My dad reads, a lot. When he was in Tanzania for three months last year he read something like 12 or 13 books. Put simply: the dude likes to read. One of the great things about knowing someone who reads this much is that they often tell you about the books they’ve recently read, and in the event that any of the books sound interesting, you can usually borrow them. Several months ago my dad told me about a book he had just read about a newspaper columnist in L.A. who met a homeless man who was a former Juliard music student, and thanks to their friendship and the power of the press (the man wrote about his new friend in the Los Angeles Times) the homeless man slowly got back on his feet…kinda — it’s a true story, so it doesn’t have a perfect/happy Hollywood ending (even though the events transpired in the shadows of the Hollywood hills).

The book is The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music, and it’s on sale at Amazon right now for only $3.99. If title or the storyline sound familiar, that’s because it was recently made into a movie (starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr.) and it comes out this Friday. Here’s the trailer:

The real stars of the story – Nathaniel Ayers (mentally ill musician who has lived on the street of L.A. for years) and Steve Lopez (columnist for the L.A. Times whose articles about Nathaniel — and the response they received — inspired him to write the book) – were on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago.