No comments about This Is Judy Woodruff at the White House.

No comments about Chinua Achebe: Teacher of Light, A Biography.

5 comments about Cleaving: The Story of a Marriage.

1. I've read all of Vicki Covington's novels and think she is a great writer. My book club really enjoyed BIRD OF PARADISE. And Dennis's book about snake-handling churches was fascinating so I read this story of a marriage hoping to find kindred people. I admire honesty but I was very disturbed by this couple and their obessions. I'm not a prude and I've always been a Christian( even though some youthful love affairs) but I don't understand raising two daughters and continuing in the way the Covingtons have. I also don't understand having an abortion because you can't tell who the father of the fetus is. Again I believe that abortion is very necessary but not for the reason Vicki gave. "What kind of marriage do you have?" was the question the wife of Vicki's lover asked and it's a valid question. We all have our definitions of marriage and we all lead lives that call for forgiveness but we're also called to repentance. I didn't see much of that in CLEAVING. Sometimes the honesty is too much.



2. Dennis and Vicki Covington are accomplished novelists, but in Cleaving they leave fiction behind to present a candid, revealing account of their marriage which has endured and survived alcoholism, mutual adultery, and antagonistic abortion. They spare neither themselves nor the reader from their lapses of faith, failures, betrayals, and addictions to alcohol and drugs. Cleaving is a mesmerizing biography, a lot like driving past a literary car wreck. Totally fascinating reading, and a testament to what the human spirit can cause, endure, and occasionally triumph over.



3. Since "Salvation on Sand Mountain," "Bird of Paradise," and "The Last Hotel for Women," are among my favorite recent books, I was surprised by how much I disliked "Cleaving." Another Covington fan warned me against reading the book, but I was curious, in the same way one cannot help but pick up those grocery store tabloids when one is waiting in a long line.

   While the Covingtons repeatedly evidence dishonesty in their relationship, they insist that they must be honest in writing about their relationship. Why is honesty in writing valued so highly by the Covingtons when it was so easily dismissed in their relationship? And there is something self-congratulatory in their tone that made their revelations more characteristic of exaggerated fish stories than of honest personal reflection.

   I can understand, perhaps, the value to the Covingtons of writing these experiences together and reviewing them together; I cannot see the value of publishing them. If you must read this book, for goodness sakes, check it out from the library. (Sorry, amazon.com.) This book isn't worth the money or aggravation.




4. These Covingtons are skillful writers, but the tale they tell of betrayal and compromise, self-indulgence and thrill-seeking is a self-serving one masquerading and soul-cleansing confession. No matter how carefully you spread their behavior across a grid of pop songs, psychobabble, scripture and contemporary sociology, it still amounts to a single conclusion: these people are good at constructing fictions. This so-called breast-baring is just another one of them, casting seriuous doubt on their ability to write non-fiction with any genuineness of purpose.



5. I really enjoyed this book. Yes, it is very honest and sometimes painful to read, but to me, that's what good writing is about. In everyday life, a pretty gloss is always painted on things, and it seems that writers tend to look beneath the surface and reveal truths that need to be told about themselves and society. I'm a writer myself, I have a book in the Birmingham library system, and I know how hard it is to write. In fact, writing is the hardest thing that one will ever do. I think Vicki and Dennis Covington have done a pretty fair job with this one. If one ventures to read this, they should approach it with an open mind and heart as well. Vicki Covington still has a way with words and can weave them nicely in her own fashion. Although this is non- fiction, if you liked her four novels, you will enjoy this greatly.

2 comments about Gordon MacQuarrie: Story Of An Old Duck Hunter.

1. If you've ever wondered who the real "Mac" was, Keith Crowley has the answer for you, and then some. If you you're like me and you need to read the Stories of the Old Duck Hunters over and over as the leaves start to turn, then you need to read this book to gain an even greater appreciation for the talents of this outdoor writer. Buy it and put it right next to the rest of your McQuarrie titles where it belongs.



2. This guy can write! Forget about the extensive research done to produce the tremendous amounts of factual data in the book, it reads with the ease and style not unlike that of the subject author. This book has earned a spot on the shelf next to my copies of Macquarrie Miscellany and the Trilogy!

2 comments about It Wasn't Pretty, Folks, but Didn't We Have Fun?: Surviving the '60s With Esquire's Harold Hayes.

1. I'm torn between a four star and five star rating. If you are a writer and editor like me, you will definitely love this look behind the curtains at a major mag during its golden era. Super juicy if you know the territory. Otherwise, a nice enough read, but probably not your ticket.



2. After trying to find any book that could give me an in-depth look at what it's like to edit a great magazine, I finally found this. I can't reccomend this book to everyone, but if you LOVE magazines, or are just a fan of 60s Esquire, you'll be very happy with this book.

No comments about KASZTNER'S TRAIN: The True Story of Rezso Kaztner, Unknown Hero of the Holocaust.

4 comments about The Dog of My Nightmares: Stories by Texas Columnist Dave Lieber.

1. We recently chose this great little self published book as our March Selection, It is written in a folksy, charmingly funny style, and contains plenty of wisdom. There are short chapters about all kinds of subjects; relationships with wives, kids, dogs, work, etc. It is great choice for book clubs that want to alternate their deep. dark, reads with something happy that everyone will relate to. We all enjoyed it.



