Inside LA Librería’s new West Adams location, a hush falls over the thick crowd of multigenerational families. Angelica Sauceda, a librarian at Anaheim Public Libraries, faces an audience of young readers ready to hear the bilingual story of “La Siesta Perfecta.”

“Es hora,” she calls out. It’s story time.

On Sunday, the only children’s Spanish-language bookstore in Los Angeles invited customers to celebrate the grand opening of their biggest storefront yet. Back in 2012, founders Chiara Arroyo and Celene Navarrete set out with the goal of providing quality, imported Spanish-language titles to local schools and bilingual families. And their newly opened 2,400-square-foot location marks the moment they have been patiently waiting for — the ability to bring their community together in a space that finally fits.

“When we were an appointment-only showroom, people were always knocking on the door trying to get in. When we opened a small storefront, we didn’t have enough space for events. Most of the time, all the kids would have to be inside and all the parents wait outside,” said Arroyo. “We needed more space to move.”

Arroyo and Navarrete first crossed paths at their children’s elementary school, Edison Language Academy. Navarrete, a professor of coding and computer information systems at Cal State Dominguez Hills from Mexico, and Arroyo, a former film critic from Spain, both volunteered at the school’s book fair. Given the dual-immersion aspect of the school, they remember how few Spanish titles were being sold.

“We were surprised. We didn’t like the selection very much. Some [books] had mistakes or were full stereotypes,” Arroyo said. “Given how many people in L.A. are interested in learning Spanish or raising children in a multicultural environment, it was shocking that you couldn’t even find books in Spanish in a bilingual program.”

LA Librería co-founders Chiara Arroyo and Celene Navarrete at Sunday’s celebration of their larger space. In the early days, they operated their bookstore out of an old hair salon.

(Sarahi Apaez / Los Angeles Times)

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Instead of complaining, they took action. With Navarro’s background in technology and Arroyo’s experience in the publishing industry, the two were able to muster enough books together for the next fair, where they had their own curated Spanish-language literature table. Hand-picking each storybook, the pair says they are able to understand the market and the community’s needs so well because they encounter the same difficulties with their own bilingual families. As the word got around, they began selling at schools all around L.A. until officially becoming La Librería in 2012.

As busy parents, the duo couldn’t commit to being in a store for eight hours a day, so they started off with an appointment-only showroom model. Operating out of an old hair salon in West Adams, the demand for their collection only continued to increase. In 2015, they settled into a small office space on Washington Boulevard in Mid-City where they were able to open up a more typical-looking bookstore. They began to host readings and events, but given how many people would show up, they say the space quickly became unsustainable.

“When we were selling at these fairs, many people didn’t even know these kinds of books existed until they saw them. Let alone know they are available in a city like Los Angeles and in their schools,” said Arroyo. “To have access to these books in your family’s language is a huge thing and can open up a discussion, especially because the language has been so stigmatized in the past.”

Skimming the shelves while carrying her daughter, new mother Crystal Morales recalls her own relationship to Spanish. Because of the language’s marginalization, she was taught to understand her parents’ tongue but never to speak it. Now living in La Verne, she wants to ensure her baby can speak both English and Spanish fluently.

“I don’t remember having any Spanish books in my [childhood] home, and now I would say half of the library at home is in Spanish. I am definitely a ‘no sabo kid’ and I don’t want my daughter to grow up the way I did,” Morales said. “Now Spanish is so embraced and the more bilingual you are, the more of an asset it is.”

Today, LA Librería is housed in a 2,400-square-foot space whose hybrid look is part modern style and part old-fashioned facade. With glass front-facing windows and raw wooden bookshelves, the store is filled with anything from graphic novels and picture books to poetry anthologies and adult novels — a new venture for the duo. With over 250 publishers in their index, the shop prioritizes a selection specifically meant for L.A.’s Spanish speakers up to the age of 15.

“We have learned that the book industry puts Latinos in the same box and we try to do the opposite. We try to represent and diversify the selection,” Navarrete said. “They don’t know about the diversity in Latin America. We wanted to reflect that in the collection.”

Averi Johnson, 3, reads a book from LA Librería.

(Sarahi Apaez / Los Angeles Times)

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Sheila Pastor, a Spanish teacher in Santa Monica, had barely started browsing the stacks and was already carrying four books. Having taught Spanish for over a decade, the educator says she’s rarely able to find a resource as diverse and accessible as LA Librería. She plans on bringing her students in the coming weeks to experience the store for themselves and participate in a few workshops.

“In the past, I haven’t been able to find many resources, so I often create them myself through board games and stuff,” she said. “I like to see that there’s something for everyone. There’s these huge books with big pictures for the little ones and stories that the older ones will like too.”

When looking through the vast selection, visitors can find stories from almost every Latin American country and even a few in Indigenous languages like Nahuatl and Zapotec.

