Texas Pages

Our friends over in the Points section of The Dallas Morning News will launch the third annual Points Summer Book Club this month, and you're invited. They've picked a doozy of a book this year, with loads of local relevance and intrigue: The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes, by former Wall Street Journal reporter Bryan Burrough. It's about the four "Big Four" oil barons who shaped much of what Texas is today. Extra credit: Can you name the Big Four? Find the answer at the bottom of this post.

Two books are now out that examine the lives of the violent gang known as the Mara Salvatrucha, or the MS-13. Both devote substantial space to the incredible and sad tale of Brenda Paz, a 15-year-old who lived in Carrollton for a short time and was recruited into the MS-13 during her Texas stay.

She was a witness to one of the most gruesome deaths in recent history--the slaying of Javier Calzada near Bluebonnet Lakes in Grand Prairie in December 2001.

Both writers deploy their considerable investigative skills to their mission.

Why is it in the twilight of newspapers
that story-telling is ascendant?

The SMU's Newcomers Institute, by the School of Education and Human Development, continued Saturday, and two of the most gripping presentations
were by those who told their stories, one as a former homeless
student and the other through song.

They were skilled at their craft.
Their stories had a strategy.
To inspire others to action.

A favorite verse in honor of the Apocalyptic storm raging over Dallas right now. It's the kind of storm that makes me want to stand on the front porch and yell:

Heigh, my hearts! Cheerly, cheerly, my hearts!
Yare, yare! Take in the topsail! Tend to th' master's
whistle! Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!

(From The Tempest. Got any other storm-related verses to share? Fire away, before we're blown away.)

The Dallas Museum of Art and the Dallas Theater Center wrapped up this year's Texas Bound series of readings (part of the DMA's Arts & Letters Live series) in fine form Monday night at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. All four pieces -- by Steve Almond, Richard Bausch, Sue Monk Kidd and Steve Martin -- were warmly received, and the audience was especially enthusiastic about seeing former DTC actor Randy Moore (who's now in Denver).

All of the actors were terrific, but to my eyes the standout was James Crawford in "Aren't You Happy for Me," by Bausch. Crawford brought a canny, completely believable mix of befuddlement, bemusement, outrage and horror to his characterization of a father who learns that his daughter, 23, is about to marry her babydaddy, a literature professor 40 years her senior (and 19 years senior to her dad).

Harriet Harris also charmed the crowd, reading the short story, "The Secret Life of Bees," by Sue Monk Kidd, which evolved into the best-selling novel and then the movie of the same name.

Speaking of Kidd, the DMA made a surprise announcement sure to please those who are dreading a long, desolate literary stretch before the next A&LL season: She and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, will make an appearance on Sept. 15 at First Presbyterian Church of Dallas. They'll discuss their upcoming joint memoir, Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story, about a time when both were embarking on significant life changes. A&LL patrons will get a first look at the book, which comes out Sept. 8.

There're still two more events in the regular A&LL season: David Eagleman, Houston-based author of Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives, on June 19, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Alexandra Fuller on June 23. For tix and information, go here.

PHOTO: Actress Harriet Harris in an earlier Arts & Letters Live appearance.

I do not wish to anoint Dan Baum as The Publishing Guy Who Has This Internet Thing Figured Out. But I do think he's onto something.

First, he wrote a terrific book, Nine Lives, about New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina. Then, just when attention seemed to be waning a bit, he used Twitter for a revealing series of messages about the inner workings of The New Yorker. Say what you will about whether he's a victim or a hero, the tweets got people talking, and he now has more than 2,400 followers.

Earlier, he noted that because of the Twitter response, he was reviving his blog. Which carries visitors directly to the book's Web site and promotional video.

The blog at the moment is running a series of posts providing background about the real-life people in his book -- and which actor he would want to play them in the movie.

So to recap: Book leads readers to Twitter leads readers to blog leads readers to an enhanced reading experience, if not more readers.

I'm not calling him a genius -- lots of people are trying this exact same approach. But I'm not sure I've seen anybody do it better. Have you?

Keith Donohue wrote one of my favorite books in the last few years, 2006's The Stolen Child, in which he did a better job than any contemporary writer I've come across in conveying to adult readers the inner lives of children. Even for someone who has children and presumably knows a little about how they think, this book was a revelation, both joyous and terrifying.

He pulls off that neat trick again, even better, with Angels of Destruction, which came out in March. In this one, a lonely middle-aged woman is surprised one cold, windy evening to find a young girl on her doorstep, the enigmatic and beautiful Norah. Margaret Quinn is still missing her own daughter, who ran off as a teenager to join a radical student group. Margaret takes Norah in, and they concoct a story that she's Norah's grandmother. Norah makes a friend named Sean who begins to suspect that Norah's not really a child ... she's an angel. She performs wonderful feats that could be explained by simple trickery, but they somehow go beyond that. She enchants the other schoolchildren; they stop bickering in her presence. But Norah's persnickety, and she loses her temper sometimes. Sean wonders: "How could she be an angel? She had no wings, no halo. Angels do not bite." And there's a dark figure lurking in the shadows: Is it Lucifer, the original fallen angel, trying to recruit?

As the story progresses, moving from small-town Pennsylvania to small-town New Mexico, Donohue weaves a thoroughly believable, mystical and yet startlingly realistic portrait of the Quinn family and its small interloper. This is inventive, provocative fiction at its absolute best.

OK, yes, I succumbed to headline writers' punnery with the one above -- I couldn't help myself, especially since it has that wonderful headline thing of being both a pun (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee is an avid knitter and writes books about the subject, including Free-Range Knitting and Yarn Harlot) and being absolutely true (she's hilarious). Someone once described Pearl-McPhee as the "David Sedaris of knitting," and that just about nails it.

PHOTO: Fans of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee pass the time waiting for her talk to begin. Dawn Zhang of Plano is knitting on the left, with Amee Dixon of McKinney helping out.

Sunday's review of The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet noted the buzz generated by Reif Larsen's book. And here's a bit of backlash -- from Montana, via NewWest.net. (Spolier alert before you click -- essayist Allen M. Jones gives away a couple of key details, including the last line of the book.)

Still, the essay should resonate with Texans. For example, after analyzing small inaccuracies made by Larsen, "a product of Brown and the MFA program at Columbia, a documentarian and Brooklyn brownstoner" (can't you just hear Jones spitting at this point?), he notes :

".. these small mistakes, if mistakes they are, are overshadowed by the unforgiveable portrait of the cowboy father, a one-dimensional stereotype with dialogue patterns more native to Faulkner's Mississippi than Butte, America. He sips whiskey and watches old cowboy movies and says "fer" and "wrastle" and "sho." After shooting a rattlesnake, he says, "Sho. She's a big one. Maybe we'll bring that rope back to the house. Show your mudder." For those of us perpetually-aspiring western writers who've busted our chops trying to get a handle on the hesitant, tight-lipped mumblings of cowboy dialogue (the only clear masters of the form are, in descending order, Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx), a rancher saying "sho" and "mudder" is like reaching into a cookie jar to find a mousetrap.

He goes on:

Damn if the West hasn't always wrastled with this particular demon. Folks from Back East (and Hollywood) gittin us all wrong. According to the worlds created by those who are interested only in the West as a cliché, six shooters carry at least ten rounds, horses ceaselessly nicker, and every overfed grizzly has to stand up and roar before it attacks. From the beginning, we've found ourselves at the mercy of authors and auteurs who don't know the first thing about us. It's a breach of contract, a betrayal of the relationship between author and reader.

Discussion topics:

1) Texans, do we relate?
2) Got a favorite example of Texas being maligned in literature?
3) Is it just me, or are Montana and Texas twin states separated at birth, with one getting killer cold and million-dollar views, the other getting deadly heat and a trillion dollars' worth of oil?

The Dallas Museum of Arts' Arts & Letters Live series tonight blessed us a talk by two authors with strong Dallas connections: Dallas resident Kathleen Kent, author of The Heretic's Daughter, and Cristina Henríquez, former Dallas resident and author of The World In Half. They continued A&LL's absolutely stellar season -- anyone who still thinks Dallasites don't care about literature hasn't been paying attention to what the DMA has accomplished this season.

Ms. Henríquez recalled her early days in Dallas (she now lives in Chicago), when she was living in an Uptown apartment and thinking she and her husband could manage with one car -- he commuted to a job during the day; she worked on her writing at home. When she decided to look for a job, she landed an interview at D Magazine. On a 97-degree summer day, wearing a wool-blend suit, it took her a trolley ride and two buses to traverse the 1.7 miles to D's headquarters.

PHOTO by Joy Tipping: Cristina Henríquez (foreground) and Kathleen Kent at the DMA on Friday night.

My dear friend Peter Sagal* has a good discussion going on his blog about what qualities constitute the perfect novel.

He's not asking about best novels -- but rather books that are marvels of structure and technique that you find yourself going back to again and again. Or, in his words, "a book lacking, as they used to say, 'redeeming social importance,' but made with such consummate skill that you can't put it aside."

