Sedaris in South Florida

Forget Hurricanes Hanna, Ike, Josephine and all the rest we'll inevitably sweat over this season. Hurricane David is coming.

David Sedaris, author of When You Are Engulfed in Flames and assorted other volumes of genius, appears at the Adrienne Arsht Center's Knight Concert Hall at 8 p.m. Oct. 15 (that's a Wednesday).  You don't need me to tell you he's hilarious, but I will say that I've seen him twice, once at the Broward Center and once at Books & Books, and he was every bit as funny as I expected.

You can even meet Sedaris after the show; he'll be signing books in the lobby. Our friends at Books & Books are providing books for sale there. And here's the thing about Sedaris: he's famous for staying as long as it takes to sign every book.

Tickets go on sale Monday; don't miss it. I can assure you that I won't.

Psychosis unbound

I have loved Haven Kimmel's books since I picked up The Solace of Leaving Early, intrigued by its title. I went on to review her next two novels and went back and read her two memoirs (the second, She Got Up Off the Couch, I listened to on audiobook; Kimmel reads it herself, and her wry deadpan is half the fun of listening to it).

Still none of this prepared me for Kimmel's latest novel, Iodine, a huge departure from her earlier work. Read my story about the author, who appears Thursday at Books & Books, to find out why.

A visit with the "Girl from Foreign"

Sadia Shepard, a documentary filmmaker, comes from an interesting family. Her dad is a Christian; her mother a Muslim. And then Shepard discovered that her mother's mother was not born a Muslim but part of the Bene Israel community,  a small group of Jews that settled in India. Turns out Grandmother had secretly married a Muslim at 16, and though she never converted, raised her own children in the Islamic tradition.

Shepard's new book, The Girl From Foreign, is about that discovery and her own journey to India and Pakistan, where her mother's family moved after Partition. Shepard, who's bright and interesting and someone you could happily talk to for hours, is scheduled to speak Tuesday at Books & Books. If she can get a flight in, that is. Ah, August! She has also made a documentary about the Bene Israel, which is making its way through the film festival circuit.

You can read my interview with her here.

Senator rescheduled, thanks to Fay

Sen. Mel Martinez' appearance at the Coral Gables Congregational Church Monday night has been rescheduled, due to the looming tropical storm that is making it impossible for me to get my dogs walked.

Sen. Martinez will read from his book A Sense of Belonging at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 26 at the church, 3010 De Soto Blvd. in the Gables for Books & Books.

Martinez has been making the rounds lately; he was a guest on The Diane Rehm Show just last week as well as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where he took the predictable "what is Florida going to do to screw up THIS election" jokes with good humor.

Travel back in time with "The Seamstress"

I am going to tell you the same thing I told Frances de Pontes Peebles, Coral Gables High grad and author of The Seamstress: I picked up her book thinking I probably wouldn't have enough time to read much of it. Time was short; she appears at Books & Books Friday; and the story needed to get in the paper today.

And then I sat down with The Seamstress.

150 pages later, I looked up, confused about my surroundings. When I realized how absorbed I'd been, I knew it was inevitable that I'd spend the weekend immersed in late 1920s and early '30s Brazil, with sisters Emilia and Luzia, both of whom want to escape their impoverished mountain town. One marries into a wealthy family in the city; the other joins a rugged band of cangaceiros, bandits who battle the wealthy colonels who keep the countryside down.

This is the sort of big historical novel you just tumble into - it's romantic, heartbreaking, violent, tense and absolutely absorbing. Peebles, who grew up all over Miami-Dade, has written an amazing debut novel. Read my story on her here.

A different history of Cuba

Rachel Kushner's debut novel Telex from Cuba is getting a ton of attention these days. To find out why, check out my Q and A with the author, who will appear Thursday at Books & Books.

Well, OK, I'll give you a hint: Kushner's mom and her sisters spent a big chunk of their childhood in Oriente Province, where their father worked at a nickel mine. That intriguing family history provided Kushner with a wealth of material about the province (about as far from Havana as you can get), life there in the '50s and two of its most prominent neighbors (a couple of brothers named Fidel and Raul).

