Children's Books | Beloved Berenstains sketch a 'beary' cute autobiography
This wonderful, appealing, immensely readable joint autobiography is the best thing Jan and Stan Berenstain, creators of the Berenstain Bears Books, ever wrote.
( Reviewed by Ann Waldron, 10/28/2002 03:01 AM EST)

Carlin Romano | Playing 'Top Ten' with Will Durant and the grand sweep of history
Remember Will Durant (1885-1981)? If you grew up with the Book of the Month Club, some corner of your book-shelved field is forever The Story of Civilization, his 11-volume, six-million-word chronicle written over half a century and coauthored in later years with his wife, Ariel. The club offered it for decades as an inducement to join, and sold 13 million.
( By Carlin Romano, Inquirer Book Critic, 10/27/2002 06:00 AM EST)

Sisters bound by jealousy
Jennifer Weiner has a thing for larger ladies. Starring in the follow-up to last year's immensely successful Good in Bed is Rose Feller, a zaftig Princeton-educated lawyer. Like Good in Bed's plus-size heroine Cannie Shapiro, Rose whips out the witty retorts to mask a deep insecurity about her appearance. Both are single women trying to make a go of it in middle-class Philadelphia, where female success seems to require thinness.
( Reviewed by Elisa Ludwig, 10/27/2002 06:00 AM EST)

End-of-life tale told with grace
From Arundhati Roy's to Salman Rushdie's, there's a light, Pollyanna-ish bounce and swing to much Indian fiction writing - a kind of tra-la-la, and then my mother died, tra-la-la-la-la. While this distinctive boppiness echoes the cheerful upward cadence of Hindi-accented English, it can fatally undermine the seriousness of the subject. For those who, like me, sometimes find this subcontinental lilt tiresome, an alternative beckons: Rohinton Mistry.
( Reviewed by Lionel Shriver, 10/27/2002 06:00 AM EST)

A female genetics pioneer shortchanged by history and life
Rosalind Franklin's name is not well-known in the United States for a number of reasons. First, she was a British research scientist. Second, she lived only to age 37, when ovarian cancer took her. Third, she died in 1958, another era. Fourth, she was a she, overshadowed in the almost all-male world of DNA research.
( Reviewed by Steve Weinberg, 10/27/2002 06:00 AM EST)

Sandy Bauers | Hang in with 'Piano Tuner': It gets symphonic
David Mason undertook a formidable task for his first novel. Let's start with the main character: Edgar Drake, a British piano tuner in the late 1800s. An uninteresting, unemotional sort who wanders around London, avoiding his wife, the only thing he seems truly able to connect with is the pianos he tunes.
( By Sandy Bauers, Inquirer Columnist, 10/27/2002 06:00 AM EST)

Best-sellers
1. Q Is for Quarry Sue Grafton. Putnam. $26.95 2. The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold. Little, Brown. $21.95 3. Nights in Rodanthe Nicholas Sparks. Warner. $22.95
( 10/27/2002 06:00 AM EST)

Weekday Books
Each week, look for more book reviews, author interviews and book features in the daily Magazine. This week: Monday: Children's books
( 10/27/2002 06:00 AM EST)