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For those Kindle readers who, like me, read for entertainment, scanning the book reviews in People magazine is good way to check out new people-related books - celebrity bios, popular novels, absorbing nonfiction - just hitting bookstore shelves. Featured in the November 21st issue of People:

11/22/63, by Stephen King. Scribner, 2011. Print Length: 866 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (123 reviews). People's slant: "At 849 pages, this is a mammoth but entertaining book..." Kindle edition $16.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination...Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students - a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald..." - Publisher.

Shockaholic, by Carrie Fisher. Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print Length: 176 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (6 reviews). People's slant: "Fisher is a girl who knows how to tell a story." Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"It’s been a roller coaster of a few years for Carrie since her Tony- and Emmy-nominated, one-woman Broadway show and New York Times bestselling book Wishful Drinking. She not only lost her beloved father, but also her once-upon-a-very-brief-time stepmother, Elizabeth Taylor. And as if all that weren’t enough, she also managed to lose over forty pounds of unwanted flesh - not by sawing off a leg (though that did cross her zapped mind) but by doing what might be termed 'wishful shrinking,' all the while staying sober and sane-ish. And she wants to tell you, dear reader, all about it...and more." - Publisher.

God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem, by Darrell Hammond. Harper, 2011. Print Length: 308 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (11 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"From his harrowing childhood filled with physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his parents, to a lifetime of alcoholism and self-mutilation, psychiatric hospitalizations, and misdiagnoses, to the peak of fame and success as the longest-tenured cast member of Saturday Night Live, Darrell Hammond delves into the darkest corners of his life, both in front of and behind the camera, with brutal honesty and fierce comic wit. On the back of his hilarious dead-on impressions of Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Chris Matthews, and a hundred other prominent figures, Hammond was invited into the inner sanctums of the country's political leaders, including three presidents, all the while suffering debilitating and largely undiagnosed mental anguish...His long fight for sobriety, filled with heartbreaking relapses, was propelled by a desire to do right by his young daughter and to set the record straight about how he fell so low while achieving such heights." - Publisher.

Briefly Mentioned:

The New Kids, by Brooke Hauser. Free Press, 2011. Print Length: 320 p. NONFICTION. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (9 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"Some walked across deserts and mountains to get here. Others flew in on planes. One arrived after escaping in a suitcase. And some won’t say how they got here. These are 'the new kids': new to America and all the routines and rituals of an American high school, from lonely first days to prom. They attend the International High School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, which is like most high schools in some ways - its halls are filled with students gossiping, joking, flirting, and pushing the limits of the school’s dress code - but all of the students are recent immigrants learning English. Together, they come from more than forty-five countries and speak more than twenty-eight languages. A singular work of narrative journalism, The New Kids chronicles a year in the life of a remarkable group of these teenage newcomers - a multicultural mosaic that embodies what is truly amazing about America." - Publisher.

The Garner Files, by James Garner and Jon Winokur. Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print Length: 290 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (21 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"After suffering physical abuse at the hands of his stepmother, Garner left home at fourteen. He became Oklahoma's first draftee of the Korean War and was awarded with two Purple Hearts before returning to the United States and settling in Los Angeles to become an actor. Working alongside some of the most renowned celebrities, including Julie Andrews, Marlon Brando, and Clint Eastwood, Garner became a star in his own right, despite struggles with stage fright and depression. In The Garner Files, this revered actor and quintessential self-made man recalls 'trying to decipher' William Wyler with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, breaking Doris Day's ribs, having a "heart-to-heart and eyeball-to-eyeball" with Steve McQueen, being 'a card-carrying liberal—and proud of it,' and much more." - Publisher.

The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Family Memoir, by Randy Fertel. University Press of Mississippi, 2011. Print Length: 288 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (10 reviews). Kindle edition $15.40. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Ruth Fertel was a petite, smart, tough-as-nails blonde with a weakness for rogues, who founded the Ruth's Chris Steak House empire almost by accident. Rodney Fertel was a gold-plated, one-of-a-kind personality, a railbird-heir to wealth from a pawnshop of dubious repute just around the corner from where the teenage Louis Armstrong and his trumpet were discovered. When Fertel ran for mayor of New Orleans on a single campaign promise - buying a pair of gorillas for the zoo - he garnered a paltry 308 votes. Then he purchased the gorillas anyway! These colorful figures yoked together two worlds not often connected - lazy rice farms in the bayous and swinging urban streets where ethnicities jazzily collided. The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak is a New Orleans story, featuring the distinctive characters, color, food, and history of that city - before Hurricane Katrina and after. But it also is the universal story of family and the full magnitude of outsize follies leavened with equal measures of humor, rage, and rue." - Publisher.

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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.


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