NIGHT TABLE READING

HELEN FIELDING

author, Cause Celeb (Viking)

Cocktail Time, by P. G. Wodehouse (Penguin). "I love Wodehouse—I think he's a genius and it's the best possible thing to put you in a genial and jolly state of mind with an amused perspective on life. Also, he's the best plotter ever."

JAMES BARBOUR odor, Broadway's Jane Eyre

My Name Escapes Me: Th; Diqry if a Refiripg Agtor. by Alec Guinness (Vxking). "A touching and humorous autobiographical took at the life and work of this Iegendary actor."

STEPHEN MALKMUS

musician

The Easter Parade, by Richard Yates (Delacorte). "Great mid-70s book by the critically feted, commercially damned, and recently departed author of Revolutionary Road. I can't get enough of it. Massive self-deception, failure at love, middle-class resentment— it's all there, like Updike if he chain-smoked."

JIM KELLY

managing editor, Time

Miracle at Philadelphia, by Catherine Drinker Bowen (Atlantic-Little, Brown). "A crackling narrative of how several dozen strong-willed men met in the steamy summer of 1787 and after much arguing managed to produce that astounding document, the U.S. Constitution."