**********************************************************************************
Black Dog of Fate by Peter Balakian

**********************************************************************************
My Road to Deschapelles by Gwen Grant Mellon
W. Larimer Mellon, and his wife, Gwen Grant Mellon, were a wealthy couple who read about, visited, espoused, and lived the spirit of Albert Schweitzer...compassionate care for the poor of the third world. I have worked at their hospital, Hopital Albert Schweitzer, in extremely rural Haiti several times in a medical capacity. I have seen what a truly good spirit can do for others. I wish I, as well as all of us, had the spirit, the commitment, and the love of others given by these two special people. This is the story of their strange journey to Haiti...well written by a beautiful worman, now in her late 80's. Buy this book...you'll love it, Gwen, and Larry as I do.

Also: Song of Haiti: Dr. Larry and Gwen Mellon and their Hospital at Deschapelles by Barry Paris

**********************************************************************************
Speaking Freely: A guided Tour of American English from Plymouth Rock to Silicon Valley by Stuart Flexner and Anne Soukhanov, is a good gift for language mavens or readers interested in social history. Just published by Oxford University Press, it is based on two earlier books by Flexner, I Hear America Talking and Listening to America. Much easier to read than the Oxford English Dictionary, the sections of the book are arranged alphabetically by subject category, from Advertising to Wild, Wild West. Along the way we learn about food, crime, fighting words, politics, pop culture, rap music, transportation, and talk shows. A quick glance at Booze shows us: America's Love Affair with the Bottle, where we learn about the history of beer, hard liquor, and cocktails. The text is enlivened with photographs and quotations. For example, in the booze section we find Robert Benchley's classic: "Get me out of this wet coat and into a dry martini." We discover that the word cocktail came into popular usage in 1806, followed more than a century later with cocktail hour and cocktail party. Not until the 1960s did the term cocktail table become used. Great fun, great browsing.

Also: English as a Second F*cking Language by Sterling Johnson

**********************************************************************************
Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson
You probably have only heard of Shirley Jackson, if, like every other American high school student, you had to read "The Lottery"... Bleah. Well this book is an autobiographical account of her moving to rural Vermont with her family and learning to drive and all the zaniness that ensues when one lives with small children. It's completely hilarious and even funnier than it sounds. ¾From Jessamyn

To See The Dream by Jessamyn West
Wow! This book is a really neat writer-journal type of autobiography of a short part of JW's life when her novel, The Friendly Persuasion, was picked up by Hollywood and made into a movie. She was asked to help with the screenplay. She recounts taking the train down from Napa to Hollywood, getting set up in a swank Hollywood apartment, and going to a Quaker meeting with Gary Cooper. Along the way, she also reflects on Quaker faith as she is asked to put her characters in decidedly non-Quaker situations to make it play better in Hollywood. There's also a lot of the self-reflection and commentary about human behavior that JW has become known for. ¾Also from Jessamyn

**********************************************************************************
Dear Dodie: the life of Dodie Smith By Valerie Grove Chatto & Windus, Jan 1996 Published in UK. Not For Sale in USA From a colourful Edwardian childhood in Manchester, Dodie Smith (1896- 1990) became a second-rate repertory actress, and then worked at the Everyman Theatre and Heal's before becoming an overnight sensation with her first play "Autumn Cross" in 1932. She became the most successful female dramatist of her generation with her all-time hit "Dear Octopus" in 1938, but then left England to spend the war in California with her young, handsome pacifist husband. There Christopher was her closest friend, and she wrote lucrative screenplays and her first novel, "I Capture the Castle". Back in postwar Britain, she felt out of touch with the theatre and wrote the children's book which made her an international household name when Disney filmed it, "The 101 Dalmations". This biography conjures up not only England in the 20s and 30s, and a Golden Age of British theatre, but also the life of an ambitious, talented, yet vulnerable woman.

**********************************************************************************
Masumoto's journal "scribblings" have provided him with fodder for several nonfiction books, most notably his highly praised 1995 memoir "Epitaph for a Peach." In town for a tourism conference and a reading at Elliott Bay Book Co. tomorrow evening, this 42-year-old author and farmer took a brief break to discuss his latest work, "Harvest Son: Planting Roots in American Soil," a lush and lyrical meditation on his life and the sometimes disconcerting history of his Japanese-American community in California's San Joaquin Valley.