His guidelines (paraphrased here) emphasize:

Roughly a century before Trek fans started writing their own adventures with the crew of the Enterprise, Sherlock Holmesians were doing the same for their favorite detective. Wired takes a look at the phenomenon this month.

Judging from the regularity with which Holmes-themed books appear on my desk, that game will remain afoot for another century at least. (You can dip into our archives for a review of a pair of books related to Arthur Conan Doyle here -- both are now available in paperback.)

If you're a true fan -- I found a link to the Diogenes Club of Dallas here. Any members out there who can confirm that the group is alive and well?

(DMN file photo)

I love old Texas bookstores and was thrilled to discover last week that Bill's Books in Cleburne (about an hour and a half southwest of Dallas) is still around. My parents would take me here when I was a kid. I spent hours snooping through its maze of bookcases lined with dusty paperbacks.

Owner Bill Miller (above) opened his shop in 1980 and still mans the front counter today --- with help from four cats --- at age 76. He says he will stay working until he "drops" because that's what keeps him getting out of bed each day.

And here's some trivia: Miller used to work in the film industry and says he spent two hours one day helping director Steven Spielberg scout locations in Cleburne. The town didn't make the cut, but Miller's shop remains ready for its close-up.

Bill's Books, 116 S. Main St., Cleburne, TX 817-645-7591

Photos by cwynn

Memoirist David Sedaris amply proved himself the rock star of writers at Sunday night's Arts & Letters Live event at McFarlin Auditorium. A&LL folks told me McFarlin was smushed to the gills, with 2,400 tickets sold and 150 people (sad, disappointed people) still on a waiting list as the lights went down. And down. "Can it be dark?" Sedaris asked. The room stayed dimly lit. "Can it be dark?" he repeated. Rafter elves complied, and we were bathed in pitch black, Sedaris' apparently preferred ambience for his readings.

David LaBounty, publisher of Plano's Blue Cubicle Press, had a lengthy response to my previous post on the doomed book industry. I'm posting it here.

You can also read David this week on Utne Reader's Great Writing blog, where he lists some must-read Web sites.

"Every successful publisher--really successful, mind you--could make more money by going into some other business."

Walter Hines Page - A Publisher's Confession, 1905

In the ten years since I've mistakenly picked publishing as a profession, I've experienced the highs of finding great writers to the lows of losing money and fretting about few readers (a decade, and not one profitable year).

But two years ago, I found an article in an old Life magazine about the "current" state of publishing, and I suddenly felt better about my inadequacies.

"Besides being totally obscure, U.S. book publishing has in the past been a chronically gloomy business: its occupational disease has been melancholia, verging on paranoia. There have been no completely happy publishers. Indeed publishers as a class have ranked second only to soldiers in their addiction to the grouse and gripe."

Ernest Havemann - "No More Headache, Book Business Booms," Life, May 12, 1961.

Havemann's article is a fascinating look at the resurgence of books in the 1960s. Every paragraph has a quote that could easily have been written by a publisher today, including, my favorite: "Book publishing: 'The business that capitalism forgot.'"

Not too long after I read the Life article, I found Publishers on Publishing by Gerald Gross at Recycled Books in Denton. (Great store.) Gross collected essays written by some of the greatest names in publishing about their businesses. (The book was released in 1961, the same year as the Life article.) The essays go back to 1840s, and it is striking how little the business of publishing has changed, how much these publishers complained about the same things that affect us today. For example:

"A friend of mine suddenly became much agitated over the business of book publishing. What is bothering him is not one of the usual complaints: the faulty price structure, the dominance of the best seller over the worthy book, the pitifully inadequate circulation of books, or even the menace of sex and revolution."

Curtice Hitchcock - "Are Publishers Important?," Journal of Adult Education. June 1937

"Everything is unpredictable. The book may live and flourish for a week and a month, and then die with a low thud that sickens the heart of the bookseller, publisher, and author. Or it may go onward and upward to best-seller heights. In that case the literary brigands and the doddering fossils, after paying for the plates, promotion, overhead, and royalties, are able to make a small profit. This they immediately put back into the business where it is quickly eaten up by the losses sustained on four other books by young authors whom the incurable publishing optimists have hailed as 'finds.'"

Thomas R. Coward - "After the Manuscript is Delivered," The Literary Observer, May, 1934.

My point is this: Book publishing has survived for almost two centuries on bad business practices and little to no readership, the advent of eBooks won't 'doom' publishing anymore than the disappearance of trees.

Whereas newspapers are needed, book publishing is an exercise in vanity. It's a fool's sport, and there will always be enough of us willing to suit up.

This will come as no shock to anybody who watched me try to divide up a dinner check, but I am not much of a business person. If I had a head for percentages, or margins, or any kind of numbery thing, do you think I would have gone to journalism school?

Which is why I focus on books as literature, and not on the sausage-factory-like process that produces them. But if you're looking for an excellent primer on how publishing works, check out this post by Evan Schnittman, head of Global Business Development at Oxford University Press (flagged on Galleycat). It explains the Ponzi-like machinations that consume the hard-earned dollars you fork out for books.

He also explains the threat that e-books pose to this system and explains:

"What this means is that unless a very different model evolves, ebooks can never become the dominant version of content sold by book publishers. It means that ebooks will always be priced to sell, but sold as an afterthought, not as the primary version of a work. ... It means that consumer ebooks, as a stand-alone version of an intellectual property, must fail."

Given what we have seen happen to other knowledge-based industries that failed to adapt to the Internet era, does anybody think this is a halfway realistic thought? Isn't it inevitable that books will slide into the same pit of despair that has consumed the music, newspaper, magazine and mainstream television industries?

He promises to offer "potential models" that could work. I wish him luck.

As another storied daily paper, this time the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, prepares to sink into history any moment now, the Web site Crosscut.com
has a piece about life there the 1970s.

Beyond the aging-journalists-sure-like-the-old-times angle (which has obvious appeal to an aging journalist such as yours truly), note some of the bit players in the trenches back then: novelist Tom Robbins was on the copy desk and writing headlines; Frank Herbert, whose Dune apparently wasn't paying the bills, worked as education writer.

To be sure, most journalism is not literature. But where will the next round of legends cut their teeth?

(First spotted on the High Country News blog.)

Observed in Publishers Weekly: Bookstore sales in January were flat, compared with an 8.3 percent decline in overall retail sales.

Do you think people are rushing to books as a cheap source of entertainment in troubled times? (One bookseller recently told me he was emphasizing the value of a $20 book, which might provide a week's worth of enjoyment, vs. $20 for a night at the movies (with popcorn and a drink), which lasts 2 hours.)

Are YOU turning to books to get you through troubled times?

Or is this just one of those business-statistic blips that will, in the long run, prove meaningless as we spiral toward our inevitable, impoverished, ignorant doom?

British novelist Ian McEwan wowed an Arts & Letters Live audience of about 750 people Friday night at the Naomi Bruton Theatre in the Dallas Convention Center. McEwan is one of the rare authors who is as entertaining live as he is in his writing; he's the epitome of the phrase "dry wit."

The Booker Prize winner (for Amsterdam) talked mostly about the weaving of fact into fiction, and how he frequently receives letters from readers pointing out something they perceive as an error, but that he, as a writer of fiction, sees as merely his authorial prerogative. He talked about both his own writing and others, telling a particularly funny story about a detail in Lord of the Flies about which many readers corrected author William Golding. Golding's response: "Tough."

McEwan also did a reading from and gave some tantalyzing hints into the plot of his next book, which revolves around the issue of global climate change. He recognizes up front the difficulty of the subject: "It's stuffed with facts, it affects too many people, and nobody's for it."

I think it's fair to say McEwan made everyone who was there Friday night feel smarter just for having been in the room with him.

There are many more goodies yet to come in the A&LL series from the Dallas Museum of Art. Next up is "Mummies, Magic and Mayhem," an evening of readings and discussion centered around the DMA's exhibit "Tutankhamum and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs," on March 20. For information on that and other upcoming A&LL events, go here.

PHOTO by Joy Tipping: Ian McEwan signed fans' books for about 45 minutes following his talk on Friday at the Naomi Bruton Theatre.

With the stock market at levels not seen since 1997, I thought I'd take a quick step back in time to see examine the state of reading in that long-ago year.

According to the 1999 World Almanac -- and this is from an actual book, no mere link, mind you -- the best-selling titles of 1997 were:

Hardcover Fiction

The Partner, by John Grisham
Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier
The Ghost, by Danielle Steel
The Ranch, by Danielle Steel
Special Delivery, by Danielle Steel
Unnatural Exposure, by Patricia Cornwell
The Best Laid Plans, by Sidney Sheldon
Pretend You Don't See Her, by Mary Higgins Clark
Cat & Mouse, by James Patterson
Hornet's Nest, by Patricia Cornwell

Hardcover Nonfiction

Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt
Simple Abundance, by Sarah Ban Breathnach
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt
The Royals, by Kitty Kelley
Joy of Cooking, by Irma S. Rombauer et. al.
Diana: Her True Story, by Andrew Morton
Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer
Conversations With God, Book 1, by Neale Donald Walsch
Men Are From Mars, by John Gray
Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, by Andrew Weil

Not on the list: A children's fantasy novel published that summer in Britain under the title Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The initial press run was 500 copies.

