Spitzer, hookers and a brand new book

Associated Press reports that the Penguin Group is publishing a book on the rise and fall (insert $5,000-a-pop hooker joke here) on former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The book will be written by an author who knows a bit  about rises and falls: Peter Elkind, senior writer for Fortune magazine and co-author of the 2003 bestseller Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room. His collaborator? Filmmaker Alex Gibney, who made the documentary based on Elkind's book. The pair will also collaborate on a film on Spitzer.

There really are just so many jokes here I don't know where to begin. I'd solicit guesses at the title but it really is far too obvious to even use the word "solicit" here.

No word on when the book will be released.

Life after the shelter

Just in time for May Day: Mutts Shelter Stories, a collection of Patrick McDonnell's adorable comics - the ones touting the adoption of shelter pets. Interspersed with McDonnell's terrific cartoons -which sadly do not run in The Miami Herald, but should - are photos of former shelter pets who have now found happy homes, sent in by their owners. We're talking dogs, cats, bunnies, guinea pigs, birds and even a ferret. We are partial to dogs here at Between the Covers, but the kitty photos really are adorable.

There's even a nice intro by Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States; McDonnell is a member of the national board of directors for that organization and The Fund for Animals.

Remember: only idiots support puppy mills. Don't believe me? Ask Patrick McDonnell. Yesh.

Can Bob Woodward beat "The Secret"?

Talk about a no-win situation: PW Daily reports that publisher Simon & Schuster found that profits were down the first quarter of this year. Revenue fell 12%. The news is especially jarring when compared with last year's boon, the moronic popular self-help book The Secret, which apparently accounted for $53 million in S&S's first quarter last year.

S&S execs say they're expecting things to pick up, however. There are still chuckleheads out there who will buy The Secret, which touts the power of positive thinking and suggests that negative thoughts can bring on terminal illness, disease, poverty, stomach aches, shin splints and, possibly, premature baldness. Also expected this September: the fourth installment in Bob Woodward's Bush at war series, which one S&S exec says will definitely affect the election. Can that be good news for John McCain? Stay tuned!

I'm a snob, and I shouldn't be

I don't know why I would be surprised by this revelation, but I am: St. Pete Times writer Piper Castillo, in her "What's on  Your Nightstand?" feature, asks former actress on the sitcom One Day at a Time and current author Valerie Bertinelli what she looks for in a book. Bertinelli says: "I always enjoy a bit of humor in drama. And, if you really are into fiction you can't go without Margaret Atwood. I know I can always rely on her."

I'm always delighted to find a fellow Atwood fan. Sorry, Valerie, that I doubted your ability to be a serious reader. If you haven't read The Blind Assassin, don't miss it!

Bertinelli's book, Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time, hit no. 8 on the NY Times bestseller list last week. The author is also a Jenny Craig spokesperson. And for the record, as a kid I always liked One Day at a Time.

Dove medicine

It would be easy to call The Plague of Doves Louise Erdrich's masterpiece; indeed, no less an expert than Philip Roth does just that in his promotional blurb on the book's back cover. Erdrich has written so many terrific novels, though, it's tricky. Can it really be better than the brilliant The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse?

But does it have to be? Of course not. I've been reading Erdrich's rich, resonant work since her debut of Love Medicine, and I have to say that The Plague of Doves is certainly one of her best novels, by turns funny and melancholy and heartbreaking, about the inhabitants of Pluto, North Dakota, which sits on the edge of an Ojibwe reservation and is haunted by two terrible acts of violence.

Click here to read my review. The novel is in stores Tuesday; judge it for yourself then.

Short and sweet

A recent conversation got me thinking about short stories. I've heard more than a few readers say they just don't really "like" short stories lately, and I have to admit that I've had a hell of a time getting through the ones that have appeared in the New Yorker. Notable exceptions to this rule: I read anything by T.C. Boyle and Alice Munro, because their stories are always compelling to me.

Here are some of my favorite short stories:

Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love, Lorrie Moore: "Understand your cat is a whore and can't help you." Best. opening. line. ever.

Sorry Fugu, T.C. Boyle: A chef aims to seduce a restaurant critic. Well done.

Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx: I loved this story long before the movie, loved it to the point that the image of the shirt within a shirt can still give me chills. Actually I like all the stories in this particular collection (Close Range). The one about the half-skinned steer will give you nightmares for a week.

The Dead, James Joyce: No, I'm not being an AP English suckup. I love this story and its final haunting lines.

