From One Book Lover

The world of the famous and infamous is rather small, Craig Brown proves in his delightful book Hello, Goodbye, Hello .  It's like Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only across genres. The book is a chain of 101 meetings: Truman Capote meets Peggy Lee, Peggy Lee meets Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon meets Elvis Presley...  The book blends from one encounter to the next seamlessly with well-recorded conversations and comments from reliable resources: published accounts, diaries, third-party accounts, all verifiable, all more honest than one would expect. But is it interesting? Mostly. The author is British, so he takes delight in a couple of politicians whose notoriety is lost on me. I could have skipped over them, but I didn't want to miss a single snarky, surprising encounter. And there are plenty. The encounters I enjoyed most were between the writers and movie actors. I'll never again see Sir Alec Guiness in the same light — his recollection of James Dean was swee...

I love India. Wait, let me clarify: I love what I know about India. I am sure I don't know enough about it, but some cultural elements fascinate me: Bollywood, da a l , saris, Hinduism, bustling cities. Each of these is a single idea — and Katherine Boo has replaced "ideas" with realities : real people, real situations, real dilemmas. In Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity , Katherine Boo reveals the private lives of some of the residents of Annawadi, a "slum" near the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport . It may be my own shortcoming, but the word slum connotes in my mind a certain surrender, as though people have resigned themselves to the inevitable. Those who live in Annawadi are a diverse lot, Hindu and Muslim, and some have seen the undercity as a way to make their mark, or to gain control. For others, it's a temporary place until they find their niche in the city. Others expect to use the sys...

You know when your skin prickles and you just know something isn't right?  That is instinct, something most of us ignore if we think it will cause us embarrassment. Gavin de Becker will convince you to react otherwise in his brilliant book, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence . For de Becker, instinct is the gathering of data we cannot articulate but simply understand.  If a voice comes from a location a person should not logically be traveling, if the gesture or tone of voice doesn't comfort us as it should, if the offer for help seems too forceful — our minds won't explain it to us, but upon reflection, it all makes sense. Equally important is knowing the difference between what should cause fear and how we invoke it in ourselves.  Being petrified that you're in an empty parking lot is a waste of fear if there is no real threat.  Using your spidey-senses to listen for the unexpected footsteps, however, is a good way to determin...

I would follow Bill Bryson anywhere. I have followed him on the Appalachian Trail, into the universe, across America, through England and all the way Down Under. He does not fail to delight readers — even when he stays home. In At Home , the furthest he goes is to the roof. Bryson literally strolls through his home in a quiet English hamlet, pondering who has come before (and literally how many there are still there, in body if not in spirit) and how they created the space around them. Many students of history know the kitchen was often separate from the rest of the house, but how it evolved from a sure-fire death trap to today's modern amenities is worth the trip alone. In the kitchen, Bryson considers food and ponders why we eat what we eat — and who in their right mind would think [fill in the blank here] was a good idea for the plate? From wheat to corn, from meat to dairy, from spices to grain, Bryson ponders what we eat, and how it came to be on our plate, rather t...