bookpagedev

by Alison Hood

Writers’ night The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein opens in June 1816, as a spooky summer storm rages around the Swiss villa of Lord Byron. Inside, five friends sit near a warm fire, writing ghost stories at the behest of their host. From the charged evening that gave birth both to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the first vampire novel, The Monsters segues into a superlative, riveting history of Shelley’s idiosyncratic parentage (writers William Godwin and proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft), her love-starved childhood, and her erratic life with Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and their gifted contemporaries (including the mad, bad and dangerous to know Lord Byron).

With acute psychological insight, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, historians and award-winning authors of the American Family Albums, explicate Mary’s internal and external worlds, effectively connecting the turmoil of her 19th-century life to the poignant themes at the heart of Frankenstein. Though her family and friends experienced misfortune and untimely deaths after she published Frankenstein, The Monsters sensibly suggests that if malady fell upon them, it was because of their monstrous natures ones that veered unwisely toward self-aggrandizement, incest and excess all in a search for unconditional love.

Alison Hood is a writer in San Rafael, California.

Writers' night The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein opens in June 1816, as a spooky summer storm rages around the Swiss villa of Lord Byron. Inside, five friends sit near a warm fire, writing ghost stories at the behest of their host.…

Fiction

Fiction

A note of genius

Review by bookpagedev

by Michael Alec Rose

For better or worse, the movie Amadeus has set our era’s musical tone by building an unbreachable wall between genius and ordinary talent. Salieri’s unholy war on Mozart stands for our own unease over extraordinary artists, whose uncanny power to move us sets them irrevocably apart from our day-to-day lives.

Now comes Sleeping with Schubert, in all its irreverent glory, poised to overthrow Amadeus’ austere artistic paradigm. If there is any justice in the realm of musical metaphysics, Bonnie Marson’s first novel and the Paramount Pictures film slated to be made from it soon will make everyone who bought the “Mozart vs. Salieri” model trade it in happily and wisely for “Schubert-in-Liza Durbin” instead. Liza is a Brooklyn lawyer who suddenly finds the spirit of Franz Schubert inhabiting her body while she is shopping at Nordstrom. Although she has not had a piano lesson since childhood, Liza sits down at the store piano and plays like a virtuoso. Franz’s presence leads to her nervous breakdown, her discovery by a Julliard School piano teacher and her Carnegie Hall debut. In the course of Liza’s hilarious account of her adventures, we hear Schubert’s own sweet voice only in the briefest of interludes, in which he comments upon his unanticipated luck at having a second chance at existence in the 21st century, after such a tragically brief first stint in the 19th. These novelistic grace notes are perhaps the most memorable things in the book, for they subtly confirm what Liza Durbin has only just begun to learn that real, deathless genius, is above all human; what is more, that it is humane, in absolute touch with the ordinary passages of peoples’ lives, their petty concerns, their joys and woes. At some incalculable point in the novel, it dawns on the astonished reader that Schubert’s resurrected creativity and Liza’s ongoing problems with her hair have somehow found common ground with each other. This wedding between the sublime and the ludicrous will no doubt offend some readers of Sleeping with Schubert. But to discerning Schubert lovers, the great fun of the book will strike a blissful note of fidelity to the composer, especially when it glides imperceptibly into pathos. Genius literally takes possession of the ordinary, so that the two together can continue to work on the ever-unfinished symphony of the human spirit. Michael Alec Rose teaches at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.

For better or worse, the movie Amadeus has set our era's musical tone by building an unbreachable wall between genius and ordinary talent. Salieri's unholy war on Mozart stands for our own unease over extraordinary artists, whose uncanny power to move us sets them irrevocably…

Biography

Biography

Not ready for her close-up

Review by bookpagedev

by Alison Hood

Charles J. Shields, a journalist and author of nonfiction for young readers, blends techniques of fiction and creative investigative reporting in Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. No prior biography of Lee exists, and Shields has written a largely imagined rendering of the reclusive, famously feisty author's life. Lee, now 79 and living in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, declined to speak with Shields or verify his research. The result is a book that, in Shields' words, "aims to capture a life but is not a conventional biography." Which begs the question: Do we really need to know Ms. Lee's innermost thoughts, isn't it enough that she wrote a worthy book that continues to inspire?