Time declared Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, Don DeLillo's Underworld, Alex Shoumatoff Legends of the American Desert and Stephen Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers among its best books of the year.

Oprah's Book Club had been going for about a year. Here's what she was suggestiing:

The Best Way To Play by Bill Cosby
The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby
The Meanest Thing To Say by Bill Cosby
A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Songs In Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris
The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou
The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

If you had a computer and a modem, you could have purchased these from a two-year-old Washington company called Amazon.com, which went public that year. Or maybe you could have gone to the new Barnes & Noble store that opened that year at America Online.

Or you could have invested your money in the stock market, and dreamed about what it might be worth 12 years hence, when your newborn child was preparing to go to college.

Browsing through my handy 2009 Quality Paperbacks Book Club calendar (I stay in the club just so I can get the calendar every year; it's jam-packed with fun literary tidbits), I came across this fascinating list of all-time best-selling books (if you discount the Bible, the Koran and other religious texts, which always hold the No. 1 spots). I don' t know QPB's source, but I trust they didn't just make it up.
1) Don Quixote (1605), by Miguel de Cervantes, 500 million copies
2) The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), by Alexandre Dumas, 200 million
3) And Then There Were None (a.k.a. Ten Little Indians) (1939), by Agatha Christie, 115 million
4) The Catcher in the Rye (1951), by J.D. Salinger, 65 million
5) The Da Vinci Code (2003), by Dan Brown, 64 million
6) Heidi (1880), by Johanna Spyri, 52 million
The following are all tied with around 50 milion copies sold:
* Ben Hur (1880), by Lew Wallace
* The Curse of Capistrano (a.k.a. The Mask of Zorro) (1920), by Johnston McCulley
* How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), by Dale Carnegie
* The Little Prince (1943), by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
* The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946), by Dr. Benjamin Spock
* The Alchemist (1988), by Paulo Coelho

Speaking of Timothy Egan, as we were in the previous post -- he celebrated Wallace Stenger's 100th birthday on the Opinion page of The New York Times, his declared nemesis, which help slap him with the tag of "regional" writer, because, well, the East Coast didn't understand him.

I'll bet there are some Texas writers who understand that.

(Spotted on the PW Morning Report, where Dermot McEvoy "worked with Stegner back in the 1970s[. A]t Doubleday he was not only a great writer, but a gentleman who always had time for his fans.")

Reaching into the mailbag this morning, I find this conversation-starter from regular reader and commenter L.A. Starks, who notes:

"As tough as things are right now, I've recently read two books that put the times into perspective. If you do a 'recession-reading column,' I'd suggest The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan about the Dust Bowl. Egan's map indicates that the hard-struck region encompassed not just Oklahoma--which I'd always heard stories about--but also the Texas Panhandle, Kansas, and eastern Colorado.

"And with the attention on Ayn Rand's centennial, I read We the Living. Even though it's fiction (today it would be called memoir-ish) it gives an accurate picture of Russia in the 1920s."

I just happened to read two books back-to-back last year that highlighted life in Stalinist Russia -- Child 44 and City of Thieves. They made me .... well, they made me hungry. Happy to be born where and when I was. But hungry.

We've discussed the bright side of a global financial meltdown in the past. Today I'm asking -- what should we be reading to remind us just how bad things can get?

Loved Sophie Kinsella's latest book, Remember Me, which is a frothy delight reminiscent of her Shopaholic books (the movie version of the original, Confessions of a Shopaholic, hits theaters on Friday). Remember Me, which came out in paperback last fall, is the tale of a young woman who gets hit on the head and wakes up with amnesia covering the last three years -- during which time she's gotten rid of her "snaggly" teeth, acquired a killer body and hairstyle, and ruthlessly climbed over her former friends to attain her career aspirations. What's more, she's married to a gorgeous guy and lives in a mansion (OK, Mr. Wonderful has some bad points, like obsessive neatness to the point that he freaks if a DVD cover is left on the carpet). Lexi soon find she wasn't all that happy in this fairy-tale existence, though, and the book hilariously follows her as she investigates a very interesting topic: herself. It's froth, but it's well-written froth and you'll drink it up like a latte on a cold day.

Here's what I've read in the last couple of weeks:

* Curse of the Spellmans (2008), by Lisa Lutz. The second in Lutz's trilogy (the third comes out this spring) about Isabel Spellman and her wacky family of private detectives. These remind me of Sue Grafton's alphabet series of mysteries starring Kinsey Millhone, only funnier. We're planning a review of the third book, Revenge of the Spellmans, and also an interview with Lisa Lutz, so stay tuned.
* The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), by Joan Didion. I read this when it first came out, and re-read it recently for my book club. Having gone through multiple health crises with my husband since first having read it, it resonated even more with me this time. Didion's spare, not-an-ounce-of-sentimentality writing has never been better, and this is the one of the best books on grief and marriage that I've ever come across. I recommend it to everyone.
* The Romanov Prophecy (2004), by Steve Berry. Pure guilty pleasure. I interviewed Berry recently, and it made me want to read his books that I hadn't already gotten to. This one takes on that Russian equivalent of "Did Oswald act alone" -- were all the Russian royals really executed in July 1918, or did one, maybe even two, of the children escape? A highly entertaining romp that, at least while you're reading it, seems entirely plausible.
* Poe's Children (2008), edited by Peter Straub. I've had this on my nightstand forever, and finally finished it this week. Some great stories by Stephen King, Dan Chaon, Ramsey Campbell and others. Highly recommended for fans of horror, or fans of just plain kick-you-know-what writing in general.
* The Devil's Feather (2006), by Minette Walters. Extremely good thriller that goes back and forth between war reporting from Baghdad (the heroine's a war correspondent) to something that reads a little like an English "cozy" mystery (cottage in a small town, gossipy neighbors, Gothic influence). An odd combination, but it works brilliantly.
* Sum (2009), by David Eagleman. The author, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, posits 40 different explanations of the afterlife. Fascinating, and strangely comforting. Look for a full review of this one in the next couple of weeks on Guidelive.com and in the paper.

To reiterate what Ann Pinson said, Wally Lamb was just marvelous last night at First Presbyterian Church. He was there as part of the Dallas Museum of Art's fabulous 2009 lineup for its Arts & Letters Live Series. What a boon for book lovers in this town -- if you haven't seen this year's schedule -- Ian McEwan! Elizabeth Gilbert! David Sedaris! -- you owe it to yourself to check it out, and reserve your tix early. More than 450 fans turned out to see Lamb.

I was so impresed with Lamb's humility, warmth and intelligence -- a combination that is all too rarely seen among authors with his kind of numbers (he is, after all, one of the few authors to make the Oprah book club twice). Last night, he read from an autobiographical essay and then read a very moving piece from his new book, The Hour I First Believed. I was fascinated with how he "hears" his characters; he said the first line that Caelum, the new book's protagonist, spoke to him was: "My mother was a convicted felon, a manic-depressive, and Miss Rheingold Beer of 1950." From that, the book was born.

Also loved his stories about some of the reader mail he receives, like the letter where someone asked him if there was going to be an all-woman Mt. Rushmore, who would he put there? I think we all expected him to say Oprah. But no: "The only one I'm absolutely sure of is Aretha Franklin." On that, Wally, we're totally with you.

Click to see our review of the new book, and our recent interview with Lamb.

Hubby and I greatly enjoyed David Macaulay's talk today at the Dallas Museum of Arts' Arts & Letters Live series. Macaulay charmed and enlightened a nearly full house in the Horchow Auditorium, mostly talking about and showing drawings from his books Pyramid and The Way We Work.

He started off with an utterly hilarious, imagined look at a circa 2470 excavation of an early 21st-century site, the mysterious Motel Toot 'N C'mon. "I'm much more optimistic about the future [than the past]," he noted. The site featured the deceased lying down, facing what appears to be a sacred altar (the TV), holding some sort of interaction device, possibly for communicating with the gods in the after life (the remote control). Macaulay pointed out "the sacred parchment" in a small anteroom, noting it's fascinating point downward, possibly the importance of direction to this enigmatic people (that would be the toilet paper with it's maid-has-been-here point).

The whole thing made me wonder if there are Egyptian spirits hovering around the Tut exhibit, laughing hysterically at our interpretations of what was left behind.

Macaulay moved on to intriguing drawings from Pyramid and his most recent book, The Way We Work, which dissects the human body with both architectural precision and a demented sense of glee (a drawing of the pelvis is dubbed "the bridge of thighs," with an accompany drawing of Venice, "just because.")

This was part of A&LL's "BooksmART" series; the next installment is with Jonathan Stroud, at 3 p.m. Feb. 1 at St. Mark's School of Texas. Stroud is the author of The Bartimaeus Trilogy of fantasies. A&LL also hosts Wally Lamb, author of The Hour I First Believed, this coming week, on Thursday at First Presbyterian Church. For a full schedule and tix, go here.