Get off the couch and into the pool

Good news for all you slackers who say you're too old to get in shape (or maybe it's bad news...I'm not sure): W. Hodding Carter says you don't necessarily have to lose muscle mass as you get older. (Of course, you have to get off the couch to keep it. And step away from the Doritos.) He should know: the 40something competitive swimmer and author of Off the Deep End has been training for the Olympics.

I didn't make his reading last night at Books & Books, but spy reports indicate it was another good one and that former swimmers were in abundance in the audience. Carter, who was introduced by former Olympic swimmer Gary Hall, Sr. says his book isn't so much about swimming as it is having a goal and sticking to it.

Herald writer Howard Cohen did a nice piece on Carter earlier this week; click here to check it out.

Unique insight into Florida's ugly past

Peter Matthiessen, author of Shadow Country (which used to be informally known as the Mr. Watson trilogy), joins the already-confirmed panelists for the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, which takes place in January and will focus on the theme of "Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth."

The seminar, which fills up fast, has also signed on Gore Vidal, Russell Banks, Calvin Baker, Andrea Barrett, Allan Gurganus, Tony Horwitz, Geraldine Brooks, Barry Unsworth and Madison Smartt Bell.

Click on the seminar's blog for further updates.

Dancing for a 9/11 hijacker

Andre Dubus III originally believed that his latest novel , The Garden of Last Days, would be a short story. Five hundred-plus pages later, it was something else entirely. Set in a Sarasota strip club in the days before Sept. 11, 2001, the book throws together a group of people - one of whom is going to be on an American Airlines flight out of Boston in a couple of days - in a strip club and piles on the drama.

Dubus, who wrote House of Sand and Fog, says he wanted to write about what it would have been like to be one of the dancers who performed for the 9/11 hijackers - some did go to a strip club before their heinous acts, just like some others had a few drinks at the now-gone Shuck 'Ems right here in Hollywood. The idea of monsters in our midst is an unsettling one, isn't it? I remember thinking: Why couldn't those bastards have gotten in a bar fight that night and ended up in the hospital? As if that might have changed what happened.

Dubus apparently had similar thoughts. He's an entertaining guy to talk to, and funnier that you might expect if you'd only read his books (I get the impression he's a great teacher, though I suppose we'd have to check in with his students at UMass-Lowell to find out for sure). Garden has its share of wrenching moments, but ultimately Dubus sees it as a hopeful book: No matter what terrible events shape our lives, we have a way of going on.

You can read my interview with him here. And you can see him at 8 p.m. Thursday at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

Keeping her promise

Joyce Wagner does not call herself a writer, though she has written a book. She calls herself a survivor, because that's what she truly is. Out of nine brothers and sister, parents and grandparents, she is the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust, surviving two years in the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Wagner brings her remarkable tale to the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center in Hollywood, at 2031 Harrison St., as part of the organization's Author Series. She'll speak at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 15. The appearance is free, but reservations are required.  Call 954-929-5690 or email regina@hdec.org to RSVP.

"Hands are the window to a man's soul"

Today is clearly video link day, so here's another suggestion for you: Click here to watch a video interpretation of a slice of The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. This is the novel narrated by Enzo the dog that I keep flirting with reading, only I worry it will cause me to weep. My fear proved well-founded when I got a little teary watching the video. God, dog people are nuts, aren't they? They'll like this website for sure: You can send e-cards with Enzo's sayings on them (like the one in the title here) and download photos of your own dogs to share. I hope I'm too busy to do this, but I wouldn't count on it.

Stein appears at 8 p.m. Monday June 16 at Books & Books in the Gables, and you might want to get started on the book ASAP - there will be an Enzo trivia contest.

What we learned about Leif Enger

We already knew he was a personable guy and an evocative writer. Here's the other important stuff:

1. He's an excellent reader, adding a lot of humor to the passages he read from So Brave, Young, and Handsome (the one he read about Hood Roberts' wild ride is one of my favorites in the book).

2. He's a swooning fan of Cormac McCarthy. No surprise there, really. Says he came to McCarthy through All the Pretty Horses, but that No Country for Old Men is his favorite. Loved the movie, too. Was proud his son read the book at age 13 (he's now 17). Say, here's an idea: Stop force feeding teenagers some of those boring moldy classics and set them up with No Country for Old Men.

