Night-Table Reading

Elaine Kauffman,

restaurateur: A Father's Kisses, by Bruce Jay Friedman (Donald I. Fine ). "It's very funny, but dark humor. Bruce is clever, how he spins his story— you never know what is going to happen."

Ralph Steadman,

artist, cartoonist, writer: My Uncle Oswald, by Roald Dahl (Knopf). "Dahl's most scrofulous, indecent, and disgusting piece of squelchy prose. It is an ingenious and disgraceful romp. "

Simon I. Critchell,

president, C.E.O. of Cartier, Inc.: Collected Short Stories: Volume 1, by W. Somerset Maugham (Penguin). 'Proof that human nature does not change. I am also nostalgic for the great days of that empire on which the sun never set."

David Sedaris,

author: Truth Serum, by Bernard Cooper (Houghton Mifflin). "His intelligence is staggering, and never for one moment do I doubt his honesty. Best of all, the book includes a rhesus monkey."

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