Books

Coach lets it fly

Coaches' memoirs are usually a sorry lot, rife with the sorts of nostrums and treacle and pithy life lessons one endures in the campaign biographies of politicians and the masterworks of celebrities.
Modified: 11/06/09 02:25:22 PM

Father and son caught in chaos

'Last Night in Twisted River" showcases all of John Irving's biggest liabilities as a writer: a tricked-up, gimmicky plot; cartoony characters; absurd contrivances; cheesy sentimentality; and a thoroughly preposterous ending. And yet, at the same time, it evolves into a deeply felt and often moving story -- a story that with some diligent editing might have ranked right up there with "The World According to Garp" (1978) and "A Widow for One Year" (1998) as one of Irving's more powerful works.
Modified: 11/06/09 02:35:19 PM

Inside MI5, as it defends the Realm

Mention "MI-5" to the typical Anglophile, public television viewer and you will be filled in on the latest episode of BBC America's riveting, well-acted, late Saturday night show. After 9/11's catastrophic intelligence failure, there was serious talk of creating an American version of MI5, Britain's domestic security service, which is commemorating its centenary this year.
Modified: 11/06/09 02:35:25 PM

New in paperback

The English Major by Jim Harrison. (Grove) "We English majors of a serious bent are susceptible to high ideals we paste on our lives like decals," the protagonist of Harrison's 15th work of fiction, an English teacher turned cherry farmer, says. Dumped by his wife of 38 years, he leaves his Michigan home and heads west; the novel is his "trip journal." Along the way he contemplates sex, marriage, farming, fatherhood, teaching, the landscape, American history and the younger brother who drowned when they were boys.
Modified: 11/06/09 02:35:22 PM

The total package: a book, play, music

A conniving crook and a young innocent. Paths cross. Beliefs are challenged.
Modified: 11/08/09 06:13:57 AM

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A daughter's take on Orson Welles

No posters or photographs of Orson Welles hang in the living room of his eldest daughter, Chris Welles Feder. His memory is preserved, imperfectly, through a shelf of books that Feder says have yet to capture her father's many-sided life.
Modified: 10/30/09 05:46:59 PM

The disconnection connects it all

'Paranoia is a flower in the brain," asserts the incredibly named Perkus Tooth, nexus of all the strange happenings that run through Jonathan Lethem's very strange novel "Chronic City."
Modified: 10/30/09 02:47:12 PM

The holy grail of physics

A 17-mile-long circular tunnel lies beneath the French-Swiss border just outside Geneva. Parts of it are more than 500 feet below ground. The tunnel houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle collider on the planet.
Modified: 11/01/09 05:57:27 AM

Youth and desire collide

It's 1967 as "Invisible" begins. Adam Walker, a 20-year-old literature student at Columbia and aspiring poet, meets political science professor Rudolf Born and his temptress girlfriend, Margot, at a party.
Modified: 10/30/09 02:32:24 PM

Bestsellers

Fiction 1. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown 2. Pursuit Of Honor by Vince Flynn 3. Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly
Modified: 11/01/09 07:27:55 AM

New in paperback

By Victor Pelevin. Translated by Andrew Bromfield. (Penguin)
Modified: 10/30/09 02:47:47 PM

The woman behind 'Little Women'

In her new biography of the fiercely independent author of "Little Women," screenwriter Harriet Reisen draws a lively, engrossing portrait of Louisa May Alcott's life that will appeal to the legions of women who grew up worshipping the book.
Modified: 10/30/09 02:47:53 PM

Appreciating an artist who became an icon

Francine Prose's "Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife" is, in effect, a biography of the book.
Modified: 10/23/09 05:16:20 PM

The miracle of SNCC

"The pace of social change is too slow. At this rate it will be at least another generation before the major forms of segregation disappear. All of Africa will be free before the American Negro attains first-class citizenship."
Modified: 10/23/09 03:16:04 PM

Keeping secrets in the family

Although born in Egypt, Penelope Lively has spent most of her life in England, where she became known in the 1970s, first for children's books and then for novels for adults, many of which have received important literary accolades.
Modified: 10/26/09 06:01:31 AM

Batter up! A bevy of baseball books

With the playoffs underway and the World Series set to begin Oct. 28, baseball fans can enjoy books on everything from Yogi Berra to umpires to the only perfect game ever pitched in the World Series. Here are some recent publications:
Modified: 10/18/09 09:49:39 AM

Sick of smiley faces

When Barbara Ehrenreich became a breast cancer patient, she found herself infuriated by the disease's upbeat, infantilizing culture of pink ribbons and teddy bears.
Modified: 10/18/09 09:52:13 AM

New in paperback

The House On First Street: My New Orleans Story
Modified: 10/16/09 01:41:11 PM

Best sellers

Fiction
Modified: 10/16/09 01:41:13 PM

'Best' might be a stretch

In her introduction to this year's 20-story collection, guest editor Alice Sebold writes, "Every story in the final selection deserves to be read.
Modified: 10/18/09 09:55:30 AM

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