3. He is a big fan of TV's The Deadliest Catch. He claims it's this same son who prompts him to watch it, but I don't know...he seemed awfully interested in what the fishermen brave on that show. Fair enough, though - he said an older brother used to work on that sort of boat, so he's intrigued by what they go through. Frankly just looking at the waves makes me queasy.

"Pancho Villa crossed the border in the year of aught '16"

You'd need to be Lewis and/or Clark to find my Q and A with author Leif Enger on the website, so here's a handy link, should you want to read it. It occurs to me that if Enger's latest novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome, had a soundtrack, it would be Tom Russell's Indians Cowboys Horses Dogs, in particular the songs Tonight We Ride, narrated by a drunken cowboy riding with Black Jack Pershing after the evil Pancho Villa ("He killed 17 civilians, you could hear the women scream...") and Bucking Horse Moon, kind of  broken-heart look back at a rodeo romance ("I lost my youth on the dusty fairground.") Russell is known for his cowboy songs, and what with Enger's novel referencing what happened in Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916...it just seems fitting somehow.

Thinking ahead

It's early, and Lord knows I'm not one to plan things out in an intelligent manner, but it's not a bad idea to get your tickets for Salman Rushdie's appearance for Books & Books and the Florida Center for the Literary Arts. He'll be here at 7:30 July 8 at Temple Judea, 5500 Granada Blvd., and tickets are required for the reading/signing. You get two tickets for each copy purchased of his latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, available at any of the B&B locations.

Augusten and the Wolf

As promised here is the link to my story with Augusten Burroughs, who appears Monday night at the Lincoln Theatre in South Beach to talk about his latest book A Wolf at the Table, a memoir of his father.

The biggest question, the recurring one that I keep reading about is: did he make this stuff up? But the one that I'm most curious about is how readers will react to the book's tone. It's bleak, with none of the usual wiseguy asides that made Running with Scissors and Dry so popular - and so much fun to read. Wolf is more like something out of Stephen King, only with a monster you can't destroy, one that can only destroy itself.

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.

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.

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.

Gorge on this feast

Jennifer Valoppi is just one of the 20 authors appearing at this year's LitLIVE!, part of Broward's Literary Feast, which benefits the Broward Public Library Foundation and is held Saturday at Nova Southeastern in Davie.

LitLIVE, which stars at 10 a.m. features panel discussions and author signings. Among those on the schedule: Jeffrey Archer, Chip Kidd, Lauren Groff (the debut novelist who wrote The Monsters of Templeton that I liked so much), James Hall, Stephen Hunter and others. Visit bplfoundation.org for a full schedule and directions to the campus.

Hops to it

And over to your right, this building with the cone-shaped towers, that would be an oast house. "An oast house?" you say. "I live in Miami (or San Antonio or Phoenix or Los Angeles). What the heck is an oast house?" Here's where Between the Covers comes in handy: I'm going to tell you. Oast houses were used to dry hops - yes, the ones they use to make beer - in England back in the day.

But a better, more entertaining source for stories of hop-picking in the Kentish countryside can be found in Jacqueline Winspear's latest Maisie Dobbs mystery, An Incomplete Revenge. The fifth in this historical series set between world wars, Revenge finds Maisie investigating crimes in Kent amid East Enders on holiday and a gypsy tribe, and it's full of ripe historical background as well as an unerring sense of England's national state of mind at the time.

You can go here to read my interview with Winspear, and you can go to Books & Books in the Gables at 8 p.m. Thursday to see her in person. She's a delight to talk to and, as you will see, thoroughly knowledgeable about her subject. And to see more photos of the lovely Kentish countryside, click here.

Viva the Middle Ages

One of the more beautiful paperback releases I've seen recently is Thomas Cahill's Mysteries of the Middle Ages and the Beginning of the Modern World, which charts the course of medival scholarship, art, literature, science, philosophy etc., after the Dark Ages and how those elements shaped Western civilization as we know it today.

The book, which comes out Tuesday, is printed on surprisingly thick paper for a paperback and comes with full color illustrations and maps and smartly arranged footnotes, just like its hardback counterpart.