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, Ernest Hemingway: Anyone who knows me has heard me gripe about Hemingway's bull-goring, war-mongering testosterone-ridden novels, but this story is genius.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver: Everybody knows this one. If not, read it. Also worth reading: Cathedral and So Much Water So Close to Home.

How to Talk to a Hunter, Pam Houston: From Cowboys Are My Weakness, which also boasts the excellent Jackson is Only One of My Dogs.

Emperor of the Air, Ethan Canin: "Look up at the stars."

Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot, Robert Olen Butler: I heard the author read this hilarious story at Miami Book Fair once - a sublime experience.

Everything's Eventual, Stephen King: Look, I like The Mist too (the story, not the movie) and the one about the guy who chews off his own foot on an island. But this one is his BEST STORY EVER. I dare you to top it!

Arrive in your tiny white van

Botswana's "foremost solver of problems" - that's Precious Ramotswe to you - returns in her ninth No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency adventure, The Miracle at Speedy Motors, but that's only half the story if you live in Miami. Her creator, the absolutely hilarious Alexander McCall Smith, appears at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

If you're a fan of these impossibly charming books, which read more like travelogues of Botswana than actual mysteries, do not, I repeat, DO NOT miss McCall Smith, who appeared a couple of years ago at Miami Book Fair International in a kilt. Still one of the most memorable author appearances I've ever seen, especially when McCall Smith revealed what the J, L and B stand for in Mr. JLB Matekoni's name. (He's Mma Ramotswe's husband.)

In a 2004 Herald interview, McCall Smith, when asked why his No. 1 Ladies books have been so successful, said: "People are being reminded of a world in which people had time to have these exchanges, where the links between people were very strong. That's touching a very strong chord of nostalgic longing in people."

I grew up in South Florida, of course, so this polite, kind interaction seems totally foreign to me.

OK, this won't be TOO controversial or anything

AP is reporting that Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven has written a book that suggests that Jesus was fathered by a Roman soldier who raped Mary. Wow, that won't offend too many people. But honestly, how can you not trust the man responsible for bringing us Basic Instinct and RoboCop?

Amsterdam publishing house J.M. Meulenhoff will publish Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait in September.

AP also points out that Verhoeven is a member of Jesus Seminar, a group of artists and scholars that tries to "establish historical facts" about Jesus.

No title, but a swell pedigree

Production began this week in Connecticut on the new screenplay by husband and wife writers Dave Eggers (What is the What) and Vendela Vida (Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name). The untitled project, about an expectant couple traveling around the country looking for a place to raise a family, is being directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty).

If that's not enticing enough, the couple is played by John Krasinski of The Office (shirtless here as perfect guy Jim) and Maya Rudolph of SNL. The supporting cast is pretty stellar, too: Toni Collette, Jeff Daniels, Catherine O'Hara, a bunch of other people I don't really care about and Allison Janney, whom I will love forever for being C.J. Cregg on The West Wing and suffering through that debilitating woot canal.

George!

I miss the George Clooney photos I posted last week, so here's another completely random, non-book related picture, just because I can:

It's all about the story

I'm always hearing complaints about those kids today, they don't read enough, they just watch bad TV. Well, here's a way to introduce your kids to storytelling in an interactive way: Miami-Dade Public Library System's "Art of Storytelling" festival, which will include such storytellers as Connie Regan-Blake and Dylan Pritchett, pictured here.

The event features storytellers, storybook characters, music and dance, and it's free, from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. May 3 at the Main Library in downtown Miami, 101 W. Flagler St. There's even free parking at the Cultural Center Garage, 50 NW Second Ave., and the Hickamn Garage at 270 NW Second. You can find a full schedule of performances by clicking here or by calling 305-375-2665.

Go graphic

Publishers Weekly reports that good news has come out of the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference: Sales were up by 12 percent in 2007. Sales in the U.S. and Canada totaled $375 million.

The industry has been boosted by sales of such graphic novelizations as Stephen King's The Dark Tower and Heroes, based on the NBC series, which I am not going to watch anymore because there are far too many annoying heroes out there. (Hint: somebody kill off the remaining twin with the bleeding eyes, the ridiculously stupid and naive Mohinder and any of the supremely annoying characters played by Ali Larter, and I MIGHT consider going back, though honestly it's a long shot.)

Other big sellers on the backlist: Watchmen and (predictably) 300, because who doesn't like guys in leather thongs chopping each other up?

