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Sparks Fans Are Among Lucky Ones

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By KEVIN WALKER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 28, 2008

Nicholas Sparks has a new book.

I report this only because I feel it is my obligation to let you know such a wildly popular author has a new book on the shelves (or it will be, come Tuesday). Not a big fan, myself. On the other hand, I can't help but respect someone who has found a niche and runs with it, to wild success. This is not as easy as it might seem.

Me, I would veer off the path after the first couple of books, shock my fans with a sudden turn into romance or horror or suspense or fantasy without any romance at all. You know what I mean? I just don't know if I could do the same sort of thing repeatedly; it would be like writing 200 episodes of "Gunsmoke." Although, I suppose, someone did that, too.

(I looked it up on the Internet Movie Database and it is true. A gentleman named John Meston wrote 257 episodes of "Gunsmoke" between 1955 and 1965.)

Anyway, Sparks doesn't go off on weird tangents, ever. At least, not yet. And I can just tell from the cover of the new one, "The Lucky One" (Grand Central, $24.99), that he is on top of his love game. It features a Ferris wheel, a night sky and a shooting star. Somebody's going to fall in love, don't you think?

Also new this week is "Happy Families," by Carlos Fuentes (Random House, $26), in which the acclaimed Mexican writer explores the famous line from Leo Tolstoy that opens "Anna Karenina": "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

This collection of short stories looks at relationships of all kinds, including lovers and friends, mothers and daughters, and fathers and sons. It has received high praise from early reviews, which you might expect from a man who has won the National Prize in Literature in Mexico and the Cervantes Prize.

In nonfiction, there's "Hippocrates' Shadow," by David Newman (Scribner, $26), in which the doctor talks about ways physicians can win back the trust of patients by disclosing more information - such as the fact that many medications are useless and that studies show patients do better when they get treatment from a compassionate physician. More of that compassion is needed, Newman believes.

By the way, still reading "Gravity's Rainbow," by Thomas Pynchon, and loving it. I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind spending a lot of time thinking about what they're reading or going back over sentences and trying to figure them out but not getting too upset when they cannot.

Speaking of Pynchon, David Foster Wallace - who died recently, an apparent suicide - was a big fan of his. You can see his influence in much of Wallace's work, especially the early stuff. I enjoyed Wallace. I can't exactly recommend "Infinite Jest," which I have yet to finish, but his two collections of essays and journalism, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" and "Consider the Lobster," are great places to begin reading him.

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