Weaver, artist, colorist, free spirit--Susan Sargent is all these and more. After having trained and worked in textile art in Scandinavia, Sargent brought her bold, free-wheeling color and pattern sensibility back to the United States, where it has had a considerable impact on modern country decorating. Once the province of dove greys, white, taupe and beige, the boundaries of country decorating have been pushed out by Sargent, who is interested in helping us not be afraid of pattern and color--and in fact, she urges us to embrace both.

The book is an exhilarating visual punch. Sargent blithely combines acid green, periwinkle, daffodil, a deep coral red and a host of other colors to show us that--far from being intrusive or hard to live with on a day-to-day basis
--color can be simultaneously stimulating and calming.

The practical advice in here isn't anything you haven't read elsewhere already, but the book is worth the price just to see Sargent's heady color experiments and her considerable control of pattern as well.

Tim Richardson's "Sweets: A History of Candy" is an extraordinary overview of confections from all over the world, and all through recorded history. He covers every continent (with special attention paid to the Brits and the Americans, who both have an enormous national sweet tooth) and every conceivable type of candy, from milk- and cream-based confections to those which have their foundations in nuts and fruits to those commonly enrobed in chocolate and beyond.

There is apparently nothing which cannot be made somehow into a sweet. Richardson reports that in India, "sherbet" is made from ground-up chickpea powder, sugar and baking soda. The Maoris, in the early part of the 19th century, commonly ate fern root "moistened with treacly brown sugar crystals from the pith of the . . . cabbage palm" and the Turks, known throughout the civilized world for the sheer breadth of their confectionary offerings, make pastries and nutmeats with the most fabulous names: lady's navel, glad eyes and sweetheart lips are but among a few.

Along the way, Richardson never fails to fascinate and inform. He tells us that writer Roald Dahl was told in childhood that licorice whips were made from rats' blood, tying this into other candy myths like the 1970s-era one about Bubble Yum being filled with spider eggs. Richardson has even managed to unearth some true-life horrific candies, such as "Kelly-in-a-Coffin," a popular 19th century sweet molded like, well, a baby in a coffin (more acceptable, apparently, when infant mortality was a more everyday part of life).

Despite the occasional unnecessary pomp (Richardson is overly fond of referring to himself in print as "The First International Confectionary Historian"), this sweet book is a special treat for anyone interested in either candy or history--or both!

You should know going in to Peter O'Toole's "Loitering with Intent" that it is intended less as a full autobiography (it ends with his teenage years shortly after the end of WWII) and more as an impressionistic canvas of growing up in Europe during 20th century wartime. Bearing this in mind, you will find this both immensely enjoyable and hauntingly well-written.

O'Toole's recollections of his parents--a gorgeous, flirtatious mother and a handsome, ne'er-do-well father--are rich with detail and emotion. He remembers also their friends, their tribulations (and pet mouse!) during WWII, and perhaps most vividly of all, his enforced sojourn in the English countryside when city life was deemed too dangerous for children. His account of going to church and going to a Protestant school (O'Toole was reared a good Irish Catholic boy) are especially hilarious, from the fights with bullies to the strict teachers to the sad family with whom he lodged. One especially funny tale has to do with a school picnic. When the Protestant teacher instructs the class to pray for good weather for the picnic, they all promise to. Of course picnic day arrives and is rainy. The teacher disapprovingly sniffs, "Well, I see God didn't answer our prayers." O'Toole, eight years old and astounded by this non-Catholic outlook, cries out, "Yes, He did! He said no!"

Young O'Toole is obsessed with Adolf Hitler, who makes an appearance every several dozen pages. O'Toole gets at the maniacal dictator's fascination for a young, feverishly imaginative boy with some extraordinary stream-of-consciousness writing:

"Hitler had been poison-gassed [in WWI]. Daring despatch runner that he was, twice he was got. Shrapnel swept a bit of his shin away. After two years of carnage, fighting trench warfare at the front, he was got. Into beetroot fields. stream bottoms, slag heaps, pitheads, broken smoking juts of towns and villages, burning vanished woodlands, into downs and rides and hillsides, the trenches had been dug deep down into the mud and earth . . . hydra-headed, destroyed, constantly relocated, these barbarous earthworks moved and split the countrysides of France and Belgium. Six million soldiers hopped off sandbag parapets and were killed. Many miles of no man's lands ran between the Allied and the German trenchlines, they, too, dying and being reborn in other fields. Barbed-wire gardens to crouch in and be killed."

If only the book explored more of O'Toole's life as a world-renowned actor . . . but it doesn't. It stops shortly after the war and we must all hope that he soon writes a follow-up volume. Had he not been an actor, Peter O'Toole could have made a splendid career as a writer. Thoroughly enjoyable!

