Texas Pages

I've been waiting until Halloween to mention a book that came out in June: Jim Knipfel's These Children Who Come at You With Knives, and Other Fairy Tales.

Here are some things I was going to say about it: Sick. Twisted. Creepy. Disturbing. Frightening.

Loved it.

Hide it from the kids.

The A.V. Club's Nathan Rabin comes to bury cinematic disasters, not to praise them. Actually, he does a little of both, depending on your perspective.

What began as a weekly column on The A.V. Club, the arts and entertainment sister publication of The Onion, has become a really-for-real book, a collection of musings on some of film's most notorious failures.

The book, My Year of Flops: One Man's Journey Deep Into the Heart of Cinematic Failure, collects some of the most popular entries from the column (which has now lived on for well over a year), bonus interviews with the actors and directors closest to the bombs and 15 "book exclusive" entries.

Within the past two weeks, at least three heavy-duty readers I know have started singing the praises of their new Kindles to me.

Which is why I want to talk about Al Jaffee's Mad Life, by Mary-Lou Weisman, which is being released today by the HarperCollins imprint It Books.

As any MAD Magazine reader knows, Al Jaffee, still going at 89, is one of the greatest cartoon artists of the 20th century. (Don't take my word for it; ask the National Cartoonists Society, which gave him a Reuben in 2008.) So I snatched this one up with high expectations.

Travel editor Mary Ellen Botter discusses a new resource for fellow Austenites:

Jane Austen enthusiasts and readers of Regency romance (and we know who we are) have an excellent new reference in "Georgette Heyer's Regency World" (Sourcebooks, $14.99).

Good news to send us into the weekend: Modern Library is preparing to issue a 25th anniversary edition of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

The press release says the release date is Sept. 28, and that the re-issue "returns Blood Meridian to its original trim size and boasts the artwork from the original cover, the first edition of which is one of the most sought-after items on the antiquarian book market."

This is a legendary book, one that reviewer Bryan Woolley once described as "a terrifying hymn to violence and death" that "sold few copies at first, but
critics and academics now acknowledge it as one of the great American novels and name Mr. McCarthy with the same reverence as Melville and Faulkner."

So I'll be looking forward to getting my copy. In the meantime, I dug way back into the archives for the original review from The Dallas Morning News. The reviewer was another western legend, Elmer Kelton.

Labor Day might have marked the end of the season for lazy reading, but I have at least one lesson leftover from one of the triple-digit-heat days of not so long ago.

The lesson is: There is nothing more delightful than an book picked up in a moment of whimsy that turns out to be terrific. Case in point: The View From the Bridge, by Nicholas Meyer.

I reached for this book when I was trapped inside with my kids because of the weather. I needed something I could dip into without fear of being challenged intellectually, because I was probably serving macaroni and cheese to somebody while I read. With a subtitle of "Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood," I was sure it would turn out to be self-indulgent, cheesy and not worth my time, even for an unreconstructed Trekkie like me.

I was wrong, wrong and wrong.

Historians love to talk about revisionism, the art of finding something new to say about something old This helps explain why each year produces a new crop of books about familiar historical figures.

Few characters in history produce more new books than Lincoln and Churchill. Why is that?

"The fascination with Lincoln is more about ourselves than about Lincoln," says Richard Norton Smith, a presidential historian and the former director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. "He's a mirror we hold up to ourselves. He reflects each generation's occupations and interests."

This helps explain how often Lincoln is re-examined and re-interpreted in history. This has been seen in recent years with books that focus on parts of the Lincoln story that speak to today's times.

Jonathan Franzen has not suffered for lack of exposure for his soon-to-be-released novel, Freedom. With pre-publication appearances on the cover of Time and in The New York Times Book Review, the novelist is showing that you really don't need Oprah to whip the book media into a frenzy. (Yes, The Dallas Morning News will be on that bandwagon as well -- stay tuned.)

But not everyone is thrilled. As noted on GalleyCat, Jennifer Weiner has launched a Twitter campaign with the hashtag "#franzenfreude" that she says is a call "for non-Franzen novels about love, identity, families, The Way We Live Now. I pick Anne Tyler's DIGGING TO AMERICA"

Here are a few other titles suggested by tweeters, with links to reviews where available.

With the Glee phenomenon taking over television and radio, it was only a matter of time before it was committed to the written word. The YA prequel novel, Glee: The Beginning by Sophia Lowell, promises to fill readers in on what happened in the lives of our favorite McKinley High students before Mr. Schuester took over Glee club.

It accomplishes that goal in a very basic sense: we see the lives of Rachel, Finn, Mercedes, Kurt and the rest in the months leading up to the pilot episode. But if anything that happened before the show started was that pivotal or interesting, wouldn't it have been on the show?

I'm not sure I'll be watching the World Cup finale this weekend -- the team I root for was eliminated Wednesday.

But both Lapham's Quarterly and NPR have compiled lists of literary soccer reading.

The consensus choice seems to be Among the Thugs, by Bill Buford. Your own suggestions, of course, are welcome.

Over at NPR, my friend Glen Weldon has put together a delightful list of books related to mutants, monsters and the undead.

But not vampires. As Glen writes, these books "feature gods, monsters, aliens, mutants, pulsating brains, sword-canes, dirigibles and derring-do. They're enlivened, every one, by wit and wordplay, not more pale, bloodless introspection."

Glen is scheduled to appear on the NPR program Talk of the Nation this afternoon; the topic is the Man of Steel. If you're in an area that gets it, tune in. I know of nobody with a finer mix critical sensibilities and true geek cred.

[UPDATE: Glen did not appear on TOTN as planned -- I'm told there was some silly sports thing involving a basketball player that was deemed more important -- but watch for him on a future date.]

If you're still searching for summer reading choices, here are some favorites from my "to be read" stack that have actually gotten read during the past few weeks. It's still tottering, of course, but I'm making progress. Until that next Amazon order arrives, at least ...

Author Elizabeth Bass scores a charming hit with her Texas-set debut, Miss You Most of All, about two sisters and their extended family (including a much-despised stepsister, on the run from the mob), all living at Sassy Spinster Farm. The farm lets guests try out farming, getting their hands dirty and cooking what they've pulled up that day. The book is mostly light as air, but passages dealing with one of the character's breast cancer will have you weepy. It's one of those books where not much happens, but so much happens. Perfect for a women's book club.

While your humble books editor gets caught up on things after a non-literary hiatus, here are a few links that will let you do the same.

In this morning's paper, you'll find David Martindale's interview with Scott Sigler, who will be at Border's (Preston at Royal) on Friday.

Tom Maurstad recently took a look at the latest from Bret Easton Ellis. His essay is posted here.

Nancy Churnin had a chat with one of my favorite authors for children, Doreen Cronin. That interview is here.

Local author Alex Lemon published an essay about his father.

And we recently ran a mess of reviews with Texas connections, including Welcome to Utopia, by Karen Valby; Lightnin' Hopkins: His Life and Blues, by Alan Govenar; Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto; and Uncertain Ground by Carolyn Osborn.

