The Browser: A quick look at recent releases

This collection of anecdotes about famous' authors dysfunctional moments is subtitled "The Feuds, Frolics and Follies of Literature's Great Adventurers, Drunkards, Lovers, Iconoclasts, and Misanthropes," and that pretty much tells it. Sample stories: Robert Frost heckles Archibald MacLeish at a poetry reading. William Wordsworth and Charles Dickens exchange vulgar insults. Wallace Stevens and Ernest Hemingway bruise each other in a drunken brawl. Dylan Thomas tries to seduce Shirley Jackson. Hemingway (a favorite in any book of literary anecdotes) starts reading a book over the shoulder of a woman he's having sex with. It's all highly amusing until about the 30th tale, when you start to feel a little drunk just by association. No surprise, the alcohol thing -- so many creative types through history have been drunks, in many cases in an effort to medicate mental illness of some sort. That's a fascinating subject, and no doubt it's been much examined, but this isn't the book that does it. This is a history-of-the-weird kind of book, good for an airport or beach reach. You'll chuckle a lot while reading it, but when you're done, you'll feel melancholy, for all the sorrow, loss and waste it describes.

PAMELA MILLER,

NIGHT METRO EDITOR

When biologist and naturalist Edward O. Wilson published his first novel, the title was no surprise to people familiar with his research and writing. The author of "Anthill" had previously co-written two nonfiction books about ants; one of them won a Pulitzer Prize. His novel is a story within a story about the natural world. The characters include humans, and ants. As a boy in rural Alabama, Raphael "Raff" Semmes Cody grows up exploring an unspoiled forest of longleaf pines, wildflowers and complex ant colonies. He learns to love the Lake Nokobee wilderness, and makes it his life work to study and protect it. It is a well-told story of conflict and compromise between conservationists and those who see real estate development as the natural order of things. The book will appeal to readers who enjoy fiction as well as science and nature.

DAVID SHAFFER,

BUSINESS REPORTER/EDITOR