Travel books have never, ever interested me--when I hear that one is particularly good, I tend to think, "Yeah, that was THEIR experience, but there's no way it can translate . . . " My thinking has always been that you yourself have to be somewhere, live somewhere, to really know what it's like or else what's the point?

My views on this changed when my sister gave me a copy of Leila Hadley's extraordinary "Give Me the World." A travel book in name only, this work by a great-great-great-great-granddaughter of author James Boswell is more a journey of self-discovery than it is about the places she visits--but the writing is so fierce, so fine, so rich and complex, that as a travelogue it is still head and shoulders above 90% of what else is out there cluttering the travel book bookshelves. Case in point:

Of trying to learn Siamese: "Learning to recognize such simple signs as DANGER, WOMEN and EXIT was as difficult as memorizing the patterns in filigreed silver."

Of the Siamese attitude towards life: "Although Siamese, as good Buddhists, do not believe in taking life, they see nothing wrong in rescuing a fish from drowning. If the creatures die on the bank or in a net, it is probably from exhaustion due to their long immersion, they say, and surely there can be no harm in eating them."

Of Bangkok's reputation as a den of iniquity: "To make sure that one missed nothing of Bangkok's [physical] wonderland, the Siamese had thoughtfully provided a 'Baedeker' . . . in the preface [it noted], 'This pocket book is somewhat inevitable to be kept ready at the hands.' "

Of her opium den experience: "I thought ahead to the times when, back in New York, I would say, 'By the way, I once had an interesting experience in an opium den' or even, 'Opium? Why, of course, I smoked it in Bangkok.' "

Of the difference between western and Malayan clothing: " . . . the people not in western costume looked out of place and a little garish, like partygoers in evening clothes coming home at breakfast time."

Of cooking on board a small boat: " . . . breakfast was a tempestuous affair. Vic darted about the lounge scaling coffee mugs at us, swearing at the stove, in a pother that the biscuits were burned on the bottom and raw on top, rattling and banging pans, and all the while keeping up a running flow of conversation about an article one of the men's adventure pulps had ordered him to rewrite, about the things he wanted to do--all the wildly impractical things like walking from Cairo to Morocco, chartering a dhow to explore the Baluchistan coast, leading an archaeological expedition to Alaska, and then his talk coursed off onto the subject of women and their extraordinary behavior."

On jellyfish: "We were almost abreast of the muddy current when a myriad of filmy jellyfish streamed past the hull. They were beautiful things, delicately colored--some like fragile bladders of Venetian blown glass, some like the pinky-fawn undersides of toadstools with pearly streamers."

On steering the boat at dawn: "The dawn watch. It was one of those chance rewards of travel, a magic moment, untranslatable from its time and place, a moment which lives on perpetually, with all its colors made fast. Just then there was no sign of dawn. The masts were still black against the luminous darkness of the sky, the sails grey in the starlight. There was a thrilling flush of wind against my skin."

On the Taj Mahal: "It shimmered. It glowed. It had the magical property of not looking man-made. Its marble walls had the tender radiance of seashells, petals and moonlit snow."

I could go on and on (and already have!), but really, you have to read the book to get more of this gorgeous prose and see a sheltered girl--yes, a girl, despite her twenty-five years and her six-year old son--blossom into a woman of the world as she makes her way around it. Highly recommended!

Simon Winchester's "The Professor and the Madman" is one of those tales that you wouldn't believe if you didn't know it to be non-fiction. James Murray, editor of the then-in-progress "Oxford English Dictionary," finds out that Dr. W. C. Minor, one of his steadiest and most brilliant contributors, is not what he seems.

This astonishing discovery, with all its attendant ramifications, is played out against a backdrop of the American Civil War, Victorian England, the English urge to be best at whatever is attempted, late 19th-century attitudes about mental illness and more. Murray is portrayed as serious from the start about education and learning--this is a boy who by the age of fifteen had a working knowledge of French, Italian, German and Greek and who inscribed on the flyleaf of his primer, "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER." Though the other main character, Dr. W. C. Minor, would at first appear to be similar in many ways to Murray--well brought-up, brilliant, slightly eccentric--the similarities end there. Minor had the misfortune to serve as a medic in the Civil War, a time when, according to Winchester, "The common soldier was thus in a poorer position than at any time before: he could be monstrously ill treated by all the new weaponry, and yet only moderately well treated with all the old medicine." Minor's mental collapse begins here, on the bloodied American battlefields, and continues once he departs for England.

