The Festival of Books app is ready for download

For those who feel strange if they don’t have a smartphone on hand, modern technology has made navigating the L.A. Times Festival of Books easy. The new L.A. Times Festival of Books app is now available to download for free at iTunes and at Google Play.

The app is searchable, so you can find out where and when your favorite authors are reading. If you’re listening to a panel and want to know more about one of the authors, you can drill down to learn more about them.

There’s a custom schedule function, which was super-helpful last year for planning out the panels I wanted to attend. Because I’m old-school, I also carried around a copy of the print schedule, but the app was really handy.

Handy, in part, because it has maps. Even someone who attended USC and expects to know her way around (like me) may be surprised to find that a brick building and a grassy lawn are where a parking lot used to be.

That was all available last year. Something new you can do in 2013 is upload a photo to our #whatareyoureading gallery. It’s already online, in this Facebook gallery -- in fact, you can upload to it now, without using the app, if you like.

About 400 authors, chefs, celebrities, the USC marching band and more are scheduled to appear at the L.A. Times Festival of Books. Download the free app and start planning now -- and don’t forget to order advance tickets if you can.

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