Not coincidentally, Cahill - also author of How the Irish Saved Civilization, of which I've always been skeptical, given the state of some of my relatives - appears 8 p.m. Wednesday at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

Invest in Banks

I admit it: I have a soft spot in my heart for authors who pose for publicity photos with their dogs. Hence my love for this shot of novelist Russell Banks, who appears at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Books & Books.

I was trying to decide on my favorite books by Banks, and I keep coming back to Continental Drift. It's a devastating novel, told from two separate points of view (a working class white guy from New Hampshire and a young Haitian woman, both trying desperately to get to Florida and start living the dream). But I also have great affection for The Sweet Hereafter, about a bus full of children plunging off the road and into a lake and its consequences on a small town.

A colleague (hi, Scott!) reminded me a few days ago that Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story is a terrific short story by Banks, and I have to agree with him. You'll find that one in the collection The Angel on the Roof. I pulled out the book and reread it, and it's just as great as it was the first time I read it. Seek it out if you can.

You can read my interview with Banks here.

Miami - write it like a native

Tom Wolfe isn't the only novelist working on a Miami book. Russell Banks, who's in town Tuesday to talk about his new novel The Reserve, is also turning his attention to South Florida.

"I'm gathering material for a book set in Miami," says Banks, who lives in the Adirondacks with his poet wife Chase Twichell but also owns an apartment in Miami. Then he jokes that the notoriously slow Wolfe could end up beating him to the punch.

Florida was one of the main settings of Banks' Pulitzer Prize finalist Continental Drift - some say it's his best work - which followed the intersecting lives of a New Hampshire repairman and a Haitian immigrant, both searching for refuge in Florida. The Reserve is a '30s noir-style mystery, set in the Adirondacks.

Banks appears at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Books & Books in Coral Gables.

On the road for freedom

One of the more interesting and entertaining writers I've talked to in a while is civil rights activist Charles Cobb Jr., who appears at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Books & Books in the Gables. His new book is On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail, which is a guide to important Southern sites of the civil rights battle and a history of some of the lesser-known players who fought in it.

Over here at the right is Charles back in the early '60s, when he left Howard University to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (Charles is the guy in the middle). What were you doing when you were just out of college? Absolutely nothing of any importance, in my case.

Charles is a guy with great stories, ones that are vitally important to tell. To read my Q and A with him, click here.

Pour some sugar on me

Remember how you craved candy when you were a little kid? Now you probably long for a nice, mellow pinot noir, maybe with a strong blackberry finish, when day is done. But back then, it was Sugar Babies and Kit Kats and Junior Mints and Bubble Yum and that gross sugary substance that came in those long skinny containers...Pixie Sticks! Yes. All that good stuff. And the Pringles. Don't even get me started on the Pringles.

Bich Mihn Nguyen, author of the memoir Stealing Buddha's Dinner, remembers it even more clearly. As a Vietnamese immigrant whose family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, such sugary or salty delights stood for the American culture she tried hard to grasp, which wasn't easy for a small Asian girl amid a sea of tall blonds.

Stealing Buddha's Dinner is Nguyen's story, and it's a good one that will appeal to anybody who ever felt they didn't quite fit in. To read an interview with Nguyen, who appears at 8 p.m. Friday at Books & Books, click here. And pass the M&Ms.

Next up: Newt

I'm going to attempt to report this as straight-faced as I can, no irony or snotty comments:

At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, as you are enjoying your post-primary election glow, you can meet former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich at the Borders at 9887 Glades Rd. in Boca Raton, where he'll be signing copies of his book Real Change.

No word on who might actually want to do such a thing, but hey, it's free...

An event that's both literary and cinematic

A week of incredible author appearances culminates Friday night at the Cosford Cinema at University of  Miami when novelist Paul Auster introduces a special screening of his film The Inner Life of Martin Frost, which is simultaneously being released as a paperback original by Picador. After the film, Auster - who is married to novelist Siri Hustvedt, whose new novel comes out in April - will discuss the making of the film and the adaptation process.

The movie has only been shown in New York and Europe, so feel privileged!

