CALIFORNIA'S POET LAUREATE Al Young, California's newest poet laureate, and I were talking. I asked if he recalled the first poem he ever read. "That's interesting. I have to go all the way back to …

Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles: An Accidental Memoir by Kate Braverman. Graywolf Press, 2006; 218 pages; $15 FROM THE DUST JACKET: Kate Braverman grew up in Los Angeles in the late 1950s at …

Twilight of the Superheroes: Stories by Deborah Eisenberg. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006; $23; 240 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Deborah Eisenberg is nearly unmatched in her mastery of the short-story form. Now, in her …

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster. Henry Holt & Co., 2005; $24; 306 pages FROM THE DUST JACKET: Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life …

The Bill from My Father: A Memoir by Bernard Cooper. Simon & Schuster, 2006; 240 pages; $24 FROM THE DUST JACKET: Bernard Cooper's new memoir is searing, soulful, and filled with uncommon psychological nuance and …

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006; $28; 340 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: The dust storms that terrorized …

The Letters of Lytton Strachey edited by Paul Levy. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005, 720 pages; $40 FROM THE DUST JACKET: Lytton Strachey is one of the key figures in the cultural life of the …

A few years ago I ran across Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country. The novel's translator writes in an introduction to the novel: The west coast of the main island of Japan is probably for its latitude …

What I don't like about where I live is that snow never falls. I saw a glass ball that has a snowman in it. You shake the globe and "snow" falls. I bought it. I …

Billy Collins Live: A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space. Random House Audio, 2005; $19.95 The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems by Billy Collins. Random House, 2005; $22.95; 112 pages FROM THE DUST …

The Complete New Yorker: Eighty Years of the Nation's Greatest Magazine. Introduction by David Remnick. Random House, 2005; eight DVD-ROMs enclosed in a 123-page booklet, $100 FROM THE DUST JACKET: Every page of every issue …

The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons by Samantha Barbas. The University of California Press, 2005; $29.95; 420 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Hollywood celebrities feared her. William Randolph Hearst adored her. …

De Kooning's Bicycle: Artists and Writers in the Hamptons by Robert Long. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005; $23; 240 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Some of the 20th Century's most important artists and writers --- …

Writers: Photographs by Nancy Crampton; introduction by Mark Strand. The Quantuck Lane Press, 2005; $40; 224 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Here are more than a hundred wonderful and sensitive duotone portraits of our major …

The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece by Jonathan Harr. Random House, 2005; $24.95; 250 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo …

James Agee: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, Shorter Fiction, edited by Michael Sragow. Library of America, 2005; $75; 748 pages; 818 pages FROM THE DUST JACKET: VOLUME ONE: A …

The Coldest Winter: A Stringer in Liberated Europe by Paula Fox. Henry Holt and Company, 2005; 144 pages; $18. FROM THE DUST JACKET: In 1946, Paula Fox walked up the gangplank of a partly reconverted …

Veronica by Mary Gaitskill. Pantheon Books, 2005; $23; 227 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: The new novel from the author of Bad Behavior and Two Girls Fat and Thin, Veronica is about flesh and spirit, …

Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food by Steve Striffler. Yale University Press, 2005; 208 pages; $25.00. FROM THE DUST COVER: Anthropologist Steve Striffler begins this book in a poultry processing plant, drawing on …

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis. Knopf, 2005; $24.95; 308 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Imagine becoming a bestselling novelist, and almost immediately famous and wealthy, while still in college, and before long seeing your …

The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad by Stacy Horn. Viking/Penguin, 2005; $24.95; 320 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Between 1985 and 2004, 8,894 unsolved homicides were committed in New York City. …

Visiting Frost: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Robert Frost, edited by Sheila Coghill and Thom Tammaro. University of Iowa Press, 2005; 180 pages; $39.95 hardcover; $17.95 paper FROM THE DUST JACKET: A …

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books by Maureen Corrigan. Random House, 2005; $24.95; 201 pages FROM THE DUST JACKET: For the past 16 years, Maureen Corrigan has reviewed books for …

Envy: A Novel by Kathryn Harrison. Random House, 2005; $24.95; 301 pages FROM THE DUST JACKET: Will, a Brooklyn psychoanalyst and almost-identical twin, has a good sex life-with the woman he married. So why then …

Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte. Little, Brown and Company, 2005; 311 pages; $24.95. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Into our trash cans go dead batteries, dirty diapers, bygone burritos, broken …

The Trudeau Vector by Juris Jurjevics. Viking, 2005; 402 pages; $24.95. FROM THE DUST JACKET: As the international team of scientists at the spectacular Trudeau Research Center prepares for six months of unrelenting Arctic winter, …