Penis-eating ducks

My editor refused to let me get that phrase in print, but I have a blog now, where I reign supreme! Besides, in her book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach actually does mention such creatures in an anecdote about how Thai doctors quickly got proficient at reattachment surgery. Apparently - and here's a chance for me to use another favorite phrase - in the '70s in Thailand there was a rash of incidents involving angry wives chopping off their adulterous husbands' members. Frequently they'd throw them to the livestock, and the ducks developed a taste for them.

"The paper," writes Roach, "does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.' "

But there's more to Bonk than carnivorous ducks. It's a smart, funny book, graphic in parts, sidesplitting in others. Roach, who also wrote Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, is hilarious, and I suspect her upcoming reading at Books & Books (Wednesday at 8) should be a riot.

To read my story on Mary, which is buried so far inside the newspaper that not even the penis-eating ducks could find it because God KNOWS no one wants to read about that dull topic of sex, click here.

Sing a love song to your favorite book - and win cash money

Seriously! Also in honor of National Library Week, Gale - part of Cengage Learning - is sponsoring the Books & Authors songwriting competition in which writers can compose and perform on YouTube an original song about their favorite book or author - and win $5,000, to be split with the winner's favorite library.

So make your video - no more than two minutes in length - and load that puppy to the librareo group on YouTube before midnight EST May 31. Extremely creative types may submit as many videos as you like as long as they don't sing about John Updike, as he is annoying. Ha ha! Just kidding. You can sing about any writer, even John Grisham, if you must. Top five winners will be chosen by June 6 and featured at www.gale.com/librareo for a nationwide vote.

Just in time for National Library Week

I actually got a couple of audiobooks from the Broward County library system, so I can cancel the fatwa against them. So nice to have something to listen to in the car after The Diane Rehm Show is over (or before it begins, for that matter). First up: David McCullough's 1776. The author reads the book, and so far it's not bad, though I'd have to say it falls more  the "like" scale than the "love" scale, but I've only heard 2 discs so far.

I also got Geraldine Brooks' March, in keeping with the theme of books about American wars.

Good news for Elephants

Happy anniversary to Sara Gruen. PW Daily reports that her novel Water for Elephants has just recorded its 52nd week on the paperback bestseller list. That's a year to you if you're counting. The book spent 13 weeks on the list in hardback, with 1.8 million copies in print.

That's great news for publisher Algonquin. The next closest Algonquin book to spend that long in the limelight, according to publicity director Michael Taekens, was Robert Morgan's Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage, which spent 12 weeks on the bestseller list after being chosen as an Oprah Book Club pick.

I haven't read Elephants; what do you all think of it?

Fiction may never be the same

Be still my heart! Oprah whipping boy James Frey's new book hits shelves May 13. This time, he's allowed to make stuff up: Bright Shiny Morning is a novel, so Oprah can't bitchslap him on national TV this time. Or maybe she can. She is allowed to do pretty much anything, isn't she?

What are the odds that Bright Shiny Morning is about a recovering drug addict? Is there anyone out there that thinks drug addicts are actually interesting? With the exception of Bubbles from The Wire, they're NOT.

Orange you glad she's nominated?

American Patricia Wood, author of the debut novel Lottery (due out in paperback in June), is one of six authors on the shortlist for the Orange Prize for fiction by women. You think that's lucky? Wood was inspired by her father's winnings in the Washington State lottery (six million bucks).

Two other debuts were nominated: Britain's Sadie Jones for The Outcast and Canadian Heather O'Neill for Lullabies for Little Criminals. Rounding out the nominees are Canadian Nancy Huston for Fault Lines; and Brits Charlotte Mendelson for When We Were Bad and Rose Tremain for The Road Home.

The winner will be announced June 4. Past winners you may have heard of: Carol Shields, Andrea Levy, Zadie Smith.

Cornwell + Lifetime = movies

Lifetime Television has made a deal with suspense writer Patricia Cornwell to adapt her latest book At Risk and its sequel, The Front, due to be published in May.

Lifetime has adapted novels to its screen before, and as you may have guessed, they're all by, if not for, women: Joyce  Carol Oates' We Were the Mulvaneys, Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid's Chair, a bunch of things by the prolific Nora Roberts and, most recently, Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter.

