A Girl and Her Books

Since reading my first Dick Francis novel in 1982, he’s been at the top of my favorites list, and I took it badly when his wife, Mary, died in 2000. He’d never hidden how essential she was to his work – she was his primary editor and researcher – and declared that, without her, his writing days were over. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case – he returned with a fourth Sid Halley tale in 2006’s Under Orders – and now son Felix is helping him turn out his classic tales. The latest entry is Silks , where barrister (and amateur jump jockey) Geoffrey Mason finds himself entangled not only as a defense attorney, but in a struggle for his life. The plot follow well-established Francis territory, but what draws me – and fans worldwide – to each novel is the freshness with which this former jockey (and the only three-time winner of the Edgar Award) covers ground that would, in the hands of a lesser writer, prove sterile. Rachel Johnson: "Our Favourite Thriller Writer Dick Francis i...

It soothes my frazzled nerves to know that illustrious Yankees like David Mamet & Howard Norman enjoy Southern cooking as much as those of us who were raised on it. Jimmy Kennedy's recipes are slightly adapted to Northern groceries & palates (Breakfast Pasta, p. 85), but are definitely steeped in his Mississippi roots (Chicken-Fried Hamburger Steak, p. 98). The only category missing is drink recipes, but then again, you can just reserve some liquor from the Whiskey Cake (p. 205). Five-star recipes and terrific stories to go along with them.

After sitting on my reading list for two years, I finally bought this book, after all three of my public library systems refused to buy it. Now I know why. From a first-paragraph description of the sexual position used to conceive her first child, Erika Schickel spends 228 pages bemoaning her “pussy belly,” hating her minivan, vacillating between alterna- and trad-moms, playing Grand Theft Auto, and getting lap dances from female strippers. I enjoy warts-and-all mothering books, because it was the most difficult, demanding and immediate-reward-deficient assignment of my life. But a history of drugs used by stay-at-home moms to medicate their misery (while bitching about how hard it is to quit smoking weed)? Excuses for how much you hate your cat, to the point of returning it to the shelter? (As a mother of three refugee dogs, that one really set me off.) Losing your cookies because foot surgery hurts and renders you temporarily handicapped? ...

An elderly woman rents rooms in her Nantucket home to make ends meet, inadvertently forcing convergence on many disparate lives. A theme visited by many other authors, but Jane Green renews it quite well.

I love books about home renovation, New Orleans is one of my favorite settings for a story, and I'm a fan of Julia Reed's writing -- I adored Queen of the Turtle Derby -- so this book arrived on my reading list with a pre-approved stamp. Thankfully, it lived up to the label. Not only did I enjoy the warts-and-all renovation tale, but completely related to Julia's long & complicated journey from uncommitted single life to married domesticity. Add in the intrigue of Hurricane Katrina, along with Julia's irrepressible urge to entertain -- as a friend says, "A fool and her money throw great parties" -- and you've got one hell of a good read. Hilarious appearances by Vogue 's Andre Leon Talley, a longtime Reed friend, are icing on the cake.

Liz Phoenix has always known she was different, but has no idea just how much separates her from the rest of mankind until she finds her foster mother, Ruthie, in a pool of blood in her kitchen, dying from wounds inflicted by an otherworldly beast. She’s quickly sucked into the battle between good and evil, populated by seers, demon killers, fairies, skinwalkers, dhampirs, berserkers and vampires, amongst many others. Along the way, she discovers the secrets lurking behind many otherwise normal faces, as well as unsavory aspects of her youthful love and fellow foster child, Jimmy Sanducci. This is a standard paranormal romances, filled with energetic & graphic sex . When the story shifts to a Manhattan high-rise, light bondage harems enter the picture. However, Handeland’s descriptions never reach the explicit levels of Anne Rice’s vampire novels.  None of these elements is likely to lure a reader not already interested in paranormal erotica.

This is one of the sweetest books I've read in years. Not a literary masterpiece, but a funny, charming and heartfelt glimpse of small-town life that reminds me, once again, why I'm so proud to be Southern. I just wish there was a Piggly Wiggly in my town for me to waltz in the aisles.

This book is rude, crude and lewd. Every page made me laugh. And then I made my boyfriend read it.

This is, hands-down, the best book I read in 2006, and probably one of my best reads of the decade. It's even better than Case Histories , and I didn't think Ms. Atkinson could top that. I'm in awe of her ability to build an incredibly complex and detailed story -- and make it look so easy. This review was chosen as a Daily Dose by Powells.com

Paula tells her inspiring story, warts and all. While she berates herself for smoking, having an affair with a married man, and being an imperfect parent, those very faults make us (her less-than-perfect fans) love her all the more. Well done, Lady!

