Getting Out the Word : Hot House in North Hollywood celebrates the reading life, while encouraging writers to share their work during weekly literary evenings.

It’s not easy to be a book fiend in Los Angeles, which is sometimes characterized as the world capital of passive entertain ment. Yet San Fernando Valley litera ture lovers may be heartened by the arrival of Hot House, a North Hollywood coffee bar built on a reverence for good writing.

From its inventory of used books to its out-of-print search service to the portrait of Steinbeck over the kitchen door, the place celebrates the reading life, while encouraging writers to share their work during weekly literary evenings. Hot coffee, fresh cafe food and Saturday-night jazz complete its offerings, which are presented in an intimate, down-to-earth style that eschews trendiness.

“When you’re over 30, it’s easy to feel not quite part of the club in hip, young coffeehouses,” says Amy Dovaston, 32, who opened Hot House in August with her husband, Karl, and a partner, Jon Baer. “Here, by having good readings, good food and good music, we hope to draw a lot of different people--and get them reading more books.”

For Dovaston, the dream of a place where writers could read and musicians could jam goes back to her childhood, when her pianist father played with Charlie Parker and other jazz stars, and her writing mother hung out with beat greats such as Allen Ginsberg. Photos of Billie Holiday, Art Pepper and Dexter Gordon adorn the walls of Hot House, and jazz is always playing in the background.

Dovaston has worked at Dutton’s bookstores, mainly in North Hollywood, for more than eight years, and she has recruited a lot of her Dutton’s friends to read on Thursday nights. She has also, according to bookseller Davis Dutton, created Hot House in the same spirit with which she approached his store.

“Amy brought a love of contemporary beat writing and literature noir to us,” he says, “and she’s re-created that era very skillfully in this coffeehouse.”

As coffee-bar style goes, Hot House is spare but sophisticated, with homespun touches including a checkered floor and a rattan monkey hanging from the ceiling. Rosy light shines from wall sconces onto the usual mix-and-match furniture and a collection of ‘50s-era memorabilia. Board games pile on a window ledge, and a magazine rack offers everything from Vanity Fair to Mother Jones to Out in the ‘Hood magazine.

Evening customers, mostly in their 30s and 40s, who drift in to read or write over coffee in the quiet room, tend to stay for scheduled events, which never involve a cover charge or a minimum. “Having money,” says Dovaston, “is not a requirement for appreciating the program.”

What is required is the kind of attention customers such as Sarah Wood, a Cal State Northridge English major, bring to readings of fiction as well as poetry. According to Wood, “I’m unswervingly dedicated to story. Tell me a story and take me away.”

In a typical java parlor, noisy with coffee makers and restless, talkative customers, a prose reading can be hard to pull off. At Hot House, patrons stay in their chairs, the machines shut down and the readers--usually mature writers with professional track records--hold the floor on the strength of words rather than the power of theatrics.

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One recent evening, a blend of poetry and prose, featured actor and writer David Abbott of North Hollywood and two poets who write fiction, Beth Wolfson of Northridge and Suzanne Bazell of Santa Monica. Abbott’s short story, “Pity,” read like an action-packed meditation on the nature of dreams, memory and emotion.

Wolfson, who teaches poetry at Barnsdall Arts Center in Los Angeles, read several short, related prose pieces on childhood, in addition to some poems. Bazell, a registered nurse, presented poems about reunions, and the renewal and resolution of old conflicts.

“For me,” says Bazell, “reading my work is part of completing it. It’s the finishing of a thought.”

Wolfson described her own poetry as “pretty cerebral,” and speculated that she couldn’t have read it in a more typical coffeehouse setting. Hot House, she concluded, is unique, because “Amy is a gifted appreciator.”

Where and When

What: Literary readings.

Location: Hot House, 12123 Riverside Drive, North Hollywood.

Hours: Open readings at 8:30 p.m. the first Thursday of the month, other literary events at 8:30 p.m. most remaining Thursdays.

Price: Free.

Call: (818) 506-7058.