Kicking Back With A Book

Bruce Chatwin. Nicholas Shakespeare (Jonathan Cape) A decade after the death of the British travel writer Bruce Chatwin, his cult continues to grow. Wandering in Afghanistan with the Pathans or cruising New York's gay bars with Robert Mapplethorpe, the golden boy-man was the world's most elegant nomad.

No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton Christopher Hitchens (Verso) Catty, witty and well researched, this book can disillusion even the biggest FOB.

Best American Short Stories of the Century. Edited by John Updike (Houghton Mifflin) Only Updike himself would agree with every one of his choices, but with Fitzgerald, Cheever, Carver, Lorrie Moore and--ahem--John Updike, how badly could he, or you, go wrong?

Home Town. Tracy Kidder (Random House) This profile of Northampton, Mass., gently but astutely probes what we mean when we talk about "home."

The Bird Catcher. Marie Ponsot (Knopf)Carolyn Kizer calls her "the Couperin of poets," but she's tough and funny beneath that formal elegance.

The Hours. Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) The elegant, Pulitzer Prize-winning set of variations on Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway."