This just in, lady and gent readers: Oprah has just chosen Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as the latest addition to her book club—and scored big points with this editor. McCarthy remains one of my favorite discoveries from grad school. Notoriously press-shy (there’s no way in hades he’ll appear on Oprah), the writer is not known for seeing the more honorable side of humanity (see his brutal anti-Western, Blood Meridian).

An LJ Best Book of 2006, The Road continues in that vein, describing with macabre elegance “a devastated country where food is scarce and everyone becomes a scavenger, ” according to our review by Stephen Morrow. While I haven’t read it (it’s sitting on the floor, next to my bed), methinks ole Winfrey isn’t so much in a pessimistic mood as moved, simply, by McCarthy’s ability to etch beauty in despair. I have to wonder if her demographic will go along for the ride (though as my colleague Wilda Williams pointed out, the book has already been a best seller), but here’s to disseminating quality literature.

The imageless, emerald green cover and 1970s-looking typeface would not give away the genre, nor would the title, Spadek, a Polish word, I gathered, judging from the blonde woman reader and the fact that I was riding the L train. Making matters more frustrating were her manicured fingers obscuring the author’s name. What was this book, and why was it resisting my sighting?!

Finally, I caught a break: a seat opened up next to the woman, and I managed to swipe it before an iPodded-out hipster. Playing it cool was not an option at this point (not that I’m capable). I dropped down and leaned in for an obvious glance at the oddly yellowed interior pages. Patricia Cabot, Patricia Cabot…an American writer, a Midwestern girl if there ever was one.

Patricia Cabot, better known as Meg Cabot (LJ has only reviewed Boy Meets Girl and Size 12 Is Not Fat), was born in Indiana in 1967, and before I could translate the book title, I went out on a limb and guessed I was dealing with a romance or chick lit. How couldn’t I with an author photo like this (Cabot pens the best-selling Princess Diary series for YAs)?

Spadek, as it turns out, boils down to “downfall” or “descent,” nouns all too common, perhaps, in the lives of beautiful, single foreign women of more chivalrous centuries. Of course, Cabot has never penned a book with a title involving either word, so it’s still hard to determine what I sighted. My best guess? A Little Scandal (St. Martin’s, 2000). Outside detective work welcome. 

I may be well informed about illness as the health & medicine editor, but that doesn’t make me immune to heinous stomach flus. Last Thursday, I was gripped by one while sitting at my desk. My trusty plastic garbage bin deserves an award for catching the torrent I unleashed into it with my mouth. Not to mention my colleague Anna Katterjohn, who had to hear it.

But I digress…this is a blog about what you do when you’re recovering from violent illness. You sure as hell don’t read books because it’s hard to keep your head up and your eyes open. I certainly didn’t have the physical or mental strength to take in even a trashy US Weekly. The way I see it, one brutal stomach spasm deserves a good belly laugh, so after I weathered the worst of the upchucking, I popped in season one of the cult comedy sketch show The Kids in the Hall, newly minted on DVD.

I came for the excellent parodies of teen angst crossed with rock’n'roll fantasy, not to mention the top-shelf drag and satire of corporate America (which predates The Office by over 15 years!). Little did I know I’d be treated to an impressive dose of book-inspired material.

My favorite example from my weekend viewing marathon: gay martini-sipping raconteur Buddy Cole (as played by Scott Thompson,  pictured below) considers the whole desert island scenario. His choice of book? Why, Peggy Hertz’s All About Rhoda (Scholastic, 1975), a now out-of-print guide to the Valerie Harper vehicle that can be had for between $1 and $8 on AbeBooks.com. His choice of companion? The one and only Oscar Wilde, who in his attempts to be a witty island mate shamelessly steals quips from other famous people, including Buddy (e.g., “Now I may have been born yesterday, but I still went shopping!”).

And how can I forget Dave Foley doing The Dr. Seuss Bible? It’s too long and potentially offensive to paste in here, but it’s damn witty and made the cut of a Dr. Seuss webliography compiled by a professor at Kansas State University. Read it and weep—and always, always wash your hands! 

It was a balmy springlike evening last night as my friend Amanda and I stood outside the Booth Theater on West 45th Street. We were having a quick chat before going inside to see Vanessa Redgrave perform in The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion’s new play adapated from her best-selling memoir.

Who should we spot standing next to the theater’s entrance but author Philip Roth in a black suit and a lot taller than I had imagined him to be. And then here came British playwright David Hare (Plenty, Via Dolorosa). He was carrying two notebooks and quickly entered through the stage door. He was the show’s director and, since the show had just started its previews, was obviously going to give Vanessa her notes after the performance.

