Pete Dexter, author of Paris Trout and Train, has got a new one out, titled Spooner ; I've just gotten through the first couple of chapters but I can tell it's going to be another winner.

Also, feminist author Marilyn French has written a semi-autobiographical novel about the Sixties and early Seventies titled The Love Children. The opening line quotes a Hemingway short story; "In the fall the war was always there but we did not go to it anymore". Makes me want to read this book and Hemingway again.

New World Monkeys by Nancy Mauro -- a debut novel, very good and different - everyone's actions are unpredictable. Non-formulaic is what I mean. ("Everyone" is mainly the couple at the center of the novel, Lily and Duncan).

There is a new book out by a first time author named Steve Hely, titled "How I Became a Famous Novelist" which is very funny and revealing about publishing as a business. The title is fairly self-explanatory. A good precursor to this is About the Author by John Colapinto, mentioned much earlier in this blog.

Jim Carroll died last week. He was only 60, but I guess that's a good run considering where he was coming from. His Basketball Diaries revealed a whole new world to me when I read it in undergrad. They made a movie out of it with Leonardo DiCaprio rather clumsily cast in the lead. JC himself had a bit part doing his song/poem People Who Died. Both worth accessing.