Oliver Sachs is a neurologist, and a prolific writer. In An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales,
he looks at seven individuals and how specific mental or neurological conditions affect their identities.

The title essay concerns Temple Grandin, a college professor who holds a Ph.D. and runs a small business.
She is also autistic. "The Landscape of His Dreams" and "Prodigies" both deal with persons who paint.
"A Surgeon's Life" concerns a highly successful surgeon who has Tourette's syndrome.

In each of these essays, Sachs seems to ask the question of what makes a person. Is "identity" the specific
medical conditions these people experience, or does "identity' transcend those conditions?

	While Rick was reading one Oliver Sachs book, I was busy plowing through 
	two of Sachs' other books back-to-back: Awakenings and 
	The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
 
	Awakenings  concerns the use of the drug L-DOPA on patients who suffered 
	Parkinson-related neurological problems as a result of being stricken with 
	sleeping sickness in the 1920s. L-DOPA was hailed as a miracle drug, but the
	effects that it had on the patients were quite varied. 

	The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat contains other case 
	studies of patients with out-of-the-ordinary neurological problems. As Rick 
	noted, Sachs spends a lot of time philosophizing about what is 
	"identity", "health" or "wellness", "personhood" and the intersection of 
	psychology and neurology.

	Each of these books was well worth reading. I recommend them both. However, 
	don't do what I did and read them back-to-back.  Give yourself plenty of 
	time to process one before you plunge into the next.

	Pat Barker's The Ghost Road  won the 1995 Booker Prize in the UK. 
	The story takes place during World War I, and focuses on the lives of two characters.    
	The depiction of the horrors--and attractions--of war is compelling.  
	Nonetheless, I found my interest wandering through the middle third of this 
	novel, and had to force myself to finish.  This is a good book.  I suppose 
	it an "important" book, at least according to the Booker judges.  I would 
	not consider it a great book.

	The cover blurbs of Carol Muske Dukes, Dear Digby compare this novel to Nathaniel West's 
	Miss Lonelyhearts. I remember reading the West novel back in college, but can't remember enough 
	of the story to write an essay "comparing and contrasting" the two books. Suffice it to say 
	that like Miss Lonelyhearts, Willis Digby receives letters from the public. But instead of 
	being an advice columnist, Digby edits the letters received by the editor of a feminist magazine.

	The book begins with a string of rather vulgar, graphic letters to the editor 
	and Digby's replies that I found rather off-putting. (And I'm no prude.) But once 
	I plowed ahead and got a sense of where the novel was heading, the language wasn't 
	so distracting anymore. This novel is about a woman confronting her past and coming 
	to some measure of wholeness. Digby is not your conventional heroine, but that 
	doesn't make her any less likable or her story any less compelling

Those of you who live in the Academy will enjoy Jane Smiley's Moo, a spoof of life
at a large Mid-Western land grant university. This book is a satire, no doubt about it,
and it is painted in large brush strokes. And since there are two universities near me, I didn't
have any trouble relating to the goings-on and enjoyed them immensely. However, Moo just isn't in the
same class as Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. The denizens of Moo U are easy targets
for ridicule and the chuckles keep on coming, but I didn't detect much going on beneath the surface.

	I admit it. I'm a sucker for any novel that takes place in the South. I just love 
	the colorful dialog--so much more picturesque than us Yankees! Set in Cold Sassy, 
	Georgia in 1906,  Cold Sassy Tree  by Olive Ann Burns is yet another 
	novel about a young boy/man coming of age.  Ms. Burns tells the story with 
	warmth and good humor and each of the characters was worth spending some time with.

	In The Patron Saint of Liars. Rose Clinton has a problem. She finds 
	herself unexpectedly pregnant, while married to a man she likes but does not love. 
	So, in the story told by Ann Patchett,  she leaves her husband, and disappears 
	from her home in California, ending up at St. Elizabeth's, a home for unwed mothers in 
	Habit, Kentucky.  Intending initially to give up the child, she decides at last to keep 
	Cecilia, and also to marry the St. Elizabeth's groundskeeper, Son (she is now a bigamist). 
	This remarkable first novel, like Patchett's Taft, is all about what 
	makes a family.  In this case, the family consists of Rose, Cecilia, Son, Sister Evangeline 
	(the patron saint?), the other sisters at St. Elizabeth, and a seemingly endless stream 
	of young girls whose task is to birth, then surrender their babies, and return home. 
	As you read the book, ask yourself about the "signs from God," and how they assemble 
	the remarkable family here.