The play doesn’t open until March 29 but here’s my early preview for those unlucky enough not to have bought tickets to what may be a sold-out limited run. The tall and imposing Ms. Redgrave does not physically resemble the tiny and frail-appearing Ms. Didion, but for almost two hours (without an intermission), the audience sat enraptured and moved as the splendid Redgrave captured Didion’s shock, grief , and denial (”magical thinking”) in the wake of her husband’s sudden death and her only child’s devastating illness.

The play is not an exact transcription of the book as it covers events that occurred after the memoir was published, notably daughter Quintana’s death in August 2005. In a Playbill interview, Didion said she approached the play not as a simple adaptation but as a fresh work, noting that the character Redgrave plays “is speaking from a year and half or two years later. It’s a different perspective.”

If some bored suit-and-ties decide the world needs another awards show, let’s hope they model it on the National Book Critics Circle ceremony. Much as it has the last few years, the show went down without a hiccough or yawn last night at the New School in New York City’s West Village. I was sitting in my usual seat right next to the exits, the perfect spot to sight authors (howdy, Richard Ford!; hey-ya, Dave Eggers!), steal away to the bathroom, and whisper naughty commentary to my colleagues. 

After NBCC president John Freeman set the tone for this heartfelt-without-being-hokey celebration of ass-kicking books, we cut straight to the winners. It didn’t matter that I had never heard of Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award winner John Leonard or that I hadn’t read a single nominee—I invested myself in every winner because the speeches were so damn good (and mainly off-the-cuff). Clearly, these are people who live, eat, and breathe for books. They just might die writing, too, and it would be a better way to go than in sleep.

Aspiring writers would do well to attend this free ceremony—you don’t need a tux, an attitude, or a business card. Just bring your punk self and soak up the love. You’ll learn a lot about book reviewing, the writing life, and witness firsthand the joy of being recognized for years of blood, sweat, and tears.

Without further ado, here are the winners:

• Criticism: Lawrence Weschler’s Everything That Rises: A Book of Contemporary Convergences (McSweeny’s)
• Poetry: Troy Jollimore’s Tom Thomson in Purgatory (Margie/Intuit House)
• Julie Philips’s James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (St. Martin’s)
• General Nonfiction: Simon Schama’s Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (Ecco)
• Autobiography: Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost: A Search for Six of the Six Million (HarperCollins)
• Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (Atlantic Monthly)

Yesterday on a bitterly cold evening, I walked from my office on East 25th Street down to the New School in Greenwich Village to hear 24 of the 30 finalists for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Awards read brief excerpts from their nominated works. Since my job limits my precious reading time to the categories I assign (popular and genre fiction; natural history and sciences), I was curious to hear from the authors of the nominated autobiographies, works of criticism, biographies, literary novels, poetry collections, and general nonfiction.

I was not disappointed. I felt like a kid in a Baskin-Robbins store, sampling its 31 ice cream flavors from classic vanilla to yummy pistachio almond. Each author reflected his or her own unique reading and writing style. Comics artist Alison Bechdel displayed panels from her poignant graphic novel memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic as she narrated the story. Flaubert biographer Frederick Brown’s mellifluous voice and perfect French accent conjured up the rainy, muddy funeral of Flaubert’s dear friend, novelist George Sand. Novelist Dave Eggers introduced the real-life hero of his heartbreaking What is the What, Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng, who movingly read the book’s final paragraph. And poet Daisy Fried, with two-month-old Quinn strapped to her chest (how’s that for a captive audience?) revealed her gritty, streetwise view of life in My Brother is Getting Arrested Again.  

For those who missed the reading or don’t live in New York City, all is not lost. BookTV on C-Span 2 plans to air the reading on Sunday March 11 at 7pm and Monday March 12 at 12am. For readers interested in learning more about the nominees, the NBCC blog Critical Mass is running an interesting series, “30 Books in 30 Days”, that profiles the authors and their books. The winners will be announced tonight in a ceremony at the New School.

As you  know by now, the steamy novel about baseball great Mickey Mantle that led to publisher Judith Regan’s downfall has found new life and a new home. On April 3 Lyons Press plans to publish Peter Golenbock’s controversial  7: The Mickey Mantle Novel, which was cancelled by HarperCollins after it fired Regan and disbanded her imprint. With an initial print run of 250,000 copies, Lyons obviously has high hopes, although judging from all the negative hoopla when the book was first announced, one wonders.

