rise. Current utilizers of the smaller cut include the buzzy Vanderbilt heir Belle Burden’s “Strangers,” George Saunders’ darkly humorous “Vigil” Lena Dunham’s millennial-tinged tell-all “Famesick” and the infamously tablet-sized “Transcription” from Ben Lerner.

1/5

“Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage” by Belle Burden  (The Dial Press)

2/5

“Famesick: A Memoir” by Lena Dunham  (Random House)

3/5

“Vigil: A Novel” by George Saunders  (Random House)

4/5

“Transcription: A Novel” by Ben Lerner  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

5/5

“Lost Lambs” by author Madeline Cash  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Gretchen Achilles is the director of interior design at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Achilles recently implemented the 5-by-8 cut for one of this year’s breakout hits, “Lost Lambs” by Madeline Cash. “It’s a tone,” she says. “Smaller trim sizes have an intimacy. … You want to echo what’s going on in the text as an experience for the reader.”

According to Achilles, FSG frequently implements the 5-by-8 trim size. She said that length is the No. 1 factor when deciding to employ it, followed by genre. She listed literary fiction, memoir, biography, and essay collections as the defining genres of the smaller size books.

Caroline Mason is a writer in New York whose debut novel “An Endless Cycle of Evenings” from Hyperion Avenue is slated for 2027; she runs the Instagram account @literarycrushes. Mason described a 5-by-8 hardcover as shorthand for a specific book she seeks out when she is in a bookstore because it often signals a character-driven novel. “It’s my favorite kind of book,” Mason says. She adds that it’s also Instagram-friendly.

“Holding the book up to take a photo of it is easier,” she says with a laugh. “Although I do sometimes still drop it.”

Dahlia de la Vega is an L.A.-based Bookstagrammer who runs the page @ofpagesandprint. According to De la Vega, she finds the shrunken books more approachable. “When I sit down to read a small hardcover, it almost feels like I’m reading a journal,” she says. “Whereas when I read a large hardcover, it almost feels like I need a journal to jot down notes about what’s happening.”

Ethan Mann, my colleague and a supervisor at Book Soup, told me he remembers the place he was both mentally and physically when he purchased a 5-by-8 hardcover copy of “The Parade” by Dave Eggers. (Right before the pandemic struck at CSUN campus store at Cal-State Northridge). “It’s easier to attach relevance to the specific feel of [the book] because it seems one of a kind,” he says.

Mann adds that hardcovers are sometimes a tough sell on the floor. They are often derided for their cost, and customers declare they will wait till the paperback comes out. But the smaller hardcover has the benefit of fitting into nearly any bag.

Esther Margolis is a publishing veteran and the founder of Newmarket Press. She says that the 5-by-8 hardcover is nothing new. According to Margolis, the smaller trim size was previously the industry standard for U.S.-based publishing houses, and any fluctuation is due to the evolution of printing technology.

“Unlike for mass-market paperbacks, hardcover books were shelved, so it didn’t matter that the books were different sizes,” Margolis says. “They didn’t have to fit into a pocket.”

The popularity of the 5-by-8 hardcover is, at the very least, indicative of a shift in what I witness consumers at Book Soup seeking out. With social media making it easier than ever to connect over the act of reading, or looking like you are reading, cover design and presentation — and how it cuts through the noise of the attention economy— is perhaps a factor too.

“A small hardback is like a Labubu,” my co-worker Mann says. “ The feeling in your hands isn’t just about books — it’s about all cute things. … We like small things we can control.”

The success of the publishing industry could never rest on the tiny shoulders of the small hardcover. It may not even represent any changes in production. But on the bestsellers display at your favorite local indie, it represents the small pleasure of palming a near-pocket-size book in your hands.

And, yes, maybe Instagrammability too.

Messinger is a writer in L.A. who runs the Substack adumbmessinger.

The Dodgers are too good, and too rich. If the owners of other major league teams ultimately deem that combination so objectionable that they shut down the sport this winter because of it, they will risk a rupture in one of the greatest fan bases in American sports history.

The four million tickets the Dodgers sold last season tells one part of the story. Here is an arguably better one: For decades, the Dodgers and Lakers have dominated Los Angeles sports and left every other team far behind in popularity.

For now, after back-to-back World Series championships, the Dodgers have left even the Lakers far behind in popularity, and every other team in town even further behind.

In a Loyola Marymount survey asking Los Angeles County residents to identify their favorite among the 12 pro sports teams within the local media market, nearly half picked the Dodgers.

The Dodgers’ lead over the Lakers — 43% to 28% — represented the largest gap between the teams in the nine editions of the survey, first conducted in 2014 by the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

The Rams ranked third, at 7%, followed by the Kings at 5% and the Angels at 4%.

The two women’s teams — Angel City FC and the Sparks — tied for last, each with less than 1% of the vote. Even when the study separated votes by gender, the two women’s teams got less than 1% of the vote from women.

As recently as 2018, five teams beyond the Dodgers and Lakers — the Angels, Clippers, Galaxy, Kings and Rams — attracted at least 4% of the vote. In this year’s survey, only the Rams did.

“I’m a big Rams fan,” said Fernando Guerra, the center’s director, “and I still put the Dodgers first.

“I love all these teams. But, when you have to choose one, it’s the Dodgers.”

Dodgers president Stan Kasten pointed to the popularity and excellence of the players, the cherished ballpark and the generational fan support as factors contributing to the top ranking.

“If you have a lot of good elements but you don’t win, you’re not going to be as high,” Kasten said. “And, if you win but you don’t have the other elements, you’re not going to be as high.

“I think, right now, we’re as close as you can be to clicking on all cylinders.”

Beyond the winning, Guerra cited Shohei Ohtani as a driving force behind the Dodgers’ popularity, and not just as a tourist attraction, merchandise driver, and the foremost product endorser in sports.

In 2018, Ohtani’s debut season with the Angels, 8% of fans that identified themselves as Asian picked the Angels as their favorite team and 34% picked the Dodgers — a terrific showing for the Angels, since the study polls residents in L.A. County, not Orange County.

That demographic this year: 4% picked the Angels, 47% picked the Dodgers.

In their 10 years since returning to Los Angeles, the Rams have made seven playoff appearances and two Super Bowl appearances, winning one. All that, and a half-century in their previous run in L.A., and their membership in the most popular sports league in America, and the best they could do was 7%.

“It’s just tough to break the Lakers’ and Dodgers’ hold,” Guerra said. “It’s not like we don’t love the Rams or the others. It’s just not your top priority.”

The Lakers and Dodgers have combined to win 20 championships in Los Angeles. The other 10 teams that call this market home have combined to win 16.

In the 13 seasons since Mark Walter and Co. bought the Dodgers, the team has won 12 division titles, made five World Series appearances, and won three championships. In the same time, the Lakers have won three division titles, advanced past the first round of the playoffs twice, and won one championship.

Walter bought a controlling interest in the Lakers last year. He has installed Lon Rosen, formerly the Dodgers’ executive vice president and chief marketing officer, as the Lakers’ president of business operations.

“When the Lakers are winning a lot of championships, they’re No. 1,” Rosen said. “When the Dodgers are, they’re No. 1.

“It’s a good position to be in, since we control both teams, and both teams are highly successful.”

In this moment, the Dodgers are highly successful.

“The Lakers and Dodgers are going to be neck and neck very soon,” Rosen said. “The Lakers will 100% be champions again soon.”

The Dodgers do not concede the days of neck and neck will return. Kasten, remember, said the Dodgers were as close as they could be to clicking on all cylinders.

“We don’t take that for granted,” he said. “We know we can do even better.”