“When you go to a bookstore in Mexico, you are not asking if they have a book from a different country. Other stores don’t really import from other places. But that’s what makes Los Angeles unique,” Arroyo said.

Going forward, Arroyo and Navarrete plan to expand LA Librería’s workshop programming, host professional development events and continue bringing more publishers into their selection. As they continue establishing themselves as a community hub, literary representation remains their focus.

“People want books from their own countries,” Navarrete said. “And we are confident to tell them, that’s our commitment.”

96-fame director C Prem Kumar returns to the director’s chair after nearly five years to helm Sathyam Sundaram, a slice-of-life film on relationships and nostalgia. The film stars Aravind Swamy and Karthi in lead roles, who play the titular characters of Sathyam and Sundaram respectively. Sathyam and Sundaram is originally titled Meiyazhagan in Tamil. While the Tamil film is set in Thanjavur and Chennai, the Telugu film’s locations have been changed to Guntur and Vizag respectively. Sathyam Sundaram is produced by Jyothika and Suriya, who have previously backed critically acclaimed films like Soorarai Pottru (Aakasame Nee Haddura in Telugu) and Jai Bhim.

What is it about?

Sathyam (Aravind Swamy) and his family lose their beloved ancestral house in Guntur due to a property litigation in 1996, following which they tearfully leave the town and move to Chennai. 22 years later, Sathyam makes a trip back to Guntur to attend his sister’s wedding. What happens when Sathyam bumps into an overly friendly childhood acquaintance in the village (Sundaram) forms the crux of the story.

Performances

Karthi is the heart and soul of the film and he is the reason why everyone connects with the story. He also elicits the most laughs out of the audience. Aravind Swamy plays an introverted character with a lot of trauma. His screen presence fades a bit when he is with Karthi, but nevertheless, he delivers a strong performance.

Sri Divya and Devadarshini play the wives of these main characters. Despite their limited screentime, they are both endearing and memorable. Rajkiran, as Sathyam’s uncle Sukumar, is extremely relatable and effective, reminding a lot of us of our uncles.

Technicalities

The film has extremely emotional and soul stirring music by Govind Vasantha. The intent and meaning of the original Tamil lyrics of the songs have also been translated competently by Rakendu Mouli.

The film’s original location Thanjavur, with its ancient temples, plays a major role in determining the film’s overall production values. Though the makers of the film have changed the location in the Telugu version to Guntur, it is hard to miss the effect of Thanjavur in the film.

In addition to the friendship between Sathyam and Sundaram, the film also emphasises the relationship these actors share with animals of all kinds, ranging from cats, parrots to bulls and snakes. It adds a wholesome and heartwarming flair to the overall narrative.

The cinematography, by Mahendiran Jayaraju, plays a huge role in conveying the film’s soothing-yet-hard hitting themes. The result makes the film look both real and cinematically beautiful at the same time.

Thumbs up

Karthi & Aravind Swamy
90s nostalgia
Writing
Worldbuilding
Music

Thumbs down

Runtime
Slow paced narrative

Analysis

Sathyam Sundaram is a beautiful trip down the memory lane. Much like the director’s previous film 96 (and its Telugu remake Jaanu), a majority of the film takes place in the space of one night with just two characters.

Movies that take place entirely within the span of a single night fit well in the thriller genre, but clearly, 96 and Sathyam Sundaram are exceptions to this rule. Each dialogue, scene, sub-plot and arc in the film leaves a person with a smile and a good feeling in their hearts.

The film slowly but steadily wins the heart of everyone with its sincere emotions. A couple of scenes in particular, have the potential of making the audience tear up, due to their highly effective and relatable emotionality.

The makers have taken good care to ensure that it appeals well to Telugu audience, with attention to detail given to the dialogues, comedy and lyrics. This film will particularly impress 90s kids, with its bicycle sub-plot, flashback portions in the village and the actors humming iconic 90s songs like Singarala.

The film could have been much easier to enjoy though, had it been 30-40 minutes shorter (the runtime is 177 minutes long). The film’s makers could have also gone for a different title since it gives a spoiler to one of the film’s biggest mysteries. All in all, Sathyam Sundaram is a positive step in the direction of good, soulful cinema. However, those who do not enjoy slice-of-life emotional dramas or three-hour long films must definitely think twice before watching Sathyam Sundaram.

Verdict: Emotional Journey Of Pure Hearts

Rating: 3/5

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She didn’t spot any glaring red flags the first time she stalked his Instagram page. No photos of him boarding a private jet. Zero reels showing off bottle service sparklers. Nary a shirtless mirror selfie in sight.

Instead, what Erin Foster found as she scrolled through the account of the cute guy from her gym was disarmingly wholesome. Shots of him posing with his parents or playing on a local basketball team.