**********************************************************************************
There's been an avalanche of cookbooks published over the last decade on increasingly obscure and constricted topics -- I recently received one devoted entirely to chocolate cookies. Riding the coattails of this trend has been a handful of non-cookbooks devoted to individual foods, often with a few recipes thrown in to enhance their appeal among cookbook consumers. Two prototypes were "Sweetness and Power," an exhaustive neo-Marxist study of the history and economics of sugar by Sidney Mintz, and "Corn," Betty Fussel's lengthy and abundantly illustrated exploration of the romance of maize. These treatments remained at least partly academic, but subsequent contributions have been more slender and written in a more popular vein. Wall Street Journal reporter Amal Naj's "Peppers," one of the best books ever written about food, proved that the Portuguese were responsible for nearly every modern food trend; and lately we've feasted on Mark Kurlansky's "Cod," a brief historical and environmental epic by a one-time cod fisherman. Now along comes Frank Browning's "Apples." Like Kurlansky, he's practiced what he preaches, coming from a long line of Kentucky orchardists. Browning has produced an interesting and readable book on apples, which he rhapsodically calls "the hardiest, most resilient and most diverse fruit on the earth." Like all of the single-topic food books, "Apples" works best when there's a mystery to be solved, in this case the origin of the first apple, the search for which takes the author to the Central Asian republic of Kazhakstan. It turns out that the ancient apple forests of the Tian Shan mountains possess genetic traits that have much to offer the modern apple breeder, even though the gnarled and uncultivated trees often produce apples Browning calls "spitters" -- one bite and you have to spit them out. A cast of fascinating characters bring the book to life. There's Tom Burford, the specialist charged with repopulating Monticello's apple orchards, who searches for the tantalizing Taliaferro, a long-lost cider apple said to be Jefferson's favorite, and Akio Tanii, a Japanese agricultural researcher who was hectored into committing suicide after inadvertently revealing to Western scientists the presence of fire blight in Japanese fruit. Browning handles scientific topics like fire blight with ease, drawing parallels with human diseases. The sections of the book that deal with apple genetics are miraculous in their clarity and readability. Less interesting is the apple mythology, wherein the author retells familiar stories from Greek, Roman and Scandinavian sources as if running a foot race while the publisher shoots at him from behind. The back matter contains recipes, here presented in a narrative form that may frustrate less-accomplished cooks. Much better is the appendix that devotes a paragraph apiece to the 20 apples most prized by the author. I'm taking this with me on my next visit to the farmer's market.

Also: The Potato by Larry Zuckerman
Also: Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton

**********************************************************************************
INDIA: MYSTIC, COMPLEX AND REAL, An Interpretation of E.M. Forster's A Passage to India, by Adwaita P. Ganguly, hb., 390 pages, Rs300, Motilal Banarsidass, Bungalow Rd., Jawahar Nagar, Delhi 110 007, India "Most studies of this work have been written from a Western viewpoint, thus assuming, almost unconsciously, that the central questions concern the English characters who appear in the novel. Beginning from the Indian questions that haunt the novel, Dr. Ganguly shows what happens if one reads the novel with them at its center."

**********************************************************************************
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk
This immensely readable account of the epic struggle between Britain and Tsarist Russia for Central Asia is not only a great story and an informative history lesson, it is also very instructive for understanding what is happening today in the area known as the former Soviet Union. The Great Game remains one of my favorite books to recommend, and so far as I know, it hasn't disappointed anyone yet.

**********************************************************************************
Mollie Panter-Downes, who wrote Letter from London for the New Yorker magazine, died Jan. 22. She was 90. Mrs. Panter-Downes' first Letter from London appeared Sept. 9, 1939, and her last was on March 26, 1984. Her last article appeared Aug. 18, 1986. In 1923, Mrs. Panter-Downes published her first of several novels, The Shoreless Sea when she was 16 years old. Later, she published compilations of columns in the New Yorker in the books, London War Notes: 1939 to 1945 and At the Pines. The magazine also commissioned her to write Ooty Preserved, (1969), the profile of Ootacamund, a town in India. She also wrote short stories and articles for magazines in the Unites States such as Cosmopolitan. Survivors include her husband and two daughters, Virginia Chapman and Diana Lady Baer.

