The browser: A quick look at recent releases

With Patsy MacLemoore, Huneven boldly shows how low "bottom" can be for an alcoholic in denial. The history professor is smart, sassy and frequently soused. When Patsy winds up in the sheriff's holding cell, again, her glib attitude evaporates as the detectives detail the results of her most recent blackout: a woman and her 12-year-old daughter run over and killed in Patsy's driveway. With a plea bargain, Patsy gets only four years, but in reality it's a life sentence of grappling daily with the heartbreak she has caused. Huneven ably skewers both a prison system that does little to rehabilitate and the cult of personality found in some Alcoholics Anonymous groups. Patsy feels guilty for the tragedy, of course, but with a sharp twist Huneven thoughtfully explores the ways in which we place blame and whether any thoughtless act is excusable. The story, set in the early 1980s, has a subplot involving HIV/AIDS that subtly parallels Huneven's themes of loss, love and redemption. It's a smart, often wry and always compassionate tale.

KATHE CONNAIR, FEATURES COPY EDITOR

I never pegged Paul Shaffer as a Muzak artist, but his autobiography kept reminding me of elevator music as he reels off one benign, smooth, familiar, unadventurous anecdote after another. It doesn't swing; it glides. The bandleader, who so effectively winks at show business on "The Late Show With David Letterman," fails to bat an eye at anything that might put him out of tune with any future guests or his boss. Anyone looking for dirt on David Letterman's workplace dalliances will have better luck talking to an Ed Sullivan Theater usher. Shaffer does share a few memorable ditties -- Gilda Radner once dated Doug Henning, Britney Spears has never heard of Bob Hope -- but one expects more from someone who's spent nearly three decades at the heart of rock 'n' roll.