I was out sick last week -- the dreaded ultracrud that seems to be circulating, so this is my first post since starting Joy's List of what I'm reading this year. The only good part of being sick: extra reading time, although I found myself falling asleep on books rather more often than I would have liked, through no fault of their's.

* Feed Me: Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight and Body Image, edited by Harriet Brown. This is a marvelous collection of essays that will make you laugh, cry and definitely re-evaluate the way you look at your one-and-only (love it or hate it) body. Definitely ... oh, I can't help myself ... food for thought. This comes out next week (Jan. 27) so you can be the first on your block to get one.

* Flanagan's Smart Home: The 98 Essentials for Starting Out, Starting Over, Scaling Back, by Barbara Flanagan (2008). I thought I might find something I needed but didn't know I needed. Indeed: real linen sheets. And I was very glad to learn that Flanagan prefers a $40 French press, which we have, to one of those $3,000 Starbucks coffeemakers.

* 101 Things to Buy Before You Die, by Maggie Davis and Charlotte Williamson (2007). I've had this for a while, but since I was shopping from bed (see above), I figured what the heck. It's a great wish-list, but mostly full of things I can neither afford nor really want. (Although I've always coveted a pair of Brooks Brothers men's PJs, and they made this list.)

* Dogs: History, Myth, Art, by Catherine Johns (2008). A gorgeous coffee table book that I had planned to just skim through and admire the photos, but found myself terribly interested in dog history and dogs in ancient cultures. If you're looking for a gift for a dog lover, sniff in this direction.

Alert reader Bill Marvel spotted this essay in The New Atlantis, which seeks to challenge those who enthuse excessively about the rise of an era of "digital literacy".

It notes that "if enthusiasm for the new digital literacy runs high, it also runs to feverish extremes. Digital literacy's boosters are not unlike the people who were swept up in the multiculturalism fad of the 1980s and 1990s ... like multiculturalism, which soon changed its focus from broadening the canon to eviscerating it by purging the contributions of "dead white males," digital literacy's advocates increasingly speak of replacing, rather than supplementing, print literacy. What is "reading" anyway, they ask, in a multimedia world like ours? We are increasingly distractible, impatient, and convenience-obsessed--and the paper book just can't keep up. Shouldn't we simply acknowledge that we are becoming people of the screen, not people of the book?"

Maybe not, author Christine Rosen argues.

Last week, we took a look at now-citizen George W. Bush's reading habits.

Today, we can discuss President Barack Obama's tastes, thanks to The New York Times.

Here's the nut of the analysis:

"Mr. Obama tends to take a magpie approach to reading -- ruminating upon writers' ideas and picking and choosing those that flesh out his vision of the world or open promising new avenues of inquiry. ...

"What's more, Mr. Obama's love of fiction and poetry -- Shakespeare's plays, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead are mentioned on his Facebook page, along with the Bible, Lincoln's collected writings and Emerson's Self Reliance -- has not only given him a heightened awareness of language. It has also imbued him with a tragic sense of history and a sense of the ambiguities of the human condition quite unlike the Manichean view of the world so often invoked by Mr. Bush."

I was pleased to see a couple of my favorite histories (Team of Rivals, Parting the Waters) on his list. What did you think? Any suggestions for the new president's nightstand?

OK, I've gone and done a crazy thing. I've committed to Mike Merschel, our Esteemed Books Editor, that I will blog about ... ahem ... every single book I read this year. My husband's reaction: "Are you insane? Isn't that another full-time job?" Well, let me clarify -- these will not be full-on reviews, more of an online diary by an extremely avid reader, mostly of contemporary fiction but I may surprise you now and then.

I hope to open up dialogue with others out there who have an overwhelming "to be read" stack, or as in my case, stacks. What book's been on your shelf for 10 years that you just got around to reading? What have you tried to read 18 times and can never finish? Stuff like that.

Since I'm starting mid-month, here's what I've read since Jan. 1:
* Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates. Read this in preparation for seeing the movie, and it's amazing. One of the best portraits of a marriage I've ever read, and oh-so-Mad Men.
* Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, by C.J. Box. Nifty thriller about a couple whose adopted daughter may be taken away by her biological father and grandfather. The grandpa is an evil judge. I'm reviewing this for the paper, so look a full review soon.
* The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, by Charlie Huston. Another thriller, this one about an employee of a company that cleans up after murders, suicides, etc. Didn't you always wonder who does that? I've never seen anyone use dialogue quite the way Huston does,and it gives the actual reading of the book a jittery edge that perfectly matches the subject matter. As with Three Weeks, a full review will be coming soon.
* Sing Them Home, by Stephanie Kallos. Oh my, oh my. You know when you get that rare, sublime "ahhhhhhhhhhh" feeling as a reader -- that you've just discovered someone utterly magical and unusual, and you're thrilled but kind of want to keep them all to yourself as your personal writer? I felt that way about this book, and I can't wait to see Kallos on Friday at the Dallas Museum of Arts' Arts & Letters Live shindig.
* The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, with a pitch-perfect translation by Alison Anderson. Two female narrators -- one in her 50s, one a 12-year-old girl with suicidal tendencies -- tell this completely enthralling tale in which not much happens. If you count ongoing jokes about Anna Karenina and a lengthy discourse on the inelegance of a misplaced comma as high entertainment, this is is the book for you. And definitely for me -- I read it in one sitting.

OK, now: Discuss!

I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't been up to Legacy Books in Plano till this weekend, but boy-oh-boy, was it worth the drive. (I'll now schedule it with my frequent treks to Ikea, just a bit further up the Tollway.) It wasn't quite what I had expected -- when I hear the words "independent bookstore," I think musty, not quite organized, funky.

But this, THIS, is more like the Neiman Marcus of bookstores -- absolutely gorgeous, designed and organized to make my little perfectionist's heart sing, and with staff that obviously know their stuff and are waiting to pounce if you show even a HINT of confusion on your face. I stocked up on books and stocking stuffers (trays, pens, frames) that were different from any I'd seen elsewhere. Also love the selection of fabulously pretty papers and cards. The food and hot chocolate I acquired at the cafe were far above typical bookstore fare, as well.

If they'd plop an air mattress down somewhere -- or, given the aesthetic, a Tempurpedic on a fancy Italian bedframe -- I'd be very happy living there. They have lots and lots of book signings and activities, and it's really NOT that far -- I live downtown, and on the Saturday before Christmas it took me only about 25 minutes to get to the North Dallas Tollway and Legacy Drive. It's like a mini-getaway to a book lover's idea of heaven.

Go see for yourself here.

OK, so Buy a Book by a Black Author and Give It to Somebody Not Black Month is the creation of Washington Post contributor Carleen Brice, who talks about the challenges of being a black writer::

"... it's extremely hard to have a viable career in publishing without support from a wider (read: not exclusively black) audience. And it's difficult for black authors, especially of literary fiction, to develop the buzz that sells books. White readers don't hear our books discussed generally (except, of course, the ones by heavy hitters such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and a few others)."

Some suggestions from our archives might include Breena Clarke or James McBride. (Yeah, we did Toni Morrison, too.)

Your own suggestions are, as always, encouraged.

(Tip to Shelf Awareness.)

After a hard day of roping and branding books, I found myself headed to a Barnes & Noble last night to do some ... book shopping. This had nothing to do with work -- my kids' school was having a fund-raiser, and I felt obligated to drop in.

What I saw was, in a retail sense, impressive.

On a Tuesday night when cold breezes and a bit of sleet had most Texans fleeing for home -- mind you, "a bit of sleet" and "a hail of bullets" are interchangeable phrases for most local drivers in terms of implied danger -- the Barnes & Noble at Prestonwood Center was so busy that I had to circle the lot to find a parking place.

Inside, I found dozens of my neighbors and their kids -- chatting, watching puppet shows, sharing stories (see photo, above), listening to "music" performed by beginning band students, and even buying books.

David LaBounty produces one of Plano's finest literary journals, The First Line. TFL is coming up on its 10th year, which is quite amazing for any publication of any kind, when you get right down to it.

But he always has a unique perspective on the Texas Book Festival. I blog it from the vantage point of a journalist scrambling from event to event. He writes about it as a vendor/participant who sees an entirely different side of things.

Here's his insightful take from this year's event.

[Updated 9:30 a.m. Tuesday to correct name.]

Welcome back from what I hope was an enjoyable holiday.

I had hoped to post this before the big week, in honor of all of you headed to Grandma's house over the river and through the woods into West Texas or Oklahoma. It's from William Least Heat-Moon's highly enjoyable Roads to Quoz, which I have been moseying through. (Read our review here, or read about his appearance in Austin here.)

Mr. Heat-Moon has traveled more highways than most, and he has some choice observations about Texas vs. Oklahoma, as well as the experience of driving across those West Texas plains.

