Jack Gaughan was one of my favorite SF artists. His covers for Jack Vance’s The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle as well as Harlan Ellison’s Paingod and Other Delusions and Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney are classics. Luis Ortiz gathers those wonderful artworks with hundreds of sketches in Outermost. This book captures Jack Gaughan’s life with its successes and failures. The slow collapse of science fiction magazines, the changing tastes of paperback editors, and the new markets for artwork on children’s books mirror Gaughan’s career. Sadly, Gaughan died of cancer in 1985. But his marvelous work lives on. Outermost crystallizes Gaughan’s work and life. GRADE: A
OUTERMOST: THE ART & LIFE OF JACK GAUGHAN Edited by Luis Ortiz
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I’m a sucker for a book like Bound to Last. Thirty writers pick their most cherished book. Ray Bradbury admits in his Introduction that reading Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination turned him into a writer. For Francine Prose, it was Anderson’s Fairy Tales. For Karen Joy Fowler, it was The Once and Future King. Sigrid Nunez picks Mythology as the book she most cherishes. Reading the essays these writers wrote about the books they love make me want to drop everything and read the books they recommend. I bet you’ll feel the same way, too. GRADE: A
If you’re lucky enough to have a newspaper that reprints articles from the Washington Post, you may have read some of the dazzling pieces in The Fiddler in the Subway: The Story of the World-Class Violinist Who Played for Handouts. . . And Other Virtuoso Performances by America’s Foremost Feature Writer. The “fiddler” in question is Joshua Bell, the virtuoso violinist who played in the Washington, D.C. subway and was mostly ignored. Only a few of the commuters recognized him. Mystery fans will enjoy Weingarten’s article on Leslie McFarlane who wrote many of the Hardy Boy novels under “Franklin W. Dixon.” I’ve been a fan of Gene Weingarten for years. If you haven’t read his work, you’re missing out on a masterful writer. Fiddler in the Subway is a terrific collection of Weigarten’s work. GRADE: A
I’ve been an admirer of Tony Dungy for years. I liked his quiet, but firm style of coaching. Dungy brought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the brink of the Super Bowl (they won it the next year after Dungy was fired–Jon Gruden got the credit). Fortunately, the Indianapolis Colts hired Dungy and he took them to the playoffs and finally to a Super Bowl win. Tony Dungy’s The Mentor Leader: Secrets to Building People and Teams That Win Consistently holds plenty of great football stories. Dungy talks about helping Michael Vick rebuild his career and his life. He also talks about the huge effect Chuck Noll, coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, when Dungy was a player (and later a coach) had on his life. The chief secrets Dungy shares is that leaders must be teachers and role models. Nothing earth-shattering, but execution is everything. GRADE: B
Sigrid Nunez’s latest novel, Salvation City, revolves around a deadly flu pandemic that kills millions in the U.S. and around the world. Cole, a teenager whose parents die in the plague, finds himself adopted by a fundamentalist religious couple. Cole, also a plague victim, recovers with some memory problems. As Cole tries to adjust to his new parents and a whole new post-plague world, the past starts to exert its power as his memory slowly returns. I found Salvation City reminiscent of post-nuclear holocaust novels of the 1950s. This book could also have been marketed as a Young Adult novel. GRADE: B 