Books Archive

A Twist of the Wrist: Quick Flavorful Meals with Ingredients from Jars, Cans, Bags, and Boxes - Nancy Silverton is one of the last chefs in the world I would have expected to write a cookbook that urges you to use prepared foods. Worse,

A Village Lost and Found: Scenes in Our Village - A geezer with curly white hair shredded a red guitar he built himself to jump-start the Academy Awards. If you saw him backstop a weak replacement for Freddy Mercury in

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Then she added the Pulitzer Prize. You would be entirely forgiven if those awards for “A Visit to the Goon Squad” intimidate you

A Walk in the Woods - So you've written a batch of books, Mr. Bryson, and now you live in New Hampshire, a state where people rest from the chore of meeting Presidential candidates by lacing

A Whole Lotta Love: What The Home Shopping Network Special on ‘Eat Pray Love’ Might Have Offered - Today we're in China and Japan. Why are we anywhere? Just scroll down past the China and Japan recommendations for the reasons behind the 'East Pray Love' special.... But

A Widow’s Story - Guest Blogger Elizabeth Benedict is the author of five novels, including the bestseller Almost, and editor of the anthology, Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives.

A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald - For decades, the scariest sentence in the English language was “Mike Wallace is here to see you.” No more. Now it’s “Errol Morris is fact-checking you.”   Errol Morris, who makes Academy Award-winning documentary

A Window Opens - In the cookie-cutter women’s crowd pleaser, the heroine is a Superior Being --- a Brainy Beauty and all-around Good Person who must wage a Superwoman battle to achieve wealth and

A Wrinkle in Time - GUEST BUTLER MICHELLE WATKINS has been a Head Butler reader for so long she has two seats on the aisle for any movie or play I get produced. She and

Abide With Me - Guest Butler Laura Harrington is an award-winning playwright, lyricist and librettist, and the author of Alice Bliss, a novel I love a lot. Her plays, musicals and operas have been

About Alice - Alice Trillin died in New York City on September 11, 2001. Did anyone else die in Manhattan that day? In “About

About the Author: A Novel - I like nothing better than to pick up a novel I knew almost nothing about by a writer unknown to me and go nuts for it. John Colapinto’s “About the

Act One - The best Broadway memoir. Ever. I’m not the only one who says it. Here's André Bishop,  Artistic Director of Lincoln Center: "This is the greatest theatrical memoir ever written and it reads

Acting in Film: An Actor’s Take on Movie Making - Michael Caine was a Cockney with burning ambition, unproven talent and few connections. If he wanted to be a movie star, he decided, he'd have to invent himself as one. He went

Advice for Future Corpses (And Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying - One of the reasons I wrote a play about Matisse is that he had a great death. In his final years, he created his masterpiece. He had a deep spiritual

After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie - The favorite writer of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is rumored to have been Jean Rhys (1890-1979). If so, that says a lot, for the main character in a novel by Rhys tends to be

After Paris: a reading/viewing list - Think back, please, to the weeks immediately following 9/11. In New York, they were quiet, contemplative, even profound. Eager to understand why it happened, many of us read Ahmed

Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive - A few days before 9/11, Joel Meyerowitz --- famed for landscapes of extreme beauty and serenity --- took photographs of the World Trade Center. He planned to take more. Then

Agatha Raisin and The Quiche of Death - AGATHA RAISIN RIP: Marion Chesney, who wrote as M.C. Beaton, died recently, at 83. According to the New York Times obituary, she wrote 150 novels and had no plan to

Akira Kurosawa: Something Like An Autobiography - You love so many of his movies. Star Wars, of course. The Magnificent Seven. That first great Clint Eastwood western, A Fistful of Dollars. And, most recently, A Bug's Life.