Special guest at Stephen Elliott’s Progressive Reading Series last week was none other than hilarious cartoonist Keith Knight, a Litquake regular since the early days, who has recently moved to Los Angeles (but we won’t hold that against him). Knight’s newest comic strip, The Knight Life, just found national syndication, and this year he published two highly-praised collections, I Left My Arse in San Francisco, and a massive anthology, The Complete K Chronicles. Keith’s work will be exhibited at the Cartoon Art Museum until November 9th. Stephen will host a special Litquake version of his reading series at the Make-Out Room on Wednesday, October 8, with an excellent lineup: Christopher D. Cook, Will Durst, Joe Loya, Lisa Margonelli, Ishmael Reed, and Ellen Sussman.

iPhone-owning book fans can rejoice, with the launch of the new Stanza reading interface. Now you can ride BART or sit in a café, whip out your phone and read San Francisco-centric classics like The Conqueror by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton, or the collected works by Ambrose Bierce, in their entirety. Gizmo hype addicts will note that Time magazine recently listed Stanza as one of their “Top 11 iPhone Applications.” Of course, if you want to read contemporary authors such as those featured in Litquake, pay for the download and support the arts!

Staff of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library sighed with relief last week upon recovery of two rare books stolen from the library earlier this summer. One of the missing tomes, The Freeman Code, was sold for $35,000 to a buyer in England. The other, The Maxwell Code, was recovered earlier this month in Columbus, Ohio. For those antiquarian aficionados keeping score of thefts related to our 19th president, The Maxwell Code (1795) was the first book printed in what is now Ohio, and contains the first printed record of the laws of the Northwest Territory. The Freeman Code (1798) is a reprint of The Maxwell Code. In this election year, it’s worth noting that Hayes was elected president by only one electoral vote.