Tickets are free, but you need to pick some up at a Books & Books location. Go here for more information.

Frogs and foreign policy, take two

Packed house - er, temple - for Madeleine Albright Thursday night; some people were left standing along the sides to hear the former Secretary of State, who talked about issues facing the next president. Though she said upfront she was supporting Hillary Clinton, she kept the placard-waving for her candidate to a bare minimum, only speaking about her when one of the audience members asked her why she supported Sen. Clinton in the Q and A period.

And speaking of the Q and A session: Almost all of the questions were good, most were intelligent and thoughtful - on U.S. policies toward Israel, Cuba, terrorism, torture, foreign spending, women's roles in government. But there's always one person in the audience who isn't clear on the concept that a Q and A session means: You ask a question, you get an answer, you say thanks and sit down. It is NOT a private discussion between you and the speaker. You should NOT stand there monopolozing the microphone and asking more and more questions as the audience fidgets and sighs and claps and otherwise indicates you need to go sit down and let the next person have his or her turn. Take a lesson from the Beastie Boys: Pass the mic.

Frogs and foreign policy

So back before I held the lofty position of book editor, I was a copy editor for the Herald's community news desk, a slave ship we liked to call "Neighbors." Actually before I was a copy editor I was a carnival roustabout, but before that I was in a band...but more on that later.

Anyway, an extremely disturbed friend of mine gave me these stuffed frogs that she'd picked up in Nogales, Mexico, on what I assume was a drugrunning trip (OK, fine, maybe she was just down there for the tequila, but it sounds fishy to me). When I say frogs, I mean REAL frogs stuffed with, like, sawdust, posed in various positions. So I put these hideous things on my desk at work to cheer us up as we toiled 14 hours a day analyzing school lunch menus and honor roll lists.

Another even more disturbed friend and co-worker (now a powerful editor at the Herald whose name I will not divulge) started DRESSING UP THE FROGS. And by dressing them up I mean, making CLOTHES FOR THE FROGS. For different holidays. Santa hats for Christmas. Bunny ears for Easter. Wedding gowns for June.

So life on Neighbors is pretty uneventful, until one day an extremely important person in the Clinton administration, say, THE SECRETARY OF STATE, is meeting with the editorial board, and she comes walking past my desk on her way to the elevator, Secret Service agents in tow. And there are the frogs in their garish finery, and the Secretary does a slow doubletake, as in, "What in God's name is that, and why would anyone have that on their desk? and why haven't we invented Homeland Security yet so I could have this person shipped off to Guantanamo?"

This is a long way of telling you that the world has come full circle. Earlier this week I spoke with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright about her new book Memo to the President Elect. I elected not speak with her about the frogs. I'm hoping she's forgotten all about them.

Read my Q and A with Madame Secretary here.

And if you want to see Secretary Albright at 7:30 Thursday at Temple Judea in the Gables (or at 12:30 Friday at the Plantation Barnes & Noble) I suggest you get there early.

Books and Brooks lovers

Huge, interested crowd at Books & Books Monday night for Geraldine Brooks. So big, in fact, that the book editor's reserved seat got taken before the book editor got there. Ha ha! Just kidding, folks, I didn't demand a reserved seat, just heard a rumor that the thoughtful B&B staff tried to save one for me and failed due to the crush of people who were sensible enough to get there before I could. No worries. I was happy to stand up against the wall and stretch my legs after all day at the computer, though I really couldn't get a good look at the slides of the Sarajevo Haggadah. Note: if you were up front near me or on the floor and couldn't get a good look, type "Sarajevo Haggadah" into Google, and you'll get quite a few hits. And that's cheaper than buying the $4,000 fascimile Brooks mentioned.

Some Brooks fans, clutching copies of People of the Book, had it worse than me. They were  caught in the front room or the cafe (thankfully the sound system appeared to be working in the other rooms). I caught one woman staring plaintively through the windows from the outside. But Brooks signed books for everyone afterward, and so endeth another lovely Miami literary evening.

No tosh - Brooks' book is worth a look

"It's absolute tosh," says Geraldine Brooks about Miami's reputation as an empty-headed, partycentric metropolis with no culture whatsoever. Not that there aren't empty-headed partygoers in abundance. You know who you are. But there's more, Brooks thinks. The former foreign correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist also believes her home continent - Australia - gets the same unfair rap.