A Mouth Like Yours by Daniel Duane. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005; 195 pages; $24. FROM THE DUST JACKET: A brutally honest novel about love and illusion from the author of Caught Inside. Cassius Harper, …

The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon by Donald Hall. Houghton Mifflin, 2005; 258 pages; $23. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Donald Hall's celebrated book of poems Without was written for his wife, …

The Georgics of Virgil: Bilingual Edition. A translation and introduction by David Ferry. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005; 202 pages; $30 FROM THE DUST JACKET: John Dryden called Virgil's Georgics, written between 37 and 30 …

The Good Priest's Son by Reynolds Price. Scribner, 2005; 288 pages; $26. FROM THE DUST JACKET On September 11, 2001, Mabry Kincaid -- a fiftyish art conservator -- is flying home after a much-needed rest …

Harry N. Abrams, 2005; 160 pages; $32.50 FROM THE DUST JACKET: From legendary jewelers such as Tiffany and Cartier to out-of-the-way flea markets, from chic design houses like Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel to tiny …

Beyond Black: A Novel. A John MacRae Book/Henry Holt & Company, 2005; 362 pages; $26 FROM THE DUST JACKET:A paragon of efficiency, well-schooled in the mundane tasks of an average existence, Colette took the next …

FROM THE DUST JACKET: Over the course of his life, Robert Lowell impressed those who knew him by his "refusal to be boring on paper" (Christopher Benfey). One of the most influential poets of the …

Two Trains Running. Pantheon Books; 2005; 112 pages; $25. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Electrifying, compelling, and ultimately terrifying, Two Trains Running is a galvanizing evocation of that moment in our history when the violent forces …

The History of Love. W.W. Norton & Company, 2005; 252 pages; $23.95. FROM THE DUST JACKET: A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure …

Rules for Old Men Waiting. Random House, 2005; $21.95; 210 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: A brief, lyrical novel with a powerful emotional charge, Rules for Old Men Waiting is about three wars of the …

The Poet of Tolstoy Park. Ballantine Books, 2005; $21.95; 274 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: "The more you transform your life from the material to the spiritual domain, the less you become afraid of death." …

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005; 752 pages; $35. FROM THE DUST JACKET: American Prometheus is the first full-scale biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, "father of the …

Do You Hear What I Hear? Religious Calling, the Priesthood, and My Father. Viking, 2005; 304 pages; $25.95. FROM THE DUST JACKET: At the first revelation that her father, a sixtyish university professor, wants to …

The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke. Written by Rainer Maria Rilke; edited and translated by Ulrich Baer; Modern Library, 2005; 215 pages; $19.95. FROM THE DUST JACKET: In this treasury of uncommon …

Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems. Edited by Edward Hirsch; The Library of America, American Poets Project, 2005; 158 pages; $20. FROM THE DUST JACKET: From the recollections of his youth in Michigan to the visionary longings …

The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets. University of Nebraska Press; 2005; 163 pages; $19.95. FROM THE DUST JACKET: "Kooser's Poetry Home Repair Manual is marked by impeccable clarity and focus of …

Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil. Copper Canyon Press, 2005; 108 pages; $15. FROM THE DUST JACKET: An unruly paean to American poetry, Cooling Time blurs the divisions between poem, memoir, and essay, while borrowing …

Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London. W.W. Norton, 2005; 314 pages; $24.95. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Mary Lamb -- a dutiful daughter, well liked by just about everyone -- killed her own …

Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey with His Son. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005; 158 pages; $17.95. FROM THE DUST JACKET: The recipient of two Booker Prizes, Peter Carey expands his extraordinary achievement with each new …

Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith. Crown Publishers, 2005; 320 pages; $24.95. FROM THE DUST JACKET: In a thoughtful examination of faith, Martha Beck chronicles her decision to leave …

I wrote Fat Girl because I'd read books that other fat women wrote about how they were fat. Most fat women didn't write the truth about fat. They didn't write about fat fat fat fat …

February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America. North Point Press, 2005; 166 pages; $22. FROM THE …

In Fond Remembrance of Me: A Memoir of Myth and Uncommon Friendship in the Arctic FROM THE DUST JACKET: Howard Norman spent the fall of 1977 in Churchill, Manitoba, translating into English two dozen "Noah …

Five Quarts: A Personal and Natural History of Blood. Ballantine Books; 2005; 309 pages; $23. FROM THE DUST JACKET: "We're born in blood. Our family histories are contained in it, our bodies nourished by it …