**********************************************************************************
A London Girl in the 1880s and A London Home of the 1890s by M.V. Hughes. Autobiography; the titles tell it all. The third volume, about the London child in the 1870s, wasn't available, sadly. (They had a 1 volume set of the complete works for $14, but I decided to take the two under-$3 books and find the third elsewhere.)

The Other Alice by Christina Bjork. This was remaindered so I picked it up for about $7, hardcover. A children's book about Alice Liddell, the real-life Alice in Wonderland. I remember it as having lots of nice pictures of Oxford. If it's not as good as I thought, I'll keep it until I need to give a present.

**********************************************************************************
Glass, Paper, Beans By Leah Hager Cohen
What uncommon wonders lie hidden within the "common" threads of our everyday lives? Once upon a time, we knew the origins of things: what specific part of the earth the potato on our dinner plate came from, who cobbled our shoes, whose cow was slaughtered to provide the leather. We knew from which well, spring or rain barrel our water was dipped. In many parts of the world, that information is still readily available. But in our ever more high-tech, sophisticated society -- even as technology makes certain kinds of information more accessible than ever -- other connections are irrevocably lost, as value and worth are determined solely by price tag and market share. In this elegant and inspired inquiry into the true nature of things, Leah Cohen traces three simple commodities on their geographic and semantic journey from her rickety wooden table in Somerville's Someday Cafe to their various points of origin. And through intimate portraits of three unforgettable workers, she traces the origins, myths and manufacture of her glass, paper and beloved coffee bean. A gentle, thoughtful, charming voyage of discovery, Glass, Paper, Beans reveals and reaffirms the wonder hidden within the seemingly ordinary elements of our lives. It is destined to become a classic on the economy of everyday life.

The Chair : Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design by Galen Cranz
Berkeley architecture professor Cranz takes a radical departure from her first book, The Politics of Park Design, in offering up a soundly intellectual perspective on the chair--its history, styles, uses, and evolution. Far from being an object of desire, the four-legged wonder as commonly designed and perceived wreaks havoc on our bodies, making the phrase "comfortable chair" a thoroughly modern oxymoron.

Also: Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash By Susan Strasser

**********************************************************************************
The Pleasure of Reading by Antonia Frasier
A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel
Ex Libris by Anne Fadman
Old Books, Rare Friends by Leona Rostenberg & Madeleine Stern
A Gentle Madness by Nicholas A. Basbanes
Living with Books by Alan Powers
At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries edited by Estelle Ellis, Caroline Seebohm, & Christopher Simon Sykes

**********************************************************************************
Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom
A Life in Letters by M. F. K. Fisher

**********************************************************************************
White Weddings : Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture by Chrys Ingraham
An interesting look at the institution of marriage. Or, rather the industry of marriage as the author emphasizes in her clear-eyed view of weddings. Ingraham, an associate professor of sociology at Russell Sage College, tears away the veil of fantasy and takes a hard look at bridal magazines, religion, the garment industry, the media and just plain capitalism, and how they all figure into this tradition. The sociology professor writes about how weddings have more to do these days with marketing and economics than with spirituality and reality. Ingraham advances an understanding of the impact of the social construction of heterosexuality as a dominant institution. Anyone seeking to understand gender and sexuality as they interface with race and class in the US and what happens to those who step out of line must read this informative study.

Also: The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Coontz

**********************************************************************************
The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

Also: A History of God by Karen Armstrong

**********************************************************************************
No Hurry to get Home by Emily Hahn
Nobody Said Not to Go by Ken Cuthbertson
The Long-Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker by Maeve Brennan
Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories by Joseph Mitchell

**********************************************************************************
The Queen of Whale Cay by Kate Summerscale
Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton by Diane Wood Middlebrook

**********************************************************************************
Longitude by Dava Sobel (trade paperback edition)

**********************************************************************************
Tea Lover's Treasury and The Tea Lover's Companion by Norwood Platt
All the Tea in China by Kit Chow

**********************************************************************************
The Road Home by Eliza Thomas

**********************************************************************************
Travels With Myself And Another by Martha Gellhorn
Must surely be ranked as one of the funniest travel books of our time - second only to A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush ... It doesn't matter whether this author is experiencing marrow-freezing misadventures in war-ravaged China, or driving a landrover through East African game-parks, or conversing with hippies in Israel, or spending a week in a Moscow Intourist Hotel. Martha Gellhorn's reactions are what count and one enjoys equally her blistering scorn of humbug, her hilarious eccentricities, her unsentimental compassion.

