 | The American Future: A History by Simon Schama
Buy new: $19.79 / Used from: $9.06 Brilliant synthesis of American history.
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 | Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
Buy new: $14.28 / Used from: $2.11 Wow! I haven't seen typeface this big since I finished my Bobbsey Twins series! Between the large typeface and the multiple photographs, there isn't a lot of content in this book, but what is there is pretty dang funny.
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 | Epilogue: A Memoir by Anne Roiphe
Buy new: $20.71 / Used from: $0.44 I know a lady who is in desperate need of cheering up, and that lady is Anne Roiphe. Her book tells of her attempt to renew her life - or at least find a date -after her spouse passed away. Extremely well-written.
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 | Rules of Deception by Christopher Reich
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.01 I love a good suspense novel, but they are oh so hard to find. This tale of international intrigue was decent enough for me to finish it, but just barely.
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 | Columbine by Dave Cullen
Buy new: $17.81 / Used from: $12.75 Pretty good insight into the sickness that led to this terrible tragedy. Painful to read.
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 | Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir by Christopher Buckley
Buy new: $16.49 / Used from: $6.34 There is something inherently entertaining about the Buckley clan. Books about losing people are usually sad, but less so when the people in question had reached the fullness of their days, as the Buckleys had. I enjoyed this beautifully written portrait of the family.
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 | The Confessor by Daniel Silva
Buy new: $9.99 / Used from: $1.11 Pretty good, I guess. Genre writers I like: P.D. James, Grisham, Childs, Grafton, LeCarre, Larsson, Burke, George, Carter, Connelly, Leonard. Genre writers I affirmatively don't like: Patterson, Evanovich, "Ludlum", Baldacci, Coben, Cussler, Brown.
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![A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Jo [SUMMER OF HUMMINGBIRDS]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41bSB74t8mL._SL75_.jpg) | A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Jo [SUMMER OF HUMMINGBIRDS]
Buy used from: $18.00 No description I come up with could do justice to this brilliant and remarkably original book. It depicts the theme of hummingbirds as adopted by Gilded Age greats including Emily Dickinson, Martin Heade, the Beechers, and Mark Twain. A wonderful book.
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 | My Father's Tears and Other Stories by John Updike
Buy new: $17.13 / Used from: $12.00 Usually I do not like short story collections because just when you have done the work of submerging yourself in an alternate universe, the story ends and you have to start all over again. Not so with this book, where you are immediately immersed in a world presented by an author with unparalleled skills of perception and description. There is no one, but no one, to replace John Updike.
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 | No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Buy new: $13.64 / Used from: $1.92 Finally got around to reading this Pulitzer Prize winning book. Oh, to have been a fly on the White House wall during the Roosie years. Stellar work, Doris, just like always.
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 | Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown by Edmund L. Andrews
Buy new: $16.70 / Used from: $11.00 I don't know how the rest of us are supposed to cope when even the NY Times economics reporter falls for the subprime mortgage scam.
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 | Goodbye to a River: A Narrative by John Graves
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $2.51 Lyrical farewell to the Brazos River in Texas. I liked it very much.
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 | The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order by Joan Wickersham
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $6.00 Author tries taking analytical approach to understanding her father's suicide. Some things just don't make sense, no matter how you look at them. Three stars.
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 | Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding
Buy new: $16.50 / Used from: $13.35 Depressing.
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 | In the Moon of Red Ponies: A Billy Bob Holland Novel (Billy Bob Boy Howdy) by James Lee Burke
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.01 This author has a voice all his own and I love his books. In this one, lawyer Billy Bob and a whole crazy cast of characters try to figure out why the gov is after native American Johnny American Horse. Prepare to be transported.
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 | That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
Buy new: $15.17 / Used from: $11.00 Quietly dreary, although well-written. I prefer Richard Ford in this vein.
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 | The Geography of Love: A Memoir by Glenda Burgess
Buy new: $11.90 / Used from: $2.99 At first, I was distracted by the author's labored attempts to flesh out her "geography of love" metaphor. But in the end, I was quite moved by her account of her husband's painful demise.
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 | Heartwood by James Lee Burke
Buy used from: $151.01 Really good. See "Moon of Red Ponies, etc.", supra.
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 | Jericho's Fall by Stephen L. Carter
Buy new: $17.13 / Used from: $1.83 Dear Mr. Carter: Please take your copy of "Emporer of Ocean Park" down off the shelf. Reread it. Then try again. Thank you.
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 | The House on Fortune Street: A Novel (P.S.) by Margot Livesey
Buy new: $10.07 / Used from: $2.12 Certified chick lit. Lives intertwine in the House on Fortune Street (duh). I had trouble getting into the story at first, but by the end I could hardly put it down.
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 | Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement by Richard Brookhiser
Buy new: $18.15 / Used from: $0.29 Decent look at modern conservatism, with a dash of William F. Buckley thrown in.
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 | Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein
Buy new: $14.27 / Used from: $0.14 I remember most of this happening, so I did not find it that interesting. Although certainly it is thorough.
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 | The Gay Place by Billy Lee Brammer
Buy new: $16.47 / Used from: $6.38 This is supposed to be a classic based on 50's - 60's politics, based on LBJ. I just found it very hard to get into.
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 | Parallel Play: Growing Up with Undiagnosed Asperger's by Tim Page
Buy new: $17.16 / Used from: $15.00 The title of this book tells you it is going to be about growing up with an undiagnosed case of Asperger's Syndrome, but it really is not about that at all. It is about the author's great love of music, which has been capped off with a career as a respected music critic. Page is a very good writer, but this book has very little to do with Asperger's.
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 | Night Soldiers: A Novel by Alan Furst
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $3.60 Alan Furst is an extremely literate writer of spy fiction. In this one, a conflicted provocateur plays his role during World War II in Bulgaria, Spain, and Paris. Great.
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 | Legends by Robert Littell
Buy new: $11.20 / Used from: $0.01 CIA agent has lost himself in too many guises and is not sure who he is anymore. Had to work to finish this one - I don't know why - I just did.
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 | The Associate: A Novel by John Grisham
Buy new: $9.99 / Used from: $1.59 I have enjoyed all of Grisham's books, even the ones that got poor reviews. The Associate was no exception. Nice, lite reading after slogging through "Legends", supra.
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 | Symptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption by Christopher Kennedy Lawford
Buy new: $10.76 / Used from: $0.01 Here's a guy who has never forgotten for a second that he was born a Kennedy and a Lawford. He had apparently limitless opportunities, contacts, and financial resources, and threw it all away in favor of a lifetime of drug use. And he isn't a good writer, either. Sorry, pal.
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 | Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America by Kati Marton
Buy new: $17.16 / Used from: $16.16 The story of Marton's parents' imprisonment in pre-glasnost Hungary. Pretty good, I suppose.
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 | The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries) by P.D. James
Buy new: $17.13 / Used from: $1.04 I love P.D. James British mysteries, and this one is no exception. The story of a journalist who travels to Dorset for plastic surgery and lives not to see the morn. Who done it?!?
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