As Chris Vognar and I mentioned in our BookExpo coverage from New York, this season's most anticipated novel is from Houstonian Justin Cronin. His book, The Passage, will be available tomorrow. In the meantime, you can read Ed Nawotka's review, (He says, "The Passage is the type of big, engrossing read that will have you leaving the lights on late into the night for reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that light keeps vampires away.") or Michael Brick's profile, wherein Cronin notes:

"From a human-interest standpoint, I'm a suburban dad from Texas who wrote a novel that started an entertainment franchise."

From NewWest.net: Regular Dallas Morning News contributor Jenny Shank writes about King of the Chicanos, a novel by Manuel Ramos. Though the author is from Denver, and the review (which appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera) emphasizes the Colorado connections, alert Texans will note the protagonist's birth in historically significant Crystal City. The publisher is San Antonio's Wings Press.

Food critic Leslie Brenner has posted a review of Anthony Bourdain's new book, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook on the Eats Blog.

She writes, "Bourdain is one angry fellow. In fact, Medium Raw is one of the angriest, oddest, most disjointed, self-indulgent, self-righteous, bitter, vicious books I've ever read."

Click here to find out what she really thinks, though.

After reading my recent review of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the third in Swedish author Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, Rainer Schulte, director of the Center for Translation Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, very nicely pointed out to Books Editor Michael Merschel that I hadn't mentioned the series' translator, Reg Keeland. Excellent point, Mr. Schulte, I should have done that -- without Mr. Keeland's stellar efforts, we'd all be wondering what that fuss in Europe was over those "Girl" books. I solemnly promise never to leave out the translator's name again!

It started me thinking about other books I've loved that would have been impossible to enjoy without the work of translators. Here are some of my favorites:
* The Diary of Anne Frank, translated by Barbara Mooyaart-Doubleday
* The I Ching, translated by Richard Wilhelm and Carl F. Bayne
* An Actor Prepares, by Constantin Stanislavsky, translated by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood
* The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera, translated by Michael Henry Heim
* The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, translated by William Weaver
* The Reader, by Bernard Schlink, translated by Carol Brown Janeway

What are some of your favorite books written in other languages, and who translated them?

Today's Dallas Morning News has Beatriz Terrazas' interview with Isabel Allende.

Allende will speak 7:30 p.m. Thursday at First United Methodist Church of Dallas as part of Arts & Letters Live. (Click on that link for ticket info.)

She's also scheduled to be interviewed 1 p.m. Thursday on Think on KERA-FM (90.1).

(Photo by Lori Barra)

And our review of Island Beneath the Sea is available here.

Coming Sunday, Jenny Shank will be reviewing Brady Udall's The Lonely Polygamist on our books pages.

To whet your appetite, here's her interview with Udall, as posted at NewWest.net. (Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here.)

As Jenny says: "The Lonely Polygamist is my favorite novel this year so far, and I've been telling everybody about it, so don't say that I didn't tell you."

Sunday's Dallas Morning News has a review of local writer Susannah Charleson's Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog.

The photo you see is not the author or her dog -- but the Louis DeLuca photo from Oklahoma City that inspired her. It shows Skip Fernandez, from the Dade County Florida Search & Rescue team, hugging his dog Aspen after working the night shift at the federal building an April 26, 1995.

Speaking of inspiration: Charleson was a prize-winner at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. The story of how the conference helped her land a book contract is posted here. [UPDATE: My friends at the Mayborn suggest that this link might be more appropriate. Her story is the third one on the page.]

Hampton Sides' Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin is reviewed on today's books pages.

In case you missed it, here's his Sunday Essay on how the experiences of Dallas and Memphis parallel one another.

Columbus, Ohio-based author Carla Buckley, whose debut novel The Things That Keep Us Here was reviewed by us (well, me actually) in last Sunday's GuideDaily, will be in town for a book signing next Tuesday. She'll appear at 7 p.m. March 9 at Borders, 10720 Preston Road at Royal Lane. 214-363-1977.

I've been meaning to write about two of my favorite books from last year: Pops, the Louis Armstrong bio by Terry Teachout, and The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece, by Eric Silbin. The brewing iPad hype gives me an excuse.

The books don't have much in common, besides music and overall excellence. Pops is a straight-out biography, one that challenged and changed the way I think about my favorite performing artist. Armstrong comes across as great as ever -- and, for the first time in my readings about him, fully human as well. We're at least a generation past the period where thinking people viewed the trumpeter as an Uncle Tom who stopped doing serious work in the 1920s; Teachout's work should help bury that image by portraying Armstrong as an intense artist who was, in contrast to his always-clowning stage persona, "given to inexplicable explosions of anger that came and went like summer storms."

Teachout's portrayal, gleaned in part from previously inaccessible records, hardly tarnishes the legend, though. As Armstrong told a doctor late in life after being warned that he might drop dead if he went through with a planned series of concerts: "Doc, that's all right, I don't care. My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to bloooow that hooorn." Teachout adds welcome depth to our understanding of that lovely soul and the music that expressed it.

The Cello Suites is a blend of criticism, musical history, personal essay and biography -- or rather, biographies, because I learned just as much about J.S. Bach as I did about Casals. It's the story of how the remarkable Cello Suites came to be -- or at least, how they are thought to have come about. Because it turns out that the music, which today is accepted as timeless, had been virtually forgotten until Casals stumbled across the sheet music at a shop in Barcelona in 1890 and eventually led them from obscurity to ubiquity.

It's a rich story, one that is infused with Siblin's sense of obsession (the pop music critic at one point takes cello lessons to understand Bach better) but never overtaken by it. A serious music scholar might be bored by his journey. I was enthralled.

The two books had one one other thing in common, which is where Steve Jobs comes in.

From travel editor and birder Mary Ellen Botter:

Birders watch birds because they want to learn. What is that? What color is it? What's it doing? Why does it do that? How does it live?

A small new book from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and author Laura Erickson will arm enthusiasts with answers to questions they have and may not even have imagined. The Bird Watching Answer Book (Storey, $14.95) is 388 pages of welcome information, such as which birds play, fast-living birds in the tropics, what to do about a one-eyed robin, senses birds have that humans lack, and how to cope with a blathering mockingbird.

Useful to virtually all skill levels of birders, Answer Book has a Q&A format with factoid boxes that makes it easy to pick up and put down as time allows. And when you come to the final question (why birds flying in flocks don't crash into each other), you're like a blue jay at a peanut feeder: You want more.

This review falls in the "better late than never category" ... though in my defense, it was Douglas Adams himself who said, "I love deadlines - I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

I was not all that excited when word came that Eoin Colfer was publishing a new book in Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I knew Colfer only by reputation -- millions of Artemis Fowl fans can't be wrong -- but I couldn't imagine anything good coming of attempts to piggyback on the success of the funniest science fiction series of all time.

But a strange thing happened while I was reading And Another Thing: I not only laughed early and often, I got to thinking he might even have done too good a job at being Adams.

Adams died of a heart attack at age 49 in 2001. Colfer has managed an absolutely astounding bit of literary doppelgangery. He echoes Adams' voice without mimicking or mocking it. Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox make nearly pitch-perfect returns. So do the hateful Vogons, cows (and fish) who beg to be eaten, and the god Cthulhu. Who was not actually an Adams creation, but he does a solid cameo.

Colfer's ability to channel Adams is so slick, in fact, that had Adams himself written it, fans would be heralding his return to heights not seen since, oh, about halfway through the second book in the series, which is always where I felt the series peaked. And Another Thing captures his sense of the zany, but that zaniness is channeled into a relatively tight plot that involves an impotent Norse god, a faux-Irish huckster, a peril to humanity and an immortal whose goal is to insult every being in the universe. (I did say relatively tight.)

I'm doing a story on the novelist Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude). So I was mildly amused that the New York Times books editors recently named his latest, Chronic City, one of the five best novels of 2009.

No problem with that; I'm deeply enjoying Chronic's alternate universe version of Manhattan. But it was just two months ago that Times chief book critic Michiko Kakutani delivered an impassioned screed against Chronic City in the august publication's pages. (The words "tedious" and "overstuffed" appear in the first sentence of the review).

I realize the Times has bifurcated books coverage, with daily critics like Kakutani weighing in during the week and the books section following leisurely behind with its own freelancers on Sundays. Still, put yourself in Michiko's shoes. You hated this book so much that readers wondered if it did bodily harm to your loved ones. You are the books voice of the Times. And it made the Times' top five.

Not that critics have egos, but that's gotta smart.

Who would have thought that a book about a plane crash could make you feel better about flying?

Judging by the title, one might expect William Langewiesche's
Fly By Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24) to be a feel-good tale about Chelsey "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot (and local hero -- as noted here) who kept his cool and brought his crippled Airbus A320 into the Hudson River on Jan. 15.

Although the geese that his plane hit were liquefied, all 155 people aboard survived. That's an amazing tale that makes Sullenberger worthy of the praise and attention he has received; Langewiesche notes that data prove "that he was a pilot at the peak of human performance."

But Langewiesche is not into hero worship or myth-making. He's an award-winning journalist -- and a pilot himself (he flew his first solo at 14, notes Publishers Weekly). And his tale of the crash is not only both breezy and technical, it manages to be respectful of Sullenberger while also showing that some of the real heroes of the day were the Airbus engineers -- particularly former test pilot Bernard Ziegler -- who designed a plane that could be flown in such circumstances.

Here's what the Associated Press thought of Sarah Palin's book, which we're talking about in advance of her visit to Legacy Books in Plano. (Tickets are available starting today.)

You can read The New York Times' take here.

The AP also scrutinized the book and exhaustively fact-checked it; that story is appended at the end of the review.

By MARK KENNEDY
Associated Press Writer
Going Rogue: An American Life (HarperCollins, 413 pages, $28.99), by Sarah Palin: There should be a feeling of palpable glee running through Sarah Palin's memoir: Now, finally, she gets to talk, unfiltered and unedited.
This is, after all, a politician convinced that the media twists her words, who says she's been parodied and mocked by establishment elites, and who complains she was muzzled by her own party.
Going Rogue: An American Life offers her a chance to answer back, without pesky interference from the likes of Katie Couric or GOP handlers. It is, to steal Nancy Reagan's memoir title, My Turn.
So why is there so little bloodletting, why no mustn't-miss gory bits? Her book, written with an assist from Lynn Vincent, is less the revealing autobiography of a straight-shooting maverick and more a lengthy campaign speech -- more lipstick, less pit bull.

With the Dallas Theater Center set to christen the new Wyly Theater with A Midsummer Night's Dream later this week, it seems a good time to mention the updated version of one of the more delightful bits of biography from last year, Bill Bryson's Shakespeare.

I danced between the paper and audio versions when I ... read? .... listened to? .... consumed this work last fall. I was richly entertained in both formats. Bryson manages to be intelligent and entertaining, serious and funny, all at once. Mr. Shakespeare would be pleased.

Harper has just sent me what is billed as the "Illustrated and Updated Edition." Which is a classy way of saying, "We're hoping you'll buy this as a coffee table book for Christmas." Actually, it's more of an end table book, only slightly wider than a standard hardcover, on glossy paper. And if adding photos and period artwork to Bryson's breezy text does seem to be gilding the lily (which, as luck would have it, is phrase of Shakespearean provenance,) this is still something that might actually get picked up off that end table and ... consumed. Watch for it in stores after Nov. 3.

On the heels of Oprah's announcement, here's the review of Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them. And here's the accompanying excerpt.

Audio book expert Mary Ellen Botter offers the following:

The payoff in most murder mysteries is learning who the killer is. But author Peter de Jonge digs further, laying out a "why" he answers and another "why" he leaves rattling the listener's thoughts.
Complex, dark and gritty to the point that you may feel you need to wash up after listening, Shadows Still Remain nonetheless is a tale with enough threads (violent death, political jockeying, addiction, lesbianism and pedophilia among them) to hold the attention of even the most experienced mystery solver.
De Jonge's NYPD detective-heroine Darlene O'Hara and her faithful partner Serge Krekorian hunt the killer of a promising university student. The two break a raft of rules to solve the case before nemesis homicide detective Patrick Lowry can nab the wrong suspect.
The author's detailed knowledge of New York City makes its streets and neighborhoods come alive. Reader Tita Benko's Big Apple accents are appropriate and believable. And three mysteries in one audio is a bargain.

Shadows Still Remain
Peter de Jonge, author; Tina Benko, reader
Harper Audio, 6 disks, unabridged, $29.99

This weekend's print edition carried an abbreviated review of Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs. I haven't gotten around to that one myself; the reviews I have read ranged from lavish to tempered praise.

This morning, the Flyover blog at artsjournal hones in on one aspect of those reviews that applies to Texans -- the parochialism of East Coast reviewers. The blogger notes:

.

...Michiko Kakutani wrote unironically in the New York Times that "[Moore] gives us bright, digital snapshots of flyover country where nearly every small town has a local Dairy Queen..." (something Kakutani apparently finds exotic and noteworthy).

Jonathan Lethem's piece for the NYT also touches upon similar territory. Rather puzzlingly, he wrote that "Moore's class diagnostics are so exact she can make us feel the uneasiness not only between town and country in a single landlocked state, but between different types of farmers on neighboring plots." This comment tells me more about Lethem than Moore.

Lorrie Moore certainly has her laser-like descriptive gifts, but being able to distinguish in a work of fiction between a Madison-like college town and a rural community is not an extravagant feat.

It reminds me of this lead on another New York Times story from flyover territory, this one a 2008 feature on Robb Kendrick's Still: Cowboys at the Start of the Twenty-First Century:

One fairly reliable way to tell if you are in a part of the country where people still herd cattle for a living is the frequent and unself-conscious use of the word cowboy as a verb.

