Night-table Reading

HanH Kureishi (writer, director):Odd Jobs,by John Updike (Knopf). "Fortunately, Updike is that rare thing, an essayist rather than a reviewer, and the range and quality of these essays are endlessly interesting."

Maryann Plunkett (actress):Silences, by Til lie Olsen (Delacorte). "When I'm traveling, I must have this battered and dog-eared book with me. It's about creativity, and the creativity of living. "

Joanna Kerns (actress): A River Runs Through It,by Norman Maclean (University of Chicago). "This novella expresses poignantly the things we cannot say to the family we love and later wish we had, the emotions that sit there and smolder unsaid. "

Robert MacNeil (broadcast journalist): His Master's Voice,by Robert Kotlowitz (Knopf). "It is a delicately humorous and sensual evocation of Jewish life in Baltimore at the outbreak of World War II. "