In addition to the human drama at work here, we are shown the history of dictionaries for English-speakers. It is a fascinating journey. Samuel Johnson apparently wrote a terrific dictionary--one of the first really complete ones--but even this fine effort was marred by Johnson's inability to resist inserting his own viewpoints in the definitions (for "oats" Johnson wrote, "A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people"). Winchester also examines the fiendish difficulty of definitions themselves in the following passage:

"Defining words properly is a fine and peculiar craft. There are rules--a word (to take a noun as an example) must first be defined according to the class of things to which it belongs (mammal, quadruped), and then differentiated from other members of that class (bovine, female). There must be no words in the definition that are more complicated or less likely to be known than the word being defined. The definition must say what something is, and not what it is not . . . If the definer contrives to follow all these rules, stirs into the mix an ever-pressing need for concision and elegance--and if he or she is true to the task, a proper definition will probably result."

"The Professor and the Madman" is a heady mix of history, drama, mystery, thriller and truth--whatever that truly means, however it be defined--and I highly recommend it.

Brad Paisley was new to me until I listened to this, his third album. "Mud on the Tires" features songs written by Paisley (except for a couple of the seventeen tracks here) and featuring his guitar playing and vocals. It's not only strong musically, it's a joy to listen to.

Among the many pleasures here are "Celebrity" (a scathingly funny indictment of how many celebrities behave) and "That's Love"--all about the "perjury we commit" to keep loving each other. Both showcase Paisley's considerable and sly sense of humor. Ballads like "Hold Me in Your Arms (And Let Me Fall)" and "Whiskey Lullaby" (featuring Alison Krauss on harmony) are equally good--Paisley has a real gift for the vivid lyric. Perhaps the two best tracks are "Make a Mistake" and its immediate follow-up, "Make a Mistake With Me"--the latter of which is purely instrumental--and "Spaghetti Western Swing." Stinging guitars and banjos make both tunes fly. I recommend the CD highly!

Jim DeFede's slim little book is called "The Day the World Came to Town"--a title which almost makes it sound like a child's book. It examines the situation in Gander, Newfoundland on September 11th, 2001 and the several days after. This is when Gander residents took into their homes and hearts the thousands of stranded airplane passengers and crew who ended up in their town when all planes were ordered to land wherever they could.

The book is multi-faceted with an enormous cast of characters, all of whom DeFede manages to keep both real and distinct from one another. We hear tales of couples coming home to America from adopting abroad; big-wig businessmen finding themselves in the same plight as their less-well-known fellow passengers; the mother of a fallen firefighter waiting to find out what happened to her son as she sits nervously in Gander; and perhaps most upliftingly of all, the beginnings of love between two stranded strangers who would never have met were it not for the horrific events of that fateful day.

I came to tears several times throughout the book. It is a much-needed tonic for anyone who still feels as though they can't quite get a grasp on what took place in America on September 11th. It is a little cameo of a book--a miniature reminder that in the face of extraordinary evil, people will always rally to summon up kindness, generosity and the best of what humanity has to offer.

Meghan Daum's "The Quality of Life Report" is a TERRIFIC book. I happened to start reading it one weekend when my husband and kids were away, and the first night finally went to bed at 3:00 AM, although I wanted to stay up and just keep reading. I finished it the next afternoon, and it was an altogether delicious use of my time. This is a most satisfying novel.

"The Quality of Life Report" is a semi-autobiographical tale of one Lucinda Trout, a Manhattan TV producer who is bogged down by doing segments on sushi, the thong underwear craze and so on. She is disgusted by her job, her boss, her life. After having done a piece on meth addiction in the midwestern United States, she moves there and continues to do pieces called "The Quality of Life Report" for her Manhattan TV show.

The move is a jolt for Lucinda, but she settled in fairly quickly. She meets all sorts of interesting people--the book fairly teems with characters, all of whom are drawn so full-bloodedly and realistically that you feel as though you are reading about people you know yourself. Without going into the amount of detail that would give away the book's denoument, suffice it to say that Daum doesn't stoop to the pat happy ending--and yet her ending makes perfect, delicious sense.

The book is often laugh-out-loud funny. Daum's writing is wonderful, as you can see by the samples below:

"Do you ever get, like, harassed?" I asked, now a probing journalist in the Katie Couric vein, unafraid of raising the tough questions. "I mean, being openly gay and living out in the country and everything."

Sue looked bewildered. "No." She said this as if I had asked whether coyotes ever came near the house, opened the door, and sprawled out on the couch to watch "Friends."

* * *

[Lucinda is having a drink with her friend Daphne and tells Daphne that she's contemplating moving to the midwest.]

