Lifestyle

This week’s must-read books

Eminent Hipsters
by  Donald Fagen  (Viking)

Fagen’s band with Walter Becker — Steely Dan — has always been different than its musical peers. And his 159-page recounting of how that jazzy group came about has the same feel. He tells of the offbeat artistic influences he absorbed during his suburban New Jersey youth, like Jean Shepherd and Henry Mancini, talks about his days at Bard and even devotes a few pages to Ike Turner.

The Eternal Wonder
by  Pearl S. Buck  (Open Road)

From one of America’s most famous and famously prolific writers, a new novel — 50 years after her death. Last year, Buck’s son discovered a neatly typed manuscript by the author of approximately 100 works, including 1931’s best-selling “The Good Earth.” The “new” novel is the coming-of-age story of a young man, Randolph Colfax, who falls in love with a half-Chinese, half-American woman living in Paris and goes on a mission in Korea, a country where Buck did much of her work. Fans of the author will feast on the writer’s trademark descriptions of both Chinese artifacts and romance.

Grave Descend
by  Michael Crichton  (Hard Case Crime)

A new book by the “Jurassic Park” author who died in 2008? Not exactly. While he was studying at Harvard Medical School, Crichton wrote paperback thrillers on the side as John Lange. Hard Case Crime is out with four of them this month, including this Jamaica-set story from 1970. Here, diver James McGregor is exploring the Grave Descend wreck — which has multiple and conflicting stories about its mysterious cargo.

Marie Antoinette’s Head The Royal Hairdresser, the Queen, and the Revolution
by  Will Bashor  (Lyons Press)

Marie Antoinette may have worn the French crown, but only Leonard Autie reigned over the queen’s crowning glory. Now, historian Bashor chronicles the escapades of the hairdresser to the queen of France. Autie invented the elaborate pouf hairstyle associated with the decadence of Versailles. As the only man allowed to live among the women of the French court, his own life was filled with sex and intrigue. Oddly, the man arguably responsible for the queen’s head appears to have had two himself: French newspapers report his execution near the time that Marie Antionette was famously beheaded. But there are also reports of Autie living in Paris on a French pension long after her death.

What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?
by  David Harris-Gershon  (Oneworld)

On July 31, 2002, American grad student Jamie Harris-Gershon headed to lunch at the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, leaving her husband, David, home to eat pasta with pesto. She was gravely injured in a Hamas bombing that killed the friends she was sitting with. In his raw and gripping memoir, Harris-Gershon tells of his family’s healing and his own attempts to meet the imprisoned bomber face to face. Unable to do that, he ends up meeting with the terrorist’s family. The author is speaking Thursday at Park Slope’s Congregation Beth Elohim (cbebk.org).