As in: "Buck got a good scholarship to go to college, but he turned it down. All he wanted to do was cowboy."

For more than 20 years the photographer Robb Kendrick, a longtime contributor to National Geographic, has traveled around the United States, Canada and northern Mexico visiting just such places, increasingly rare ones where development has been kept at bay and discouraging words seldom are heard, at least on cellphones, which stop working a hundred miles from the nearest tower.

Now, I have lived in flyover states for most of my life, and I suppose the fact that I have never met a person who gave up a college scholarship "to cowboy" does not mean all that much. I trust that the reporter did actually more than one person who had done this. Still, I wish that when certain media icons dare to look at lives beyond the Hudson River, they could find a way without resorting to cliche, stereotyping or just plain silliness.

Technical issues prevented this review of Victor LaValle's Big Machine from appearing on our Web site this weekend, so we're publishing it below instead.

You can see reviewer Walton Muyumba this week during the "Art & Seek" segment of Think on KERA-TV, which airs Friday at 7:30 p.m. He'll be discussing his new book, The Shadow and the Act: Black Intellectual Practice, Jazz Improvisation, and Philosophical Pragmatism.

By WALTON MUYUMBA
Special Contributor

Victor LaValle's weird and ambitious novel Big Machine is set in 2005 but peopled with junkies, prostitutes and grifters resplendent in Harlem Renaissance-era fashion: tailored gabardine and calfskin boots. The book also features a secret research society in backwoods New England, murderous religious cults and hazy, yellow angels.
Though mixing elements of spiritual parable, African-American literary history, the detective novel, the graphic novel and speculative fiction, LaValle dresses the work as realism. In fact, the tension between sci-fi and noir material and realist approach makes Big Machine crackle.

I continue to be fascinated with the new version of A Moveable Feast, although I promise to move the conversation along soon. But before I do -- you might be interested in this review from The Kansas City Star, which once employed Mr. Hemingway. It's the best analysis I have seen. (The Star, which has been publishing without former books editor John Mark Eberhart, still maintains an excellent Hemingway site here.)

For the audio-inclined, you can also get a nice report from Maureen Corrigan of Fresh Air.

And now, I shall wander off in search of a quiet cafe in which to think the rest of the morning's deep thoughts. Someplace with sensitive, world-wise waiters, where the literati of Dallas will not disturb me. It should be clean, and well-lighted, as well. Any suggestions?

For my recent sojourn to the high country of Colorado, I grabbed the new-in-paperback novel Art in America, Ron McLarty's story about a failed writer who finds himself in ... the high country of Colorado. The appeal to me should be obvious.

Opinions had been divisive on this book. On the one hand, it earned several raves; NewWest.net, for example, named it one of the best Western books of 2008. On the other hand, the West-based critic I asked to look at last year it dropped out halfway through for lack of interest.

So I was eager to make up my own mind. And I came away ... divided.

I loved Allison Winn Scotch's first book, The Department of Lost and Found, and her latest novel, Time of My Life (just out in paperback), is even better. It's a moving, hilarious tale of a woman, Jillian Westfield, who's having a really bad day as the book opens. As she runs errands amid the whif of spoiled milk (a sippy cup tragedy in the backseat), she's mentally chanting the 17 words her 18-month-old daughter can say, including the multisyllabic "Barbie," which, when first uttered, sent she and her husband into spasms of glee.

A bit later, she's finally relaxing in the hands of Garland, her massage therapist, when she begins to ponder what might have happened if her life had taken a different turn, away from her stay-at-home-mommie days, lawyer husband and the big house in Westchester County, N.Y. What if she had married Jackson, her pre-marriage boyfriend? When she wakes up from the massage -- she's there. She's gone back seven years, to her life as an advertising exec in Manhattan, and she's back with Jack. And the great thing is, she remembers everything that's coming.

Hence, the book's mostly about Jillian's decisions in the face of all that future-knowledge: whether to stay on the path that led her to husband Henry and little Katie, or to enjoy the single-girl lifestyle, the rewards of career stardom and Jackson's laid-back essence (he's not exactly lawyer material). It's the ultimate "do-over," and Scotch carries it off with witty, breezy aplomb. Don't let the cover, showing a girl bundled up against the snow, make you think this is a "winter book." No, it's just about perfect late-summer fare, when all you want to do is lay by the pool, let your limbs go limp in the heat and think about ... what might have been.

Every now and then, I will reach into the great pile of unread books here at Humble Books Editor HQ and grab a galley that I hope will amuse Mrs. Humble Books editor, if only for the title alone.

Such was the case with The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter, by Holly Robinson. We recently acquired a pair of gerbils in our own household, and I thought the book would earn maybe a smirk, then get tossed into the big box of unread books that gets hauled to the library's donation room every month or so.

But the joke was on me, because my wife devoured it -- and was enthusiastic enough in her praise to persuade me to pick it up myself.

I can't say that I loved it. But then, perhaps I am not the target audience for a memoir about a young woman coming of age in a household with an aloof mother, siblings who ranged from sickly to sociopathic, and a Naval officer father who has a dream of being the world's greatest purveyor of gerbils.

Travel editor and regular Texas Pages contributor Mary Ellen Botter says, "Put these paperbacks at the top of your summer reading list:"

Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield (Broadway, $16) recounts the real activities of the Long Range Desert Group, British commandos trying to derail the rout of Allied troops in North Africa by German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. The narrator, a member of a fictional LRDG unit, puts the reader in the crosshairs of the conflict. The book isn't gratuitously bloody, but its taut writing makes real the terrible heat, the chaos and the courage. Pressfield provides a fast read that's deep and thought-provoking, not just action.

Pet lovers will have no trouble embracing a dog as the storyteller in the wonderfully touching The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein (Harper, $14.99). Enzo's master is Denny, a professional race-car driver. The dog dreams of opposable thumbs and a voice so that he can coach and comfort Denny, his wife Eve and their daughter Zoe as life carries all in painful detours. Enzo's faithfulness and understanding are constants, as is his hope of being reincarnated as a human so he can tell Denny how proud he is of him. Rated five Milk-Bones out of five. (And bring a hankie.)

Larry Bond's Cold Choices (Forge, $26.95 hardback) is a submarine thriller set in the frigid Barents Sea. A Russian nuclear submarine commanded by a hot-dog sub jock collides with an American sub in international waters, and the ensuing rescue ignites Cold War emotions and attitudes. It takes a bit of an engineer's mind to follow some of the hardware details, and a few story threads seem to fray (a mutiny afoot? an unstable captain -- of a nuclear vessel?). But the resolution isn't telegraphed, and the reader is engaged to the final pages.

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.

Loyal blog readers will notice that things have been a bit slow around here of late. Thanks for sticking with us; your humble books editor has been unable to blog, as he has been driving a minivan across large, squarish states in the middle of the country.

