Also of interest ... in ways with words

Yours Ever

by Thomas Mallon

(Pantheon, $27)

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Thomas Mallon’s book on letter writing is “one of those perfect Christmas gifts to give to bachelor uncles,” said Carolyn See in The Washington Post. Not only does it look nice, “it’s as full of learning as a candy bar chock-full of nuts.” The only problem is that Mallon attempts to cover too much ground. He’ll leap, for instance, from the White House memos of Richard Nixon to Florence Nightingale’s war-front correspondence. The transitions are “dizzying.” Be sure your bachelor uncle possesses “an exceedingly quiet mind.”

The Infinity of Lists

by Umberto Eco

(Rizzoli, $45)

Lists have apparently always fascinated novelist and scholar Umberto Eco, said Albert Mobilio in Book­forum. A list has rhythm, a list “can tell a story,” a list is a potent antidote to the burden of a ceaselessly acquisitive consciousness. “Eco is especially fond of lists that take visual form,” from Joseph Cornell’s shadow boxes to the portraits-in-vegetables ­created by 16th-century painter Giuseppe

Arcim­boldo. In a book that “ranges widely,” Eco proposes that every list is haunted by the infinite variety of things that it excludes.

Memoir: A History

by Ben Yagoda

(Riverhead, $26)

Ben Yagoda’s “all-too-restrained” ­history of memoir writing does include some interesting insights, said Judith Shulevitz in The New York Times. The reliability of memoirs has been an issue since Daniel Defoe framed his 1719 novel about Robinson Crusoe as if it had been written by the protagonist himself. Yagoda also offers wise counsel about how a reader can tell when an author is trying to deceive. But he “prefers cataloging to philosophizing,” and the subject demands more than his “one thing after another” approach.

The Tyranny of E-mail

by John Freeman

(Scribner, $25)

It’s rare that a book about a problem is better on solutions than diagnosis, said Ben Yagoda in The New York Times. To be fair, Granta editor John Freeman “has some good innings” swinging away at e-mail’s penchant for wasting our time and brain space. But his warnings are undercut by his inclusion of a long history of communication technologies. When you discover that people once feared postcards, shaking your fist at e-mail feels less appropriate than adopting Freeman’s modest tips for avoiding e-mail overload.