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby (1958 Repr. 1985); Penguin; The sort of travel book that gives me hope that the spirit of the British Empire will never die. Newby and his friend, Hugh Carless ("of Her Majesty's Foreign Service") take a "little" trip ... overland ... to the Hindu Kush. (Nuristan & Kafiristan.) At that time, and probably still, one of the most remote and untravelled parts of the globe. This is a perfect read for a winter afternoon, in your favorite armchair. With vast mountaineering experience (gained on a 2-day weekend course in Wales) these heroes tackle 20,000 ft ice shrouded mountains with typical British spunk, and, surprisingly, SURVIVE. You must read this. It is priceless.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
At one point in my life I lived overseas and had very little access to books (this was before e-commerce). I would, therefore, read almost anything I could get my hands on. Somehow, I obtained a copy of Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent and spent the next couple of days reading parts of it aloud with my fellow ex-pats. I remember literally having to stop reading, my side hurt so much: I had never laughed so hard in my life and haven't since. Needless to say, I have read a number of his books since, and have not yet been disappointed. (Notes from a Small Island is particularly good.) A Walk in the Woods is Bryson's account of an extended hiking trip he took with a friend, walking the Appalachian Trail. And yes, like all his books, this one is very funny. But Bryson is also a keen and informed observer; his hilarious anecdotes also reveal a great deal about the state of the American wilderness, as well as the state of our national character.

Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger
Our Hearts Were Young And Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner
The Lady and the Panda (1938) and Pangoan Diary (1942) by Ruth Harkness

**********************************************************************************
Traveler's Tales: Food, (edited) by Richard Sterling (1996); Traveler's Tales Inc. A Standard collection, but all stuff I (a big "travel" reader) I had never stumbled across elsewhere. I really enjoyed the stories about India, especially ordering on Indian railways. Place your order on a ("curry-stained") menu at one station, then your food is delivered at the next station, and the empty tray collected at the next station after that. There's also quite a funny story about an Englishman getting the better of a Frenchman, over the topic of tomatoes. Always a happy topic that.

Do you like travel writing? Do you like food writing? Do you like personal narrative (well, duh)? Then you will love this book! It's called Feeding Frenzy: Across Europe in Search of the Perfect Meal, and it's about this fellow, Stuart Stevens, and his friend-who-is-a-girl (not girlfriend), Rat Kelly, driving across Europe in a Mustang convertable, eating at all 29 three star restaurants in consecutive days, and it's hilarious. ¾From the Mighty Kymm

Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin. The highly acclaimed and national bestselling author of Goodbye Without Leaving presents a delightfully delicious and witty exposition on what, how, and why we eat. With recipes, tips, and personal recollections, Home Cooking is part memoir, part cookbook, and part warm discourse on the joys of simple food.

Secrets of the Tsil Cafe by Thomas Fox Averill. I've always read a lot, and for the past several years have been reading many food books -- from cookbooks to food science to memoirs and biographies to fiction. But for the first time ever, I've read a novel about food that's made it into my "top ten" fiction list (and let's just say it takes a very special book to make that list).

Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
Miriam's Kitchen by Elizabeth Ehrlich
The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman
The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten
The Best Thing I Ever Tasted by Sallie Tisdale
Clementine in the Kitchen by Phineas Beck (Samuel Chamberlain)
Culture and Cuisine: A Journey Through the History of Food by Jean Francois Revel
The Cook's Dictionary & Culinary Reference by Jonathan Bartlett
The Vegetarian Hearth: Recipes and Reflections for the Cold Season by Darra Goldstein
Fields of Greens: New Vegetarian Recipes from the Celebrated Greens Restaurant by Annie Somerville

**********************************************************************************
Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kuusisto
What's that Pig Outdoors by Henry Kisor
A Place of Their Own : Creating the Deaf Community in America by John Van Cleve

**********************************************************************************
The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow by Benjamin Hoff

**********************************************************************************
Tales from the River Brahmaputra
This absolutely stunning book, produced by the husband-wife team of Tiziana and Gianni Baldizzone, presents an eye-opening portfolio of photographs from Tibet, India and Bangladesh, laced together by provocative, poignant tales of explorations and pilgrimages, past and present. "Brahmaputra" traces the course of the great river known variously as Tsangpo, Brahmaputra and Jamuna on its 1,850-mile journey from high in the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. In so doing, it illuminates the fundamental cultural and geographical similarities and idiosyncrasies of the regions through which it winds: three countries, three religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam), one river. The Baldizzones bring a passionate attachment to their subject, deepened by more than a decade of travel in the area, that sweeps the reader along through epiphany and impasse. The images they create -- like all great travel photographs -- are not just aesthetically exquisite, they also embody a rich appreciation of the daily lives and landscapes of the countries they reveal. With the river as a dynamic and engaging guide, "Brahmaputra" brings a diverse, dramatic and little-understood piece of our planet to extraordinary life.

Vestiges of Grandeur by Richard Sexton
In an evocative sequel to the acclaimed New Orleans: Elegance and Decadence, author and photographer Richard Sexton returns with an in-depth visual journey through the hidden mansions--some inhabited, many now long abandoned--of Louisiana's River Road. Bordering the Mississippi, these antebellum landmarks were once the epitome of gracious living in the Deep South. Over the past century, these grand dwellings have slowly succumbed to time, humidity, and the reclamation of the land: first by nature, then by real-estate developers who built subdivisions, oil refineries, and strip malls where curtains of Spanish moss once swayed from the live oaks. This collection--featuring over 200 haunting color photographs with extensive captions explaining the architectural significance and history of each structure--is a beautiful elegy for a rapidly disappearing landscape and its ghosts.

**********************************************************************************
Gardens of Obsession : Eccentric and Extravagant Visions by Gordon Taylor, Guy Cooper
"Gardens of obsession" are "the metamorphoses of dreams, fantasies, ancient myths or allegories made into a physical reality." This stunning book features a breathtaking array of 150 gardens, from the beautiful to the bizarre, from the enchanting to the eccentric, each of them the realization of one person's wildest dreams. And it is the fact that these dreams can be so completely brought to life on the garden's canvas that makes this book so enthralling. Even the most extravagant design has been achieved with great accomplishment; the most extreme idea has become reality. Yet these gardens are also testaments to craft and hard work--only the obsessive bent on creating something truly personal can achieve the sort of visions exemplified in the book.

Really Small Gardens by Jill Billington
Paradise Found: Gardening in Unlikely Spaces by Rebecca Cole
Self-Made Worlds: Visionary Folk Art Environments by Mark Sloan & Roger Manley

**********************************************************************************
A Book of Colors : Matching Colors, Combining Colors, Color Designing, Color Decorating and Colorist by Shigenobu Kobayashi

Machine Beauty by David Gelernter
Trawl by B. S. Johnson
Interface Culture by Steven Johnson
The Arithmetic of Life by George Schaffner

**********************************************************************************
Fotographia Publica is more than a fantastic documentary of the history of photography in print, 1919-1939. It's also one of the most beautifully designed and printed books I've seen in a long time. As a graphic designer and book collector, I've found that a successful marriage of quality of content and quality of design is rare. The photomontages and typography represented here document one of the best periods of design and the worst periods of political strife. Propaganda art, magazine covers, exhibition posters from between the two World Wars cover artists and designers from Europe, Asia, Mexico and the United States. Printed on an uncoated stock, the colors and richness of these hard to find posters, magazines, and book covers are reproduced wonderfully. A detailed and informative essay by Horacio Fernadez completes the history.