It is the exact opposite of the type of driving you can read about in A.J. Baime's Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferarri, and their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans, which I reviewed here. The book has fast cars, crazed titans of industry and a folksy Texas genius to the rescue -- so what's not to like?

Baime recently spoke about the book on the public radio program Marketplace. You can listen to it here.

Today on the books page, Joy Tipping chats with David Eagleman, author of Sum: Forty Views of the Afterlives, ahead of his appearance at the Dallas Museum of Art on Friday. (He's also scheduled to appear at Legacy Books on July 15.)

You can also read her review of Sum here.

And you can peruse the book here.

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.

Check our books page on Sunday, and you'll find reviews of:

Far Bright Star, by Robert Olmstead

Quest for Justice: Louis A. Bedford Jr. and the Struggle for Equal Rights in Texas, by Darwin Payne.

An Inside Passage, by Kurt Caswell

In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language, by Arika Okren.

Hello Goodbye, by Emily Chenoweth.

Chasing Icarus: The Seventeen Days in 1910 That Forever Changed American Aviation, by Gavin Mortimer

And don't forget to be watching for Chris Vognar's updates from Book Expo America.

Pick up a Sunday paper, or click on the new link to the books page at dallasnews.com, and you'll find reviews of:

Four great thrillers, evaluated by Alan Cheuse: Fragment, by Warren Fahy; The Genesis Secret, by Tom Knox; Martyr, by
Rory Clements; and Marine One, by James W. Huston.

For the history-inclined, there's American Heroes, by Edmund S. Morgan,
The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China, by Jay Taylor.

There's also a serious look at Bigfoot, The Life and Times of a Legend, by Joshua Blu Buhs.

And a novel, Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, by C.M. Mayo.

But wait! There's more on Monday, when Joy Tipping will offer a look at some of the more intriguing books coming out this summer.

Pop over to the books page of GuideLive.com to find reviews of:

How to Sell, by Clancy Martin

Into the Beautiful North, by Luis Alberto Urrea

Vicksburg, 1863, by Winston Groom

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T.J. Stiles

and

Winter Vault, by Anne Michaels

Also, Staff Writer Eric Aasen took a look at the ongoing fascination with Bonnie and Clyde. Along the way, he spoke with local writer Jeff Guinn, whose Go Down Together was reviewed earlier this year.

In case you missed out over the past few days, we've had a glut of books coverage, including:

Alan Peppard's interview with Allegra Huston about Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found.

Joy Tipping's interview with Tony Horwitz ahead of his appearance tonight at Arts & Letters Live.

Jane Sumner's obituary for Bud Shrake.

And book reviews of:

Stone's Fall by Iain Pears
Mrs. Somebody Somebody by Tracy Winn
Shadow and Light, by Jonathan Rabb
Puttin' on the Ritz, by Peter Levinson
The Girls From Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship, by Jeffrey Zaslow

and Love Stories in This Town by Amanda Eyre Ward (pictured.)

(File photo/Cory Ryan)

For those who missed it, you can still read Jane Sumner's interview with Nadine Eckhardt, author of the saucy memoir, Duchess of Palms. (Personal aside: I wish more of my Texas-bashing out-of-state friends were familiar with the likes of Nadine, someone who is all Texas, all woman and not at all like the stereotypes that certain coastal types cling to.)

We also reviewed:

Woods Burner, by Austin's John Pipkin

The Protest Singer, a brief look at Pete Seeger's life

The Mexican Wars for Independence, by Timothy J. Henderson, just in time for Cinco de Mayo.

And Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness , by SMU's Willard Spiegelman.

[UPDATE: The link on that last item has been repaired.]

New releases this month gave me an excuse to reunite with a couple of authors I enjoyed as a much younger person. One reunion was wonderful. The other, not so much.

Let's get the bad news out of the way first. Tom Robbins' B is for Beer (Ecco, $17.95, publishing April 21) is subtitled "A Children's Book for Grown-ups/ A Grown-up Book for Children.)

I was hopeful for this one. The mere idea of a kids' book about beer seemed frothy with potential. I braced myself for a sip of the subversive, counterculture fun that came with classics such as Another Roadside Attraction and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

It's not there. Well, maybe in a sentence or two. But B is for Beer amounts to little more than a paper-thin short story about a precocious girl named Gracie with a difficult home life and a zany, beer-loving philosopher uncle. That story is interwoven with lessons about the history and mystery of beer, told by a Beer Fairy -- yes, a Beer Fairy -- that might have been lifted out of a brewery-tour pamphlet.

As much as I would like to say otherwise, this is not a book you would want to slip a child, even to annoy his or her parents. You also won't want to offer it to anyone but the most voracious Robbins fans. If classic Robbins is your favorite homebrew, this is Bud Light -- a pale imitation of the real thing that will leave you unsatisfied, and possibly with a mild headache.

If you are looking for a book you can proudly offer to the young children in your life, or their parents, or anyone else for that matter, rush to pick up a copy of The Annotated Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, edited by Annie Gauger (Norton, $39.95).

I had retained only vaguely pleasant childhood memories of Wind in the Willows when I brought this one home to read to my second-grader. I feared that most of it would go over her head. But she was engaged, helped along by the lavish illustrations and timely annotations that helped Dad explain some of the most archaic bits.

This is a classic for a reason, so I won't bother adding my praise to it. OK, I will -- my daughter liked the humor and the adventure; I was enthralled by the beauty of the writing. And the annotations go well beyond mere definitions. They constitute a book in themselves.

Some of the research was done at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin. So we could even consider it a Texas book. Sort of. Wherever you are, if you've ever loved Toad, Badger, Mole and Rat -- or wondered what the fuss is about -- you need this book.

Y'all come on back on Sunday, either in the print edition or on the books page at GuideLive.com, and we'll offer you reviews of:

The Color of Lightning, by Paulette Jiles. (We'll also have an excerpt from this novel, which is set in frontier North Texas.)

We Agreed to Meet Just Here, by Scott Blackwood. (He's one of the authors headed to SMU's Literary Festival.)

The Collector of Worlds, by Iliya Troyanov

Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America -- And Found Unexpected Peace, by William Lobdell

and Wonderful World, by Javier Calvo.

Tune in Sunday, in print or on GuideLive.com, and we'll offer you looks at:

Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud, edited by Robert Pinsky

But Wait ... There's More: Tighten Your Abs, Make Millions, and Learn How the $100 Billion Infomercial Industry Sold Us Everything But the Kitchen Sink, by Remy Stern

Castle, by J. Robert Lennon

and Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession With Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science, by Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano.

Plus -- Si Dunn's roundup of Texas and Southwest books.

Check back on Sunday, either in your newspaper or on GuideLive.com, and we'll offer you reviews of:

Allen Barra offers us a roundup of baseball books, including As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires, by Bruce Weber; Under the March Sun:The Story of Spring Training, by Charles Fountain; The Corporal Was a Pitcher: The Courage of Lou Brissie, by Ira Berkow (watch for an excerpt from that as well); and Baseball Prospectus 2009.

