Nonfiction: October 2007 Archives

What better subject to tackle on Halloween than ghosts? And who better to tell us about them than the real life Ghost Whisperer. No, I'm not talking about Jennifer Love Hewitt, who plays a version of her on TV; I'm talking about Mary Ann Winkowski, whose new book, When Ghosts Speak: Understanding the World of Earthbound Spirits (Grand Central Publishing, 238 pages, $24.99), gives us her version of her "gift," in three parts.

In Part I: Listening to Spirits, Winkowski tells the story of how her maternal grandmother discovered that her young granddaughter shared her gift of communicating with spirits. Apparently it's passed down through generations but somehow skipped Winkowski's mother...

Seeing as I work at a newspaper, Porcupine, Picayune & Post: How Newspapers Get Their Names (University of Missouri Press, 181 pages, $34.95) seemed like a no-brainer when I pulled it off the shelf. I thought it would be filled with interesting, fun, entertaining stories ...

Years ago, when my somewhat newlywed sister and brother-in-law were looking to buy their first house, they agreed to purchase a house with all of its contents. Turns out, the elderly woman who had lived there recently died and her son decided to unload everything in one fell-swoop. It was a treasure trove of furniture, kitchenware, jewelry and all manner of odds & ends.

While helping my sister clean out and sort through what we came to affectionately refer to as Dead Woman's House, we came upon a manuscript, way up in a closet. Both of us felt like we'd hit the jackpot. Was it a novel? A diary? What secrets could we find out about Dead Woman? Our minds wandered, and we both came to our senses and decided the right thing to do would be to return the manuscript to the son.

I was reminded of Dead Woman's Manuscript while reading through Regina's Closet: Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal by Diana M. Raab (Beaufort Books, 166 pages, $23)...

Ever wonder what a teacher does during summer break? I once saw a teacher from my high school delivering mail and wondered if he'd been fired. It didn't occur to me that because perhaps teachers were underpaid, they had to supplement their income during the summer instead of hanging out at the beach like we did.

The "crazy summer jobs" bullet point on the press release that came with Tales From the Teachers' Lounge (Delacorte, 307 pages, $25) by Robert Wilder is what made me pick up this book, which, frankly, I'm not sure what to make of...

You gotta love a book that includes a blurb by Paul Reubens (that's Pee Wee Herman to all you "Playhouse" fans): "If I were to read a book on David Sedaris it might be this one."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Sedaris (University of Minnesota Press, 249 pages, $17.95) by Kevin Kopelson is a curious little reader. Kopelson, a professor of English at the University of Iowa, turns his subject — David Sedaris, essayist, satirist, NPR contributor, best-selling author — inside out...