**********************************************************************************
For an excellent introduction into the basic principles of design and typography, read The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams. It's very plain-spoken and accessible and will keep you from making the most common and egregious mistakes. But it's not just a list of rules - she includes very cogent explanations of the reasons for basic design rules, which helps you figure out when it's a good idea to break them. She also wrote The Non-Designer's Web Book, which is likely (I haven't read this one, so am working from second-hand reports) just as good and possibly more relevant.

If you'd like to delve more thoroughly into typography in particular, buy a copy of Stop Stealing Sheep. This is one of the rare books that will speak to rank beginners and hard-core typography geeks alike. I'm still learning things from it. It's so accessible that you can open it to any random page and start reading, and not only will you not feel lost, you'll learn something interesting. ¾Both from Karawynn

**********************************************************************************
The Moral Animal - Why We Are the Way We Are, Robert Wright
If I had to pick the books which most impress me, the ones I can read over and over, the ones I wish I could make everyone else in the world read, I'd have to put this one pretty close to the top of the list. It's an excursion deep into human behavior via the relatively new science of evolutionary psychology. It's also about the life of Charles Darwin, as seen in the light of the science he fathered. The important, and thoroughly amazing part of the book, however, is the way Robert Wright illuminates human actions and motivations. Every page contains concepts that are both startlingly new and at the same time seem so clear and obvious that you wonder why people are only just figuring these things out. Imagine primitive humans, evolving over millions of years, and the world they lived in. It was a harsh and unforgiving place, and staying alive was difficult. Those that had characteristics which helped them to survive and reproduce, did so. Not just physical traits were passed onto offspring, but also behavioral traits. And even though today, we have ways to control our environment and make different choices than our ancestors would have, we're still driven by the things that kept them alive. Our feelings, relationships, the things we value and the things we hate all come from us through a long, long line of primitive ancestors. Wright shows how seemingly vague concepts like jealousy, commitment, friendship, justice, and even love can be traced back to survival. It's not something many people like to think about, especially those who believe that humans are more than sophisticated animals. But I believe that every belief should be challenged, especially the most strongly held ones. Trust me - no matter what you believe, read this book.

The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst
If you don't know the difference between an ampersand and an umlaut, just skip this one. If you ever have to set type, even just a presentation for work, consider reading this book. I've resolved to reread it at least once a year. I love good typography, especially now that I know just what constitutes good typography; not just the use of ligatures and proper quote marks, but type's color when set properly, and the proportion of a beautifully designed page. There's a breakdown of the different families of typefaces, an appendix of characters, a glossary of typographic terms, and tons of indispensible advice on choosing and using type.

Chasing Dirt; the American Pursuit of Cleanliness, Suellen Hoy
A somewhat dry but still interesting history of Americans' passage from settlers living in relative filth and believing bathing to be dangerous, to the 1950s' (and current) obsession with spotless households and odorless bodies. It's fun to look at American history from this perspective. Why did history classes in school have to be so boring?

**********************************************************************************
Feeding the Eye by Anne Hollander

**********************************************************************************
I first read Sterling North's So Dear to My Heart when I was 8 years old and have reread it oh, I guess ten or so times since then. (Same original copy since it is long out of print.) It is a beautiful story.

**********************************************************************************
Adultery and Other Diversions by Tim Parks
With each essay, Parks begins by grounding himself and the reader in a concrete experience--a bus ride across Europe, for instance, or cleaning his daughter's room, or translating an Italian novel into English--then lets his mind loose to joyously observe, reflect, and comment on what it all means. In "Glory," for example, Parks recounts an arduous hike through the Italian Alps with his two young children and a family friend. Descriptions of the difficult terrain, his own complicated feelings about climbing a particular peak, his friend's preoccupation with the Tour de France, his children's games--all dovetail gracefully to arrive, eventually, at his real point, the nature of their endeavor. Whether he is discussing the Dionysian nature of affairs, or drawing parallels between the society Plato commented on in his Republic and our own, Parks does so with wit, elegance, and the kind of unself-conscious grace that a natural athlete brings to the game. A delight to read, and even better to think about afterwards.