2. As a Texas now living in North Carolina I had read Dave Lieber's column for years and still do online. In 1996 I had the privelege of meeting both him and Sadie the dog at the walkathon in Bedford, Tx where I took my beloved dog, Jake. (Like Sadie Jake is no longer with me but still in my heart. Last week I was in Texas and saw this book and had to buy it. It is well written and brought back many memories of thing from Dave's columns. My favorites were always when he wrote about Sadie. Great book!



3. This is a wonderful heartwarming book that I found hard to put down. The story of Dave's dog is especially funny and sad. I wouldn't want to give away any plot secrets but the dog sounds pretty sharp. You will feel like you've been transported to Texas and invited to be part of a special family when you read this book. I hope there is a sequel.



4. As a longtime reader of Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Dave Lieber's work, I was privileged to purchase an advance copy of his book off his new Internet web site before the actual publication date. It's thrilling to see his best stories from the past decade collected in one attractive volume. Dave writes laughers that remind me of Dave Barry at his best. He also writes stories about people that, well, you better darn well have a box of Kleenex nearby. The one about how Dave brought former Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith to the classroom of a teacher who was dying of cancer (true story; it was her dying wish) is unbelievable! The book has almost 90 stories, each of them short and easy to read. They cover every conceivable subject -- from family, kids, love, education (Dave calls it 'Texas Edukation'), nutty politicians, quirky Texans, Sept. 11, a writer's life, becoming a cowboy, etc. There are probably about 50 photographs in the 288-page book, too. I guess what I like about this book is that it's full of surprises. You never know what is going to be on the next page. There's a story about Dave's relationship with a convicted murderer and then what happened when the guy got released from prison. It's surprising as heck. There's a story about Dave's first meeting with the Texas governor and the strange comment made by Gov. Perry. But the signature story of the book is about Dave's beloved Psycho Dog. Dave loved the dog, but the dog hated Dave. This opening chapter is a real tear jerker, reminiscient of My Dog Skip. I think it's wonderful that Dave is giving a portion of the proceeds of this book to the Humane Society in honor of his late dog. I promise you'll love this book. I'm already on my second reading. - M.W.

1 comments about A Good-Looking Corpse.

1. I bought read this out of my interest in the life of the 1960s South African journalist Nat Nakasa. It did help flesh out my sense of the legendary Drum Magazine of the 1950s, and it had a few things by and about Nakasa I haven't found readily available in the US, but some of the information it does have about him is incorrect, especially things to do with his last year of life in the US, leading up to his apparent suicide.

No comments about Too Good a Town: William Allen White, Community, and the Emerging Rhetoric of Middle America.

3 comments about Dawn: An Autobiography of Early Youth.

1. Dreiser follows such a simple structure. First, the dreamy, hypnotic recurrent images of early childhood, that only melted into perspective years later. Second, the glory of sexual awakening, mixed with the whitewater current of ambition, shuffling like white noise into his consciousness only once he tunes his ears to listen.
   To the details. Dreiser loved his mother, in a way that may have swung past the platonic, and certainly shaped his female ideal. She does seem an ideal parent, with her selfless love, endless devotion in hard work, and support regardless of the wayward tendencies of her iconoclastic brood. His father seems little more than a hollowed out Jesus enthusiast, who, following the personal disaster that surely damaged his brain, emptily follows Christ's lead by punishing his children for not being religious enough.
   Dreiser himself came of age by losing it to the immigrant bakery owner's daughter, an idle miscreant long forgotten outside these pages. Dreiser was bound by two diametrically opposed desires - one for sex, the other for love, and as a wise man once said, these rarely overlap, especially for Dreiser in his early youth. His platonic ideal is the shy, frumpy type, while he can't help but be lured in by the pretty ones. His sex complex keeps him from many a lay, which he overcomes by ravishing a young Italian waywardess.
   Poe once said something like "Any man who chooses to tell about his life the way it really is will change the world forever, but no one has the courage to do it." Dreiser comes close, though I doubt this has stood much ground the test of time. I was referred to it by one of Fitzgerald's early characters. Dreiser doesn't hesitate to wag his finger at himself, and never, ever makes me wish not to have had the golden opportunity to join him for lunch of a foggy Tuesday.



2. Although he published this volume (second after Newspaper Days, chronologically), Dreiser intended Dawn to be the first of four autobiographies, each covering approximately 20 years of his life. This confirms Dreiser's ambition, but doesn't place this book in the prize category of great autobiographical works. For all of his professed candor, Dreiser still skirts personal truths for the protocol, and his sentences wind and ramble and repeat like an electric train on contorted tracks.
   If you liked Sister Carrie and some of his other longer fictions, this extra reading may be helpful, but if you want to go for the "red meat" of Dreiser's life, I'd encourage a reading of his American Notebooks--his journals, published after his death and never really intended for publication. In them, boy oh boy, does the real Dreiser sans facade emerge.



3. "Dawn" may be stronger than Dreiser's fiction, which is saying a good deal. He shows a remarkable memory and attention to detail. I am admittedly biased because I identified so closely with his experiences as a child, youth, and adult, but the scenes in this volume are well drawn and he overcomes his sometimes florid style and difficulties with fluid language well here. Along with "Newspaper Days," one gets an intimate look at the life of this talented and important author.