'Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children'
By Eden Ross Lipson
Three Rivers Press, $18
This is the third edition, the first in paperback, by the children's book editor of the New York Times Book Review.
This is an easy-to-use guide introducing 1,001 of the best children's books of the 20th century, from Mother Goose to Harry Potter and after. It's divided into six sections — wordless, picture, story, early reading, middle reading and young adult. Each numbered entry includes a brief review, as well as information about the author, illustrator, publisher and major awards.
It's a treasure chest for both parents and grandparents who want to find high-quality books for the children they love. — Dennis Lythgoe
'Schmidt Delivered'
By Louis Begley
Knopf, $25
Begley has written about his anti-hero, Albert Schmidt, before — in "About Schmidt." Schmidt is a traditional gentleman and lawyer of the old school, whose practice in the first book withered, forcing him into early retirement.
In the new book, Schmidt is back from the brink. After the death of his wife, he marries Carrie, a Puerto Rican waitress, and finds a new life and a May-December relationship in his Hamptons home.
In business, he becomes involved with a billionaire, Michael Mansour, who is both odd and hard to figure. The book stands out for its inside knowledge of America's upper class and its subtle, intellectual edge. Begley tells a good story with elegance and wit. — Dennis Lythgoe
'Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer'
By Richard Holmes
Pantheon, $30
Holmes is a highly successful British biographer who has won numerous literary prizes for his work. In this book, he takes a lingering look at the process of writing biography, specifically, his own 30-year career. Critics have consistently called his work novelistic, even though he is writing about real people and real lives.
The only thing is — he frequently gets sidetracked, "led astray by a path or an idea, a scent or a tune."
Whether he is writing about Chatterton, Shelley, Coleridge, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Mary Wollstonecraft (the earliest known feminist) or Robert Louis Stevenson, he regards biography as a kind of literary game. He sees it as a puzzle whose pieces have to be put together so that readers can understand why things happened as they did. For anyone who loves reading biographies, this book is an intellectual delight. — Dennis Lythgoe