Shields' narrative earns A's for effort and for his evocation of the Depression-era South. Also, he clearly respects the importance of To Kill a Mockingbird, mining its pages for clues to Lee's life. Less effective, however, is his weave of fact and conjuration (derived from a mix of tangential research), which makes the text threadbare in spots as it attempts to authoritatively explore the vista of Lee's family and upbringing, friendships, education, writing process and present life. And, oddly, Shields' book closes with a misplaced thematic defamation of Lee's carefully wrought novel.

Mockingbird has three sturdy chapters, though, that lend revealing biographical subtext. These chronicle the diligent shepherding of Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by her agent and editor; her lifelong friendship with the flamboyant Truman Capote; and her struggle to write a second novel. About this literary silence, Shields reports that Lee is self-forgiving: "People who have made peace with themselves are the people I most admire in the world."

Alison Hood is a writer in San Rafael, California.

Fiction

Fiction

Behind the cult of celebrity

Review by bookpagedev

by Thane Tierney

Who will be the next American Idol? Who will The Donald pick to be his apprentice? Who wants to be a millionaire? You do. I do. It’s part of our national psyche, from Star Search going back to Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts and Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour. We all think our thimbleful of talent would magically expand to fill the stage or screen if only we had the drive and the lucky break to propel us into the stratosphere of Superstardom.

Liza Normal, the heroine of Cintra Wilson’s debut novel, Colors Insulting to Nature, is no different. Born to a dentist absentee father and a dervish of a stage mom, Liza soon develops a sense of ambition as wide as Ruben Studdard’s waistline. Unfortunately, her talent was not inherited in equal measure. Her trail from high school social outcast to self-made punk to high-camp dominatrix is a massively comic and intensively poignant character study in the effects of repeated failure as a crucible.

Wilson shifts effortlessly between dispassionate observer and existential philosopher as she documents Liza’s ab-Normal life. Her spot-on depiction of celebrity culture, “the momentary cash-cults that formed whenever the mass attention-span swung unpredictably onto something and stuck for more than more than three seconds,” is both bracing and disturbing. Are we really all that shallow? Well, yes, we are. In Liza’s journey to own her mediocrity and exploit her marginal gifts, Wilson holds up a mirror to all the wannabes and could-have-beens. As she observes in the epilogue, “Human beings can’t stand for too much happiness in their lives; it’s not as interesting or educational as the Obstacles.” Thane Tierney stokes “the star making machinery behind the popular song” in L.A.

Who will be the next American Idol? Who will The Donald pick to be his apprentice? Who wants to be a millionaire? You do. I do. It's part of our national psyche, from Star Search going back to Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts and Major Bowes'…

Essays, Nonfiction

Nonfiction Essays

Lessons learned

Review by bookpagedev

Sports writers traffic in idolatry, or at least they did when Roger Kahn broke into the business some 60 years ago. The great ones, though, see beyond mere statistics and discern the shape of character within these tumbled numbers. Kahn writes here of people who enriched his life through the examples they set as competitors, most notably Jackie Robinson, the first black ballplayer in the major leagues, and his double-play partner, Pee Wee Reese, the first white ballplayer to dare to become Robinson’s friend and defender.

But to write about these heroes, Kahn first had to learn what it meant to write well and with conviction. In learning these lessons he met other heroes, men like Stanley Woodward, his editor and mentor at the New York Tribune, who defied de facto censorship to expose the hatred directed toward Robinson by his peers. Also on the list are Robert Frost, Eugene McCarthy and others.

How can we find meaning from this, we who aren’t privileged to associate with demigods? The answer lies in the last chapter, which Kahn dedicates to his son, Roger Lawrence Kahn, whose turbulent life ended in suicide 19 years ago. Young Roger never left his mark beyond immediate family a family that, in Kahn’s graceful, pared-down prose, feels uncomfortably familiar. Yet everyone that preceded him, and all who have followed, seem to circle him and, in his absence, become important not because of their notoriety but in spite of it.

Fiction

Fiction

Sifting through the rubble of a sister’s ruined life

Review by bookpagedev

by Max Winter

Sifting through the rubble of a sister’s ruined life Though many novels that involve current events acquire a dull, refried sheen, the engaging Going East avoids that particular pitfall. British journalist Matthew d’Ancona’s tale of a young woman who survives the loss of her family and then excavates the story behind that loss is consistently entertaining and written with a balance of psychological closeness and accumulative suspense, managing to examine sociological dynamics in contemporary London as it goes.