**********************************************************************************
The Best of Craftsman Homes by Gustav Stickley (published by Peregrine Smith, 1979)

**********************************************************************************
Small Spaces by Azby Brown
Studio Apartments by James Grayson Trulove
Living in Small Spaces by Lorrie Mack
Organizing from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern
Uncluttered: Storage Room by Room by Candace Ord Manroe
House as a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home by Clare Cooper Marcus
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

Meditations on Design: Reinventing Your Home With Style and Simplicity by John Wheatman
Wheatman's design sensibility was influenced by several experiences: growing up in a three-generation household in San Mateo, Calif., serving in the military in Korea, earning a fine arts degree at the University of Washington, and working at a high-end furniture store in Oakland. But it's the 40 years since that first day at Jackson Furniture Co. - designing thousands of Bay Area homes and gardens, running his own design firm and retail shop, and teaching countless courses on interior design - that honed his design philosophy of simple elegance. "If you're wise, you learn from everything and everybody," says Wheatman, 74, who has compiled this lifetime of design education into this book.

**********************************************************************************
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Invisible New York: the Hidden Infrastructure of the City
The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn edited by John Manbeck
Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places by John Stilgoe
The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere by James Kunstler
Around the Block: The Business of a Neighborhood by Tom Shachtman
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighborhood by David Simon

The Ice Palace That Melted Away : Restoring Civility and Other Lost Virtues to Everyday Life by William Stumpf
"No thing is too large or too small to have within it a civil message," writes designer Bill Stumpf, "inventions, all manner of urban architecture from public schools, daycare centers, to housing, police cars and uniforms, taxicabs, food, plumbing, telephones, computers, media, affordable and available products of quality." Stumpf has been doing his part to make the world a more comfortable place for years--among the products he's designed was the world's first ergonomic chair--and in The Ice Palace That Melted Away, he shares his thoughts (and a few flights of fancy) with readers. Stumpf has a folksy, grandfatherly style of delivery that serves him well, whether he's talking about a set of lace curtains he saw in the window of a Swiss police station, Britain's lamentable phase-out of its archetypal red telephone booths, or his suggested redesign of the 747 to allow more passengers to enjoy the thrilling airborne views. Stumpf lives in Minneapolis (the titular ice palace was a 100-foot-plus sculpture at the neighboring St. Paul Winter Carnival).

**********************************************************************************
The Gilded Age : Edith Wharton and Her Contemporaries by Eleanor Dwight

Here We Are edited by Charlotte Zolotow
short stories by Dorothy Parker, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, etc.

**********************************************************************************
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Are you a single male between the ages of 24 and 32? Have you been listening to the same classic rock albums since you were twelve? Do you find yourself compulsively compiling lists of all your favorite things: five favorite angry songs, five favorite bedtime albums, five favorite episodes of The Simpsons? Are you afraid of commitment? Nick Hornby has been reading your mind. And he's written a hilarious story to prove it. "Keep this book away from your girlfriend," one critic wrote, "it contains too many of your secrets to let it fall into the wrong hands." Yes.

(My note: Promoted from below; I loved it so much that want it on hand to read whenever the urge strikes.)



**********************************************************************************
WANT TO READ (maybe own):
**********************************************************************************
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger

**********************************************************************************
Chris Bohjalian, author. Midwives (Crown, 1997): This satisfying novel is the story of Sibyl Danforth, refugee from the 1960s and a respected midwife in her Vermont town. Told from the point of view of her daughter, now an ob-gyn, the story takes place during Connie's thirteenth year, when her mother was accused of murdering one of her patients. Bohjalian is an author who writes solid, well-reviewed novels that not enough people read. He's solid at characterization and keeps the pages turning. His first three novels were published by a small imprint of the University Press of New England. Incidentally, don't miss his 1995 novel, Water Witches.

**********************************************************************************
Ian Mc Ewan's The Child in Time throws up all sorts of ideas on time, childhood, relationships...

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
This is a lot tamer than most of his earlier works, but it maintains that eery, twisted, slightly sinister quality that characterizes his writing. The story centers around a man whose relationship slowly falls apart when a young, independently wealthy and mentally disturbed man starts stalking him after a freak ballooning accident. I would have liked to see the characters drawn more sharply, or perhaps deeply, but the story moves along well nonetheless.