I was so moved by this, the latest in the Dalziel-Pascoe series, that I had a hard time moving on after the story ended. Focusing on the cops rather than the robbers makes this a moving addition to the series.

Quite simply, the funniest book Buckley has ever written. That's a high accolade, given his body of work, but it's the only way to sum up such an outrageous, and accurate, novel.

I never thought any writer could out-nuttify Carl Hiaasen, but Tim Dorsey proved me wrong. I'll never look at a Coleman cooler the same way again.

A friend of mine gave this to me as a good-luck gift just before major surgery. It has saved my life many times since then, mostly because George Singleton never fails to demonstrate that even the openly deranged can survive in Southern society. This is a good reminder for me, as I've spent my life teetering on the edge of sanity.

I'm not a big fan of memoirs, but checked this out under duress from the local librarian. A few pages in, though, I was hooked. Carolyn Jourdan returns home from a high-powered job in Washington, D.C. after a family crisis to eventually discover that her dream of helping people and fixing the world is best accomplished where she started, in her rural hometown in east Tennessee. Without a doubt, the best book I read in 2007.

Perfectly sums up small-town life -- coping with isolation, family, community and figuring out where you belong.

One of the sweetest books I've ever read. A tale of twins -- both human and porcine -- filled with love and laughter; even the bad guy meets a good end. Jimmy's not a literary genius, but he's fun and generous, and in my opinion, sometimes that counts for more than brilliance.

A better title would be A False Advertisement of Humor . Although the dust cover described this as darkly funny, I found almost nothing about it laugh-provoking. It was just another tiresome woman searching for meaning in her life after suffering several setbacks, following a predictable path to the typical results. I don't feel like I lost brain cells to this book, but I didn't gain any either.

I picked this up mainly because a distasteful fellow patron at my local library declared it "sad." I figured if she disliked it, it couldn't be all bad ... and it's not. A plucky single Manhattan mom runs a cozy knitting shop while coping with her headstrong preteen daughter and the sudden reappearance of the girl's father, while patrons of the shop build an informal support group they brand "The Friday Night Knitting Club." Yes, the story has some sad moments, but what I took away from it was the immense strength offered by a group of friends who become your chosen family.

Chick lit is dismissed as fluff, but there are times when even the most serious reader needs something sweet to distract from everyday life. This is the perfect choice: light, breezy and funny, with just enough fact-based drama (the author survived the famous Rosie invasion of McCall's) to make it realistic. I thoroughly enjoyed Little Pink Slips -- in fact, was sorry to finish it -- and hope Sally Koslow has another book up her brocaded Mandarin sleeve.

Having read -- and disliked -- two of this collection's pieces in Esquire and The New Yorker , I should have avoided Brief Interviews with Hideous Men . But I wanted to give David Foster Wallace and his vaunted dry humor one more chance. I found a couple of the briefest stories ("Forever Overhead," the first episode of the two-part "The Devil is a Busy Man") interesting and even laugh-provoking, but the remaining stories bored me. Like Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People , this book strives too hard and self-consciously to be funny. Wallace should buy a volume or two of Barry Hannah's work and study the master of the dryly hilarious short story. And no, the fact that Wallace committed suicide doesn't change my attitude about this collection.

For those of us whose every day is off-kilter, Jamie Harrison has created the ideal town with the perfect sheriff: Jules Clement, Ph.D., of Blue Deer, Montana. Home after a decade of archeological exploration, Jules finds that the duties of a small-town sheriff are more dangerous than excavating in Tunisia or Turkey, because in Montana he has to cope with sibling rivalry, nouveau riche newcomers, duck killers, naked men peeing in the town park, and memories of his father's murder twenty years earlier. Walking on the wild side has never been better.

From the first page to the last, Joan Anderson reveals herself to be a self-absorbed woman, rather than the self-sacrificing mother and wife she claims to be. Her attempts to "find" herself, such as frolicking with seals, taking a job in a fish shop, and befriending another self-obsessed older woman, are stereotypical "enlightening" activities -- in other words, the so-called talented writer can't rise above the pedantic. This memoir is an insult to hard-working women who "find" themselves in the midst of busy and demanding lives without the convenience of a seaside refuge. Joan Anderson would have done the literary world a service to stay in her cottage and keep her "unfinished" thoughts to herself.

