Of Bugs and Men
Occasionally, a gender-equity conundrum stirs up the literary community. It goes something like this: Why is it that so many men are able to create believable female protagonists—think Wally Lamb’s Delores Price in She’s Come Undone, a much-ballyhooed Oprah pick—while supposedly so few women seem to be able to get inside the heads of men and tell their stories as convincingly?

Texas Tidbits
The mystique of Texas is unmistakable.

In fact, when you get right down to it, some countries aren’t as interesting as Texas. Maybe that’s because Texas has it all—martyrdom and triumph, colorful characters and rugged pioneers, huge cities and ghost towns, admirable deeds and shady dealings—all of it happening across a vast and incredibly varied terrain. Oh, have I mentioned cowboys, deadly gunfights, lost mines and sunken treasure, political shenanigans, feuds, rodeos, natural and man-made disasters, and multiple revolutions?

Booknotes