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Reading List: Recent Books by Local Authors
Peter Biskind, author of such film classics as Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures writes an intimate, revealing and balanced biography of a Hollywood legend in Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America (Simon & Schuster, 2009). In it, Biskind makes the case that, for all his excesses, Beatty was an auteur long before most Hollywood “cognoscenti” knew what that was.
A frequent contributor to Rural Intelligence, Amy Cotler, who’s been living and cooking in the Berkshires for nearly two decades and was the founding director of Berkshire Grown, is one of the original locavores. Her most recent book, The Locavore Way: Discover and Enjoy the Pleasures of Locally Grown Food (Storey Publishing) was published in January 2009. Her previous books include Fresh from the Farm: The Farm to School Cookbook (MA Department of Education, 2007) and The Secret Garden Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s the Secret Garden (Harper Collins, 2000).
Ruth Reichl—the best-selling memoirist, editor of Gourmet and Columbia County weekender has written another memoir, Not Becoming My Mother. (Penguin Paperback, $19.95)
Arnold Lobel’s post-humously published illustrated book, The Frogs and Toads All Sang.
Sarah Montague new book The Adult Rider: A Practical Guide for First-Time Equestrians and Adults Getting Back in the Saddle is practical and inspirational.
Merritt Bookstore
Millbrook, NY
On the heels of her first novel, Little Pink Slips, former McCall’s editor-in-chief Sally Koslow has just come out with another comic novel, The Late, Lamented Molly Marx, a stylish who-done-it set on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. If all Chick Lit were this funny and well written, the genre would have a better rep. (Ballantine Books, $23)
FLIP! For Decorating (which you can get a feel for in the slide show above) by Elizabeth Mayhew is, according to The New York Times “extremely satisfying, like watching a stop-action film, and very, very useful.” (Random House, $24)
When George Washington was born, the New World had virtually no artists. Over the course of his career, Washington became the subject of choice for an emerging band of painters and sculptors. He posed often, if reluctantly, transforming the culture of our country in the process. Hugh Howard, author of The Painter’s Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art will read from his new book and discuss the process of researching it. (Bloomsbury Press, $26.95)
With Don’t Cry, Mary Gaitskill, “the onetime mistress of transgression, the former high priestess of literary cool, has written a deeply compassionate book,” according to Claire Dederer, writing for Slate. (Pantheon, $23.95)
In his moment-by-moment insider’s account of the fall of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street author William D. Cohan captures the pervasive Wall Street culture that led to the world-wide financial meltdown. (Doubleday, $27.95)