It Will Come to Me, by Emily Fox Gordon

Plain, Honest Men, by Richard Beeman

and Sanctified and Chicken-Fried by Joe R. Lansdale.

Your comments will be welcome on anything you read.

Check your weekend papers or visit GuideLive.com, and we'll offer you the following:

On Saturday, Joy Tipping chats with Lisa Lutz, author of Revenge of the Spellmans, who will be appearing at Borders, Preston Road at Royal Lane, on Tuesday.

On Saturday, the books pages will look at:

Prairie Spring: A Journey Into the Heart of a Season, by Peter Dunne.

Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood, by Dallas resident Donovan Campbell. He'll also be speaking at Borders, on Thursday.

A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, by Elaine Showalter (pictured). You can view some samples at the Random House site.

And, just in time for baseball season: Yogi Berra, The Eternal Yankee, by Allen Barra.

Pick up a copy of The Dallas Morning News, or visit us at GuideLive.com, on Sunday, and you'll find reviews of:

Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, by Jeff Guinn

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann.

The Siege, by Ismail Kadare

Life Sentences, by Laura Lippman.

A Saint on Death Row, by Thomas Cahill.

Today on GuideLive.com, you''ll find a review of The Believers, by Zoë Heller. You can read samples from the book at the publisher's Web site.

We also have a review of Ruins, by Achy Obejas. Here's a YouTube video of the author reading from that work.

Here's a look at books coverage headed your way in Sunday's Dallas Morning News and on GuideLive.com. We'll offer reviews of:

The Believers, by Zoë Heller.
Triangular Road:A Memoir, by Paule Marshall (pictured)
Ruins, by Achy Obejas
The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War, by
James Mann and
Pictures at an Exhibition, by Sara Houghteling

(Photo credit: Daniela Zedda)

In Sunday's paper, and on GuideLive.com, you'll find:

Alan Peppard's extensive look at The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes, by Bryan Burrough.

And we'll add reviews of

One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love, edited by Rebecca Walker;

American Rust, by Philipp Meyer;

Drood, by Dan Simmons;

A Comrade Lost and Found, by Jan Wong;

and An Altar in the World, by Barbara Brown Taylor.

I've been meaning to read Charles Baxter's latest book, The Soul Thief, since it came out on Feb. 12 ... of 2008. That should tell you how tall my "to be read" stack is; it's actually threatening to topple over and kill several potted plants even as we speak. Or possibly the schnauzer.

Anyway, the book came out Feb. 10 this year in paperback, and that reminded me to go read my hardcover that's been sitting around for a year. Too bad I waited; it's a doozy, one of those books that you better start reading early in the evening or it'll keep you up all night.

It starts out in 1970s Buffalo, where a grad student becomes enthralled with an outsider named Coolberg. Nathaniel's affection ... well, cools, when he finds out that Coolberg is literally trying to become Nathaniel, stealing clothes and other items and claiming that incidents in Nathaniel's life actually happened to him. Something nasty happens, and Coolberg exits, only to reappear decades later. Creepy stuff -- not the least of which is that we don't know who's actually narrating the first-person novel.

Perhaps because I just finished re-reading Joan Didion's remarkable The Year of Magical Thinking, this memoir by writer Susan Sontag's son had to work doubly hard to keep my attention. I got through it, but only because it's a mere 179 pages. Reiff is not talking about grief, as Didion was, but the lengthy, horrific approach to grief, as his mother battled terminal cancer. Still, many of the topics touched on are the same. Reiff has the same spare writing style as Didion, but none of her piercing self-awareness or wit, and I was left feeling sad but unenlightened and unchanged.

OK, you caught me. I've been lazy the last couple of weeks, mostly catching up on magazine reading. But I finished a batch of books over the weekend, so you're about to get a few new entries in Joy's List for the year.

Carol O'Connell's Bone by Bone (hardcover, 2008) is one of the best mystery/thrillers I've read lately. I'm not a big fan of her Mallory novels, but this stand-alone is gripping and intriguing. Former Army investigator Oren Hobbs returns to his hometown of Coventry, Calif., to find a mystery on his own doorstep -- literally. It's the skull belonging to his little brother, who disappeared years ago at 15 while on a hiking trip in the woods with Oren. Someone, it seems, is returning Josh to his father's home a little bit at a time.

Coventry has its ... well, let's call them "eccentricities." As one character remarks about the town's ongoing seances, which everyone in town has been to at least once, "Any other town in America would have formed a bowling league."

The only thing missing from this book is more information on Oren, who's an intriguing character that we never really learn much about, past his woman-chasing past. I'm hoping O'Connell writes a sequel and puts him truly at center stage.

Visit GuideLive.com on Sunday, or pick up your paper the old-fashioned way, and you'll find reviews of:

Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans, by Dan Baum.

Doghead, by Morten Ramsland, translated from the Danish by Tiina Nunnally.

The Women, by T.C. Boyle.

Plus a Judy Alter column on retired Will Howard, creator of Will's Texana Monthly.

Staff Writer Dianne Solis attended the Robert Olen Butler event at The Writers Studio on Wednesday. Here's her report:

The Writer's Garret coyly billed it as an author chat "for mature audiences." After all, Robert Olen Butler's latest work of fiction is called Intercourse.
But think of it as much about the supremacy of tickling the heart.
Intercourse is about the imagined interludes among the mighty and the mythical, the fallen and heroic of history.
It includes meditations on loneliness and isolation and character. A case in point was Butler's dramatic reading of the imagined interaction of a celebrity political couple with the surnames of Nixon.
And the romp through the heart is what makes literature art.

This weekend in Guide Sunday and on GuideLive.com, we'll be taking a look at :

The Painter's Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art, by Hugh Howard.

Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese (eho is headed to Arts & Letters Live) .

Spade & Archer, by Joe Gores.

A quick peek at the current offerings from the ShelfLife@Texas blog from the University of Texas at Austin reveals a pre-Valentine's Day look at varieties of human love in all its glory.

Topics discussed include:

About Love: Reinventing Romance for Our Times, by the late philosopher Robert Solomon.

Literary Marriages From Hell, a course taught by Betsy Berry.

Books on passion, jealousy and murder by David Buss.

And Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, by Robert Jensen.

You know, maybe I should have stopped at the post about Jane Austen.

Travel editor Mary Ellen Botter weighs in on a pair of recent releases aimed at Austenites:

Another take on Jane Austen's "Pride": Austenites are always eager for embroideries on Jane's novels, in particular that romantic home run Pride and Prejudice. A new thread comes from an unexpected source: best-selling author Colleen McCullough (Thornbirds, Masters of Rome series).

Disappointingly, the author crashes through expectations into improbability in The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett (Simon & Schuster, $26). Behavior ingrained (more likely required) in gentlefolk of the Regency era is set aside for more modern themes: feminism, homophobia and religious zealotry.

