How Herblock ruled Washington with a pen
Herbert Lawrence Block is the reason Tom Toles no longer draws editorial cartoons just outside my office, although when I peer over the top of my computer I can still see his old drawing table and the signature drawing lamp he depicts in the lower corner of his cartoons. (Updated: 11/08/09 8:29 AM )
‘Twisted River’ finds Irving wrestling with familiar themes
Last Night in Twisted River” couldn’t have a better beginning, (or ending, since they are nearly the same). In one intense, packed paragraph, John Irving plunges totally, recklessly, into the icy grip of fate with the sudden, tragic death of a young teenager in a logging camp. (Updated: 11/08/09 8:29 AM )
Books in brief
NONFICTION (Updated: 11/08/09 8:29 AM )
Compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.
FICTION (Updated: 11/08/09 8:29 AM )
Editor’s Choice
The Humbling by Philip Roth; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 160 pages ($22). (Updated: 11/08/09 8:29 AM )
The girl who grew up not needing a prince
A baby left in the forest, a shape-shifting sorceress, a lovestruck prince —the familiar fairy-tale ingredients are there, starting with “Once Upon a Time.” (Updated: 11/08/09 10:09 AM )
Poetry: Poems by Gay Baines
One Night
By Gay Baines
I still hear in my head
the names my mother called me
while I was being born. I
cursed it the same way, cursed
my miserable husband as well,
all the way back to his fancy
ancestors. It was spring, when
they say people die. We huddled
in a scrubby pasture, nowhere
to lie but the ground. Nothing
to give the child but my scarf,
to bundle it in. My husband
found a poor place to lay it down,
and when I looked at its tiny skull
my heart went out to it, to him,
my cockleshell, my little love.
Was this the messenger's
foretelling? No. He was my own,
no matter what life brought us.
(Updated: 11/05/09 12:26 PM )
By Gay Baines
I still hear in my head
the names my mother called me
while I was being born. I
cursed it the same way, cursed
my miserable husband as well,
all the way back to his fancy
ancestors. It was spring, when
they say people die. We huddled
in a scrubby pasture, nowhere
to lie but the ground. Nothing
to give the child but my scarf,
to bundle it in. My husband
found a poor place to lay it down,
and when I looked at its tiny skull
my heart went out to it, to him,
my cockleshell, my little love.
Was this the messenger's
foretelling? No. He was my own,
no matter what life brought us.
(Updated: 11/05/09 12:26 PM )
Obama’s brother recalls dad in book
GUANGZHOU, China — The mixed-race son of a brilliant but troubled Kenyan academic and a white American woman writes an emotionally moving book about his search for identity and self. (Updated: 11/05/09 7:50 AM )
A surprisingly honest restaurant cookbook
Four years ago, David Chang was considering closing Momofuku Noodle Bar, the two-man ramen shop he had opened on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. (Updated: 11/04/09 7:52 AM )
Poetry: Autumn by Adam Zagajewski
Autumn
By Adam Zagajewski (Translated by Renata Gorczynski) (Updated: 10/30/09 3:57 PM )
By Adam Zagajewski (Translated by Renata Gorczynski) (Updated: 10/30/09 3:57 PM )
Speaking of ‘Wild Things,’ love lost—and Mozart
NEW YORK — About the hoopla surrounding the film adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are,” Maurice Sendak is characteristically gruff. (Updated: 11/01/09 6:45 AM )
Gibson, Jackson take readers deep inside game
I have in my office a wall full of sports books, the majority of which serve no purpose but to illustrate that most sports books really aren’t worth the time it takes to read them, but their dust jackets make for a useful decorating touch. (Updated: 11/01/09 6:45 AM )
Vaccaro offers front-row seat to the 1912 ‘world’s series’
Anyone who loves baseball and writes for a living has imagined what it must have been like to cover the sport a century ago, when it was our unquestioned national pastime and a thriving newspaper industry was the main source of information on the game. (Updated: 11/01/09 6:45 AM )
Chabon examines the ideals of manhood, and they aren’t easy
Michael Chabon has been showered with praise, ratified with book sales, and honored with elite prizes. But sometimes even “the Updike of [his] generation” (as Time magazine once called him) has gotta eat. (Updated: 11/01/09 10:23 AM )
Books in brief
FICTION (Updated: 11/01/09 6:45 AM )
Best Sellers
Compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide. (Updated: 11/01/09 6:45 AM )
Editor’s Choice
Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writing of Manny Farber, edited by Robert Polito; Library of America, 824 pages ($40) (Updated: 11/01/09 6:45 AM )
Patricia Cornwell gets a Q&A third degree
Award-winning, international best-selling author Patricia Cornwell has seen her meticulously researched crime novels translated into 36 languages across more than 50 countries. The former police beat reporter scuba dives, rides motorcycles and flies helicopters –just like her characters do. (Updated: 11/01/09 7:59 AM )
Marv Levy opens the Bills' play book
Marv Levy, the former Buffalo Bills coach and general manager, has a new book out that he wrote with NFL researcher and author Jeff Miller of Springville, "Game Changers: The Greatest Plays in Buffalo Bills Football History" (Triumph Books, $24.95). (Updated: 10/29/09 1:26 AM )
Translator, artist shed new light on sacred texts
Here, from the same publisher and officially published a week apart, are two of the most important books of 2009. Willis Barnstone’s “Restored New Testament” is the Samson attempt of one great scholar and translator to knock down ancient pillars of error, injustice and persecution. In that endeavor alone, it may be the most important book of the year. (Updated: 10/26/09 2:47 PM )
Ted Kennedy failed to dig deep enough in ‘True Compass ’
As he worked on his memoir in the final years of his life, Ted Kennedy reportedly told people, “I’ve got to get this right for history.” I wish he had written it more out of passion than obligation. (Updated: 10/31/09 11:55 AM )
Ackroyd’s weak rehash fails to reanimate ‘Frankenstein’
If you’re going to attempt to rewrite a classic, you darn well better have a fresh perspective and not a hacky, overwrought “surprise” ending tacked on in the final two pages. (Updated: 10/25/09 7:27 AM )
Best Sellers
Compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide. (Updated: 10/25/09 7:27 AM )
Editor’s Choice
The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by John Ortved; Faber and Faber, 333 pages ($27). (Updated: 10/25/09 7:27 AM )
Ames girls teach a lesson in friendship
As a lifestyles columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Zaslow chronicles the business of living itself in “Moving On,” a column about transitions. (Updated: 10/25/09 7:27 AM )
Books in brief
CHILDREN’S (Updated: 10/25/09 7:27 AM )
Poetry: Between Season Insomnia by Theresa Wyatt
Between Season Insomnia
(Updated: 10/22/09 3:46 PM )
(Updated: 10/22/09 3:46 PM )
Fascination with fate of Earhart still soars
SEATTLE—Nearly a century ago at a fair in Toronto, a young nurse’s aide watched an exhibition of stunt flying, as a pilot began diving at the crowd. “I remember the mingled fear and pleasure which surged over me as I watched that small plane at the top of its earthward swoop,” she would write, years later. “I did not understand it at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.” (Updated: 10/22/09 7:01 AM )
Poetry and Literature Calendar
MONDAY, 7 p. m.: Reading to celebrate the release of “Beyond Bones,” a new annual anthology featuring writers from Western New York, featuring editors Jennifer Campbell, Perry Nicholas and Verneice Turner with contributors Amrutansh (Amol Salunkhe), Kenneth J. Feltges, Loren Keller, Marge Merrill, Jane Sadowski and Bill Sylvester. Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware Ave. (Updated: 10/18/09 6:42 AM )
‘Blame’s’ tale penetrates alcoholism’s blurry spiral
Michelle Huneven takes a road rarely traveled in her new novel, “Blame.” (Updated: 10/18/09 6:42 AM )