As the story begins, Ben Taylor, a financier, is having a 30th birthday picnic with his parents and younger twin sisters. Mia, his other sister, a successful consultant, arrives late and then dashes back to work, promising to return later. The family repairs to Ben’s flat for more celebration. When Mia arrives for the party, she finds her brother’s house and the house beside it demolished from an explosion, her entire family dead. A year later, Mia is working at a healing center in a shoddy neighborhood in East London, living a completely different life and yet crucial questions nag at her. Was the IRA responsible? Or someone with a more personal grievance? Mia is a worthy guide through d’Ancona’s multilayered social diorama. As she begins to investigate her brother’s past, she encounters thugs in expensive suits and knights in ratty clothes, including dashing, scrappy Rob, a musician who comes to work at the healing center and later sleeps with Mia; Aasim, a young gang leader who vandalizes local shops with impunity; and Miles, her old boss, who knows more about her brother’s past than he chooses to reveal. These characters, as in older suspense classics, suggest entire backstories in the sparest of appearances.

The novel moves explosively from its outset, only slowing when d’Ancona offers us too generous a slice of his characters’ psyches or betrays his journalistic past by pulling back too far from the action, becoming almost essayistic in his approach. This, however, is infrequent myriad mini-stories keep us watching, from the sex party in one of the back rooms at an expensive benefit, to Mia’s confrontation with a bartender in a rough establishment. All of these scenarios are drawn together into the story of a courageous woman’s life in this believable, spirited debut. Max Winter writes from New York City.

Sifting through the rubble of a sister's ruined life Though many novels that involve current events acquire a dull, refried sheen, the engaging Going East avoids that particular pitfall. British journalist Matthew d'Ancona's tale of a young woman who survives the loss of her family…

History

History

Dispatches from Africa

Review by bookpagedev

by Anne Bartlett

When journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault was growing up in then-segregated Georgia, the movies she saw at the Saturday matinees always depicted Africans as hapless or even demonic. But Hunter-Gault, an African American who later became the first black woman admitted to the University of Georgia, was able to transcend those ugly stereotypes, creating a lush African jungle paradise in her own imagination.

Hunter-Gault, a two-time Emmy and Peabody Award winner, believes conventional Western journalism still stereotypes Africa as a place of unrelenting chaos and despair. In New News Out of Africa, she asks us to transcend that image by recognizing what she believes is a renaissance of a continent in hopeful transition.

Now Special Africa Correspondent for National Public Radio, Hunter-Gault does not ignore the huge problems faced by Africans, among them AIDS, famine, civil wars and authoritarian governments. But she believes they have to be seen in a context that also includes increased civic activism, economic progress and improving governments in such major countries as Nigeria and South Africa.

South Africa, where she now lives, is Hunter-Gault’s exemplar. She is unabashed in her admiration for Nelson Mandela and writes movingly of the country’s effort to peacefully overcome its apartheid legacy. She acknowledges that president Thabo Mbeki responded badly to the country’s AIDS crisis, but argues that he is largely a positive role model for African leaders.

Hunter-Gault brings to her view of Africa the perspective of a woman who was herself a successful civil rights pioneer. She asks only that we see the continent with balance and compassion. Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

A behind-the-scenes look at terrorism

Review by bookpagedev

by Ian Schwartz

Former CIA officer Robert Baer, whose experiences in the Middle East inspired the film Syriana, makes his fiction debut with Blow the House Down, an alternative history to 9/11 that weaves fact and fiction into an intriguingly plausible version of the tragic attacks. The story is replete with money-hungry businessmen, sinister terrorists, rogues, righteous agents and the requisite beautiful woman. In short, there are the good guys, the bad guys and the worse guys.

The hero of Baer’s book is Max Waller, a middle-aged CIA agent with an ex-wife, a teenage daughter and a singular obsession: finding the terrorists responsible for the real-life kidnapping and murder of fellow agent William Buckley. Buckley, the CIA chief of station in Beirut, was kidnapped in 1984 and subjected to torture and interrogation for 444 days before dying in captivity. Max, always regarded as a lone wolf, sticks his nose under the wrong tent and finds himself on the outside looking in. His own people are following him, the FBI is making a case against him and he is being set up to take a huge fall, one that will force him out of the agency and possibly into prison. But Max hasn’t spent two decades in obscure parts of the world working with shady people without learning a thing or two. With his finger curled around the thread of a mystery, he pulls, and slowly unravels a connection between the U.S., Iran, Osama bin Laden and the eventual 9/11 hijackers. Max flits from one godforsaken Middle East hotspot to the next, growing increasingly disturbed by what he finds something is going to happen and it will be big. Most troubling, the powers-that-be are not only ignoring his warnings, but also seem to be going out of their way to shut him up.

