Lorrie Moore

An anagram, for those who've forgotten or never knew, is a word or phrase made by rearranging its letters, as now , won or dame , made . In the plural, as in the title of Lorrie Moore's first novel, the word means a game of making words by rearranging or adding letters. A baby, announces Benna Carpenter, heroine of the novel, is "not much more than a reconstituted ham and cheese sandwich. Just a little anagram of you and what you've been eating for nine months."

It should have been a triumphant moment. On a crisp fall night, author Lorrie Moore was about to receive the 1998 O. Henry award for the nation's best short story. An overflow crowd at the National Arts Club turned out to hear her read it. But something was wrong. Seconds after Moore began, she seemed uncomfortable. She only made it through the first few pages of "People Like That Are the Only People Here"--the harrowing tale of a toddler with cancer--before halting and returning to a chair.

Benoit-Marie Carr, remembering her 15th year and about to tell the story of it, announces what sounds like the considerable disadvantage that, "My childhood had no narrative." She comments that that time of her life "was all just a combination of air and no air," a "waiting for life to happen," having "no stories, no ideas, not really, not yet." It was, she says at last, "just a space with some people in it." And there you are.

PASS THE POLENTA: And Other Writings From the Kitchen, With Recipes. By Teresa Lust (Steerforth Press: 270 pp., $24) Like Laurie Colwin and M.F.K. Fisher before her, and many a practical cook before them both, Teresa Lust goes gunning for haute cuisine. "I did not inherit a silver palate through good breeding," she writes in this hearty collection of essays on food and family, "and I could not create one through perseverance.

The appearance of her third book, "Like Life," confirms my impression of Lorrie Moore as a writer with a wry, skittish sense of humor and enough verbal glibness to provide material for all the stand-up comics in Los Angeles, but with very little ability to create convincing characters or tell stories that invite us to suspend our disbelief as we read them or to brood upon them after they've been read.

It should have been a triumphant moment. On a crisp fall night, author Lorrie Moore was about to receive the 1998 O. Henry award for the nation's best short story. An overflow crowd at the National Arts Club turned out to hear her read it. But something was wrong. Seconds after Moore began, she seemed uncomfortable. She only made it through the first few pages of "People Like That Are the Only People Here"--the harrowing tale of a toddler with cancer--before halting and returning to a chair.

PASS THE POLENTA: And Other Writings From the Kitchen, With Recipes. By Teresa Lust (Steerforth Press: 270 pp., $24) Like Laurie Colwin and M.F.K. Fisher before her, and many a practical cook before them both, Teresa Lust goes gunning for haute cuisine. "I did not inherit a silver palate through good breeding," she writes in this hearty collection of essays on food and family, "and I could not create one through perseverance.

Novelist Louise Erdrich and journalist Katherine Boo took the top prizes at the National Book Awards in New York on Wednesday night. Although set half a world apart, both women's books express what Boo described as "small stories in so-called hidden places. " Erdrich won the fiction award for "The Round House," set among the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. The author of more than a dozen novels, Erdrich spoke in Ojibwe and English in her speech, citing "the grace and endurance of Native women.

As book covers go, you can't get any more "plain wrap" than the one created for Lorrie Moore's "Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?" With such a title you might expect this novel to sport an illustration of a frog in bed with an IV unit attached to its foreleg, or a hospital building with little froggy faces peering out the window. But this slim, 148-page volume features nothing more on its cover than the words "Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

Benoit-Marie Carr, remembering her 15th year and about to tell the story of it, announces what sounds like the considerable disadvantage that, "My childhood had no narrative." She comments that that time of her life "was all just a combination of air and no air," a "waiting for life to happen," having "no stories, no ideas, not really, not yet." It was, she says at last, "just a space with some people in it." And there you are.

The appearance of her third book, "Like Life," confirms my impression of Lorrie Moore as a writer with a wry, skittish sense of humor and enough verbal glibness to provide material for all the stand-up comics in Los Angeles, but with very little ability to create convincing characters or tell stories that invite us to suspend our disbelief as we read them or to brood upon them after they've been read.

An anagram, for those who've forgotten or never knew, is a word or phrase made by rearranging its letters, as now , won or dame , made . In the plural, as in the title of Lorrie Moore's first novel, the word means a game of making words by rearranging or adding letters. A baby, announces Benna Carpenter, heroine of the novel, is "not much more than a reconstituted ham and cheese sandwich. Just a little anagram of you and what you've been eating for nine months."

Joelle Dumas, educator: "Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing" by A.S. Neill (Hart). "A.S. Neill was the child psychologist who started the famous Summerhill School in mid-century England. His was a simple philosophy of pure love and freedom for children." **** Cathryn Shin, public defender: "Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse (Bantam). "Hesse takes his reader on a beautiful and sometimes painful journey of self-realization.

Buoyed by last year's success, the First Amendment Project again will auction off character-naming rights in forthcoming works by prominent authors, including Carl Hiaasen, Lorrie Moore and Edward P. Jones. The 2005 online auction raised $150,000 for the Oakland-based nonprofit and thrilled nearly two dozen fans who paid to see their names in print, according to Executive Director David Greene. The project is dedicated to protecting and promoting freedom of information, expression and petition.