Surfing Calaveras Beach

Too Much of Nothing is the title of a new novel by Michael Scott Moore set in the fictional South Bay town of Calaveras Beach, in which a Jewish surfer-teenager-ghost narrates the last months of his life in 1984. Moore, who reads at Skylight Books on April 10 at 7 p.m., is stage critic for SF Weekly and the editor of Radio Free Mike, a Northern California blog. He waxes here about the literary allure of L.A. and the beach towns.