Brooks, who appears 8 p.m. Monday at Books & Books in Coral Gables, says she loves coming to Miami, and for good reason: it's where she was inspired to become a novelist. At her first Miami Book Fair International, she saw Charles "Cold Mountain" Frazier and thought, hey, I'll give this novel writing thing a try. What followed was Year of Wonders, March (the Pulitzer winner) and now the splendid People of the Book, a  fascinating fictional account of the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah.

But back to South Florida: "I just think Mitchell Kaplan and the Miami Book Fair are absolute gifts to writers," she says. She's looking forward to her appearance, during which she'll show slides of the Haggadah.

Read more about Brooks and People of the Book here.

Shocking theory or merely the truth?

Naomi Klein coined the term "disaster capitalism," and whether or not you agree with her assessments of the trend in the economic system you have to agree: That's a damned good phrase. Sounds plausible, too: Klein writes in her new book The Shock Doctrine that victims of disasters - the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq - become victims a second time when the greedy maw of exploitive capitalists rush in to make money off suffering. So much for peace on earth doing anybody any economic good.

You can hear Klein discuss her theory at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Coral Gables Congregational Church, where she appears for Books & Books.

Why you should have gone to see Richard Russo

Before reading from his novel Bridge of Sighs Wednesday night at Miami Book Fair International, Richard Russo warned the audience that the passage would involve a few crude bits and that it should be rated PG-13 - just in case there were kids in the audience. There didn't seem to be any children there - I'm thinking a book about facing mortality and the perils of your past all at once probably doesn't appeal to kids quite the way Harry Potter does - but you have to like a guy who is sensitive enough to give queasy parents the chance to flee.

Other favorite moments: "I'll be beyond thrilled if I'm read 50 years from now. Of course I'll be dead and thrilled."

An Evening With Jenna Bush . . . and a lot of waiting

How much do you want to see Jenna Bush at Miami Book Fair International? If the answer is "a lot" or "I already have tickets," here's what you need to know:

Because of increased security, you must arrive at the Chapman Conference Center, Miami Dade College, two hours before the presentation, which begins at 7:30 p.m.  Tuesday. You have to show up early even if you have tickets (there will also be a standby line for people without tickets).

No umbrellas, backpacks, tote bags, or other bags are allowed. Purses will be searched. You will be swept by a metal-detecting wand. No sharp objects. Pretend you're at the airport and carry metal objects, including keys and cell phones, in your hand.

Visit the restroom before you go in. Once you're seated, you have to stay for the entire presentation. If you exit, you might not be allowed re-entry.

Bush will take not take questions but she will sign up to three copies per person of her book Ana's Story. She will not personalize or sign anything else, nor will she pose for pictures.

By the way, if your answer was "Why on earth would I want to see Jenna Bush? I'll just go to the fair Wednesday and see Richard Russo and not have to deal with this security mess,'' then you don't have to read any of this. If your answer was "Jenna Bush is an author?'' you get a gold star.

Are we smarter than a fifth grader?

The good news is novelist Andrea Barrett thinks we're intrinsically curious. The bad news, she says, is that some force may be perverting our natural desire for knowledge.

"As I get older I meet more people in whom that impulse seems to have been deadened,'' says the author of The Air We Breathe, who appears at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Miami Book Fair International. "I don't presume they don't have it somewhere. Maybe something in the culture is squashing that. But it's my quite optimistic hope that it's saturation with TV or the Internet and that most people are hungry to know about the world.''

I don't always share Barrett's optimism, and I fret that more people don't read her amazing books. They're elegantly written, fascinating and deeply layered. If a novel is too much of a commitment - though woe to the soul who skips The Voyage of the Narwhal, her book about Arctic adventurers - start smaller, with the short story collections Ship Fever or Servants of the Map. The title stories in those collections are among Barrett's best work. Love, science, family, travel, discovery, dangerous illnesses, political unrest - it's all there, along with her trust in your intellectual capacity and your eagerness to enter other worlds.

Click here to read more on Barrett