Baer mixes real events and characters among his fictional creations. While the tragedy of 9/11 has recently begun to crop up in literary fiction, this is one of its incipient starring roles in the popular fiction genre. Baer treats the subject with respect in this thoughtful page-turner. Ian Schwarz writes from New York City.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

A Southern family’s fading fortunes

Review by bookpagedev

A Southern family’s fading fortunes Regina Angela Riant, the heroine of Helen Scully’s first novel, In the Hope of Rising Again, is the fifth child and only daughter born to Colonel and Regina Riant, prominent citizens in turn-of-the-century Mobile, Alabama. The favorite of her father, a colorful Civil War hero who was lucky enough not only to survive the war unscathed but also to marry well and fall into great wealth, young Regina is well educated, beautiful, devout and indulged in every way. Yet it’s soon clear that Regina’s early privileges are no buffer against hardships to come: a troubled marriage, a dying child, the onset of the Great Depression and worse. It’s as if the Colonel’s good fortune in life is destined to be repaid by his daughter, in a story that’s almost Dickensian in its downward spiral of misery. The novel begins with Regina’s marriage to a delicately handsome man named Charles Morrow, who whisks her away to Choctaw Bluff, Alabama, where he has a fledgling lumber company. But almost overnight, the sensitivity that first drew her to Charles spirals into full-fledged depression. Pregnant, miserable in Choctaw Bluff and unnerved by Charles’ growing moroseness, Regina persuades him to return with her to Mobile. Here, Scully weaves suspense out of lurking disaster.

With the Colonel now deceased, the remaining Riants are held together by name and money but little else. Regina’s mother is bitter, obsessed with her sons but resentful of her daughter. Regina’s hard-drinking brothers are playing fast and furious with their collective inheritance. Charles abandons lumber for a series of short-lived entrepreneurial ventures. Regina sees the family flying into ruin and is powerless to stop it. But then, to paraphrase Tolstoy, happy families are all alike and the unhappy ones make better stories. So it is in Scully’s impressive debut novel, which starts slow but then takes you by surprise with its rich detail and idiosyncratic characterizations. Scully makes a tragic journey thoroughly compelling, while allowing just enough hope for redemption to sustain Regina, and her readers, along the way. Rosalind S. Fournier writes from Birmingham, Alabama.

A Southern family's fading fortunes Regina Angela Riant, the heroine of Helen Scully's first novel, In the Hope of Rising Again, is the fifth child and only daughter born to Colonel and Regina Riant, prominent citizens in turn-of-the-century Mobile, Alabama. The favorite of her father,…

Biography

Biography

Bio explores the Fats Domino effect

Review by bookpagedev

by Ron Wynn

Music journalist Rick Coleman’s insightful, often controversial new biography Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock ‘n’ Roll is both a loving tribute and a bold alternative cultural perspective. Coleman argues not only for a fresh look at Domino’s importance as a pianist, vocalist and songwriter, but also that the black contribution to rock ‘n’ roll has been minimized by numerous accounts painting Elvis Presley as the music’s creator. He is especially miffed that Domino’s status as a hit-maker and performer has taken a back seat to his personal flamboyance. While many of Coleman’s claims will be familiar to those with more than superficial knowledge of people like Big Joe Turner, LaVern Baker, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, he restates their impact with zeal and passion.

Coleman traces Domino’s rise in a New Orleans where issues of race and class hampered the city’s darker-skinned residents. He also shows how several major music labels and personalities among them such figures as Dick Clark, Alan Freed and Lew Chudd played favorites and political games, undercutting Domino and many other gifted black performers while insuring maximum publicity and performance opportunities for less talented white teen idols. But thankfully, the book isn’t totally gloom and doom. Coleman provides expert analysis of Domino’s playing style, showing his mastery of triplets and the integration of elements from African and Latin idioms alongside New Orleans blues and R&andamp;B. Domino was also an accomplished vocalist, particularly on upbeat, rhythmically tricky numbers. Most importantly, Coleman points out that Domino’s recordings have sold more than 100 million copies, making him one of the most successful composers in rock history. Such Domino originals as Blueberry Hill and Ain’t That a Shame are now staples, and Domino’s scope encompassed country, blues and jazz as well. While it’s doubtful that Blue Monday can reverse the effect of decades of inaccurate music journalism on its own, it sets the record straight regarding both Fats Domino and the creative impact of African Americans on ’50s popular music. Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