Of our neighbor to the north, he writes:

Alert fellow staffer Holly Warren spotted this item about banned science fiction books.

Of local interest , note the reasons why Fahrenheit 451 -- Dallas' book in the Dallas Reads project -- is targeted:

Perhaps missing the humor in attempting to censor a book on censorship, challengers still go after Fahrenheit 451 because its firemen characters smoke, drink, and swear. And at least one complainant claimed its discussion of the Bible offended their religion.

Having just returned from a wonderful week in New Orleans, it occurs to me that the Crescent City is the exact opposite of Dallas when it comes to bookstores: Whereas Dallas has pretty much nothing but big-box bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders, New Orleans after Katrina has no big bookstores, unless you head to the suburbs. The one large bookstore downtown, the Bookstar on Decatur, is long gone, leaving just a handful of delightful, funky stores in the French Quarter, Garden District and Uptown.

These are bookstores that still smell like bookstores, with artfully disheveled piles of treasure just waiting to be lazily pawed through. My favorites are Faulkner House, on Pirate's Alley in the French Quarter (in the building where Faulkner wrote his first novel), and the divine Garden District Book Shop at Prytania and Washington in the Garden District. Both are well-stocked with works by local and national authors, and have amazingly knowledgeable staffers who have been there for decades (as opposed to the mere minutes of tenure that most staff seem to have at the big stores). If you haven't been to New Orleans in a while, it's worth it just for the books.

Oh, and the Big Easy is getting a big store soon -- a Borders is slated to open this fall in the Garden District. But in true New Orleans style, it won't be in just any ol' building; it'll be in the historic, beautiful and slightly creepy former headquarters of Bultman's Funeral Home on St. Charles Avenue. Bet they'll have a big section on New Orleans cemeteries and ghosts ...

For some time now, I have been encouraging my friends to buck up in the face of recent Wall Street happenings.

My advice is -- look at all the good things that came out of the last global depression.

Sure, you had those endless breadlines, and that whole rise-of-fascism thing that led to World War II. But you also had a lot of catchy tunes (see below), those timeless photos of the destitute and, of course, great books.

Not just Grapes of Wrath, either. Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Frost -- all had some very good years in the decade before World War II.

And let's not forget all those WPA guides that stand as wonderful literary snapshots of the era. A history buff could get lost in one of those while, say, selling apples on the corner.

Anyhow, the world wants to know your suggestion for best Depression-era writing. Hit the comments button, before the bank pulls the plug on the Internet connection.

I've seen a lot of news reports comparing the gargantuan Hurricane Ike, in size and trajectory, to the Sept. 8, 1900, unnamed hurricane that absolutely crushed Galveston. Between 6,000 and 12,000 people were killed. Erik Larson, who wrote the best-sellers The Devil in the White City and Thunderstruck, wrote a fabulous book about that Galveston storm: Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History.

If you want some pre-hurricane reading that'll keep you up till the hurricane hits, and also scare the daylights out of you, read it. It's on my all-time Top 10 list of nonfiction.

Harvey J. Graff's The Dallas Myth, reviewed in today's GuideLive, gives the Big D a big drubbing, according to Clay Reynolds' review.

Dallas is an easy city to take potshots at; you, dear readers, can probably manage a more intelligent critique.

To help you out, here's a roundup of what others have said about Mr. Graff's book:

Char Miller at the San Antonio Express-News:

"Please don't judge this book by its cover. Maybe someday a non-Texas publisher will have the imagination not to brand a book about the Lone Star State with a Longhorn. This restraint would have been especially welcome for Harvey J. Graff's complex, theoretically rich study, The Dallas Myth -- that city never rustled up the cattle business like its archrival Fort Worth, and has reveled in the fact that its origins are anything but Cowtown Moderne. ... Then again, maybe the jacket design is but a foil against which to read Graff's delightfully icon-busting text. Fair warning to Dallasites of a certain age and status: you may well be discomfited by his skewering of received wisdom about yours being a place without limits, a 'city with no history.' "

Jerome "bookdaddy Weeks: "Graff is dogged. Such thoroughness is admirable in a historian. In a writer, it can read like overkill. As he demonstrates our city's lack of real identity by going through songs about Dallas, novels about Dallas, every major Dallas building, it feels more like he's settling a grudge."

OK, I have to share -- I've had this book sitting on my desk for a couple of months and finally got around to reading it, and if you're at all concerned about the state of the language now that the "Internets" are with us, you'll want to read it.

Mignon Fogarty stunned the newly buzzy "podcasting" world in 2006 when she started her weekly Grammar Girl podcasts and they eventually rose to No. 2 on iTunes. Suddenly, knowing where the apostrophe goes, or whether to use a colon or semicolon, became hip (and word geeks everywhere wept with glee). Now she's come out with a book, Grammar Girl's Quick & Dirty Tips For Better Writing (Holt, $14); reading it was WAY more fun (and more informative, in some cases) than those college English classes ever were. Ms. Fogarty's not starchy, but she's a stickler for correctness in every form of written communication -- e-mails, text messaging, blogging, etc. She'll have none of that lazy "Well, it's only for a blog, so who cares if it's grammatically correct?" attitude.

The playful title of the first chapter -- "Dirty Words" -- gives a hint at her sense of humor. She doesn't scold; she tries to gently help, although she does note that, despite what certain bloggers or e-mailers might suspect, "writing badly is like dressing in lime skorts and an orange plaid sweater -- people notice." She also gets into issues you've probably never thought about, such as the difference (a big one, it turns out) between a "Dear John" letter and a "Hi, John" letter. The book is sparely, but delightfully illustrated by the grammatical adventures of Aardvark (species obvious) and Squiggly (a snail.)

Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, writes books faster than I read them. I mention this because I received an Alexander McCall Smith newsletter this morning annoucing the latest products of Mr. Smith's word processor.

You too can keep up with Mr. Smith at his lively and noisy Web site. Or subscribe to his newsletter by sending a blank email to sub_mccallsmith@info.randomhouse.com.

Like Joyce Carol Oates, Mr. Smith makes me tired.

Michael Granberry today reports on the success of the Nasher Salon and adds a few details about the recent appearance of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.

I've been to two Nasher events -- John Updike and the McMurtry appearance -- and had a terrific experience each time. And I'd return to either one in a heartbeat.

But I disagree with those, including my colleague Mr. Granberry, who celebrate the "intimacy" of the venue. Both times, I've thought the room felt rather cramped. And I'm not sure Updike would have been less urbane, or McMurtry and Ossana less fascinating, had they been up on a stage at the Dallas Museum of Art or even at the Meyerson Symphony Center.

In fact, I'd argue that a slight loss of intimacy would be a worthwhile trade if it enabled a few hundred additional people to attend. These days, we don't need events that reinforce the mistaken notion that literature is elitist, or for the connected few. We need events that develop and energize book readers, not lock them out.

Any thoughts?

Here's a nice entry from Book Maven Bethanne Patrick for any writers out there suffering through the summer blahs.

The short version: Keep those keys a-clacking (after you've read your favorite Texas books blog, of course.)

I've gotten a lot of comments from my friends about reading Stephenie Meyer's fabulous "Twilight" series of vampire romances. They were published as "young adult," but they've crossed over to "older women" (I'm 47) in a big way.

Apparently, they've also crossed the gender barrier. While serving on jury duty on Wednesday, I saw a gentleman who appeared in his late 60s or 70s, thoroughly engrossed in Breaking Dawn, the recently released fourth book in the series.

I was going to add a few thoughts about Why I Came West, t by Rick Bass. But Bryan Woolley's review says it all for me.

I remember tearing through one of Mr. Bass' earlier Yaak Valley books at a friend's house a decade or so ago; I stayed up until 2 a.m. savoring his descriptions of the Montana winter. And recently, I relished stories from The Lives of Rocks as well. (We still have a marvelous story-length excerpt posted from that.)

When you are capable of writing so well, the expectations are high. And he didn't meet them with Why I Came West.

In his defense, I think it's hard for us in the Dallas area, where "wilderness" means "I can't see a Neiman's from here," to grasp the ferocity of the battle he has been fighting. Take a look at this review from Newwest.net, then see the comments readers have posted. I would hate to walk into in that Montana bar without a canister of bear spray handy. .

You gotta love the song titles on the CDs by the Moaning Myrtles (on sale at Portus at the Hilton Anatole last night). On the Toilet Humor album, with a picture of Myrtle musicians Lauren Fairweather, 20, and Nina Jankowicz, 19, both of New Jersey, and a toilet on the cover (Myrtle died on a toilet, remember), we have the songs "Flushed," "Sitting on the Toilet," "And Then I Died" and "Prefects are Hot." The swaying, clapping, robe-clad crowd was particularly hot for "Prefects are Hot." I enjoyed their music, but was also surprisingly impressed by The Mudbloods, a foursome originally from Austin, that followed the Myrtles. Wearing British school-type ties and white shirts, they brought some subtle musicianship to their oeuvre, which includes "A Pensieve Full of Unrequited Love" and "I wish You Would Be My Witch."

