Texas Pages

For those of you whose publishing dreams may have been dented, if not totally dashed, by the recent spate of memoirist "outings" -- the girl who supposedly lived with wolves during World War II, the girl who supposedly lived with gang members in South Central LA -- Christopher Beam over at Slate.com has come up with a wonderfully snarky "Fake Memoirist's Survival Guide: How to Embellish Your Life Story Without Getting Caught."

For instance, he suggests: "Specificity is your enemy. Write with passionate vagueness. Avoid precise dates; don't get more exact than the year if you can help it. Better yet, the decade. ... When in doubt, go with 'awhile.' "

Here's the entire piece.

The weather in Dallas today is rather un-Dallaslike. Meaning, we have flurries in the air and panic in the streets.

So before everyone logs off and rushes home to stock up on canned goods, let me offer some celebratory items from the bookshelf, courtesy of the publishers who sent them to me.

I've got four books to offer to the first four people who e-mail me at mmerschel@dallasnews.com and ask for them:

"Duma Key," by Stephen King.

"Word Without End," by Ken Follett.

"The Appeal," by John Grisham.

"Selected Poems 1946-2006" by Donald Hall.

One per customer. No pushing, no shoving, no e-mails from people on the company payroll. And thank you for reading.

Better late than never dept.:

In an appreciation about Gary Gygax that I just filed, I mention his power to foster friendships.

So let me be wildly nonjournalistic and cite my own friend, Don Wood, a blogger/actor/carpenter who made some comments that actually anchor Mr. Gygax appropriately on the books blog.

Don writes:

"I think the secret to the success of [the game] is that it wasn't new at all. That tiny unconscious moment of silence shared by those around the table was the same exact moment shared by those around fires in caves and savannas tens of thousands of years ago. It is The Beginning of the Story. The genius of D&D was the leap from reading or even telling the story to playing the story. It created a framework for the spontaneous, simultaneous creation of a work of fiction by a group of people."

We welcome your own comments below.

One year ago today, in a quiet, dusty corner of the Internet that smelled vaguely of binder's glue and decaying newsprint, a blog was born.

Well, if statistics are to be believed, about 175,000 blogs were born. But only one was Texas Pages.

I hope we've succeeded throwing light on parts of the local books scene that otherwise would remain in quiet, dusty corners, online or otherwise. When we've failed in that, I hope we've at least been amusing.

And as always, I encourage you ... no, I dare you ... to make suggestions on how we can do things better. (You'll notice that soon after one reader suggested we post a link to recent reviews, the connection appeared, as if by magic, over there on the right side of the screen.)

Meanwhile, I would like to personally thank everyone -- Mom, my wife -- who has made reading the blog a part of your regular routine. (OK, Mom has not figured out how to bookmark the page, and my wife is too busy reading books to bother with the blog. But the counselor had some nice tips for us, and we're doing fine now.)

Check back later today; maybe I will try to offer up some fabulous prizes to celebrate. Meanwhile, here's a literary excerpt that seems appropriate.