Five Easy Decades by Dennis McDougal

Dennis McDougal paces his excellent biography of Jack Nicholson, who recently became a septuagenarian, with the command of an experienced marathoner. Nicholson’s constant pursuit of success demands a writer who can keep up.

The theme of the story is Nicholson’s compulsion to escape his impoverished childhood in Neptune, N.J., and the low-paying Roger Corman films he cut his teeth on.

Top Childrens’ Books

The fantasy novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has been named the best children’s book of all time in a new poll.

CS Lewis’s masterpiece, first published 58 years ago, beat The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle’s hugely popular picture book first published in 1969, into second place.

Enid Blyton’s Famous Five adventure books, which date back to 1942 and fell out of fashion some years ago before enjoying a resurgence, are third in the poll of 4,000 people, carried out for the charity Booktrust.

Eminem To Write AutoBiography

It has been announced that the rapper, Eminem, will be writing his autobiography this year.

According to a report in Britain’s New Musical Express published Tuesday, British publisher Orion Books and Em will partner to release the Detroit hip-hop star’s memoirs, titled “Eminem: The Way I Am,” which will include hand-drawn sketches, lyrics and journal notes, along with rare photos of the rapper. A rep for the publisher confirmed an October 16 U.K. release date for the book with the N.M.E.

Death At Intervals by Jose Saramago

Portuguese Novelist Jose Saramago enjoys disorientating readers with his fable-like novels. He places unnamed characters in unnamed countries, then shatters their lives with bizarre events, such as a plague of blindness. His latest book, “Death at Intervals,” depicts a nation where death has suddenly and inexplicably ceased to exist — at least for humans.

Saramago, 85, opens with a satirical treatise on how immortality might affect society. The church would be superfluous, he writes. Ditto life insurance and undertakers. Retirement homes, by contrast, would be horrifically overcrowded.

The public is initially ecstatic, yet eternal life soon shows its sinister side. For people who were formerly at death’s door, there’s no hope of release, only suffering without end.

Reconciliation by Benazir Bhutto

In Ms. Bhutto’s new book, “Reconciliation,” a volume she finished days before she was killed, she lays out her vision of Islam as “an open, pluralistic and tolerant religion” that she says has been hijacked by extremists, and her belief that Islam and the West need not be headed on a collision course toward a “clash of civilizations.”

If Ms. Bhutto’s own life reads like a Greek tragedy, she was nonetheless a very modern politician, and the book she has written is part manifesto, part spin job, part selective history and part term-paper analysis. It shows Ms. Bhutto in the many guises the public in both the West and her native Pakistan came to know: an Oxford-educated debate champion, adept at invoking Spengler and T. S. Eliot to make her points; a savvy and self-dramatizing campaigner, adroit at charming members of the Washington power elite as well as the disenfranchised poor in Pakistan, whom she pledged to represent; a determined heir to her father’s political legacy, who found duty turning over “years of pain, suffering, sacrifice and separation” into “an all consuming passion.”

Top Authors go digital with ebooks

The two biggest publishers in Britain are to offer dozens of likely bestsellers to read on a hand-held screen this autumn in a sign that, after many false dawns, the electronic “ebook” may finally have arrived.

Random House and Hachette, which together control just over 30% of the British book market, are to offer downloadable versions of titles by authors ranging from Delia Smith to Ian McEwan and Michael Parkinson. Every other major publisher is drawing up plans to follow suit, pitching the books at just below the price of a hardback.

The publishers have made the move to ebooks to follow the launch of two rival devices due to come on sale in Britain over the next few months – Sony’s Reader and Amazon’s Kindle.

Prepared For Rage

By Dana Stabenow, St. Martin’s, 304 pages, $28.95

Dana Stabenow is best known for her Alaska series featuring Kate Shugak. But in this book, told through the perspectives of four very different related characters, the central character is a Pakistani named Akil, a leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. With the death of his mentor, he becomes a rogue operator. He has a plan, money and a world from which to choose his team.

Patrick Chisum is a CIA terrorism specialist whose team is on the trail of Akil, now known as Isa. That trail will put him in touch with Commander Cal Schuyler, a wealthy and highly connected officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, and Kenai Munro, who has worked all her life to become an astronaut, and is about to realize her dream.

Stabenow weaves a tense tale of the inner lives and external pressures on these people as their paths converge into a heart-stopping climax. The use of the Coast Guard instead of the usual military units is refreshing, and while the al-Qaeda bad guys are the usual crowd, Stabenow does give them a bit of depth, and doesn’t skimp on her contempt for the Bush administration’s sins.

