Book Rercs of the Day 10/14-10/19/2008

A GOOD GIFT

One of the foremost choreographers of our time distills 35 years of creative work into a practical, inspiring look at discipline, skill, and time management that demystifies the process. Tharp is at ease with her subject, and her confident modesty is winning. The inimitable satisfaction of a sustained idea, from first emergence through discipline, disappointment, perseverance, shaping, redefining, and polishing, is a powerful force, and it’s a shame to lose it. Tharp shows how to harness it and make it work.

THE CREATIVE HABIT: LEARN IT AND USE IT FOR LIFE, by Twyla Tharp (Simon & Schuster, 2005)

YOU GOTTA LAUGH

This is a big comic novel about a big comical man. Misha Vainberg, a Russian émigré, is forced to return to his homeland after his father, a career criminal in the “new” Russia, is murdered. Though desperate to return to America (and to Rouenna Sales, his “giant multicultural swallow” from the South Bronx), Misha is stuck in Absurdistan battling Russian bureaucracy, eating, drinking, womanizing, and snidely commenting his way through a grotesquely excessive, corrupt Russia that is in love with America.

ABSURDISTAN: A NOVEL, by Gary Shteyngart (Random House, 2006)

It was one of the greatest partnerships in show biz—Lewis the goofy monkey and Martin the unflappable foil. For ten years they entertained a postwar America that was eager to laugh. Then, in 1956, the team broke up with such acrimony that the two men didn’t speak to each other for 20 years. In this fascinating account straight from the “monkey’s” mouth, Lewis gives us the whole story, candidly and without sparing himself. This is one of the best tell-all memoirs to come along in years.

DEAN AND ME (A LOVE STORY), by Jerry Lewis and James Kaplan (Doubleday, 2005)

FAVORITE AUTHOR

From the author of the New York Times bestselling Deep End of the Ocean comes the story of 12-year-old Veronica “Ronnie” Swan. The eldest daughter in a Mormon family, she is in charge of her younger siblings when the unthinkable happens: Scott Early, a sweet young man when taking his medication, kills Ronnie’s two sisters. Ronnie cannot forgive or forget: She hunts Early and eventually manages to get hired as the nanny for his young daughter. But the closer she comes to her quarry, the more she understands about him, about life, about love and understanding.

CAGE OF STARS, by Jacquelyn Mitchard (Warner Books, 2007)

Barker’s World War I trilogy takes on the insanity of war and questions of class and identity. The books center on William Rivers, a psychologist and social anthropologist who treats shell-shocked soldiers so they can return to the front. Rivers is one of the actual historical personages who inhabit the book. Using both real historical figures and fictional characters, Barker weaves real and imagined worlds together beautifully, with spare, lucid writing that proves to be truly moving and insightful. The Ghost Road was awarded the British Commonwealth’s Booker Prize.

REGENERATION (Plume, 1993); THE EYE IN THE DOOR (Plume, 1995); THE GHOST ROAD (Plume, 1996), by Pat Barker (All three books are available in a single volume, titled The Regeneration Trilogy, Viking, 1996)

LITTLE LAUGHS

By “very short,” they mean single paragraphs, like Cliffs Notes for the attention-deficit crowd. There’s an unauthorized autobiography called “I Did What?” by Iben Stoned; the rise and many falls of struggling artist Wanda Warhol, Andy’s second cousin; the nondeath of salesman Wiley Lomann, who tried to collect life insurance for his family by taking an overdose of placebos; and so on. Quick laughs for a fast-paced world.

FICTOIDS . . . SHORT FICTION . . . VERY SHORT, by Bill Dutcher; illustrated by Jack Ziegler (Dutcher & Company, 2006)