"I think I might have to move there. I think the train has left the station. I have the idea. I can't not do it."

"Uh oh," she said. "Alternative Lifestyle Alert."

When my friends and I were not discussing the lack of available men, we were usually discussing moving out of New York. Again, the subjects were related, though not entirely. Someone was always coming up with an escape plan, a way to lower the cost of living, a way to increase the odds of meeting a guy who actually knew how to hammer a nail into a piece of plywood. The plans varied according to the books we'd recently read, the movies we'd recently seen, the city most recently featured on "The Real World." We'd say Austin, Seattle, Paris, New Delhi. When somebody came home from an unusual location--a wedding in Nova Scotia or a snorkeling trip in Australia--and spent two weeks obsessing about moving into a yurt on the Bay of Fundy we called it an Alternative Lifestyle Alert. The guiding principle of the Alternative Lifestyle Alert was that it was never acted upon.

* * *

Daum especially hits the nail precisely on the head when she describes the different way the midwest feels to Lucinda:

But descending into Prairie City had a way of making me feel that there was virtually no chance of crashing. There was so much space, so many miles of flat, open fields that landing a plane seemed less a matter of hitting a target than of simply getting close enough.

In New York, this had not been the case. At LaGuardia, the smallest error--an extra few degrees of bank to the right, a misheard syllable from a rapid-fire controller--would land you in Flushing Bay. The same principle applied down on the ground. There, the margin for error was so small it was hardly there at all. In New York, you looked to the left and the right and back again, your head spinning from fear and indecision. The wrong college, the wrong job, the wrong direction on the A train could overturn you. We were so careful in the city. We checked ourselves at every corner. We were careful whom we lent things to, whom we invited inside, whom we fell in love with. Like planes stacked up over the airports, we didn't make a move until we knew we were cleared. We dated for years before risking cohabitation. We didn't marry until we were sure we couldn't do better. We didn't have children until it was almost too late. To act sooner, to not agonize over every option until they all practically lost their appeal, would have been to risk disaster. We were packed so tightly and moving so rapidly that one misstep could knock us permanently off course. We always seemed an instant away from losing everything.

* * *

Daum so perfectly describes Lucinda's awakening (of sorts) and her foibles and her meandering path that you are just amazed when you consider that this is a novel. Such a fully realized modern female character, with such depth and breadth and the full complement of true, human contradictions! It's a breath of fresh air. I really can't recommend the book highly enough--it was truly a pleasure to read and I can't wait for Daum's next book.

Mary-Lou Weisman's "Traveling While Married" is an absolute hoot of a book, and a terrific gift for any married couple who loves to travel together. Weisman's writing is wise without being snooty, and hilarious because of the truths about which she writes. She has nailed the experience of traveling while married dead-on, and the result is a book filled with laughs. You'll find yourself exclaiming, "That's so true!" The funniest essay in the book, "Doing Nothing," explores the whole fallacy of the relaxing beach vacation:

"Day two was always a sobering experience. We would learn for the first, second or third season in a row that we could not read on a beach. Too hot even for Jackie Collins. And so, like two amphibious creatures in a PBS nature documentary, we would lie on the sand until some eternal signal as old as life itself would tell us that we had preheated to 350 and it was time to make our way to the sea. There, we would submerge and swim about for several minutes before retracing our steps up the beach to resume our patient vigil on the sand. After a preordained period of time, the amazing cycle of nature would begin again, and back we'd go to the sea. And we'd do all this without ever laying eggs."

Weisman covers rental properties, spa vacations, whitewater rafting, cooking in other people's kitchens, inviting people to vacation with you, packing and just about every other travel topic under the sun. The result is wonderful--highly recommended.

Lynda Barry's "One! Hundred! Demons!" is just another astonishingly wonderful book in a long line of astonishingly wonderful books. Using Japanese inks and brushes, she categorizes the demons of her childhood. We see everything from resilience to hate to common scents, from magic to "girlness" to dogs to cicadas.

Among the many pleasures of the book--Barry's extremely simple yet enormously evocative illustrations, the awesome ear she has for the way children speak to each other, the cheerful colors belying much of the sadness inherent in her work--is the section entitled "Magic." This regards Barry's rejection, at age thirteen, of her two-years-younger best friend. It's easy to tell that even more than thirty years later, Barry feels shame over this episode. She so deftly sketches the psyche of her thirteen-year old self that we are left alternating between complete understanding of her actions and rueful sorrow that she couldn't ignore the age difference.

This is a funky, trippy book that's simultaneously a quick read and something you want to linger over the second (and third, and fourth) time you read it. Long may Lynda Barry rule!