Stranger In Paradise

By Robert B. Parker, Putnam, 304 pages, $25.95

It’s been more than 35 years since Robert B. Parker re-created the American private eye novel and introduced Spenser. But Parker has also created the Sunny Randall series and the Jesse Stone books set in the rural New England town of Paradise. Stranger in Paradise is the best Stone and reminds us just how good a writer Parker can be.

Wilson Cromartie, a.k.a. Crow, walks into Chief Stone’s office and announces himself. He is in Paradise on business. Crow’s last business in the area involved a hostage-taking and the theft of $10-million. He is quick to point out the statute of limitations on that crime. Then there is the minor point that people involved have no intention of assisting the police, much less testifying in court.

While Stone and his officers attempt to find out just what Crow is after, a group of wealthy citizens is demanding the police “do something” about a preschool for underprivileged Latino children. Then a body shows up on the school property.

This is a sharp, smart story with great snappy dialogue. The built-in misery of Stone’s complicated relationship with his ex-wife, Jenn, is less boring than it sounds, although we could lose the analysis from his psychiatrist.

Bestsellers-Books

FICTION

1. “7th Heaven” by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro (Little, Brown and Company)2. “The Appeal” by John Grisham (Doubleday)3. “Duma Key” by Stephen King (Scribner)

4. “Stranger In Paradise: A Jesse Stone Novel” by Robert B. Parker (Putnam)

5. “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Hardcover)

6. “Plum Lucky” by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s Press)

7. “New Moon” by Stephenie Meyer (Little Brown for Young Readers)

8. “Eclipse” by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)

9. “World Without End” by Ken Follett (Dutton)

10. “Sizzle and Burn” by Jayne Ann Krentz (Putnam)

11. “People of the Book” by Geraldine Brooks (Viking Adult)

12. “The Senator’s Wife” by Sue Miller (Knopf)

13. “Where the Heart Leads: From the Casebook of Barnaby Adair” by Stephanie Laurens (William Morrow)

14. “Beverly Hills Dead” by Stuart Woods (Putnam Adult)

15. “The Shooters” by W.E.B. Griffin (Putnam)

NONFICTION

1. “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne (Atria Books/Beyond Words)

2. “You: Staying Young: The Owner’s Manual for Extending Your Warranty” by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz (Free Press)

3. “StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths” by Tom Rath (Gallup Press)

4. “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” by Michael Pollan (Penguin)

5. “Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?: An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More” by Peter Walsh (Free Press)

6. “Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day” by Joel Osteen (Free Press)

7. “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Other’s Don’t” by Jim Collins (Collins)

8. “How Not to Look Old: Fast and Effortless Ways to Look 10 Years Younger, 10 Pounds Lighter, 10 Times Better” by Charla Krupp (Springboard Press)

9. “An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems” by Glenn Beck (Threshold Editions)

10. “Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works” by Newt Gingrich (Regnery)

11. “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” by Timothy Ferriss (Crown)

12. “Deceptively Delicious” by Jessica Seinfeld (HarperCollins)

13. “I Am America (And So Can You!)” by Stephen Colbert (Grand Central Publishing)

14. “The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life” by Ellie Krieger (Taunton)

15. “Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life” by Spencer Johnson (Putnam)

The Wall Street Journal’s list reflects nationwide sales of hardcover books during the week ended last Saturday at more than 2,500 Barnes & Noble, B. Dalton, Bookland, Books-a-Million, Books & Co., Bookstar, Bookstop, Borders, Brentano’s, Coles, Coopersmith, Doubleday, Scribners and Waldenbooks stores, as well as sales from online retailers Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

Borders Open Digital Services

Borders, the nation’s second-largest bookstore chain, hopes to reverse years of sluggish sales by reinventing itself as a hub for knowledge, entertainment and digital downloading. Exhibit A is the new store that will open to the public here Thursday — the first of 14 that Borders plans to unveil this year. Borders’ plans underscore the anxiety in the bookstore industry, which has been hurt by the growing footprint of online-only sellers.

At the Borders concept store, new themed book islands are built around lifestyle genres, including travel, cooking and health. The digital centers, meantime, are geared to welcome people of all levels of tech know-how. Staffers will guide customers through the process of burning music to CDs, downloading songs to most digital music players (except iPods, which, for now, work only with Apple software) or books to a Sony digital reader. They’ll even print the cover art and fold it into a CD cover for you.

The strategy reflects Jones’ effort to capitalize on the very technology that has helped flatten his stores’ book and CD sales — and in doing so, perhaps overtake industry leader Barnes & Noble. Despite the economic slowdown, Jones says, traffic at Borders stores is up. Holiday sales for the nine weeks ended Jan. 5 rose 2.4% — which, in a tepid shopping season, was almost something to brag about. (Barnes & Nobles’ same-store sales were off 0.4% in the same period.)