	My Old Man and the Sea: A Father and Son Sail Around Cape Horn  is really two 
	books in one.  First, it is an exciting, and at times very funny log of two men, the authors 
	David and Daniel Hays, sailing a very small boat in the most dangerous waters in 
	the worldăCape Horn.  Second, it is the story of a parent and child coming to know each other
	as adults, and the refining of relationship which both must undergo.  Both "books" are excellent, 
	entertaining, and well worth reading. Having recently taken up sailing on my parents' boat (on the 
	St. Lucie River in Florida), I understood to some small degree the excitement and occasional 
	queasiness felt by Messrs. Hays. Being myself now an adult (and a parent) who must continually 
	work out and define relationships with adult parents-- who have known me for most of my life as 
	a dependent, and who occasionally (and, sometimes, with good reason) continue to question their 
	offsprings' judgment--I also appreciated the working-out of relationship between the two Hays sailors. 

Unlike many readers of your pages, I am not much of a mystery reader. I have, however, read three
mysteries recently, and they have helped me articulate what I enjoyăand what I do notăin contemporary
fiction. For me, the characters must interest and writing inspire; good plots do not alone suffice.

1. Caleb Carr, The Alienist. This book was well-received in the New York Times Book Review,
and the review made it sound very interesting. The plot involves a late nineteenth-century sleuth, using the then-current
psychological theories and Sherlock Holmes-like analysis, to hunt for a brutal serial killer of boy prostitutes. While the plot was
interesting enough, the characters had about as much depth as a sheet of mica. The writer simply did not cause me to be interested
in them or credibly explicate what motivated them. The prose was merely workmanlike. Already a hefty 600 pages long, this
book felt much longer.

2. Ruth Rendell, Simisola. This book--again highly received--left me unimpressed and glad
I was finished, for the same reasons as The Alienist. While the book was well-plotted and moved well, I
simply did not care about the characters. The writing was also uninspired.

3. Sharyn McCrumb, If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O. I really liked this book! Set in a
small town in Tennessee, the plot involves threats to a newcomer in town, sixties' folk singer Peggy Muryan,
and how sheriff Spencer Arrowood goes about solving the crime. All of this takes place in the context of planning
for Spencer's high school reunion. McCrumb allowed me to get inside and feel for her characters; provided
an interesting and convincing setting for her plot; and did it all in prose which can be both read and re-read.

Another genre I do not read often is the travel book. Nonetheless, I have four enjoyable--but very
different--works to recommend:

Whenever one travels the interstates these days, one encounters the behemoth RV, generally driven
by an older gentleman wearing a baseball (or John Deere) cap, with his nicely-permed wife at his side.
While I cannot picture Richard B. McAdoo in a John Deere cap, I do wonder if perhaps I have encountered
the author of Eccentric Circles: Around America in a House on Wheels. Mr. McAdoo, former book publisher,
is an amiable companion, and I found his musings about America and the people he encountered very satisfying.
If ever I do find myself wandering the byways of America in a Winnebago or similar land-yacht, I hope it is with a
companion such as McAdoo.

Part travelogue and part local history, Christine Jerome's An Adirondack Passage: The Cruise of
the Canoe Sairy Gamp, tells of her travels in a tiny canoe, following the 1883 passage of woodsman
George W. Sears through the Adirondacks in an equally diminutive craft. The world of Sears, with the great
camps (really rustic palaces, complete with servants) is far removed from the Adirondacks of today, and Jerome
evokes well an age long past. Her own trip was not as interesting to me, but the history makes this short
(200 pgs) book worth the time.

I'm not sure what Lars Eichner would think of my classifying as a travelogue his Travels with
Lizbeth: Three Years on the Road and on the Streets. As the title suggests, Eichner, who earned
his meager income writing short stories for gay magazines, tells of his experiences in Texas and California living on the
street. His chapters on dumpster diving and experiences with the healthcare system, are remarkable. Also, Eichner can
write! If you are offended by Eichner's frank and unapologetic descriptions of the gay community and his life as
a gay man, this book may not be for you. Otherwise, it is for good cause that the New York Times named it an
"Editors' Choice" in 1993.

Bob Simpson's When the Water Smokes: Tides and Seasons on a Wooden Boat might
be found in either the travel or the nature section of the bookstore. Simpson, who lives in the coastal area
of North Carolina, tells of salvaging and repairing a sunken fishing boat, sailing it for pleasure, and ultimately
traveling through the intercostal waterway to Florida. The book follows the seasons of the year, without much of a
"story." Simpson's wildlife and scenic descriptions are wonderful, but I found my mind wandering through much
of his story. I don't know if the fault for this is the writer, or that I usually don't read or enjoy much "nature" stuff.

Beverage salesman encounters marriage difficulties, buries himself in work and goes hunting. On its face
these elements--and not much more happens in Bret Lott's short novel The Man Who Owned Vermont
--do not seem especially promising. Nonetheless, Lott writes the day-to-day circumstances of his
characters so well, and gives those characters such life and interest, that I could not put this short novel down.
When he returns from hunting, protagonist Rick Wheeler is told, "One thing is, though, that you got to have
stories to tell. You have to. You have to share the stories you got, or you'll die." Rick Wheeler's learning this
difficult lesson is really the point of this very good story.