At Risk introduces new characters for Cornwell, famous for her Kay Scarpetta novels: ambitious District Attorney Monique Lamont and state investigator Win Garano. It's set in Boston. I can't say I've read it - I quit reading Cornwell, whom I used to enjoy quite a bit, when she started resurrecting characters from the grave - but Publisher's Weekly was less than thrilled, calling it "far from Cornwell's best work." Still, somebody's reading - it was a New York Times bestseller.

My favorite Scarpetta books? The old school Cruel and Unusual and the chilling The Body Farm, in which Kay finally hooks up with Benton and Marino gets jealous and Lucy has not yet started being so annoying that you want her to be the next victim.

No word on whether Tori Spelling will play Monique, but let's hope not.

Riding out tonight to face the promised land

If you think you're the only one who grew up loving Bruce Springsteen's music, think again. Sarfraz Manzoor, a Pakistani-born Londoner, writes in his new memoir Greetings from Bury Park that hearing The River (and the rest of the Boss' songs)  changed his life. Journalist Manzoor did not come from down in the valley but mister, when he was young, they brought him up to do like his daddy done. And he said no.

In honor of Springsteen's concert this week in South Florida, read a swell review of the book by Herald staff writer Lisa Arthur here.

Completely random George Clooney musings

So against the advice of other movie critics, I went to see Leatherheads yesterday. That's the George-Clooney directed comedy about football in the '20s. (I have to have SOME days where I don't spend hours curled up with a good - or bad - book.) I really enjoyed it, despite the nagging desire to commit some kind of foul on Renee Zellweger to wipe that simper off her face. She improved as the movie went on, but maybe doesn't have the banter skills the role called for. (I did like her as Bridget Jones, though.)

But there is just no bad when George Clooney is involved. There simply isn't. I know he wants to do "important" movies like Syriana (zzzzz) or Good Night and Good Luck (OK, that one was good) but man, have I ever missed him in goofy romantic comedies. There's a scene where Zellweger catches him sleeping in her train compartment, and he's wearing in STRIPED PAJAMAS. I had no idea I have a striped pajama fetish, but apparently I do. She bitches him out, but let me tell you, the day Clooney shows up in your train compartment uninvited is the best day of your damned life.

A bonus: Jim from The Office is also in the movie, not that you'd know it from this post.

Still obsessing over "Lush Life"?

Critic James Wood has an excellent piece in the April 7 New Yorker regarding Richard Price's brilliant use of dialogue in his novel Lush LIfe. His theory (and it's a great one): Price (over here on the right) doesn't so much have an ear for the way people talk - because real dialogue is much more stop-and-start and repetitive an anything he writes - as he has a superior talent for bringing it to life on the page.

I don't agree with his snobbish assessment that "Price has greater novelistic ambitions than his genre can accommodate, and one longs to see him free himself from the tram track of the police procedural." The slam against genre fiction is tired, tired, TIRED; isn't writing a truly great police procedural much like a poet writing a truly great sonnet? Either way the writer is trapped within certain rules of the form, which makes standing out all the more special.

But I digress. Click here to read his dissection of Price's language.

Find great joy in Sorrows

It's hard to say what makes Siri Hustvedt's latest novel The Sorrows of an American so compelling. If you had told me: this book talks a lot about psychology, and the characters go on and on about their dreams, and they also talk about art film quite a bit, I would've shrieked and run for the hills.

But The Sorrows of an American is fascinating, a novel that unravels mysteries of the past and of the human soul. No, really! A New York psychologist and his sister dig into a mysterious letter they find in their dead father's papers; the sister, the widow of a famous writer, also finds out about some unsettling letters her husband wrote. I'm not making this sound good, but if you've read Hustvedt, you know what a delicate and yet straight-forward writer she is. She can write about art, a pet topic of hers, without the slightest trace of pretension, and her characters have a way of digging under your skin. If you have not read What I Loved, I urge you to pick it up next time you're looking for something substantial.

Hustvedt is married to the more famous Paul Auster, but honestly, I prefer her books to his.

You can read my review of Sorrows here.

A new trend for B&B

The press release calls it an "experiment, an exploration, an experience." We call it a good night out in Miami's Design District, where Books & Books has teamed up with Luminaire (and Base, Bang & Olufsen, and Lavazza) to create, well, a cool place you can listen to music, drink coffee, browse "high design" and art books 11 a.m.- 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. It's on the corner of Northeast Second Ave and Northeast 41st Street.

B&B is responsible for the art books part, naturally. This whole thing only lasts through the month of April, but you can check it out during Saturday's special Gallery Walk hours, 6-9 p.m., when co-authors Paul Clemence and Julie Davidow (Miami Contemporary Design) and some of the authors featured in the book will be on hand.