Mr. Darcy is a loutish lover and a disappointment to Elizabeth. Mary, her younger sister, is a crusader for the downtrodden. A mad monk imprisons Mary in a cave, no less. So un-Jane-like and far-fetched are these themes that it seems that only the characters' names link McCullough's book to Austen's literary legacy. For Austenites, it's a snack, not a feast.

A novel close to Jane's heart: Surely Jane would have approved the plot of Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Pattillo (Guideposts, $14.99). The romantic novel follows Austen's well-plumbed story line of love found, love lost and love rediscovered.

Was Jane speaking of her own life, or one she wished for -- or lost?

Emma Grant, a discredited professor and Austen expert, hunts the answer as she chases purported lost letters by the famed novelist. Leading her in the chase is a mysterious group, The Formidables, said to have been created by Jane's beloved sister Cassandra to keep the writer's secrets of the heart, expressed in the 200-years-hidden missives. Faced with the revelation that would salvage her career yet possibly ruin Austen's reputation, Emma wrestles with her own shattered love.

Although a quick read, Ruined isn't shallow. Austen fans will delight in descriptions of real Austen sites in England, honest emotions and the thought that actual discoveries may someday reveal more about the beloved novelist.

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.

I just finished The Host, Stephenie Meyer's first "adult" novel (although you could certainly make a case for the Twilight series going far beyond its originally intended young-adult audience). I have to disagree with Stephen King on this -- I didn't love the Twilight series with as much rabid enthusiasm as some, but I do think Meyer can write. And The Host grabbed me and wouldn't let go -- much like its protagonist, a benign, silvery little creature who, unfortunately for both species, must implant herself in a human to survive.

It reads a little like an updated Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but that's not a bad thing. Meyer has a lot to say about the nature of love, dependence and cooperation, and she says it well.

In case you were so busy watching the Pro Bowl and the Grammy Awards that you forgot to log on, you can still go to the books page of GuideLive.com and find reviews of:

Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme, by Tracy Daugherty

Germania, by Dallas novelist Brendan McNally

Sum by Houston neuroscientist David Eagleman

Fool, a King Lear retelling by Christopher Moore.

Also of interest from the weekend: Regular books page contributor Walton Muyumba discusses the need for an intellectual stimulus package. (On a rainy Monday morning, I would call that "coffee.")

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.

Here's a sneak peek at what you'll find in Sunday's paper and on GuideLive.com.

OK, the economy may be crumbling, but it's a good week to be someone who builds things, at least in this publication. We'll have a look at three architecture-related books:
I.M. Pei: Complete Works, by Philip Jodidio and Janet Adams Strong; David M. Schwarz Architects 2002-2007, by Robert L. Miller; and On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change, by Ada Louise Huxtable.

(As you may know, Pei and Schwarz both are extensively represented in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Staff critic Scott Cantrell puts their achievements in context.)

Also on the books pages:

Bordeaux: A Novel in Four Vintages, by Paul Torday;
Lark and Termite, by Jayne Anne Phillips (fans will appreciate this interview with her.);
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed;
The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet, by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

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.

Here's a review for everyone in North Texas trapped at home today and keeping the little ones plugged into PBS.

For those of us who grew up watching Sesame Street, its success can be explained rather simply: If you endured some long, flat segments that were mildly educational, you'd be rewarded with radiant bursts of Muppet hilarity. And at the end, you'd have learned something.

Which sums up my experience reading Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street. by Michael Davis (Viking, $27.95).

Davis has written a definitive history of the show. He also offers a pretty good summary of the history of the early years of children's educational television. But definitive here sometimes means long, wonkish segments about the inner workings of the Carnegie Foundation and such that are about as thrilling as a grant proposal.

The payoff arrives for devoted fans, though, who will learn, among other things:

• How Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan was a saint among early children's TV stars -- and despised by the writers who worked for him. (Some went on to Sesame Street, and he resented the show for it.)


• How Jim Henson could be both a shrewd businessman yet so vague in his personal dealings that Caroll Spinney didn't even realize it when Henson first invited him to audition for a job. (The misunderstanding would take seven years to rectify, but, as fans know, Spinney eventually worked out -- as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.)


• The happy accidents that led to the hiring of stars such as Sonia Manzano ("Maria"), and the sad decline and demise of Northern Calloway ("David").

Street Gang is a mostly entertaining look at one of the most important -- if not the best -- television programs ever created. I would have preferred to have more Cookie Monster-style hilarity. But even Cookie knows that sometimes, you have to eat your vegetables before you can enjoy dessert.

Pick up your Sunday paper, or drop by GuideLive.com, and you'll find an interview with David Macaulay, author of The Way We Work and speaker at the Dallas Museum of Art on Sunday.

You'll also get reviews of:

Why Evolution is True, by Jerry A. Coyne

Tinkers, by Paul Harding

Poe, a Life Cut Short, by Peter Ackroyd

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, by Charlie Huston

Plus Si Dunn's roundup of Texas and Southwest books, and more.

Here's a peek at what you'll find in Guide Sunday and on GuideLive.com.

Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement From the New Deal to Reagan, by Kim Phillips-Fein. (John Vachon photo of a Dubuque, Iowa billboard in 1940 courtesy W.W. Norton.)

Daemon, by Daniel Suarez. (Look for an excerpt to appear as well.)

The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee.

Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, by C.J. Box.

Herbert Hoover, by William E. Leuchtenburg.

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!

You'll find a review of Barry Unsworth's Land of Marvels on Guidelive.com today.

And you can find an excerpt from the book here.

Here's a look at reviews coming to Guide Sunday and on the books page of Guidelive.com:

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, by Tiffany Baker.

Sing Them Home, by Stephanie Kallos. The author is speaking 7 p.m. Friday at Arts & Letters Live.

With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain, by Michael Korda.

Land Of Marvels, by Barry Unsworth.

We'll also have a look at American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, by Steven Rinella, and throw in an interview with Orson Scott Card, just for good measure.

Paul Guest's My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge is reviewed today on GuideLive. Here's a sample of his work, provided by HarperCollins.

My Arms
By Paul Guest

My arms are mostly cosmetic. When I say this
to a stranger, often he'll wince
like he wants to hide inside his eyes.
Vanish from the day. I shouldn't laugh,
should be tired twenty-one years
into the telling of a poor joke,
made of pain, nerves snuffed like wicks. Back
then, I was a boy. No secret
that I fell through that
summer like a star. And here I am
wanting spring and birdsong
after tedious winter. Once I prayed
my arms might serve me
again, roll toothpaste from the tube,
dump rice into boiling water,
swat dead the mosquito
drilling its derrick face
through my skin. That symmetry,
left and right, one and one--
it's not a math I know,
not anymore. There are days I want
to lament broken glass
or put my fist through the door
or throttle the blue sky's silent
throat. There are nights
full of ache, full of nothing nimble.
No music but smashed guitars
would be enough. How many clasps
and how many buttons
did I try with my teeth
until her hands did for me what I could not?
Untrue to say I lost count
of what I never hoped to keep.
A lie to say that when
she held my hands to her hips
and her body above mine,
I loved such need, I did not hate us both.

