Elizabeth Benedict on Books, Money, Hair, Mothers, Gifts & What Not

Two months before my parents married in 1950, my mother's brother was murdered in a hold-up in the liquor store he owned in West Hartford, Connecticut. The murder and its aftermath shaped their wedding (no music, because they were in mourning), their marriage (fraught with misery), and my life (one good time after another...). In recent years, after my parents died, I returned to the scene of the crime and spent a year learning and writing about the murder and its effects. My essay, "Murder One: Mad Dog Taborsky and Me," appears in the summer issue of Daedalus , a journal published by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. For a free copy of the essay, please email me at info@elizabethbenedict.com, and I will email you the essay - or buy the issue and/or the article on-line ($13 for the journal itself; $10 for the essay): http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/daed I also have an essay, "Why Not Say What Happened?" about my recollections of Elizabeth Hardw

I've just started what I hope will be a monthly column on Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com/media/) called "Read Any Good Books Lately?" I'll interview 3-4 people in the know and in the news and post their reading lists and comments on them. Please join the conversation and add your own booklists in the comment section of Huff Po AND please write me if you are curious about what someone in the news is reading - but not Bush, Cheney, or that crowd, even as a joke. Let's be forward thinking and imagine a day (will that day ever come?) when they are no longer in charge. Anyway, write to me at: info@elizabethbenedict.com I'll do my best to track down your selections. Thanks. -EB

My recommended book for the week is The Film Club by David Gilmour, published by Twelve Books. I wrote about its charms and wonders on Huffington Post. Check out: www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-benedict/. It's by a Canadian novelist and film lover who had a popular TV show on film for many years. His son was flunking out of high school, and Gilmour's eventual solution was to let him drop out at 15, stay home and watch three movies a week with Dad. There was plenty of film education, and much conversation, communication, and maturity that happened. It's a smart, touching, and beautifully written piece of work - and it includes a list of films they watched, and there are quite a few I haven't seen yet. Reading The Film Club also makes me want to read Gilmour's novels. His website is very intriguing. http://www.calypsoconsulting.com/davidgilmour.html

I was very excited to see the first comment on my blog from someone who also loved The Book of Ebenezer LePage , which I wrote about in the current issue of Tin House (www.tinhouse.com - though the piece is not on-line; this is just to introduce you to the magazine). Much to my delight, a literary friend read the piece in Tin House , went out and bought the book -- and said it was one of the best books he had ever read! This from a widely read writer and editor. It turns out that the poet and translator Michael Hofman has also reviewed the reissued Ebenezer LePage for the London Review of Books , but I have not seen it yet. Yes, this is a remarkable book, and the reissue by New York Review of Books books should bring it new life. Thanks for commenting. I will be starting a column on Huffington Post soon books, and will let you know when it launches.

I highly recommend the new book by Philip Shenon called The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation . I reviewed and interviewed Shenon on Huffington Post, which you can read here - just do a search for my name on Huff Po and it will come up- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-benedict/philip-shenons-commi_b_90481.html

I decided to post this blog to keep my website up-to-date, rather than bug my webmaster whenever there's something new to add. Along the way, I'll say a few words about books I'm reading - and maybe even the book I'm writing. In the meantime, if you're looking for my latest articles on Huffington Post, where I write frequently, here's a url that should get you to the full list: http://search.huffingtonpost.com/search/?sp_a=sp100395aa&sp_k=&sp_p=all&sp_f=ISO-8859-1&sp_q=elizabeth+benedict In the March 2008 issue of Allure , I've got an essay called "Relative Beauty," about having a sister everyone always tells me is pretty. Yes, my sister has seen it, and she's happy enough about it to have bought 15 copies to give to her friends. I also have an essay in the upcoming Tin House that should go on sale in March, on a wonderful novel called The Book of Ebenezer LePage by GB Edwards. It's for Tin House's Lost and Found co