When I bought my iPod all those years ago (maybe 2005?), I was thinking it would be a nice way to carry the Beatles and Louis Armstrong with me on my commute. I never expected it to be a way to get literary news.

But that's a primary function for the little white box these days. The folks at NPR make it easy to suscribe to podcasts of book-centric programs such as Fresh Air, and they even compile a weekly roundup of the week's book stories. My biggest problem is finding enough room -- it seems wrong to delete Miles Davis to allow room for Terry Gross, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. (And Aura is not such a great album for commuting, anyway. Although if you disagree ... well, we should probably move over to the music blog.)

Anyhow, if you're also a fan of books and NPR and podcasts, here's something that might help: The Book Publicity Blog, which provides industry-oriented news and advice, has been compiling a handy weekly roundup of book stories on public radio, Look at all those mentions .... it must make a publicist salivate. But it's an embarrassment of riches for listener/readers.

Welcome back from the holiday weekend.

To divert you from doing any actual work this morning, here's a bit of Texas writing from regular books page contributor (and former colleague) Beatriz Terrazas.

It's not books-related, per se, but I hope you agree that it's a lovely essay.

If you're still looking for great beach reads (or just great "curled up in a chair, in front of a fan, clutching a lemonade" reads), consider Anne Cushman's Enlightenment for Idiots and/or Megan Chance's The Spiritualist.

Ms. Cushman's beautifully written, remarkably assured debut novel Enlightenment for Idiots (Shaye Areheart Books, $24) follows Amanda, a young wanna-be yoga teacher who gets sent to India to write a guide book to finding the titular "enlightenment." But at every "peace center" -- ashram, Buddhist temple, yoga/spa -- she visits, things go horribly, hilariously awry, from ripped knee cartilage to verboten guru love. Amanda's biggest hurdle, literally and physically, comes when she discovers she's pregnant and must choose: enlightenment? motherhood? are both possible?

In honor of the writer and illustrator Tasha Tudor, who has died in Vermont at age 92, here is my favorite quote of hers:

"Life isn't long enough to do all you could accomplish. And what a privilege even to be alive. In spite of all the pollutions and horrors, how beautiful this world is. Supposing you only saw the stars once every year. Think what you would think. The wonder of it!"
-- Tasha Tudor

Alert correspondent Bill Marvel passes along this Washington Post piece on The Fate of the Sentence.

Among the signs of doom, writes Linton Weeks: "In a survey, Internet language -- abbreviated wds, :) and txt msging -- seeping into academic writing."

Says Librarian of Congress James Billington: "I see creeping inarticulateness."

"This assault on the lowly -- and mighty -- sentence, he says, is symptomatic of a disease potentially fatal to civilization. If the sentence croaks, so will critical thought. The chronicling of history. Storytelling itself."

As far as I know, I have just three male acquaintances who are in book clubs.

Two work in the book industry in one way or another, so it's kind of mandatory for them.

The third is the only male in an all-women club, although he swears his motives are about literature, not meeting intelligent women who drink a lot of white wine that he didn't have to pay for.

Which means this Shelf Awareness piece about men and book clubs seemed noteworthy to me.

A telling comment from the article, from Mary Alice Gorman of Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, Penn.: "Fact is, like it or not, men just don't share their feelings easily. Book groups often fall into discussion of how they feel about what they read. Let's face it, the shared experience of growing up to be a woman in this culture bonds these groups in a unique way and is the reason they go on for so long."

Local management consultant Joel Zeff is the author of Make the Right Choice: Creating a Positive, Innovative, and Productive Work Life. (Disclosure: He's also a friend from college.)

Two items in his recent newsletter caught my eye:

Joel has an interesting approach for generating attention for his book: He's willing donating $20 to charity for each review posted at Amazon.

Is that ethical?

Joel tells me why he did it:

"Getting people to post Amazon reviews is much like asking people to help you move furniture. It just doesn't happen. Everyone says they enjoyed the book. They love the book. 'Would you mind posting a review on Amazon?' I ask. Everyone says they are going to do it. And then it doesn't happen. I understand we are all very busy. And, posting a review is not on the top of most people's lists.

"So, I thought I would put a little incentive out there. I am not trying to buy my reviews. And I don't want to seem like I am. I just thought a small incentive to a worthy cause might prompt some people to move the "post a review for Joel" to the top of the To Do list."

Frankly, I expect that kind of thing from Amazon reviews. And I think an author can do whatever he wants to promote a book, as long as he's open about it.

The problem I have is with those who would suggest that such material, as some have suggested, can replace the professional book review.

Your thoughts?

I was very intrigued by the review of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (Univere, $34.95) in The New York Times Friday. The reviewer,William Grimes, went on about how inadequate such a list makes even the most literate among us feel. He has ONLY read 303 of them himself (and admits to what he feels is his biggest sin of omission: Moby Dick). All of which makes me wonder, do all of us have a list of books we feel we must read before I die? I, personally, keenly feel the omission of some from the Dickens canon (I never did get through Bleak House) and I never have read Thackery's Vanity Fair.
So what about you? What books do you feel you must read before you die?

I grew up in an all-American, church-going, Defense Department-subsidized (via my dad's aerospace job) household. But I have never been able to generate the enthusiasm for war that usually comes naturally to my demographic.

I think some of it comes from growing up in the post-Vietnam 1970s. Nobody I knew wanted to play "U.S. vs. Viet Cong" in the woods near my house. Not when some of us had relatives who had served and refused to talk about it -- or sported more visible, physical wounds.

We did sometimes play World War II. I carried a wooden rifle with one golden bullet that was permanently ready to fire. The cooler kids had plastic M-16s with orange tips that RATATATATATATATed when you pulled the trigger. We threw pine cones as hand grenades. Usually we played Americans vs. Nazis. Even under those circumstances, I was adamant that the bad guys not be called "Germans," because my own non-Nazi relatives had been in Germany during the war. Faceless "Nazis" made a great enemy; "Germans" were real people I did not want to see die, or demonized, even if we were just throwing pine cones.

But for all that, I have remained fascinated with the military experience. So for Memorial Day, here are a few books that have stuck with me. They are served up mostly as a prompt to encourage you to suggest your own.

Hey, it works for farmers!

Thomas McGonigle, a contributor to the Jacket Copy blog at the Los Angeles Times, has a modest proposal to clear the literary air in America: Have George Soros pay established, stuck-in-a-rut writers to hang it up.

"If anyone doubts the benefits of my proposal just step back and think of the small pleasure knowing that there are no more novels from Saul Bellow and Susan Sontag! No more short stories from Raymond Carver!"

It's not a bad idea, although Mr. McGonigle's list of nominees includes just about every known writer, plus every unknown writer working for a university. Plus certain entire genres.

Which would certainly give me a lot more free time.

Still, I would have chosen a narrower target.

Such as, say, memoirs by people under 40.

Got any nominees of your own?

Please don't tell my colleagues on the television beat, but I have never watched a full episode of American Idol. Clearly, the problem is mine -- I mean, 97.5 million people can't be wrong, right?

Still, I have to admit, I get a little jealous. It's hard for an author to get anything close to that kind of attention. Unless your main character's last name is "Potter."

But if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I say. Which is why I'm going to get to work on a proposal for American Literary Idol.

Now, I'm aware that the British have been doing something similar with the Booker Prize, a Survivor -like contest with a voting procedure so drawn out that the Democratic Party's seems concise and efficient by comparison. And gather.com/Borders/Simon&Schuster and Amazon/Penguin each had contests for undiscovered talent recently.

But frankly, I think America is hungry for more. Much more.

Some of the tastier morsels out this week:
* The Front, by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam, $22.95). Continues the adventures of Massachusetts state investigator Win Garano.
* Snuff, by Chuck Palahniuk (Doubleday, $24.95). Follows 600 men waiting for their turns in a record-breaking porn movie. I can't believe I just typed that, much less that someone wrote a book about it.
* A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America, by Jim Webb (Broadway, $24.95). Political insight from the U.S. senator from Virginia.
* Moon Shell Beach, by Nancy Thayer (Ballantine, $24). Traces the reconciliation of two childhood friends on Nantucket.
* Blood Trail, by C.J. Box (Putnam, $24.95). The seventh crime novel with investigator Joe Pickett.
* Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God and Diversity on Steroids, by Julie Salamon (Penguin Press, $25.95). Chronicles a year in Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn. From the same author who brought us the inside-the-film-industry classic The Devil's Candy (about the making of The Bonfire of the Vanities).
* Odd Hours, by Dean Koontz (Bantam, $27). The newest supernatural mystery starring Odd Thomas, a former fry cook who can -- oh, here's a marketable skill -- communicate with the dead.

In an AP story out this week, Augusten Burroughs explains why he continues to write memoirs and would never have turned his life story into a novel, as some have suggested.

At the Dallas Museum of Art on Friday, novelist Brock Clarke took the exact same argument from the opposite side, telling why he'd never write a memoir (I'd love to see Burroughs and Clarke in an actual debate).