Here's what Santa will be leaving for all the good little readers of Guide Sunday and GuideLive.com:

The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, by Denis Dutton.

A Great Idea at the Time: the Rise, Fall, and curious Afterlife of the Great Books, by Alex Beam.

Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History, by Karl Jacoby.

Jury Rigged, by Laurie Moore.

And Judy Alter finds a special Texas Christmas story.

On GuideLive today, Joy Tipping takes a look at books for the canine-oriented in your life.

Here are some additional titles to consider:

Nose Down, Eyes Up, by Merrill Markoe (Villard, $24). This one, a novel, comes out Jan. 6, so it'd have to be a Christmas I.O.U., but it's worth the wait. The Emmy-winning Ms. Markoe, whose prose is always laugh-out-loud caliber, tells the tale of a man who absolutely refuses to grow up (at 47, Gil is the world's oldest 22-year-old). The book rises above mere young-adult-confusion lit with the inclusion of Gil's four dogs, who talk. And offer advice, most of it pretty cogent.

Indognito: A Book of Canines in Costume, by Karen Ngo (Little, Brown, $19.99). Here's a whole book of pups in disguise, from a foxhound mix channeling Amelia Earhart (love the aviator glasses) to a Brittany spaniel festively attired as a lobster (and looking remarkably laid-back about the whole idea). Many of the photos are accompanied by pithy quotes, such as Mason Cooley's "Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story," paired with an oh-so-world-weary Chihuahua in full matador regalia.

Saved: Rescued Animals and the Lives They Transform, by Karin Winegar with photographs by Judy Olausen (DaCapo, 25.95). This one will make you cry, but in a good way, and it'll make you swear to never get a dog or puppy except from a shelter or rescue group ever again. You can tell the pedigree is pure by the other contributors -- the book boasts a foreword by Jane Goodall and a preface by Temple Grandin.

Santa vs. Wonka. Who takes that one?

I don't know. But I do know that when a friend posed that question in another forum, the debate was furious.

If you are lucky enough to have friends of this sort -- no, not immature, sleep-deprived fans of midcentury children's television, but intelligent people who aren't afraid to laugh at sophisticated nonsense -- then you should probably get them an anthology I have been picking through: Disquiet, Please! More Humor Writing From The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick and Henry FInder.

To be honest, the book is a slow read. But that's only because every third story or so has me laughing so hard that I have to set it aside.

Contributing authors range from James Thurber to Woody Allen to David Sedaris. It has frigid men, talking monkeys and babies who are too lazy to work. It has Coyote v. Acme, Jesus test-driving an SUV, and lots of bad relationships.

We can all use a laugh right about now. This book offers lots.

And, for the record: Santa takes Wonka in single-man combat, but if you expand it to include Oompa-Loompas against elves, I say all bets are off. Your thoughts?

(Hey, this clip even mentions books at the end!)

Fran Vick, editor of Literary Dallas, wrote in about our recent review. For space reasons, the version that appears in print was edited. Here is the full-length letter.

I would like to bring a few things to readers' attention about Literary Dallas. The book was put together chronologically, to be the story or history of Dallas as told by the writers. Perhaps that was not seen or shown as well as it should have been. Also, the great hazard of publishing an anthology is that it cannot, except in multi-volumes, include every writer that the editor might like to excerpt. Therefore, anthologies are especially fair game for critics, who might tend to focus on what's not there, rather than what is.

Contrary to the view in the review, we do manage to have fun in Dallas, maybe even as much as Fort Worth, but more importantly we have a multitude of published, prizewinning authors residing here, maybe even as many as Austin. Matter of fact, 22 of the authors in Literary Dallas have won Texas Institute of Letters Awards, many of them more than one. Many of the writers in the book have won prizes beyond those given by TIL, 27, matter of fact. You will find the awards in the head notes on the writers. Some of these 49 award-winning writers in Literary Dallas have been given national awards. I am sorry none of them were mentioned. They deserved better. The only writers mentioned in the review are journalists except for a couple, and although we are blessed with marvelous award-winning writing by journalists -- much of it in Literary Dallas -- we are also blessed with outstanding poets, novelists, and short story writers. For me to start listing them here would be too much as there are 70 writers in Literary Dallas.

Also contrary to reports, readers can read about the 1936 Texas Centennial, the Cotton Bowl, the State Fair of Texas, First Baptist Church in the writings of the writers included in Literary Dallas. I do not remember anything about the Dallas Cowboys because the piece I wanted to put in there was denied me, as were several pieces. For others, the authors could not be found or did not respond to queries. I must admit, however, J.R. Ewing never crossed my mind as being literary.

It was rather surprising to read the work of J. Mason Brewer called "corn pone," the work of an elegant, educated man, who spoke four languages, recognized nationally as a scholar and folklorist, and encouraged by J. Frank Dobie to pursue work that would be lost without him. I wish the work of Spencer Williams by G. Wm. Jones had not been overlooked, as well. At least Deep Ellum is in the review.

My deepest thanks for reviewing Literary Dallas at all, Michael. I have heard that any kind of review is better than no review at all. I hope that is true for the sake of the writers in the anthology and the publisher.

All best,
Fran Vick

In Guide Sunday (and on GuideLive) this weekend, you'll find:

A big roundup of big books for those with large stockings to fill. Among those mentioned:

Skyscrapers: A History of the World's Most Extraordinary Buildings, by Judith Dupré

Texas Blues: The Rise of a Contemporary Sound, by Alan Govenar

The Elvis Encyclopedia, by Adam Victor

The Encyclopedia of Punk, by Brian Cogan

The Princeton Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, by Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson

Monasteries and Monastic Orders: 2000 Years of Christian Art and Culture, by Kristina Kruger

The DC Comics Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to the Characters of the DC Universe, by Daniel Wallace, Phil Jimenez, Scott Beatty and Robert Greenberger

Marvel Chronicle: A Year by Year History, by Tom DeFalco, Peter Sanderson, Tom Brevoort and Matthew K. Manning

(Notice that we have something for DC and Marvel fans: We are nothing if not balanced here at Texas Pages.)

For those with smaller stockings, or smaller coffee tables, we will also look at:

The Jazz Ear, by Ben Ratliff

The Journey, by H.G. Adler

As Big as the West: The Pioneer Life of Granville Stuart, by Clyde A. Milner II and Carol O' Connor

The Best American Magazine Writing 2008, compiled by the American Society of Magazine Editors

and

Graham Greene: A Life in Letters, edited by Richard Greene

Here's what's on tap in Guide Sunday, or online at GuideLive.

A pair of biographies about Samuel Johnson: Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin, and Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers.

The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia, by Laura Miller.

Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America, by Jay Parini.

Aurora Crossing: A Novel of the Nez Percés, by Karl Schlesier.

Sashenka, by Simon Montefiore.