Write now

There's still time to sign up for the upcoming Writers Institute, which is sponsored by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts. Think of it: four days of creative writing workshops! Surely you can whip that manuscript into shape in four days with all this help. There are workshops in nonfiction, fiction, playwriting, poetry, publishing and revision, as well as seminars specifically geared to teens and a Spanish language workshop.

But wait - there's more. There will also be daily lunchtime readings and lectures from such writers as Connie May Fowler (over to your right), Rick Moody, Nick Flynn, T Cooper, Felecia Luna Lemus and Micol Ostow.

For a schedule and prices on the workshops - they range from $35 for one workshop to $500 for the full schedule - and registration information, click here.

Mea culpa, history fans

All right. I didn't really see this coming, but it appears I am hooked on the HBO series John Adams, which is adapted from David McCullough's book. I'm late starting it, thanks to my Wolf Creek vacation, but I've watched the first two episodes and been quite engrossed. So engrossed, in fact, that I'm dragging myself back to the Broward County Library website to try and reserve the audio book online (we all know how effective that will be - I STILL don't have the last few things I tried to reserve).

By the way, if that's really how they used to innoculate you against smallpox...yecch! Also, is it just me, or does this production make Tom Jefferson look like a wuss? Paul Giamatti, whose name I never quite get right, is terrific, though, and as always Laura Linney is good.

What about 1776 (the book, as opposed to the old "someone better open up a window" musical)? Is that an adequate substitute if I can't get my hands on John Adams?

God beats Scarlett O'Hara

A nationwide Harris poll of 2,500-plus people reports that most Americans' favorite book is...wait for it...The Bible. With Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind a close second. Frankly, my dear, this whole list makes me wonder.

Here are the standings:

1. The Bible. Begat this!

2. GWTW, MM.

3. The Lord of the Rings series. Nerds unite!

4. The Harry Potter books by JK Rowling. How'd Jesus beat Harry?

5. The Stand, Stephen King. So surprising it's not The Tommyknockers.

6. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown. Seriously?

7. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. YES!

8. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown. WHAAAAAAAAAA? OK. I can buy seeing the Da Vinci Code on this list, if only because everybody in the world read it, but this one isn't even any good!

9. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. Starting to worry about the American people right about now.

10. Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger. Whew. Perfectly good choice.

I guess my question is this: do any of these books make YOUR top 10 list?

In case you missed it...

...and I'm sure you did, since it's impossible to find book stories on our fabulous website: click here to read my Pulitzer reaction story.

Another interesting tidbit that didn't make it into the paper: Tracy Letts won the drama prize for August: Osage County. He's the son of novelist Billie Letts, who wrote the Wal-Mart drama Where the Face Heart Is. You may recall the movie with Natalie Portman. Billie has a new novel out this summer, Made in the U.S.A., which takes place in a town called Spearfish, South Dakota. Or is it North Dakota? I can never tell those states apart.

No fuku here

The fuku - that's an ominous sense of doom to you - that trails his hero's family must have skipped Junot Diaz. On Monday the Dominican-born author won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Diaz published his previous book 11 years ago. I think we can say this one was worth the wait.

For a list of other Pulitzer winners, click here.

One of the best books of the year so far?

People have asked me if it's possible that Jhumpa Lahiri's new collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth, is as good as her Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies. Answer: yes. She covers similar  ground - the lives of Bengali families in the U.S. - but each story is remarkably fresh, insightful and poignant.

My favorite stories are the title piece, about a widowed father visiting his daughter and her young son, which pierced me to the core, and Only Goodness, about a sister fretting over her brother's alcoholism. Our reviewer, the fabulous Elsbeth Lindner, cites the title story and Hell-Heaven (in which the narrator tells us about her mother's unrequited love for a family friend) as her favorites, while another reader/reviewer emails me that he liked Nobody's Business, about an American guy secretly in love with his Bengali roommate best.

I liked this book so much that I'm sorry I didn't get to review it myself; bad timing because of the vacation. Ah well.

As for as the stories: I say judge for yourself. You can read Elsbeth's review by clicking here. You can read my interview with Lahiri here. And you can see the author herself at 8 p.m. Monday at Books & Books in the Gables.

And speaking of gore...

Check out Rene Rodriguez's review of The Ruins, a movie adapted from Scott Smith's ridiculously entertaining horror novel. Rene may be the only critic who got a good look at the movie before it was released today. He is Shiva, God of Death.