The photographic evidence led her to two possible conclusions: Either he was too good for her, or he was too nice — the kind of guy who’d fall all over himself trying to please her, causing her to inevitably get the ick.

Her assumptions about Simon Tikhman would end up, thankfully, being incorrect. But Foster’s early social media investigation into her new crush did not uncover a big part of his identity: He was Jewish. That didn’t matter to her — but the fact that she was a gentile mattered to him.

Tikhman mentioned it the first time they ever hung out in 2018, chatting over juice after the gym — “so L.A.,” they say in unison, rolling their eyes. “Whoever I marry, she has to be Jewish,” he’d said.

The story of how the couple fell in love while grappling with their different cultural backgrounds would go on to serve as the inspiration for Foster’s new show, “Nobody Wants This.” The series, which debuted on Netflix this week, stars Adam Brody as Noah, a rabbi who catches feelings for sex-advice podcaster Joanne, played by Kristen Bell.

Tikhman, 40, is not a spiritual leader — he co-founded a music management company. He doesn’t even consider himself particularly religious. But his parents fled the former Soviet Union in 1979 after being persecuted for being Jewish. When they settled in San Francisco, they instilled in Tikhman the notion that he had an obligation to continue the Jewish lineage.

“I really respect my parents and know the adversity they went through because they were Jewish,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint them.”

Foster, meanwhile, had been raised without religion in a nontraditional family. Her father, the songwriter David Foster, has been married five times — his second wife was Erin’s mom, former model Rebecca Dyer, with whom he had three of his six children. One of the men her mother dated later was Jewish, and Foster says she enjoyed going to temple during that period more than church. A decade later, she opted to attend a few classes about Judaism with a friend who was trying to delve deeper into her religion.

So the idea of converting — it didn’t scare her. Because of her “complicated family structure,” Foster found herself craving the type of tradition she never grew up with.

Kristen Bell and Adam Brody star in “Nobody Wants This,” which is loosely based on Erin Foster’s own love life.

(Stefania Rosini / Netflix)

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“A big part of what drew me to Simon was that he was someone who was funny and cool and modern, but he had a bit of an old-fashioned feel about him,” says Foster, 42. “He’ll be like, ‘Hey, we should go check in on that person, or ‘We need to go see your grandma.’ I didn’t grow up with etiquette around those things.”

It’s early afternoon when Tikhman arrives home to the couple’s West Hollywood apartment, only a seven-minute drive from his office, which is housed in the Live Nation building. They’ve been living here for two years while the home they bought in Hancock Park is renovated. It’s a modern, new build with top-end amenities, but their floor-to-ceiling windows also overlook a grocery store parking lot.

Before coming over to kiss Foster, Tikhman peeks his head into the nursery where the couple’s 4-month-old daughter, Noa, has just woken up from a nap. The baby was born in this very apartment in May, the result of 20 grueling rounds of IVF over six years. After the birth, Foster posted pictures on Instagram of herself laboring here in an inflatable tub.

Online and on “The World’s First Podcast,” which she hosts with her sister Sara, Foster is exceptionally open about her life. When Tikhman initially accepted Foster’s Instagram friend request — he strategically, and annoyingly, waited two days to do so — he wasn’t thrilled to learn that she was a public figure.

“It wasn’t an ideal situation,” he admits to thinking. “I’m just more of a private person.”

It wasn’t enough to stop him from dating her. But a few years later, when she told him she’d sold a TV show idea based on their love story, he freaked out. It was one thing if Foster was in the spotlight, but he didn’t want to be. So he asked her not to move forward with writing the show.

“Simon is not sweet in a wimpy way. He has a feminist soul with a masculine energy,” Foster says of her husband.

(Courtesy of Erin Foster)

It was 2022, and she hadn’t written a word in three years. After a brief acting stint in her 20s — her biggest part was a five-episode arc on “The O.C.” — Foster made a career shift in 2012, landing a job as a staff writer on Ryan Murphy’s NBC show “The New Normal.” She and her sister Sara went on to co-create the VH1 mockumentary series “Barely Famous,” spoofing their Hollywood-adjacent lives. It lasted two seasons, and then in 2018, Foster sold a pilot called “Daddy Issues” to 20th Century Fox. She starred opposite Don Johnson as a girl whose father starts dating her best friend; it didn’t get picked up.

So Foster pivoted again. She partnered with Sara, working as creative heads for Bumble and then co-launching a fashion line, Favorite Daughter. At 35, she met Tikhman. But being in a healthy relationship wasn’t exactly a font of inspiration. She’d always written about characters who self-sabotaged, who made the same mistakes over and over without getting to the root of their issues. Without that cynical worldview, her writer’s block overwhelmed her.