Music journalist Rick Coleman's insightful, often controversial new biography Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll is both a loving tribute and a bold alternative cultural perspective. Coleman argues not only for a fresh look at Domino's importance as a…

Lifestyles

Lifestyles

Projects to create busy hands and peaceful hearts

Review by bookpagedev

by Linda Stankard

There’s something to the old saying, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Crafty people know the pleasure, pride and peaceful satisfaction derived from creating something by hand. Those interested in converting others to their way of thinking might pass along one of these books to anyone whose heart could be helped by busying her hands. You’ll not only spread that sense of peace and accomplishment, but thwart the devil a little as well. Making memorable keepsakes As Nancy Ouchida-Howells writes in Calligraphy: Easel Does It (HarperDesign, $16.95, 96 pages, ISBN 0060588349), the ancient art of beautiful writing demands “full attention and concentration, a balance between control and freedom that creates a meditative, peaceful state as you immerse yourself in the act of creating.” Her book is designed to stand up like an easel for easy reference while following its photographed step-by-step instructions. Ouchida-Howells begins with the basics: materials needed, how to maneuver the pens and basic lettering, then guides you through eight projects “easily adjusted to suit your needs,” such as greeting cards, wrapping paper and invitations. Several calligraphic styles are demonstrated, including Gothic, Renaissance, Celtic, Romanesque and Modern Revival. There’s even a scrapbook cover project that segues nicely into the next book, Scrapbook Tips and Techniques (Leisure Arts, $16.95, 288 pages, ISBN 157486422X). In fact, since scrapbooks often include lots of lettering, your homemade keepsake album is likely to benefit from your newfound penmanship skills throughout its pages not just on the cover.

If you’re like me, with boxes and boxes of photos, souvenirs and mementos and some vague notion of creatively organizing them “someday,” Scrapbook Tips and Techniques can propel you into action. Chapter titles include “From Chaos to Order: 10 Easy Steps to Photo Organization” (sign me up!), “Collage Craze” and “Border Ideas.” While giving detailed instructions and containing numerous lovely and inspiring example pages, this book is far from being simplistic. For the serious scrapbooker or the seriously artistic, many advanced techniques and mediums are covered, such as creating stained-glass embellishments using watercolors, embossing, or fiber and eyelets for different effects.

Crafts for home and garden A versatile and portable craft, crochet is a quiet, contained activity you can do almost anywhere, and Crochet Basics: All You Need to Know to Get Hooked on Crochet (Barron’s, $22.95, 128 pages, ISBN 0764156780), by Jan Eaton, is the book to get you hooking away. Designed for the absolute beginner, Eaton’s book points out that you don’t need to invest in expensive supplies to get started: all you need is a ball of yarn and a crochet hook or two. With large, clearly defined photos of each step, she walks you through 12 separate projects starting with a simple scarf and progressing to more complicated designs such as a child’s sweater, purses, a lace evening wrap and a colorful Harlequin afghan. “Once you have the hang of holding hook and yarn comfortably,” she notes, “the basic techniques of crochet are surprisingly easy to master, and all crochet forms, no matter how intricate they look at first, are based on a small number of stitches that are very easy to learn.” Finally, if turning trash to treasure floats your creative craft, and you’re not afraid of basic tools like a hammer, sandpaper and paintbrushes, then Flea Market Makeovers for the Outdoors: Projects ∧ Ideas Using Flea Market Finds ∧ Recycled Bargain Buys, by B.J. Berti, is the book for you. In these pages a weathered trellis, too fragile for garden use, becomes an appealing plant holder, discarded woolen sweaters become a cozy patchwork throw, and rusty thrift-store trays become trendy purveyors of cooling beverages. Berti offers plenty of projects complete with material lists, numbered instructions and photos. My favorite is the romantic painted candelabra for the outdoors, created by removing the light sockets and the wiring from an electric chandelier, painting it and then substituting candles for the milk glass lightbulb covers. Just keep the fire limited to your imagination!

