Bookworm

Gioia Timpanelli Sometimes the Soul (Vintage) Storytelling iswhat later becomes literature, says professional storyteller GioiaTimpanelli. Here, she looks at her novellas and their roots in fairy tales,myths and the oral tradition. Part 5 of the nine-part series "Women;, Writing and the Imagination".;

Rikki Ducornet The Fan-Maker?s Inquisition (Holt) Rikki Ducornetclaims that the imagination has no gender and no limitations. In aninvestigation of its dangers, we focus on the Marquis de Sade, theextermination of the Maya and erotic art. Part 4 of the nine-part series "Women;, Writing and the Imagination".;

Pamela Houston A Little More About Me (Norton) Houston identifiesherself as a ?human animal? and her writing as an exploration of thedistance she feels from conventional ideas about gender. Part 3 of the nine-part series "Women;, Writing and the Imagination".;

Annie Leibovitz Women (Random House) The photographer talks abouther identification with her subjects: women and what their faces say aboutwomen?s lives. Part 2 of the nine-part series "Women;, Writing and the Imagination".;

In the first of a series on women's writing and imagination, Isabel Allende uses feminist terms to describe her history of the California Gold Rush. (Part 1 of 9)

Roddy Doyle A Star Called Henry (Viking) Roddy Doyle, novelist of the Irish working class, takes a picaresque gallop through "the; Troubles" in an historical novel about an inconveniently heroic sod.

Frank McCourt 'Tis: A Memoir (Scribner) America's favorite Irishman talks about the dubious luxury of writing his second memoir while on airplanes and in waiting rooms--the hurtle from the tragic to the anecdotal.

Michael Frayn Headlong (Metropolitan) This British comic novel links an art-theft caper to both a philosophical inquiry into authenticity and an historical analysis of Breughel's painting. Frayn on the art of historo-philosophic comedy.

Fencing the Sky (Holt) Western American novelist James Galvin contrasts the eternal values of the natural world of his youth with the rapacity of the "land pimps" who infest the New West.

Scott Turow "Personal; Injuries" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) This master of the legal thriller talks about the complexity of his characters-a complexity achieved by an understanding of law morality and story-telling.

 Jamaica Kincaid's beautiful notes on gardening uncover the same imperialistic and racist assumptions she exposes in her fiction.

The author of Fight Club gives an intense and raw description of his world view.

Motherless Brooklyn (Doubleday) The western, the hard-boiled mystery, the sci-fi epic; these are the screens behind which Jonathan Lethem's oedipal dramas loom.

Kurt Vonnegut "Bagombo; Snuff Box" (Putnam) Kurt Vonnegut began by writing conventional short stories. Here, he talks about the development of his wild style, his comic voice and his moral code.

Chang-rae Lee says the Asian-American experience is written about "in a yellow light." Here, he turns off that light to penetrate a harsh reality.

Michael Ondaatje, discussing his poetry, explores the mystery of language itself--the language of his birth, its ancient poetry and mythologies.

Timbuktu (Holt) In life, as in his metaphysical mystery novels, the elegant Paul Auster implies and evades, implies and evades -- as he does in his newest novel, featuring a talking dog.

Wayne Johnston "The; Colony of Unrequited Dreams" (Doubleday); "The; Divine Ryans" (Anchor) In each of these novels a secret is revealed-a secret history in one, a family secret in the other. But why has this Canadian novelist, of the quality of Robertson Davies or Margaret Artwood, remained a secret to Americans?

Sylvia Brownrigg "The; Metaphysical Touch" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) In this novel, a romance, of sorts, is struck up via the internet. This, then, is a conversation about the creation of characters, how they reveal themselves, how they invent themselves, and what they tell us about that invisible presence, their author.

Edward Hirsch "How; to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry" (Harcourt Brace). Some poems are so strong that they leave permanent impressionson the reader; the poems Edward Hirsch introduces are meant to alter the soul.