BookEnds

Update: An earlier version of this post mixed up the dates for Muchnick’s book tour. See the correct dates below!

Author Irvin Muchnick will drop by Borders Thursday night, promoting his book “CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death.”

The book is about WWE professional wrestler Chris Benoit, who killed his wife and seven-year-old son before hanging himself in 2007. Muchnick tries to explain the heinous murder, including whether wrestling-related concussions or steroids contributed to Benoit’s actions.

According to the blog Bookgasm, Muchnick has written about pro wrestling in the past. Muchnick penned a series for Penthouse in the late ’80s that delved into allegations of drug use and violence, including the story of the Von Erich brothers, two of whom died at their own hands, and Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, who in 1983 was the sole suspect in his girlfriend’s still-unresolved homicide.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 – 7:00-9:00 p.m.

Borders Book Shop
1041 High Ridge Road
Stamford, Connecticut

After that, Muchnick’s next stop on the Borders tour is Farmington, Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m.

P.S. In case you’re curious to find out more about Bookgasm, the site says it champions “all kinds of genre fiction, from horror and sci-fi to mystery and suspense. It also includes graphic novels, trashy paperbacks, cheap magazines and other things that much of America pretends to be ashamed of, for no good reason.”

Author A.S. Byatt's "Victorian attic in Putney", where she writes

I wanted to love “The Children’s Book”, by A.S. Byatt. I really did. It boasted a complex array of characters, a historically fascinating setting, a plot that twisted into the thickets of intrigue and more than a few hints of fantasy — in short, all the elements of a cracking good read. And yet I abandoned it, dropped the story smack in the middle, for reasons I can’t quite explain.

Well, perhaps I can. For me, walking away cold from a book is a serious decision, and one that requires a very good reason. I don’t necessarily hold myself to finish a novel that I’m really not enjoying, but I always feel vaguely guilty, like sneaking away from a party hours before everyone else has left.

With this book, though, I had to plead dissatisfaction. The first chapter was highly promising; it opens on two young boys in search of a third, a working-class runaway from Northern England who is burrowing in the bowels of the Victoria and Albert museum in London. It’s a captivating start – Philip, the runaway, is cloistered and concealed in an eerie, vault-like chamber beneath the museum, a sort of catacomb for superfluous artifacts, populated by ancient reliquaries and sightless, looming marble statues. The other boys imaginatively perceive him as feral and dangerous, or at least mysterious in origin.

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