**********************************************************************************
Carpenter's Gothic by William Gaddis

**********************************************************************************
Ishmael and My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

**********************************************************************************
Daniel McNeill, winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for "Fuzzy Logic" in his first solo effort, The Face

**********************************************************************************
A Tuscan Childhood by Kinta Beevor
Kinta Beevor was five when she fell in love with her parents' castle facing the Carrara mountains. She and her brother ran barefoot, exploring an enchanted world. They accompanied Fiore, the stonemason, searching for wild mushrooms in the hills, while Ramponi showed them how to tickle trout. The freedom and beauty of life at the castle attracted poets, writers and painters, including D. H. Lawrence and Rex Whistler. But soon, the old way of life and Kinta's idyllic world were threatened by war. Nostalgic, yet unsentimental and funny, this is a book which transports the reader to Tuscany and the sound of bells from a distant campanile.

Also: The Hills of Tuscany, A Memoir by Ferenc Mate

**********************************************************************************
After reading "The Book of Ruth," "Ellen Foster," and now "Bastard Out of Carolina," I now know that I am no longer interested in books about white trash kids with well-meaning mothers who marry abusive drunks. My suggestion? Pick up Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" or Mary Karr's "The Liar's Club" -- the true-life tales are more truthful, indeed.

**********************************************************************************
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, former professor of English and Native American Studies at Eastern Washington University, has been honored by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights. Cook-Lynn's book ``Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays'' was recognized as an Outstanding Book on the subject of human rights in North America.

**********************************************************************************
Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain."

**********************************************************************************
Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai

**********************************************************************************
The Improvised Woman by Marcel Clements
Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep by William Dement
Flaming Iguanas by Erika Lopez
Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney
Life in a Day by Doris Grumbach
Carrying Water as a Way of Life by Linda Tatelbaum

**********************************************************************************
Eggs in the Coffee, Sheep in the Corn; My 17 Years as a Farmwife by Marjorie Myers Douglas

**********************************************************************************
Dare we call her the Doyenne of Death? The beloved Jessica Mitford, who died two years ago, was the author of the classic debunking of the American funeral industry: "The American Way of Death." Before she croaked herself - she had a great funeral, and it was really cheap, too - she revised her own by-now-standard work on the funeral industry. Unfortunately, the industry is worse than ever. It has been taken over by this multinational conglomerate called SCI (Service Corporation International - I ask you!). It's practically impossible to die in a Western country without paying SCI now. Mitford, who was the droll misfit of the famous Brit Mitford sisters, will prove to have made the most enduring contribution, I think. She was an aristocratic commie and not the most likely of investigative reporters, but she was good at it. And she so thoroughly and ruthlessly and wittily exposed the vultures who feed on the grief and guilt of survivors that we shall be ever grateful. An entire generation has come to maturity since Mitford first wrote her definitive expose of the funeral industry; how lovely to have it updated for all of us. Just in time, as it were. (recommendation written by Molly Ivins)

**********************************************************************************
Families and How To Survive Them and Life and How To Survive It by John Cleese (yes, that John Cleese) and Robin Skynner. I read the former book a few years ago; it is an incredible psychology book, written as a dialogue between the two authors. I hope the second book is only as useful. (I know a book has been influential on me when I absorb certain aspects of it hardly knowing that I'm doing so-instinctively recognizing them as truth.)

**********************************************************************************
Call it Sleep by Henry Roth
Novel by Henry Roth, published in 1934. It centers on the character and perceptions of a young boy, the son of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants in a ghetto in New York City. Roth uses stream-of-consciousness techniques to trace the boy's psychological development and to explore his perceptions of his family and of the larger world around him. The book powerfully evokes the terrors and anxieties the child experiences in his anguished relations with his father and realistically describes the squalid urban environment in which the family lives. The novel was rediscovered in the late 1950s and early '60s and came to be viewed both as an important proletarian novel of the 1930s and as a classic of Jewish-American literature.

**********************************************************************************
The Book on the Book Shelf by Henry Petroski
(My note: demoted from above because ljh, a respected source of all things bookish, found it BORing)
**********************************************************************************

Related Links (I swipe comments from these voracious readers):

Bad Hair Days Forum

ThreeWay Action Forum

Reader's Paradise

 

Home

---