Molly Ivins December 8AUSTIN, Texas — Attention, Christmas shoppers! The annual Book List is here already. An unprecedented event — I usually manage to get this done by Christmas Eve, when my fellow procrastinators are down at the drugstore desperately trying to decide whether their loved ones would prefer denture cream or a laxative. But this year, I present a list of Some Books I Like in timely fashion; now all you have to do is remember where you put it when you get around to starting your shopping about 3 p.m. the day before Christmas. (Hint to fellow procrastinators: It is possible, through years of effort, to train your loved ones to be grateful if they receive their Christmas presents by Valentine's Day.) My first find of the year is in a totally offbeat category: a fine and funny book on grammar. "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner — subtitled "The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English" — is the best thing to happen to grammar since Strunk and White. With chapter titles like "Plurals Before Swine" and "Comma Sutra," you can tell the book is not of that dreadful grammatical-Puritan school. As one who still has to look up the lie/lay problem at each usage, I found this a consolingly informal approach as well as a swell read. Think widely here — not just your recent high school or college graduates but anyone you know whose work involves communication. They'll be grateful for a long time. Annie Proulx's new novel, "Accordion Crimes," is not as lovable as her "Shipping News," but it is, I think, more powerful. Of all the amazing ways to trace the history of ethnic immigration in America, following the history of an accordion has to be the most imaginative. Her accordion goes through the hands of a remarkable variety of new Americans over time, giving us glimpses of social history and some terrific characters en route. The book is a trifle gritty in character; much of what it describes is not pretty, and none of it is romanticized, but what a wealth of understanding of a country where almost all of us started out homesick. "Once Upon A Distant War: Young War Correspondents and the Early Vietnam Battles" by William Prochnau is, like everything about that war, sad and troubling. In theory, it's a rather heroic story of correspondents battling both the corrupt South Vietnamese and their own government — journalism at its finest, a band of brothers, a story that had everything.
I had forgotten how viciously they were attacked, that band of brave souls, especially by the armchair experts in their own trade. But it's also terribly sad to read how right they were, how early we knew, how soon that failure was written in stone. As Neil Sheehan (whose "A Bright Shining Lie" is the best book yet written on Vietnam) observed, despite all the controversy about their reporting, the early correspondents were believers themselves. It never occurred to them that Americans could fail. But all anyone had to do was honest reporting and, to misquote an old 'Nam saw, there it was. In my favorite category of junk reading, the murder mystery, we find a perfect festival of old favorites with new offerings. The splendid Elizabeth George with a hair-curling kidnap story, "In the Presence of the Enemy." The beloved Reginald Hill with a new Dalziel/Pascoe book, "The Wood Beyond," in which the Fat Man is in rare form. A new Kinky Friedman starring himself, of course: "The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover." The Kinkster, who devoted much of this fall to heading up an organization called Texas Gays and Lesbians for Phil Gramm, is always high-grade fun. A new Elmore Leonard, a new James Lee Burke, and a new David Handler in the delightful series featuring a cosmopolitan ghostwriter — what riches. Even a new Patrick O'Brien — if there is anyone out there who has yet to discover the grand historical novels of Patrick O'Brien, the rest of us envy you because you've a world of wonderful reading ahead. For the political activist, another swell pod of books this year: "Take the Rich Off Welfare" by Mark Zepexauer and Arthur Naiman; "Fools For Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater" by Gene Lyons; "Downsize This!" by Michael Moore; and "We're Right, They're Wrong" by James Carville. For those who have stopped believing in honor and integrity, a biography of the late Erwin Knoll, "An Enemy of the State" by Bill Lueders, will help restore faith. A meaty dissection of the free-trade argument by Douglas A. Irwin, "Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade," will be most helpful as the global economy develops at a roaring pace. Shoot, I haven't gotten through even half my list. Oh, well — I'm so early this year, I have time to do another. *** Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. COPYRIGHT 1996 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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