Mr. Clarke, who wrote An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, a hilarious, dead-on satire of memoirs, gave these reasons for preferring to incorporate his relatives and memories through fiction rather than memor:
1) "It [a memoir] would have been boring." None of his relatives have been abused or abusers, addicted or alcoholic, tormented by religion or prone to tormenting others through religion, he noted, rendering them distinctly un-memoirable.
2) "I wouldn't be able to stop myself from making stuff up."
3) "I didn't want to dig around in my grandparents' past, not because I'm lazy, but because it's none of my [expletive] business."

The AP story about Mr. Burroughs follows.

My copy-editing cohorts Tatia and Laura and I had a discussion tonight about whether Prince Caspian is, as Nancy Churnin writes in her review of the film adaptation, actually the second book in C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Some research revealed the answer: It is and it isn't.

The Chronicles were first published in this order:
1) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 2) Prince Caspian, 3) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 4) The Silver Chair, 5) The Horse and His Boy, 6) The Magician's Nephew and 7) The Last Battle.

But if you go to the bookstore or Amazon and buy a boxed set, you'll find they've been rearranged, and are now published in chronological order according to the timeline set forth in the books. That order is:
1) The Magician's Nephew, 2) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 3) The Horse and His Boy, 4) Prince Caspian, 5) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 6) The Silver Chair and 7) The Last Battle.

So which is right? Purists insist on published order -- that if you read The Magician's Nephew first, you'll find out all sorts of things you're just not supposed to know yet. Others say that if you're looking for the biblical themes and allusions in the books, those become much clearer in a chronological reading. Lewis himself, in a letter published in 1957, said either one was fine with him, although he expresssed just a smidgen of a preference for published order.

What do you think? Discuss.

For all you would-be writers out there, considering knocking off work this morning and heading out into a lovely spring day in Texas, here is some advice from Michael Chabon, as quoted in the afterword of the paperback version of The Yiddish Policemen's Union:

"Chabon's success traces to three requirements: talent, luck and discipline. 'Discipline," he says, "is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.'"

Alan Peppard's column today closes with mention of his pending memoir, Books. Alan notes:

"Some forget that more than two decades ago, Larry's Booked Up stores had an outpost in Dallas run by his friend Bill Gilliland."

That was in my pre-Texas era. Anybody recall this location?

Interesting observation reported on Galleycat -- tipsters say that the top 50 young adult science fiction/fantasy bestsellers recently outsold the top 100 adult sci-fi/fantasty bestsellers by two to one.

Blogger/author John Scalzi argues:

"That serious adult science fiction/fantasy readers don't seem to know any of this is a) a feature of the opaque nature of book sales, in which no one publicly talks about actual units sold and b) a feature of the apparent short-sightedness of adult sf/f readers, who are missing a genuine literary revolution in their genre because the YA section is a blank spot on the map to them, if not to everyone else."

This lovely quote was tucked inside the Vintage/Anchor Books fall catalog.

"To carry a book in your pocket or in your bag, particularly in times of sadness, is to be in possession of another world, a world that can bring you happiness." -- From Other Colors, by Orhan Pamuk

Amen, brother.

So, I was asked to be a Reading Ambassador for the fifth graders at Barksdale Elementary in Plano and I brought along my copy of Lois Lowry's latest, The Willoughbys. Now most of the kids were well aware of the two-time Newbery Medal winner through the books of hers that are most frequently assigned: Number the Stars, a story about a Danish family that helps Jews escape during the Holocaust, and The Giver, a futuristic look at a highly programmed society in which memories, music, colors and strong emotions are forbidden (the book is now getting a terrific stage production at the Dallas Children's Theater through Sunday). But with these two books being so serious, they were surprised to be laughing along with me at The Willoughbys, a parody of all those good little orphan kid stories. The bell rang with the kids clamoring for more after I got through the chapter where the not so nice Willoughby kids abandon a baby named Ruth (rendering them 'ruthless'). So what could I do but donate my copy to their school library? I'm always amazed by Lois Lowry's versatility. After three decades of writing for young adults, she still manages to surprise and delight.

I just spent five days in Denver for the American Copy Editors Society conference (ACES: The few, the proud, the defiantly picky!), and although the conference left little time for sightseeing, I did manage to get to the Tattered Cover's historic downtown store twice.

I was going to get all evangelical about Dallas' need for something similar, but I see that while I was gone, we had the announcement about Legacy Books coming to the Shops at Legacy in Plano. Well, I'm really, really happy for Plano, and I hope Legacy does indeed follow the inspiration of Tattered Cover and other legendary indies. But Dallas -- c'mon, Dallas, are we gonna let PLANO have a better bookstore? Geez.

So allow me a brief moment of evangelicism: TC is pretty much everything a great bookstore should be -- filled with creaky wooden floors and shelves, with sections that are beautifully organized but in a "thinking outside the box" way that leads you to selections you never knew you desperately needed until ... there they were. The last thing I need in my house is more books, but somehow two TC shopping bags found their way home with me. On my first trip, midday on a Wednesday, the store was full of contented customers being helped by fabulously eccentric, incredibly book-smart employees. I've been in a local big-chain bookstore at that same time of day when I was the only custumer in sight.

My favorite part of TC is the utter care taken in terms of helpfulness. All over the store, little handwritten signs answer the questions to apparently frequently-asked-questions. You might wonder, while perusing the journal section, "Where are the purse-sized address books?" A teensy sign points the way: "The itty-bitty address books are over on the checkout counter, near the bookmarks." Ahhh. Customer Service. It still exists; who knew?

Judy Alter's column in today's GuideLive takes a look at books about notable Dallas women.

Sadly, many of them are out of print.

Did we miss any? Were your favorites on the list?

On the Over the Top blog, staff writer Michael Granberry, on assignment to explore the blockbuster King Tut exhibit that's headed to Dallas, has some observations on reading habits in London.

(By happenstance, I just came across regular books page contributor John Freeman's own recent blog post that also discusses his experiences reading in London (and elsewhere). )

Those crazy college kids. Just when I think we can universally agree that the sky is falling and book culture is doomed, along comes a Daily Texan column that pooh-poohs the rush to digital reading:

"There's a certain magical aura that surrounds the book, even if that 10-pound American literature compilation is not your best friend right now. Having a book with real paper and ink between your fingers, and knowing that long ago someone wrote the words that you can physically touch creates a connection to the past. "

Writer Amanda Patterson, described as a "French senior," also celebrates some of Austin's favorite bookstores.

And you thought all they did in college these days was steal mp3s.

(Spotted on Shelf Awareness.)

Recently, Richardson High graduate Anne Rice, who just published "Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana,'" told Edward Nawotka that if she wrote another vampire book, it would be under special circumstances.

``I may yet revisit Lestat,'' she said. ``But if I do write another book about him it will be a Christian book. Lestat will consecrate his life to the Lord.''

That comment makes more sense to me today as she discusses her own faith in-depth in this column.

She writes:

"A long life of historical study and biblical research led me to my belief, and when faith returned to me, the return was total. It transformed my existence completely; it changed the direction of the journey I was traveling through the world. Within a few years of my return to Christ, I dedicated my work to Him, vowing to write for Him and Him alone."

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.

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.

Looks like that software update took. So let me post an appropriate ceremonial quote, and invite everyone to tell me what you think about the changes. Post a comment (if you can) or e-mail me at mmerschel@dallasnews.com.

"It will be best to start right and not let the record get confused, for some instinct tells me that these details are going to be important to the historian some day. For I feel like an experiment, I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel convinced that that is what I AM--an experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more."

-- Mark Twain, "Eve's Diary"

I know that a few of you readers are not in Texas -- as a true Texan might say, to your great misfortune. Some of you even hail from New York. Which we hear is somehow involved in the book business.

Which is why I post this story from your hometown paper, The New York Times. It describes the difficulties the candidates face in campaigning across Texas, which is, you might have heard, big.

This will not be news to local readers. But perhaps an outsider's perspective will benefit everyone here. You see, I've crossed paths with more than one book publicist who, when booking author tours, has decided to bypass Dallas on the grounds that they are already sending an author to Austin. Which is sort of like bypassing New York because you're already visiting Boston.

(Heck, I know people in Dallas who think Plano might as well be in Canada. But that's another matter entirely.)

The point is -- we like visitors. And we like Austin (for the most part.) We just don't consider authors who come to Austin to be our visitors.

Look, here's a map. Call me if you have questions.

I mentioned last week that Robert Pinsky was coming to town, and was hoping to link to some of his just-discontinued Poet's Choice columns in The Washington Post.

You can click on that link and find an entertaining poetry selection ("Country-Western Singer" by Alan Shapiro,) and also an example of an absolutely miserable reading experience.

Why?

Not long ago, we were discussing whether classic literature has any place in a modern school, or if it's time to emphasize "relevant" works.

The New York Times has countered with a piece that shows kids of diverse backgrounds responding to, of all things, "The Great Gatsby," by ... some dead white guy.

Judy Alter sends in this report on her experience:

"I bought a Kindle about a month ago, thinking ahead to a spring trip to Scotland and not wanting to travel without books yet not wanting to fill my suitcase with them. So far, I've only read one short book (How to Publish on Kindle) but I find it user-friendly. The screen is easy to read, pages easy to turn, whole thing is fairly easy for a non-tech person like me to navigate. I won't give up hard copies but I plan to use the Kindle for weekend visits to grandchildren, etc. Meantime, I'm hoarding the new Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky titles on it, saving them for Scotland."

Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, has won the hearts of Oprah and women nation-wide, but according to USA Today there may be a backlash.

Have you already read it? Tell us if, as Entertainment Weekly says, you "Love it [or] Loathe it?"

If not, buy the book and decide for yourself.

Lauren Romo

Portrait by Deborah Lopez

Your humble books editor is sipping a cup of French Market coffee with chicory, longing for a plate of properly made beignets, and wishing everyone a happy Fat Tuesday.

As you might guess, the topic of the day is a solicitation of favorite New Orleans literary experiences. For someone who spent some youthful years in a suburb of Nawlins (Abney Elementary, class of '77, or maybe '78 -- go Spartans, or was it Trojans?), I'm shamefully underread on the state's classics, aside from a long-ago reading of "All The King's Men." Which, as I recall, helped me understand those bullet holes they maintain as a sort of shrine to Huey Long at the capitol in Baton Rouge.

So I'll put in my plug for a bio that's not really about the city, but its most famous citizen. Laurence Bergreen's "Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life" contains some vivid descriptions of life in turn-of-the-century Storyville. You get the hard, ugly reality of the city's poverty and its most glorious hero all wrapped up in one package. (It should also lead you to invest heavily in his recordings, which, frankly, make life worth living.)

I would hardly present it as the last word on the subject, though. I'm sure you have your own thoughts. Throw me some ideas, mister. (Lacking ideas, you are free to suggest where to find a plate of beignets or a king cake.)

On a day that began with a debate about teaching the classics, I feel I should note this title, which just came over the transom: "HALO: Contact Harvest," by Joseph Staten. On 10 CDs.

So this is what America is creating now: Audio versions of space operas derived from video games.

No offense to Mr. Staten. It might be a great book. It's even "read by Jen Taylor, the voice of Cortana in the Halo video games, and actor Holter Graham," for what that's worth.

Still, I feel a need to go home and pull the covers over my head.

Here's a Deep Monday Morning Thought from the pages of Sunday's Points section: Would students be better off if we stopped teaching classic literature and focused instead on "relevant" works?

On the one hand, I respect the opinions of a teacher who has been in the trenches and knows what works. On the other hand, I'm not sure how much literature I would have deemed "relevant" at age 14 or 15 ... but I am quite glad that I had educators who pushed me through.

Greetings, and it's great to be back in Dallas after spending a few days off in ... Dallas.

Associated Press

But enough about me. Let's kick off the week in blogging with some idle gossip. Alert co-worker Jerry Bokamper points out that the movie adaptation of "The Road" is listed in "pre-production" on the Hollywood site imdb.com -- and the tentative cast is kind of eye-opening.

Viggo Mortensen is cast as "father," while Charlize Theron is "wife."

Now, one way of reading this is to assume that the producers have decided that the best way to make a marketable movie about an ash-covered, post-apocalyptic world of bleak emptiness is to fill the screen with really attractive people. I mean, if any couple could take the edge of a scene of baby-roasting cannibals, it would be those two. Right?

But that's what worries me. Does casting a superstar like Theron in the role signal that the wife is getting a major profile boost in the translation from book to movie?

Associated Press

Maybe they will throw in a few product placements for good measure. (FATHER [preparing to push shopping cart down a crumbling, danger-filled road that holds death at every turn and is a possible metaphor for life itself]: "They said life's better in a Jeep (r), son -- and it would be nice to have one on this road." )

Any thoughts? Or should we just wait for them to film the thing?

A new book, A Practical Guide to Racism , written by Daily Show writer Sam Means under the name C.H. Dalton, an imaginary and clueless "racial scholar" who comes off as a turn-of-the-century academic bigot, actually makes fun of racist thinking. Practical Guide is just the latest piece of pop culture to flip racism on its ear by mocking the ignorance of its inflictors. Does this trend mark dangerous ground, sophisticated parody, or both?

As always, it was a pleasure to read Judy Alter's column in this morning's DMN. What excited my particular interest in her thoughts about Robert E. Howard is that about ten years ago, a feature film called The Whole Wide World dealt with Howard's life, was made as an Indie. It was directed by Dan Ireland and written by Ireland and Benjamin Mouton, based on a book written by Novalyn Price. According to Mouton, Price, now deceased, I think, was an instructor of creative writing at LSU, and Mouton was one of her students. She gave him a copy--leather bound and privately published, of her book, and he said--that was a memoir of her association as the "friend" of Howard in Cross Plains. The film was very good, though a little rough around the financial edges, and it never did get wide release but mostly played art houses and small towns around north central Texas (I happened to see that it was playing in Abilene at one point and also in Tucson, AZ, for some reason.) It did well at Sundance, though, or so I heard. It's remarkable for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that I think it was the first feature role for both Renee Zellweger and Vincint D'Onofrio, who were more or less unknowns at the time. I can't remember who else was in it, but I think Harve Presnell played a minor role. I know about this because Mouton holds the film option on Agatite, which they just renewed. Anyway, when I saw your column, The film is available through Netflix and Blockbuster on line and is, I believe, fairly accurate.

In my recent review of the new book by Kathy L. Patrick on her East Texas "Pulpwood Queens," I compared them to the Sweet Potato Queens of Mississippi, saying that the SPQs "live merely to party and are proud of it."

Some (OK, a lot) of the SPQs from around the country took full advantange of their e-mail buttons and fired off some ... erm, let's say "sternly worded" responses to me, apparently feeling as though I'd mischaracterized them as a bunch of, as one writer vividly put it, "drunken illiterates."

I'm actually inordinately fond of the SPQs and would never intentionally diss them. That word "merely" was ill-considered, and hereby renounced. Over the years, I've covered the SPQs extensively for this newspaper -- I've interviewed Boss Queen Jill Conner Browne several times, have given positive reviews to many of the SPQ books, and was even invited to Jackson, Miss., by Ms. Browne a few years ago, where I got to ride on the SPQ float in the annual St. Patrick's Day parade. I cherish my "honorary SPQ" status, and you'll have to pry my way-over-the-top tiara from my cold, dead fingers. Here's my most recent interview with Jill.

Far from "merely" partying their hearts out (which they certainly do), the SPQs have donated thousands of dollars (probably hundreds of thousands) to charity and count among their court doctors, lawyers, teachers and all manner of professionals. And, like the Pulpwood Queens, they love to read, and many of the SPQ chapters have evolved into book groups.

Please, my SPQ sistren ... consider this my heartfelt apology for any hurt you felt. Sweet Potato Queens rock, Pulpwood Queens rock ... heck, anyone with a tiara and a library card has my undying support. Go forth and bestow queenliness upon the multitudes.

A reader just posed this question to me: Where would you go to gather with a few friends, talk about a book, maybe have a drink or two?

It seemed like a good one to put to you, dear citizens of Texas Pages nation.

Fire away.

This week, Texas Pages had its 1,000th post.

That's just an indication of quantity, not quality. But it gives me an excuse to say thank you not only to my fellow bloggers, who provide so much great material, but to all the people who have provided feedback and encouragement to us.

Of course, the biggest thanks go to the thousands of you who keep coming back week after week, and have even told your friends to do the same. Or maybe you were telling your enemies. In any case, we appreciate your spreading the word.

If you've got an idea for something you want to see more, or less, of in the next thousand posts, comment away.

Replies to Judy Alter's column on the Top 10 Texas books continue to come in. Here's one that was sent to me by Will Howard of Will's Texana Monthly. He writes:

"Here's a list of Texana novelists made to fit a chronology for the 20th century, selected sometimes for first effort and other times for my preferred. Oddities include, I gave only one entry per novelist, so, e.g., having entered the 'Horseman' I passed by the 'Dove.' "

Here's a nice, non-saccharine piece on writing from newsman/novelist Jim Lehrer. (He references "Eureka," which was warmly received in these pages.)

I'll tack on my own warm wishes to blog readers everywhere. Whatever your holiday tradition is, I hope it involves much happiness, and lots of enjoyable reading.

Bryan Woolley tells a short history of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes in today's review. Now here's a space to share your own thoughts on the master.

I vividly remember when I discovered Holmes. My parents had received an anthology in the mail as a book-of-the-month club pick. I ended up lugging it to and from sixth grade and devoured each story. This lesson from "A Scandal in Bohemia" stuck with me. Holmes tells Watson the secret to his powers:

"You see, but you do not
observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have fre-
quently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room."
"Frequently."
"How often?"
"Well, some hundreds of times."
"Then how many are there?"
"How many? I don't know."
"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen.
That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen
steps, because I have both seen and observed.

I've never been able to look at the world the same way since.