From left: Arianna Huffington, Jacob Weisberg and Deborah Needleman; Adrian Grenier

When Arianna Huffington throws one of her many parties at her Brentwood home, she is usually a very engaged hostess. The sort who, when she spots a guest standing alone, will strike up a conversation for just long enough to reel in another guest, make introductions and then politely excuse herself when the two have become fast friends.

Few of her guests probably noticed, but she seemed slightly preoccupied on Tuesday night, when she hosted a fete for Slate.com editor Jacob Weisberg for his newly published book, The Bush Tragedy.  Arianna, as usual, started the night at the door giving each and every guest who arrived a kiss on the cheek. And from her living room, she toasted Weisberg, mentioning how he had been so welcoming of "the new kid on the block" when she launched Huffingtonpost.com.

Weisberg returned the compliment, telling me, "She generates this atmosphere that makes people want to be around her. The crowd comes to her."

But afterwards, as guests—including Tracey Ullman (who does a spot-on Arianna impersonation in her upcoming Showtime series), novelist Bruce Wagner, screenwriter Stephen Gaghan with his wife Minnie Mortimer, Entourage star Adrian Grenier, producer Lawrence Bender, and Huffington Post editor-at-large Willow Bay—milled about the party, Arianna kept disappearing into her office.

I found her surrounded by a clutch of personal assistants, one of whom had handed her a mocked-up copy of her next book, Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America. A bit embarrassed to be found out of the party mix, she explained, "Today is my deadline!"  Knopf, which will publish the book in April, had sent her galleys on Friday and wanted her corrections back first thing after the long Presidents' Day weekend. "You know how it is," she said. "You think  you have so much time until Monday." Arianna had sent the first half back before the party. Then, she says, "I got an email from my editor: What time are you getting the second half back?" So here she was, ably juggling throwing a party for one book while putting the finishing touches on her own.

Photos by Tyler Boye

If you are the kind of person who gets excited about finding a copy of Yvonne Deslandres' 1987 coffee-table tome on Paul Poiret, a first edition of Diana Vreeland's Allure or a stash of 141 pristine issues of Domus magazine, William Hall is the man to know. The book dealer, who runs High Valley Books out of his Brooklyn brownstone, is a secret source for tons of fashion and design insiders in New York, Milan and Paris. Hall specializes in out-of-print fashion books, but also has an impressive collection of architecture, decorating, British lit and social history titles. When I interviewed Charlotte Moss recently, she raved about how Hall helped her build her library. Ralph Rucci, another client, told me he would like to "kidnap Bill." Carla Sozzani has books sent to Milan, and Balenciaga's design team orders them from Paris.

Hall, 42, got his start many years ago working for the well-known Upper East Side bookdealer Sean Gunson at Gunson & Turner books. "I like to have a mix of the rare and curious," he says.

About half of his collection is now online at his website, highvalleybooks.com, but to see the 3,000-plus mother lode of books and magazines involves a trip to Williamsburg (call to make an appointment: 718-963-4244). If it makes the journey any more palatable, High Valley Books is just around the corner from Peter Luger.

In traffic-clogged L.A., geography is a form of social currency. So it was a surprise to see an array of industry heavyweights, including Natalie Portman, Michael Cera, Edward Norton and Spike Jonze, pack into a grungy shop in far-off Echo Park on Saturday night to celebrate the opening of a new location of 826LA the non-profit writing/tutoring center founded by novelist Dave Eggers.

The center, geared toward local students between the ages of six and 18, is cheekily disguised as a storefront called The Echo Park Time Travel Mart. (The name thing is in line with the organization's five other locations; the Brooklyn center, 826NYC, has a sign out front that reads Superhero Supply Co.)

As well as Cera, much of the team behind Juno were there, including director Jason Reitman, co-star Jason Bateman and screenwriter Diablo Cody. Also spotted in the crowd were Jesse Dylan, The Daily Show's Demetri Martin, director Mike White (The Year of the Dog), producing partners Ron Yerxa and Albert Berger (Little Miss Sunshine), Lukas Haas and interior designer Brad Dunning.

Images courtesy Daily Monster

One might call it the perfect antidote to plunging temperatures and abbreviated sunlight: this week Abrams releases Poolside with Slim Aarons ($75.00), a frothy compendium of photographs depicting the by-the-seashore (or infinity pool) life of the leisure class through the sixties, seventies, and eighties. There's Esther Williams, out of her boned-corset suit and sporting lemon-yellow capris, nibbling a canapé at the Lighthouse Club in the Bahamas; flip a few pages further and you'll find the Austrian swim-capped masses bobbling in a heated pool in Bad Gastein. A favorite of those blonde-tressed society icons, C.Z. Guest and Lilly Pulitzer, Aarons, a Life photographer whose previous books include the equally glittery Once Upon a Time and A Place in the Sun, manages to pull off the impossible: even the oiled, lobster-red couples giggling at a swim-up bar in Acapulco look glamorous.