Ballet offers stars for auction

Ordinarily, dinner with a ballet dancer is nothing to get too excited about: “Care to share my carrot stick? You can have the big half . . . “

But check out the dinner-and-dancer possibilities on American Ballet Theatre’s new holiday auction site: Starting bid is $5,000 for the chance to nosh with ABT hottie Roberto Bolle, 33, in New York City, place and time to be arranged. “He’s gorgeous,” a company insider says, rather breathlessly, of the Italian star.

You can’t start bidding until Monday, but you can already visit the site to see the Bolle offer as well as a number of other attractive gift options, most in NYC but a few in Washington and Los Angeles; one L.A. offering is dinner with Brazilian principal dancer Marcelo Gomes, with whom Culture Monster would definitely not mind splitting a carrot stick with. In New York, it’s possible to have a meal with famed Russian ballerina Nina Ananiashvili during her farewell season with the company.

Other gifts, with starting bids ranging from $100 to $5,000, include weekend packages with ballet tickets, signed pointe shoes and photographs, and such experiential options as the chance to play stage manager during an ABT performance and to ride the pirate ship onstage during productions of “Le Corsaire” in New York or London.

The auction closes Dec. 15.

-- Diane Haithman

From: Culture Monster: All the arts, all the time

For more, go to latimes.com/culturemonster

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JACKET COPY

Penguin authors share holiday lists

Penguin got 37 of its authors to share the books that they plan to give -- and hope to receive -- this holiday season. Geraldine Brooks, Stuart O’Nan, Henry Winkler, Elizabeth Gilbert, Leonard Maltin and Karen Joy Fowler are among those who’ve revealed the books they like to read. Who would expect actor/director Winkler, a successful children’s book author, to be fond of crime novels?

One book that appears multiple times is “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz. Khaled Hosseini (“The Kite Runner”) finds it “hilarious, engaging, and profoundly moving and sad. A feast of language.” But if you happen to be friends with Hosseini, Laura Dave (“The Divorce Party”) and Michael Pollan (“In Defense of Food”), be warned -- you might find yourself unwrapping “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” three times. They’re all planning to give it as a gift.

The list is the most fun when an author provides an explanation for what they’re giving. It sounds almost like they’re sitting there after you’ve opened their package, explaining why you should love this book. Nick Hornby, for example, is pretty convincing:

I’m evangelical about Mark Harris’s “Pictures at a Revolution,” a loving, brilliantly researched account of the five movies nominated for the 1967 Best Picture Oscar, from conception to ceremony. It’s not only one of the best books about film I’ve ever read, but one of the best books about any artistic process.

Elizabeth Gilbert, who chronicled her spiritual journey and international travels in “Eat Pray Love,” says she’d like to get stories of “great adventurers like Captain Cook and Ernest Shackleton” because “with travel as expensive as it is these days, I’m looking forward to spending much of 2009 at home, reading about other people’s magnificent journeys!” If an author whose book spent more than 50 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list can’t afford to travel, the economy is really in trouble.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

From: Jacket Copy: book news and information

For more, go to latimes.com/jacketcopy

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BOOSTER SHOTS

Personalities in a car’s grille

A prehistoric part of the human psyche may account for why people tend to assign personalities to cars, say researchers writing in the December issue of the journal Human Nature.

The study, coauthored by Florida State University associate professor Dennis Slice, used a complex statistical analysis to show that many people see human facial features in the front ends of cars and that those characteristics project a personality, such as aggressive, angry or lovable. The researchers asked 40 people to view high-resolution, 3-D computer reconstructions and printed images of 38 actual car models from 2004-06, representing manufacturers from Ford to Mercedes.

One-third of the study participants associated a human or animal face with at least 90% of the cars. Headlights were perceived as eyes, the nose tended to be a grille or emblem and the additional air intake slots, the mouth.

People found elongated hoods, lower car bodies and more angular headlights were more powerful. Cars that had headlights with their upper edge relatively close to the midline and an upward shift of the car’s lateral-most points were perceived as childlike or submissive.

“In our study, people generally agreed with their ratings,” Slice said in a news release. “Thus, there must be some kind of consistent message that is being perceived in car fronts.”

Slice, who performed the research while at the University of Vienna, theorizes that people see personalities in cars because, as a species, we evolved to be highly attuned to gathering information about a person just by glancing at their face. What remains to be studied, he says, is whether people adopt the personality of their car while driving.

-- Shari Roan

From: Booster Shots: Oddities, musings and some news from the world of health.

For more, go to latimes.com/boostershots