Paperbacks
James Hughes Onslow
Music For Chameleons, Truman Capote (Sphere £1.50) 14 short stories, based mostly on im- probable characters Capote really has met — like the Martinique aristocrat who plays Mozart to his pet reptiles — and a journalistic account of a suspected mass murderer.
Old Love, Isaac Bashevis Singer (Penguin £1.50) A corny enough subject but not often written about. 18 short stories about love affairs in maturer years. Love intensifies with age, says Singer, especially in the world of Jewish emigres where life has been pretty harsh.
Goodbye Gutenberg: The Newspaper Revolution of the 1980s, Anthony Smith (OUP £3.95) So far British newspapers have resisted change but in America journalism has been transformed as much by micro-chip technology as it was by Viet- nam and Watergate.
Roughing It, Mark Twain (Penguin £2.95) Tales by the great writer when he was an itinerant pro- spector and reporter in the Far West in the 1860s. `There is a great deal of information in this book' says Twain 'I regret this very much; but it really could not be helped.'
Alice Fell, Emma Tennant (Picador £1.95) A sur- realistic, and perhaps topical, novel about a girl born during the Suez crisis. Father wants time to stand still but Aldermaston marches, the girl's increasing independence and other contemporary horrors make the imperial past harder and harder to cling to.
Paved with Good Intentions; The American Ex- perience and Iran, Barry Rubin (Penguin £1.95) The Shah relied on US support since 1953. But
when Nixon gave him carte blanche during the 1973 oil crisis American influence began to decline, leaving Carter few options.
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie (Picador £2.95) Last year's Booker Prizewinner about a Bombay pickle factory worker born at the mo- ment of India's independence in 1947, giving him a special bond with his country's development and making him both the master and victim of his times.
The Meaning of Treason, Rebecca West (Virage £4.50) The detailed account of Lord Haw-Haw's trial now up-dated with more recent British spies including Blunt. How our national obsession with secrecy and conflicting loyalties leads to an unrivalled talent for spying.
The Black Economy, Arnold Heertje, Margaret Allen, Harry Cohen (Pan £1.95) Moonlighting, Tax evasion and expense fiddles account for 15071) of the GNP — yet many offenders might be bet- ter off financially if they went straight and claim- ed legitimate state rebates.
Gardeners' Question Time, Ken Ford, Alan Gemmell, Fred Loads and Bill Sowerbutts (Penguin £1.50) The advantage of having the radio team's rich compost of wisdom in book form is that you don't have to hear about everyone else's problems. Look up your own gooseberry sawfly.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Ed- ward Gibbon, abridged by Dero A Saunders (Penguin £2.95) Churchill, Attlee and Heath all read Gibbon in times of crisis — seeking stirring phrases for intractable calamities? This compact version with new punctuation and paragraphs, concentrating on the earlier volumes, is well done. Gibbon would be furious.
The Body in Question, Jonathan Miller (Paper- mac £5.95) You miss the wild gesticulations and gory pathology and, without these distractions, Dr Miller's imaginative approach to medical history is even more lucid in print than it was on the television screen.
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