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Bonnie's relieved … to have a conversation with her mother about the way she wants things after it’s all over. Emma doesn't want to talk about it, but Bonnie insists. "Why shouldn't we talk it over? It's coming—you know it—I know it—all of Texas knows it," Bonnie says.
--Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind the Legend by Paul Schneider (Henry Holt, $27.50) Thriller
The knife had been dropped, the tip cutting into the floor before ricocheting under the bed, dropped because whoever had been holding it had panicked, alarmed by a sudden noise, an unexpected telephone call. The person had fled the room, leaving the door open, in too much of a rush to close it behind her.
--The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central, $24.99)
Short Stories
The shaving mirror hangs in front of a window overlooking the sea. The sea is always full, flat as a floor. Or almost: there is a delicate planetary bulge in it, supporting a few shadowy freighters and cruise ships making their motionless way out of Boston Harbor. At night, the horizon springs a rim of lights—more, it seems, every year. Winking airplanes from the corners of the earth descend on a slant, a curved groove in the air, toward the unseen airport in East Boston. My life-prolonging pills cupped in my left hand, I lift the glass, its water sweetened by its brief wait on the marble sinktop. If I can read this strange old guy's mind aright, he’s drinking a toast to the visible world, his impending disappearance from it be damned.
--"The Full Glass," My Father’s Tears by John Updike (1932–2009; Alfred A. Knopf, $25)
Inspiration
Childhood curiosity can last a lifetime. I learned this from my son, Bill. When he was very young, I often took him to the library. He loved to read and often needed to return the books he'd read in order to check out more. One unintended consequence of his nonstop reading habits was that he even read at the dinner table. His mother, Mary, and I did our best to convince him that, in light of certain social proprieties, reading while dining with others was not a good thing.
Every summer the teachers at his school would give the students a reading list, and there was a contest to see who could read the most books. He was so competitive, he always wanted to win. And he often did.
But the main reason he read so obsessively was that he was so curious. He didn’t just want to learn about some things. He wanted to learn about everything.
We tried to nurture his curiosity in every way. If an unfamiliar word came up in conversation, we'd walk to the nearby den, open the mammoth dictionary, look up the word, and read the definition aloud. In our son's mind, this reinforced the notion that if you have a question, the answer exists somewhere. All you have to do is find it.
Bill remains as much of a reader today as when he was a child, and he seems to remember everything he reads. He’s often eager to share what he's learned with the next person he encounters. He no longer reads at the dinner table, though—which is a good thing because the books he's attracted to now are increasingly unappetizing: The Eradication of Infectious Diseases; Mosquitoes, Malaria & Man; and Rats, Lice, and History.
--Showing Up for Life by Bill Gates Sr. with Mary Ann Mackin (Broadway, $22)
Memoir
A natural-born child of the meritocracy, I'd been amassing momentum my whole life, entering spelling bees, vying for forensics medals, running my mouth in mock United Nations, and I knew only one direction: forward. I lived for prizes, plaques, citations, stars, and I gave no thought to any goal beyond my next appearance on the honor roll. Learning was secondary, promotion was primary. No one ever told me what the point was, except to keep on accumulating points, and this struck me as sufficient. What else was there?
--Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever by Walter Kirn (Doubleday, $24.95)
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