NIGHT-TABLE READING

PAUL SMITH, designer

Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Hash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends,

by Barney Hoskyns (Wiley).

"It's about the singer-songwriters who lived in Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and 70s and that period when musicians performed and recorded songs that were written by someone else, and so for the first time people were doing both. It was an infectious community, people feeding off each other and living a very laidback, hippie lifestyle that, unfortunately, eventually degenerated into a drug culture."

THURSTON MOORE, musician, Sonic Youth

by Chris Kraus (Semiotext). "Torpor concerns itself with a feminist filmmaker consumed and confounded by the intellect and desire of a rapacious philosopher-lover. It's personalized and smart, with open thought and independent energy. "

TOM COLICCHIO, chef and owner, Craft; judge on Bravo's Top Chef

Moonlight Hotel,

by Scott Anderson (Doubleday).

"An amazing fictionalized look at what happens when a self-interested superpower meddles in the politics of a small, faraway nation. Anderson's ironic take ('Operation Stalwart Friend') would be comic if it wasn't so painfully true. It hits awfully close to home."