Oxymoronica is an addictive little book of paradoxical sayings presented by a lover of the English language who has amassed thousands of them. Dr. Mardy Grothe coined the term “oxymoronica” to suggest not just a contradiction of terms, but a contradiction of ideas.

“You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.” Beneath this sweet self-deprecation of Dolly Parton lies a pointed observation about popular images. From a different corner of musical culture comes this remark on Mozart’s sonatas: “they are too easy for children, and too difficult for adults.” The author ranges across every conceivable region of human affairs, for willful self-contradiction abounds in them all. There’s even a final chapter of “inadvertent” paradoxes, where President Bush plays a central role: “People say I’m indecisive, but I don’t know about that.” Many of the sayings take some time to sort out, like any good puzzle. “I find nothing more depressing than optimism.” “To oppose something is to maintain it.” Then there are the ones that had better not be true, however witty they may be: “I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices one so.”

There’s no denying that Southern authors are uniquely bound to their home turf just think about the kind of writer William Faulkner might have become if he’d been born someplace besides Mississippi. In Writers of the American South: Their Literary Landscapes, the remarkable relationship between Southern authors and their native soil comes alive as 12 popular novelists take readers on a tour of their home regions, revealing what they love best about the towns where they live and providing fascinating insights into their domestic routines and work habits. Pat Conroy, Barry Hannah, Josephine Humphreys and Ann Patchett, among other authors, demonstrate some good old-fashioned hospitality and offer fans a peek inside their private residences. From the majestic, museum-like manor with gothic accents maintained by Allan Gurganus in Falls, North Carolina, to the two-story hurricane-proof bunker bright, airy and built on stilts overlooking Florida Bay, where Carl Hiaasen does his work, each place is unforgettable in its own way.

Acclaimed architectural writer Hugh Howard provided the volume’s delightful text, while Roger Straus III son of the publishing giant who co-founded Farrar, Straus and Giroux contributed elegant, evocative photos. With 21 stops on their itinerary, including the estates of late authors like Kate Chopin and Flannery O’Connor, the pair traveled more than 10,000 miles to complete the book. The result: a magnificent showcase of the places Southern writers call home and a loving act of literary preservation.

Julie Hale keeps her old copies of The New Yorker in Austin, Texas.

Raymond Chandler wrote like the quintessential man’s man. His novels, such as The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, gave us hardboiled gumshoe Philip Marlowe chasing bad guys and consorting with dangerous dames, and doing it all in some of the most colorful, first-person-narrative verbal fillips ever created. With that in mind, editor Martin Asher has pulled together Philip Marlowe’s Guide to Life: A Compendium of Quotations by Raymond Chandler. Asher draws from the Chandler oeuvre and serves up keenly evocative quotable quotes, arranged topically from A-to-Z (in this case, from Advertising to Writers). Laced with singular wit and a deliciously cynical world view, these carefully chosen snippets of the Chandler genius are also often mercifully brief. For example, on marriage: For two people in a hundred it’s wonderful. Or, on coffee: I drank two cups black. Then I tried a cigarette. It was all right. I still belonged to the human race. A terrific gift idea for that literary, or maybe just very jaded, male.

Sunset, evening star, good red wine and a view of a great bend in the Cumberland River brought recollections one evening of traveling the mountains of Wyoming with Lucius. We had a yen for a book a book to jog our memory and, in these uncertain days, give a clue to the question, “What would Lucius say?” By coincidence, I had recently read a prospectus of Cold Tree Press, a high-quality, print-on-demand publishing business based in Nashville. If they could and would do what they promised, such a book would be do-able, even for people like us, who knew nothing about publishing.

We started the process in early May 2003 and wanted to have books ready by Christmas. (I didn’t want to do any Christmas shopping and had promised someone that they would have a book for Christmas a rash move, perhaps.) No narrative can depict a man’s life as accurately as his own words. I had stacks of Lucius’ papers given to me over the years speeches, articles, letters. With the miracle of a computer and help from technically adept friends, these papers were scanned to my laptop, arranged, minimal connective material was added and final editing was completed. We turned in a disk to Cold Tree Press on October 1. They printed a double-sided, unbound copy so we could see what it would look like as a book. We found some typos on this proof and were allowed to make corrections. Unlike traditional publishing, we discovered that authors are involved throughout the process and are able to participate in important decisions.

And, voilˆ, just in time for Christmas, we had our first book. Peter Honsberger, the Cold Tree partner who worked with us, handled the project with good humor. Even more, his experience in advertising and graphics is evident in the excellent formatting and design. The quality of the paper is what I first notice in any book, and when I saw the quality of paper they used, I knew we had made the right choice. We were also pleased by the remarkably reasonable cost and the fact that we will never be burdened with too many books only as many as we need.