Read his story on the making of the film here.

Why am I such a wuss?

Confession: I started Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers on the recommendation of one of my vacation companions and the clerk at Back of Beyond Books in Moab, Utah - a great little store, should you ever find yourself in Moab with a break between mountain biking and fighting the RV traffic at Arches National Park.

Here is the book's marvelous first line: "The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken." How can anyone not want to read more? Roach (whose new book is Bonk, about...well...bonking) goes on to describe a class in which aspiring plastic surgeons practice on severed heads - real ones, donated to science by "kindly southerners." Roach is funny and informative, and I laughed aloud at several descriptions.

Still. I am not a squeamish person normally. I like zombie movies. I don't faint at the sight of blood. But something about this chapter gave me the wiggins in a big way, and I couldn't finish it on the plane on the way home, for fear all my twitching and squirming would lead people to think I was some sort of nervous IRA terrorist. I'm going to try again but really, WHAT is my problem?

Sex and violence: Bring it

  A reader of Between the Covers asks for recommendations of erotic thrillers; I came up empty-handed, sadly, being more of a hardboiled noir fan, but if anybody has any suggestions please fork 'em over. The reader is a fan of Patrick McGrath's Asylum (made into a truly creepy movie, btw, with Ian McKellan and the ever cool Natasha Richardson, who is rocking the cleavage over to your left, and this other guy who was kind of a poor woman's Russell Crowe) and Susanna Moore's In the Cut (made into a movie I didn't see with Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Moore has a new memoir out about her girlhood in Hawaii, but I don't think that's what we're looking for here. McGrath's new novel is Trauma, which appears to also involve someone losing his grip on his sanity. I can relate. Can't you?

You don't know everything

Even I don't know everything. That's why the new book Discover's 20 Things You Didn't Know about Everything is so helpful. Compiled by the editors of Discover mag and a guy named Dean Christopher, this book provides 20 fun facts about a bunch of topics, from airport security (warning: read this segment only after your next vacation; the missile stuff will freak you out) to sperm banks, space disasters, rats, milk, mosquitoes, your body and duct tape. And, of course, more.

For example, did you know duct tape is good for repairing everything and anything BUT ducts? I mean, a surgeon running low on surgical tape can conceivably use duct tape to close a gunshot wound, according to this book.

Another popular topic: Aliens. In 1957 a Brazilian farmer named Antonio Vilas Boas claimed that he was abducted by aliens who covered him in gel and mated with him and - here's the surprising part - they barked. Hmmm. Another fact confirms that a 2003 Harvard study reports that 70 percent of "abductees" say they were used for breeding or sexual experiments. But then, we already knew that; we've followed Agent Scully's plight for years.

What I read on my spring vacation

I had this vision that I'd read a lot more than I did, but here are the highlights of what I managed to fit in between hiking, trying to stay warm and using more Chapstick than one might think humanly possible:

Right as Rain, George Pelecanos: First in the Derek Strange/Terry Quinn quartet. A sharp, fast read about two ex-police officers - one an African American PI, the other a white guy working in a bookstore - who ferret out the truth behind a cop-on-cop shooting. As good as you'd expect from Pelecanos and an excellent companion when you are trapped in the hell of the Atlanta airport for almost six hours.

The Anthropology of Turquoise, Ellen Meloy: A finalist for the Pulitzer, this collection of essays on nature and appreciating it are funnier than you'd expect from a naturalist (why do we always expect them to be so earnest?) Meloy, who died in 2004, was a terrifically gifted observer of Utah's arid, beautiful and threatened deserts, and she can make your heart ache for them while she takes more than a few self-deprecating jabs at the folly of being human. Her work is a perfect explanation for all you knuckleheads who say to me: Why on earth would you want to go to that scorpion-infested moonscape and sleep on the ground? Meloy, who lived in or near Bluff, Utah, can explain it all a lot more eloquently than I can.

Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri: The new collection of stories from the author of The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies. I suspect I'll write more on this later, so for now I'll just tell you that fans will not be disappointed. The title story is especially haunting.

Return from Wolf Creek

Back from vacation, and just in time for Poetry Month to begin! So I will be trading this glorious scenic panoramas for my desk.

Not that I don't love my desk. But the trip was fun, despite having to sleep in a Nissan XTerra for a couple of nights because of the cold and the wind. I didn't miss my bed, but it was nice to see it again.