Unlike Animal Husbandry and Dating Big Bird , Laura Zigman's Her is a waste of precious wood pulp. With a main character, Elise, who isn't fleshed-out or sympathetic, and a story -- she obsessively spies on her fiancé, Donald, and his ex-fianceé, Adrienne -- that's one-dimensional, not to mention awkwardly constructed, the novel belly flops. Other than a detailed list of streets in northwest Washington, D.C. and occasional forays into the coffee shop of Politics and Prose, there is nothing to recommend this novel. Laura Zigman should atone for the trees that died to print this atrocious tale.

The dustcover describes "Piggs" as the Sopranos in overalls and bare feet, but a better comparison is Carl Hiaasen in Texas. Nearly every character in this story is a lowlife, and many are murderous, but good wins out in the end and everybody gets what they deserve. At the heart of the action are Jack, an ex-con who dreams of a better life while washing dishes in a takeout Chinese joint next door to the strip joint of the title, and Gloria, the dancer of every man's fantasies, who lives in her family's abandoned theme park. Along for the ride are Cecil R. Dupree, a redneck mobster who runs the little town of Mexican Wells, and his band of merry pranksters, Grape and Cat, as well as the suave Ricky Chavez, who pines for Gloria with boxed chocolates in his hand and French condoms in his pocket. The story follows a number of conventional lines, but the characters are so memorable that readers can forgive author Neil Barrett, Jr. for treading down a predictable path.

Finch Nobles was terribly burned as a child, and as a result she hides from most of human society. But she's welcome in the graveyard she passionately tends, where the dead -- including her beloved parents and an always-squalling baby -- speak to her, telling the tales that will eventually allow them to progress along the path they must take. When a local eccentric is buried in the cemetery, however, everything -- including the dynamics of the town just outside the graveyard gates -- is changed, and Finch finds herself forced to allow living beings into her life -- and let the dead follow their own road.

It's obvious Jill Davis was once a writer for David Letterman -- Girls' Poker Night is filled with the sardonic humor he exemplifies. She deftly applies her talent to the subject of love in New York City -- specifically, the love of writer Ruby Capote for her boss, Michael Hobbs, as seen through the weekly poker nights she holds with her four dysfunctional girlfriends. The only problem I had with the novel was the premise of having an affair with the boss -- most workplaces prohibit such a relationship, but Ruby and Michael wash every bit of their laundry in full public view, much to the reader's delight.

Patty is in love with a gay man and wants a child -- dilemmas one might not be able to relate to, but such is Elizabeth Berg's magic that she draws readers into this particular story as strongly as if it were reality. She makes the difficult and complex choices of Patty and the object of her affection, Ethan, seem natural -- the initial decision to conceive a baby, then a move to Minneapolis where Ethan feels he might better simulate heterosexuality, Patty's everyday irritation with the tumults of pregnancy, and finally, welcoming a child against the backdrop of Patty's mother's recent diagnosis of Alzheimer's. One life is ushered in as another is slowly but surely escorted out; the smooth ebb and flow of being continues, and Berg, as always, renders every moment lyric and wonderful.

A moving chronicle of life's end, from the perspective of both the elderly and their caretakers. Clyde Edgerton's funny, accurate and sensitive tale of the varied residents of Rosehaven, a skilled nursing facility in Listre, North Carolina, is one of his best works ... ranking, in my opinion, with his masterpiece, Raney .

Having been deprived of his weekly column for the last few years, I'd forgotten how Dave Barry makes me belly-laugh. He borrows liberally from his friend and Miami Herald colleague Carl Hiaasen in setting up this story -- one of the heavies is almost identical, even by name, to a thug in Hiaasen's Native Tongue -- but dreams up a tale all his own. Sprinkled with his trademark humor and citing events that could only occur in South Florida, Barry constructs a believable tale of high-sea h ...mor Having been deprived of his weekly column for the last few years, I'd forgotten how Dave Barry makes me belly-laugh. He borrows liberally from his friend and Miami Herald colleague Carl Hiaasen in setting up this story -- one of the heavies is almost identical, even by name, to a thug in Hiaasen's Native Tongue -- but dreams up a tale all his own. Sprinkled with his trademark humor and citing events that could only occur in South Florida, Barry con...

I have to love any book where the mother has the exact same name as my daughter.

Why does anyone pay this woman to write? She's a hardbound case of clinical depression. Run for the exits!

Before reading this book, you should visit your doctor for an antidepressant. This woman is determined to increase the suicide rate in America.

With CERN's Large Hadron Collider a reality, this novel's premise is no longer speculation. Douglas Preston isn't a writer for the ages, but he sure knows how to spin a good tale for the here and now.