The result is a beautiful book, worthy of its subject. Start with “Recollections of a Bounty Hunter,” the only published account of shooting eagles, wolves and hair seals for bounty during the Great Depression of the early ’30s paid by the Territory of Alaska and encouraged by the U.S. Biological Survey. “Dromahair” is Everyman’s dream of owning a castle in Ireland. Searching for the wrecks of the Armada off the wild northern coast of Scotland and Ireland leads to the raising and dedication of three cannons of the Dutch island in the Caribbean, St. Eustatius, which fired the first salute to an American warship, thus recognizing the United States as an independent nation. Of the practice of law, Lucius writes, “I should like to convince you that no activity surpasses the practice of law in social usefulness. Second, of all professions, it permits more freedom, is more conducive to living an expansive personal life, and, finally, that no way of life is more stimulating and challenging.” Also included is an abridged transcript of successful federal court proceedings to lift an injunction against a protest march led by Martin Luther King Jr. on the day he was shot in Memphis. Ambassador Andrew Young, who served as King’s aide, says, “During the times of social unrest, many of the unsung heroes of the South were lawyers and judges. To me, Lucius Burch was the best. His writings confirm the courage and intelligence of a great man who made a difference.” Through the tenets of conservation, the law and equal opportunity for all people, there run through Lucius’ life whimsical and optimistic tying rods of personal freedom and life lived to the utmost. His life was divided, at his will, between advocating unpopular causes and exploring the wilderness of the earth, usually on foot, either alone or with those who loved him. Now we can vicariously roam his world and, in days of diminishing private rights, read his thoughts, which leave no doubt as to “what would Lucius say?” Lucius: Writings of Lucius Burch (Cold Tree Press, $26.95, ISBN 1583850198) was edited by Shirley Caldwell-Patterson, Cissy Caldwell Akers, Bill Coble and John Noel.

<B>The tumultuous times of England’s greatest writer</B> While the works of William Shakespeare are for the ages, they were written in a particular place and time. We can better appreciate the Bard’s achievement if we are aware of events and profound changes that took place during the Elizabethan era, particularly in London, that significantly influenced him. Frank Kermode, the eminent British literary critic and historian of 16th and 17th-century literature, provides this important context in <B>The Age of Shakespeare</B>. This gem of a book gives us an historical overview of national politics, the place of religion, the development of professional drama and theater and changes at many levels of society in the early stages of capitalism, as well as the little we know for certain about Shakespeare’s life, conjectures about it and insights into the plays.

Kermode characterizes Shakespeare as "only the grandest of the poets" during a time when the arts, especially poetry and theater, flourished. While his importance cannot be underestimated, Shakespeare’s "was an age of vast and various poetic achievement, a period unparalleled in the history of anglophone poetry." Many of these poets wrote for the theater as well, although those who did not included Edmund Spenser, usually regarded as the master poet of the period. It may be that Shakespeare’s original intent was to be a page-poet rather than a poet for the stage. He may have turned to the theater to make a living.

<B>The Age of Shakespeare</B> also explores in some detail the fascinating subject of the development of dramatic blank verse, the writing format that Shakespeare preferred and perfected. With regard to the poet’s influence on language, Kermode states, "it is hardly too much to call it a revolutionary change in dramatic language, even a transformation of English itself, now alive to a new range of poetic possibilities." Still, Kermode doesn’t discount the acting skills of Richard Burbage and other veteran actors, who enabled Shakespeare to create his many complex characters; he devotes much attention to the development of acting styles of the time.

Shakespeare’s history plays represent a fourth of his total theatrical output. Despite the possibility of censorship, they dealt with the sensitive subject of royal secession, on the minds of many people during the Tudor period. In those days, Kermode asserts, "the whole issue was bound up inseparably with religious differences, and religion could mean war." Many English Catholics, for example, believed that Elizabeth was not a legitimate ruler and should therefore be ousted from the throne. <I>Macbeth</I>, of all the great tragedies, is considered by Kermode to be most relevant to current events in early 17th-century England. Kermode highlights the allusions to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the interrogation of the conspirators involved, while tagging the Weird Sisters as a reference to the King’s well-known interest in witchcraft. This authoritative companion to William Shakespeare’s works, life and times is consistently enlightening and entertaining. <I>Roger Bishop is a bookseller in Nashville and a contributing editor to BookPage.</I>

Richard Lederer is a language maven. He’s written 30 books on the subject, has a syndicated newspaper column called “Looking at Language” and hosts a weekly show on San Diego Public Radio. For Lederer, language is a thing to be celebrated, and rather than adopt a critical tone or bother to chastise the illiterate he opts for lucid and enthusiastic reportage on words and their development and usage. A Man of My Words: Reflections on the English Language is a feast for the “verbivore” (as Lederer calls himself), featuring dozens of chapters revolving around reflections on the writing life (his own and others much more famous) and touting the wonders of English, the world’s largest, most diverse and amazingly eclectic language, which contains nearly four times the number of words (616,500, according to the Oxford English Dictionary) as its nearest competitor, German. Other topics up for discussion in Lederer’s comprehensive collection include word origins, American dialects, proverbs, “fadspeak” (words derived from pop, social and business cultures), discussions on pronunciation (including the dreaded “NOO-kyuh-lur” for “nuclear,” botched by politicians from Eisenhower to the present day) and the important effect of regionalisms on language.

With unswerving faith in humankind’s innate expressive adaptability, Lederer seeks to make sense of the natural progression of word and usage development and catalog its change and growth with intelligence and delight. By and by, Lederer also shares some personal reminiscences on family life and his travels and work all word-related, of course including his interesting duties as an interpreter of the exact legal meaning of a ballot-box political referendum for the state of Maine. Challenging quizzes make for diverting reading or even for light gamesmanship with fellow word-fanatical friends. This thoughtful, rigorously literate volume engages from first page to last but works just as well as an item for random browsing. Martin Brady writes from Nashville.