Cheuse Chooses Holiday Books

On Monday on All Things Considered, Alan Cheuse gave the gift of his holiday book list:

Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, "a wonderful combination of Virginia Woolf and Freud and Jung, and Bynum's own gifts for imagery and wordplay."
The Library of America Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, and Shorter Fiction edition of work by James Agee. The prose poem "Knoxville, Summer of 1915" offers "some of the most sublime pages in American literature."
Transcendent by Stephen Baxter, a science fiction novel by the author who "collaborates from time to time with Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and his own work comes close to inducing the same sense of wonder as Clarke's."
The Color of Law by Mark Gimenez, a legal thriller about "a high-flying Dallas lawyer whom a federal judge calls upon to defend a black Dallas hooker accused of murdering the son of a Texas senator."
The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr, "for the art lover you know," a book about the search for a lost Caravaggio masterpiece that "reads like a novel."
Herman Melville by Andrew Delbanco "for someone who wants to read about the lives of novelists, in this case, one of our greatest."
The Planets by Dava Sobel is "delightful and idiosyncratic. I especially love the opening of the chapter about the moon, called 'Lunacy.' "
There and Then: The Travel Writings of James Salter, "a collection of the maestro's recollections of kicking about France, skiing, climbing."

For children:

Little Stevie Wonder by poet Quincy Troupe, a "boldly told biography . . . lavishly illustrated by Lisa Cohen" with an accompanying CD.
Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs, "one of the most striking and elaborate pop-up books you'll ever wrestle away from your child and play with on your own."

And for everyone:

Reading Rumi in an Uncertain World, a DVD featuring Robert Bly and Naomi Shihab Nye reading the poetry of the great 13th century Persian Sufi mystic Rumi. "Long after the images are gone you'll remember the words."