This would typically be classed as a "feel-good" title, with a bit of Christian and Eastern philosophy tossed into the mix. Soon after B&B owner Wilma Porter asks God to send some help to her little town of Ebb, Nebraska, a well-dressed traveling salesman named Vernon Moore shows up at her door. He ostensibly sells games of chance, but seems more intent on rescuing the town's citizens -- most notably, the owner of an independent (and financially distressed) department store whose ...more This would typically be classed as a "feel-good" title, with a bit of Christian and Eastern philosophy tossed into the mix. Soon after B&B owner Wilma Porter asks God to send some help to her little town of Ebb, Nebraska, a well-dressed traveling salesman named Vernon Moore shows up at her door. He ostensibly sells games of chance, but seems more intent on rescuing the town's citizens -- most notably, the owner of an independent (and ...

I'm a fan of Chuck Palahniuk, but this "biography" of bio-terrorist Buster Casey was too graphic for my tastes. I didn't even make it to the quarter mark before succumbing to queasiness.

A wonderful dessert/baked goods cookbook and the most-used one in my collection. I've successfully modified a lot of the recipes to accomodate my boyfriend's diabetes and renal failure. I just wish Richard Sax were still alive so I could let him know how much his cookbook has helped me. His NYTimes obituary

I can't believe Gannett employs this woman as a humor columnist. Haven't they heard of Celia Rivenbark? Reinhardt writes long, humorless essays about her unhappy marriage, her children, and a long piece about how being raped in college led to her alcoholism.  While her topics are heartfelt, Reinhardt lacks the skill to make them funny and leaves the reader feeling just like that baby on the cover looks.

Nancy French is one of those right-wing Christian Republicans who thinks she's striking a blow for smart, funny conservatives (yeah, I know, an oxymoron). All she demonstrates is that she's a smug, self-righteous asshat.

Not as funny as I expected. Kevin Nealon's revelations about the journey that led him to become a father later in life are interesting, but true to the title, he talks too much about himself and not enough about the little boy who made him a dad.

Eloquent, heartfelt, and I'm not even a cat lover. While Stacy Horn's two feline companions are important to this collection of essays, she ruminates on many topics: life, death, relationships, loneliness and why she loves graveyards (an obsession we share). I loved this book & can't recommend it enough.

Three strong-willed Southern women unite to keep an awful secret, without considering the young woman it accidentally damages. While I'm glad I read this novel, Ms. Shaffer would have done her tale more justice by creating a less abrupt ending. As it stands, an otherwise excellent story is amputated, rather than concluded.

A sci-fi-ish novel I'd have never picked up without reading a positive review, but what a reward! A father and daughter become enmeshed in a government plot, and the father not only sees the future, but has to make an incredibly difficult moral choice. I'll definitely be reading Tim Powers again.

I don't know how David Shields put up with his dad, but I do know this: his dad was related to my late boyfriend. They were both exasperating. Thank you, David, for the field guide.

I'm always wary when a non-fiction writer ventures into fiction, as the result isn't usually successful. Laurie Notaro carries on that tradition. While I'm glad I read it and enjoyed the laughs, Sewer Queen pales in comparison to Notaro's guffaw-inducing true tales.

A fun follow-up to Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes , Secret Lives offers enough angst to be realistic, but plenty of happy endings and just desserts.

The South has a well-deserved reputation for dysfunctional families, but John Dufresne proves they flourish in New England as well. Requiem, Mass is the town where Johnny and his sister Audrey cope with their mentally ill mother, chronically absent (and pathologically lying) father, and the abusive nuns at St. Simeon's. That they survive to adulthood is a miracle, although both are psychologically scarred. Written from the adult Johnny's vantage point, it's unclear how much of this story is fact versus fiction. Whatever the case, it's a powerhouse of a book that packs an emotional wallop that stays with you long after the last page.

Everybody and their book group loves Sue Monk Kidd, but her allure eludes me. I was so bored by this novel I didn't even make it a quarter of the way through. Elizabeth Berg or Kaye Gibbons cover this territory in much finer fashion.

Sometimes I find a book as funny as all the blurbs and reviewers claim it is, but just as often it misses the boat for me. This is one of the boat-missers. Patricia Marx's first novel does have its funny moments (Obax & Etienne, anything involving Libby, riding the train with Oliver Qas), but overall I grew tired of the nameless heroine's obsession for a pretentious cad named Eugene.

Although I generally enjoyed this book, Bageant is too quick to exempt his subjects from personal responsibility, preferring to blame government and powerful individuals for the woes of the underclass. Most of his observations are keen and he makes many good arguments, but a little less bitterness would go a long way in balancing his outlook.