“When I met Simon, I really felt like I might have to choose between being happy with the person I was meant to be with, or being inspired,” she says. “Because there was nothing funny about what was happening.”

“When I met Simon, I really felt like I might have to choose between being happy with the person I was meant to be with, or being inspired,” Erin Foster says.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

That changed when she started going through the conversion process, which took place over 10 weeks at American Jewish University. Toward the end of the journey, she faced questions from a trio of rabbis about her intentions:

Are you sure you want to do this? It’s not easing being Jewish.

Are you ready to be hated by people?

If someone is being antisemitic and asks who is Jewish, are you going to stand up?

If you and your husband get divorced, will you keep being Jewish?

They were inquiries she’d never pondered before. She quickly nodded and agreed, but the quandaries stuck with her. It sparked her creativity for the first time in years, and soon she’d sold “Nobody Wants This” to Fox. (It was originally called “Shiksa,” a word that Brody’s character describes as an old Yiddish insult that “these days, just means you’re a hot, blonde non-Jew.”)

The only thing was, she never ran it past Tikhman.

“He was like, ‘Sorry, you sold a show about what?’” Foster recalls. “I immediately panicked. I hadn’t even considered it [being a problem]. To me, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m taking our story and turning it into something cool. You’re welcome.’ And he had a different point of view.”

“I’m from a very private family,” Tikhman says, reiterating his perspective. “My mom would always tell us stories about how if you said the wrong thing in the Soviet Union as a Jew, you could be taken to jail.”

Fearful that the show could harm her relationship, Foster started trying to wish it away. She dragged her feet on a pilot script, hoping that the producers might just forget about the idea eventually. They didn’t.

But one of the EPs, Steve Levitan — the creator of “Modern Family” — had a script suggestion that helped to solve some of Foster’s problems. Noah was initially written to be a lot more like Tikhman, leaving Levitan unsure whether the stakes between a Jew and gentile who fall in love were high enough for a TV audience. A rabbi and a gentile who fall in love? Now there was some real conflict.

It also helped that Tikhman’s parents were totally on board, despite their son’s fears. She spent hours on the phone with his dad talking about potential storylines, and later during filming, she put her mother-in-law in the background of a scene shot at Sinai Temple.

“Also, this is what Erin’s supposed to be doing,” Tikhman says now. “She’s a writer and she’s incredible at it. I was sitting here the other day watching an episode and thinking, ‘I wish I was as good as this character.’ ”

“He was like, ‘Sorry, you sold a show about what?’’ ” Erin Foster recalls her husband, Simon Tikhman, saying. “I immediately panicked. I hadn’t even considered it [being a problem].”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The obsession with Brody’s hot rabbi will no doubt rival the early 2000s fan frenzy over Seth Cohen, his character who was a core of “The O.C.” He’s emotionally available, almost immediately telling Bell’s character that he’s interested in a serious relationship with her. He pulls out chairs, listens to her podcast to get to know her better, buys flowers for her mother. And he teaches her about Jewish traditions in a way that’s not condescending, like taking her outside to see the stars to mark the end of Shabbat.

Not all of that happened in real life, but Foster says the core of the character is true to Tikhman’s essence. She cites an example: When they’d been dating for only four months, she had a work trip booked to Dallas for 24 hours. Tikhman found out and said he’d join. Foster was confused — it was such a short trip.

“He goes, ‘Doesn’t your grandma live there? I’ve never met her and I need to,’ ” says Foster, who hadn’t even been planning to see her. But sure enough, Tikhman came, they all met and soon, he and grandma were talking on the phone a couple of times a week.

Foster genuinely seems to view her spouse in an exalted light — frequently referencing his “goodness” or how much “better” he is than her. Predictably, this drives him crazy.

“Simon just exudes this energy that I assumed wouldn’t match up with mine — that I’d be too negative,” she says. “In my past, if I ever chose someone who was good, they were too soft for me — too sweet or a pushover. And Simon is not sweet in a wimpy way. He has a feminist soul with a masculine energy.”

As if on cue, the couple’s new nanny walks over with Noa; the caretaker just started two days ago and speaks Russian, which they hope their daughter will eventually learn.

“This is my other girl,” Tikhman says proudly, pinching the child’s cheek.

The reason Foster talks so much about him — about how happy their family makes her — is that she wasn’t always sure this was in the cards for her. She did, after all, date Chad Michael Murray in her 20s.

But for a long time, she enjoyed being single. She liked flirting and reveled in her routines — drinking her morning coffee in solace in her breakfast nook. She wondered who she’d ever want to give that up for, who she could deal with in her space all the time.

“I didn’t think it was possible, and I had gotten kind of OK with that,” she says. “And now I have to stop myself from going over and sitting in his lap. I’m obsessed with Simon; he’s my muse. And this show is like a love letter to him.”