At least I don’t have to worry about assigning this book for review again. When HarperCollins killed the novel in January, we were put in the embarrassing position of running a review that too late for us to pull from our February 1 issue. But now you can re-read our review and judge for yourself whether to order 7 for your patrons.

If 7 is not your cup of tea, coming out this month is another novel featuring a rookie ball player also named Mickey. Published by Kent State University Press, James T. Farrell’s Dreaming Baseball revolves around the infamous 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal. (Look for our review in the March 15 issue of Library Journal.)  

The author of the classic Studs Lonigan trilogy was a passionate baseball fan, longing to play second base for his beloved Chicago White Sox. HIs 1957 My Baseball Diary is considered one of the very best fan books ever written. At the same time, Farrell was unable to find a publisher for his novel, and the work remained unpublished for more than 50 years, until editors Ron Briley, Margaret Davidson, and James Barbour joined forces with Farrell’s family  to bring the book into print. The trio were careful not to tamper with Farrell’s words except to correct typos and to change Farrell’s fictional names to the historical names of the players involved. The foreword is written by Eliot Asinof, who in 1960 consulted with Farrell when he began his reseach on what is now the classic history of the scandal, Eight Men Out. 

This coming May marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of author Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring alerted the public to the dangers of pesticides and helped lay the groundwork for the modern U.S. environmental movement.

Carson began her writing and science career in 1936 at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries (today the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service). In honor of the Service’s most famous employee, the Friends of the National Conservation Training Center is launching the Rachel Carson Online Book Club. Starting March 1 and running through November 2007, participants will study Carson’s life and works. Each month features a guest moderator who will also offer his or her own comments on the text under discussion. Moderators include Carson biographer Linda Lear (Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature), Houghton Mifflin executive editor Deanne Urmy, and Cindy Van Dover, marine biologist and director of the Duke Marine Laboratory.

Besides Silent Spring, other Carson books to be discussed include Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, A Sense of Wonder, and Always Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, as well as a forthcoming anthology edited by Peter Matthiessen, Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson (Houghton Mifflin, April 2007).

And if you want more Carson-related books to consider for a reading display or a book club, check out Priscilla Coit Murphy’s What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of “Silent Spring“, Jim Lynch’s novel The Highest Tide, and The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, a new biography by Mark H. Lytle. Both Lynch and Lytle will be moderators on the online book club.

As an adult circulation desk attendant at the Fargo Public Library, I spent a lot of time reshelving Zane Gray novels—or at least trying to. I’d be in the middle of putting a book back in its place when I’d feel a soft tap on my shoulder. Sure enough, one of the male senior citizen regulars wanted to get their hands on the title before somebody else. This was in 1998, but I would bet my nonexistent horse that Gray’s books remain top circulators.

Of course, we all know that in public libraries on the whole, mystery rules genre fiction (see Barbara Hoffert’s “Budgets Rebound: Book Buying Survey 2006″), but a call for Louis L’Amour readalikes this week on Publib reminded me of the appeal of Westerns. It may very well be that only “little old men readers,” to use one poster’s expression, devour them like biscuits and gravy at a Texas canteen, but they are part of the public and deserve more of the same, so to speak. 

So who to turn to when your patrons have exhausted Mr. L’Amour’s bibliography? Here are some names that were mentioned:

• Tony Hillerman (who, one poster pointed out, was born in the same town as L’Amour, that is, Sacred Heart, OK)
• Frederick Chiaventone
• Terry C. Johnston
• Douglas C. Jones (Hasford Family Saga)
• Elmer Kelton
• Larry McMurtry
• Howard Frank Mosler
• Douglas Hirt
• Don Coldsmith
• Dusty Rhodes (author of “clean” Westerns based in Arkansas)
• Robert J. Conley (Cherokee specific)
• Lauran Paine
• Ralph Cotton
• Ralph Compton
• Elmer Kelton
• Alistair MacLean
• Max Brand

The furor over 2007 Newberry Medal winner Susan Patron’s The Higher Power of Lucky rages on, now with the help of graphic novel god Neil Gaiman. In his blog entry from yesterday, he says he loves librarians “unconditionally” but sticks it to the “rogue” types who have kicked up a fuss over, well, a scrotum (the word appears on the first page of Patron’s novel). Gaiman even inclues a link to a list of YA books probably already shelved in libraries that contain the dastardly noun. All I gotta say is, eat your heart out, penis.