literary

In By the Book, editor Pamela Paul has compiled 65 interviews of a wide range of popular authors and famous readers from her column by the same name in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. If you are not familiar with the column you are certainly familiar with many of these modern-day intellects, ranging from poets to pundits, singers to scientists and actors to authors of modern fiction. Some of the questions asked seemed pretty standard fare and were asked of most of those featured: “What book is on your night stand now?”; “If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be?” 

In her previous memoir, A Year of Magical Thinking, author Joan Didion writes about the death of her husband. More recently in Blue Nights she writes about the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo. The recent memoir differs from the previous in that the tone is lower, the story more tragic. When Didion mentions (only once) that her daughter was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and that she drank too much, I appreciated the information but was glad the author left alone what she could not speak of and handed indirectly those things she had the courage to suggest. Quintana Roo might