There's something to the old saying, "Idle hands are the devil's workshop." Crafty people know the pleasure, pride and peaceful satisfaction derived from creating something by hand. Those interested in converting others to their way of thinking might pass along one of these books…

Children's & YA

Children's & YA

Strike up the band

Review by bookpagedev

by Alice Cary

Writing and illustrating a children’s book looks deceptively simple. It’s not, of course, and the best of the best is a charmed lot indeed.

Tonight, after my twin first-grade girls were snoozing, I pulled out my advance copy of Olivia Forms a Band. The first page alone made me fall in love and laugh. As the mother of a girl who often has sock issues exactly when it’s time to go to school, I could identify with the dilemma posed by the line Olivia couldn’t find her other red sock. When her mother inquires about the 12 other red socks lying on the floor, Olivia calmly states, They don’t go with this one. In case you haven’t met Olivia, she is a young pig who has a shall we say bold sense of spirit and will. She has starred in several other books, including Olivia and Olivia Saves the Circus. Olivia is simply drawn, yet full of expression like the very best characters of children’s literature (think Madeline and Curious George). In this episode of Olivia’s life, her family is set for a night of fireworks. When her mother informs her that there will be no band, Olivia is horrified and decides that she will be the band. After her mom explains that a band technically needs more than one member, Olivia earnestly responds, But, Mommy, this morning you told me I sounded like five people. Little Olivia is certainly a character, one who grows bolder (and funnier) with each book. She originated as a Christmas gift for Ian Falconer’s niece, Olivia, who shares some character traits with our heroine. Note how wonderful Falconer’s drawings and character’s expressions are, and that his signature touch is using only black, white and red to help focus attention on facial expressions and graphic situations the basic emotional architecture of the story. There’s so much more I could say, but it’s probably best if I simply recommend that you get this book right away. Trust me there is plenty here to genuinely delight adults and children alike. Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

Writing and illustrating a children's book looks deceptively simple. It's not, of course, and the best of the best is a charmed lot indeed.

Tonight, after my twin first-grade girls were snoozing, I pulled out my advance copy of Olivia Forms a Band.…

Lifestyles

Lifestyles

Projects to create busy hands and peaceful hearts

Review by bookpagedev

by Linda Stankard

Crafts for home and garden A versatile and portable craft, crochet is a quiet, contained activity you can do almost anywhere, and Crochet Basics: All You Need to Know to Get Hooked on Crochet, by Jan Eaton, is the book to get you hooking away. Designed for the absolute beginner, Eaton’s book points out that you don’t need to invest in expensive supplies to get started: all you need is a ball of yarn and a crochet hook or two. With large, clearly defined photos of each step, she walks you through 12 separate projects starting with a simple scarf and progressing to more complicated designs such as a child’s sweater, purses, a lace evening wrap and a colorful Harlequin afghan. “Once you have the hang of holding hook and yarn comfortably,” she notes, “the basic techniques of crochet are surprisingly easy to master, and all crochet forms, no matter how intricate they look at first, are based on a small number of stitches that are very easy to learn.” Finally, if turning trash to treasure floats your creative craft, and you’re not afraid of basic tools like a hammer, sandpaper and paintbrushes, then Flea Market Makeovers for the Outdoors: Projects ∧ Ideas Using Flea Market Finds ∧ Recycled Bargain Buys (Bulfinch, $29.95, 160 pages, ISBN 0821228617), by B.J. Berti, is the book for you. In these pages a weathered trellis, too fragile for garden use, becomes an appealing plant holder, discarded woolen sweaters become a cozy patchwork throw, and rusty thrift-store trays become trendy purveyors of cooling beverages. Berti offers plenty of projects complete with material lists, numbered instructions and photos. My favorite is the romantic painted candelabra for the outdoors, created by removing the light sockets and the wiring from an electric chandelier, painting it and then substituting candles for the milk glass lightbulb covers. Just keep the fire limited to your imagination!

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Writers’ night

A note of genius

Not ready for her close-up

Behind the cult of celebrity

Lessons learned

Sifting through the rubble of a sister’s ruined life

Dispatches from Africa

A behind-the-scenes look at terrorism

A Southern family’s fading fortunes

Bio explores the Fats Domino effect

Projects to create busy hands and peaceful hearts

Strike up the band

Projects to create busy hands and peaceful hearts

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