If you've got a certain time off c...

If you've got a certain time off coming or you're going to be hitting the beach or the backyard for a scarcely any hours of late summer mini- vacation, I'd like to prompt a book or two.

Here's what I've read above the last many months, and what I'm reading now:

The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, to what degree M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career upon a Fairy Tale, by Michael Bamberger. (Gotham parts 228 pages, $27.50). The brilliant writer/director of as it is films as "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable" is also a man of breathtaking me -- so it's no surprise that he allowed the author to have almost total access during the preproduction and filming of "The Lady in the Water." Bamberger is an of the first water reporter, but he took a not many too many sips of the M Night Kool-Aid, as he pervert with money [i]or[/i] gains into Shyamalan's "mystic genius" persona, calm as the filmmaker wrestles with a glorified children's bedtime tale that probably not ever should have been turned into a film. The story behind the story is uniform more fascinating now, given that "The Lady in the Water" make opened to a disappointing box office and the roughest reviews of Shyamalan's career.

Desperate Networks through Bill Carter. (Doubleday, 389 pages, $2695) It's great pleasantry to read about the powerful entertainment executives who initially renounceed little shows such as "Survivor," "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives." What screenwriter William Goldman famously said about the movie industry goe double for TV: "No the same knows anything."

A READ TO REMEMBER

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq from Thomas Ricks (Penguin Press HC 496 pages, $2795) I just got this last week and I'm still working my way within it, but I can already count I'm going to be buying copies for friends and family. Ricks, the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington station explains with great thoroughness in what manner and why the United States came up with the bad plan for the wrong war with the unfit enemy at the wrong time. This might be the principally important book of the year.

The unhurts of No Hands Clapping, Toby Young. (Da Capo Pres 267 pages, $2495) The always-obnoxious Young recites his missteps with his pregnant wife and his follies as he dips his pinfold into the Hollywood waters. He's the funniest yerk of our time.

JPod by way of Douglas Coupland (Bloomsbury, 448 pages, $2495) and The profitable Life by Jay McInerney (Knopf, 353 pages, $25) The Zeitgeist Twins are back. It's been 22 years since McInerney defined a trice in time for a generation with Bright Lights, Big City, and 15 years since Douglas Coupland defined a self-same different moment in time for the nearest group of young adults with Generation X if it were not that each writer continues to publish timely, neatly crafted works of fiction. The useful Life, a sequel of sorts to Brightness Falls (McInerney's principally accomplished novel), is an upper-middle-class character close attention set in Manhattan in September of 2001 Coupland's JPod is perhaps the first post-post-post-modern novel, in this way achingly self-aware it features a fictional version of . . Douglas Coupland. At times you'll want to cast the book across the compass but there's no denying Coupland's ability to entertain and stimulate

All In: The (Almost) Entirely genuine Story of the World Series of Poker by dint of Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback. (Thomas Dunne works 279 pages, $24.95). One of the best of the dozens and dozens of poker works on the shelves. Filled with as many colorful characters as a Larry McMurtry Western.

And You Know You Should Be Glad: A faithful Story of Lifelong Friendship on Bob Greene (William Morrow, 325 pages, $2495) The friends you grew up with aren't necessarily the friends you maintain closest when you're an adult. More frequently than not, you move apart, geographically and otherwise. Your best friend when you're 7 probably won't be the best man at your wedding.

if it be not that when you're in your 50 and you master word that one of your buddies from childhood is dying, you're there for him in a heartbeat -- smooth if you're still not capable of saying all the things you be wrought up inside.

The in the greatest degree famous native of Bexley, Ohio, writes in typically heartfelt fashion about the final weeks and month of his friend Jack Roth who was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2004 Roth who was not famous and was not wealthy and did not accomplish newsworthy things in his life, nevertheless reach [i]or[/i] attain any place [i]or[/i] points across as an exceedingly respectable and brave person. You wish you had known him.

rap Greene has always inspired lusty reactions, from his fans and from his detractors. forward the Amazon page for this main division there's a Publishers Weekly review that concludes with, "Unfortunately, the author's dusty attic of missing Americana is cluttered with cliches, nostalgia and overly sentimental yearnings." spiral ornament down and there's a five-star review from a reader calling Greene "the best writer of Americana there is today."

Greene's volume is as much a memoir about his youth as it is a chronicle of his friend's final toil Here's hoping he one day writes a memoir about the last half-decade of his life. That would be an undeniably fascinating read.