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01/10/2010

Book review: 'The Wizard of Waxahachie' by Warren Corbett
Judged by its numbers alone, Paul Richards' major-league baseball record was a clutch double, not a home run.

Book review: 'Small Kingdoms' by Anastasia Hobbet
As Kuwait marks the 20th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion, Anastasia Hobbet takes us back to the uneasy years that followed. A former journalist and the author of Pleasure of Believing , Hobbet draws on personal experiences in Kuwait to weave this intimate, intricate story. It follows five people of different cultures, social strata and religions, whose lives intersect in a way that challenges all their values and beliefs.

01/12/2010

Turnaround pro prescribes firing even family, squeezing vendors
George Cloutier aspires to be the Vince Lombardi of small business. The 63-year-old turnaround expert is happy to be creating a buzz and drawing some heat with his audacious book, Profits Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing.

01/10/2010

Book review: 'Ransom' by David Malouf
The bare bones of the story appear in a few lines of Homer's Iliad , Books 23 and 24.

Book review: 'The Kingdom of Ohio' by Matthew Flaming
On the heels of Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling The Time Traveler's Wife comes Matthew Flaming's The Kingdom of Ohio , a time-leaping love story that features fictional characters interacting with the likes of Thomas Edison, J.P. Morgan and Nikola Tesla.

Book review: 'Happy' by Alex Lemon
We are, as a culture, obsessed with medical dramas. Just look at the history of television and you'll see dozens of shows based in hospitals, from St. Elsewhere to ER to House .

Book review: 'Unfinished Desires' by Gail Godwin
The title may fool you. This is no bodice-ripper novel of thwarted sensuality, but rather a gentle and definitely unsentimental presentation of life in a North Carolina Catholic girls' school called Mount St. Gabriel's as the headmistress, Mother Superior Suzanne Ravenel, prepares to write a history of the institution.

Local and national best-sellers
This week's list of local best-sellers is from Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 2201 Preston Road, Plano. National best-sellers are from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

Authors appearing in Dallas-Fort Worth area
Joel Osteen will sign It's Your Time at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Hastings, 791 N. Highway 77, Waxahachie.

01/05/2010

Book review: 'Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original' by Robin D.G. Kelley
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original adds significantly to our understanding of jazz's aesthetic complexities and its dynamic emotional force. Author Robin D.G. Kelley's close attention to Monk's personal history and music discredits the weak caricatures that color the pianist as an untutored, mystical loon.

01/03/2010

Book review: 'Noah's Compass' by Anne Tyler
Do we read fiction to escape the ordinariness of our lives? If so, it's hard to account for the strange power of Anne Tyler's novels.

Texas & Southwest book reviews: 'Together, Alone' by Susan Wittig Albert; 'Ranch Gates of the Southwest;' 'Winchester Warriors' by Bob Alexander; 'Winning 42' by Dennis Roberson

Book review: 'How They See Us,' edited by James Atlas
Anti-Americanism has been a badge of intellect through much of the world for as long as I can remember. We are criticized for what we did in Vietnam, in Central America and the Caribbean, in the Middle East and in South Asia. We are criticized for what we did not do in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, the Middle East (again) and in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Book review: 'Roses' by Leila Meacham
In a Twitter world of messages limited to 140 keystrokes, a 609-page novel stands out like a hoop skirt at a hip-hop show.

Book review: 'Committed' by Elizabeth Gilbert
The gazillions of readers who adored Elizabeth Gilbert's last memoir, Eat, Pray, Love , can thank officers at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport for inspiring her latest nonfiction delight, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage .

The New York Times national best-sellers
National best-sellers from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

Author Tours: Chad Hennings, Michele Bardsley, Dr. Charles Stanley
The Southern Methodist University Writer's Salon will meet 7 p.m. Thursday at Legacy Books, 7300 Dallas Parkway, Plano. The program's New York 2009 alumni panel will discuss "What Happened, What Didn't and What We Learned." Reserve at smu.edu/creativewriting.

01/02/2010

Heavy-duty coffee-table books
Clear some space on the coffee table for these elegant tomes idolizing everything from cars to stars. The greatest cars

12/27/2009

Book review: 'Hellraisers' by Robert Sellers
"I did quite enjoy the days when one went for a beer at one's local in Paris and woke up in Corsica," Peter O'Toole once quipped.

Book review: 'Ghosts & Lightning' by Trevor Byrne
As poet Harry Clifton has observed, the major development in Irish literature in the 1980s was the emergence of the urban voice, typified by the novels of Roddy Doyle and Dermot Bolger. It's startling to learn that Trevor Byrne, the latest significant addition to that bold chorus, was born in the 1980s. At 28 he's produced, in Ghosts & Lightning , a substantial debut novel that features pitch-perfect dialogue.

Book Review: 'A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game' by Jenny Uglow
Jenny Uglow prefaces A Gambling Man , her excellent new biography of Britain's King Charles II, with a confession, almost an apology: "It is a challenge for someone like me, whose sympathy lies with the radicals and artisans protesting against abuse of power, to venture into the centre, the heart of that power.

Book review: 'Then Came the Evening,' by Brian Hart
Say one thing for first-time novelist Brian Hart, a recent product of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin: He sets himself a challenge right out of the box.

The New York Times national best-sellers
National best-sellers from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

Book review: 'Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong' by Terry Teachout
Thirty-eight years after Louis Armstrong's death, Terry Teachout has written a definitive narrative biography of the greatest jazz musician of the 20th century.

12/23/2009

Year in Review: Books

AP Photo

Clockwise from top left: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, e-readers, The Lost Symbol and Going Rogue

The year 2009 has been described as the Year of Anxiety, so it should come as no surprise that the books published in 2009 reflected scary stuff – from government conspiracy theories to zombies and, natch, vampires.
Quoted: What they're saying about Sarah Palin
Gift guide: Feast your eyes on pop-up books
Blog: Books

12/20/2009

Book review: 'Her Fearful Symmetry' by Audrey Niffenegger
If Audrey Niffenegger's previous novel, The Time Traveler's Wife , hadn't been such a fresh and invigorating reading experience, her newest, Her Fearful Symmetry , might not seem so much of a disappointment.

Book review: 'Knives at Dawn' by Andrew Friedman
Before shows such as Top Chef , Iron Chef and Hell's Kitchen made cooking a spectator sport, there was the Bocuse D'Or. Started in 1987 by Paul Bocuse, perhaps the world's first superstar chef, this biennial competition is the food world's answer to the Olympics.

Book review: 'The Talented Miss Highsmith' by Joan Schenkar
In the introductory note, which opens her mesmeric, magnum-size biography of Texas-born writer Patricia Highsmith, Joan Schenkar gets right to it: "She wasn't nice. She was rarely polite. And no one who knew her well would have called her a generous woman."

Local and national best-sellers
National best-sellers are from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list. This week's local best-sellers, provided by Legacy Books, 7300 Dallas Parkway, Plano, is available at booksblog.guidelive.com .

Book review: 'The Arabs' by Eugene Rogan
Western libraries are filled with books written to "explain" the Arab world, to prescribe or proscribe policy, to categorize and define and classify.

12/19/2009

Sherlock Holmes fans hopeful and skeptical before movie opens
It takes some deduction to locate which part of the Londoner pub in Addison hosts the meeting of this Sherlock Holmes fan club.