At the Library

I went so you don't have to go -- five books. 

"How About Never - Is Never Good for You?  by Bob Mankoff   Henry Holt & co.   285 pages   $32.50

Mankoff estimates that the New Yorker magazine has published some 78,000 cartoons in the 20 years before he became the cartoon editor and that 14,000 of them were his.  I've always loved the New Yorker cartoons so how to submit, how to get in were both interesting to me. 

 In olden times, the cartoonist put about 10 cartoons in his portfolio and hied himself to the editor's office.  Today?  Probably via the internet. 
                                                   ***
"The Woman Who Walked Into Doors" by Roddy Doyle  Viking   226 pages   $22.95

I'd just finished Doyle's "The Gut" and liked it.  This title intrigued me so I brought it home.  Unfortunately it's a coming of age of an Irish woman named Paula Spencer and as such it's unreadable to me.   I hate "coming of age" as a theme.  You did it - everyone else did it - Next!  So the book goes back today.
                                                                     ***
"The Baby Boom; How It Got That Way" by P.J. O'Rourke   Atlantic Monthly Press   263 pages   $25

There are an estimated 75 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964 and I am not one of them.  Therefore, their doings are of no interest to me.  Back today.
                                                                ***
"The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England" by Ian Mortimer  Viking   393 pages   $27.95

This looks quite promising -- notable people of the time were Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake - but the book concerns itself with the ordinary people and their fields of interest such as food, clothing, shelter, sex, medicine (such as it was) - the bits of daily lives.  Looking forward to it.
                                                            ***
Mandatory Trash Read:  "Spelling It Like It Is"  by Tori Spelling and some other lady   Gallery Books  302 pages of All About Wonderful Me!  $26

You may remember I recently read her mother's book about her 70,000 sq. ft. house interspersed with nasty remarks about her daughter.  So I thought "Fair play" when I saw this one.  

They both deserve each other.