Nonfiction offers big pictures, small lives

Nonfiction doesn't get the respect it should. The word itself sounds so staid and boring, reminiscent of the big tomes you once lugged around high school or college hallways. Yet nonfiction is as lively as its subject matter.

In our roundup of nonfiction and memoirs, we travel to glamorous movies with Roger Ebert and behind the scenes at the Academy Awards. (Blame the movie focus on the fact that the Academy Awards are still lingering in memory, and book publishers want to capitalize on it.)

But some of the nonfiction tomes we review stays out of the spotlight and instead focuses on quiet lives, personal stories. Graphic novel "Epileptic" takes readers into the pain of a French family trying to help their oldest son fight severe epilepsy. "All in My Head" tells one woman's story of dealing with chronic pain. And "Eyeing the Flash" takes readers into a world where few have ever been — behind the Midway games of a small-town carnival.

David Friedman / MSNBC.com Jeannette Walls has been delivering The Scoop on MSNBC.com since 1999.

We'd be remiss to discuss nonfiction and memoir without pointing out that our own MSNBC.com gossip columnist, Jeannette Walls, has written her own memoir, "The Glass Castle." To date, Walls has been featured in Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, numerous newspapers and on television shows, and her book was reviewed in the most coveted spot of all — it earned a place on the cover of the New York Times Book Review.

Those who see Walls now as a glamorous New York City gossip columnist will be floored when they read of her early life — eating out of garbage cans, making her own braces. Those of us lucky enough to know her now see a woman who holds no anger or desire to lay blame, but who has looked her past squarely in the eye and learned to deal with it. Life in "The Glass Castle" indeed only made her stronger. Read more about Jeannette and her book.

Head games

Da Capo

The most frightening thing about Paula Kamen's "All in My Head" (Da Capo, $25) is that what happened to her could happen to any one of us. While putting in a contact lens one day, she was suddenly stricken with a horrible pain, worse than any headache she'd ever had. More than 10 years later, she still suffers from that very same headache.

For those of us lucky enough to never suffer from chronic pain, that alone is almost impossible to believe. For those of us with somewhat blind faith in America's medical profession, her story since that day is a frightening maze of medications tried and discarded, doctors consulted, nontraditional remedies investigated and more. Acupuncture, massage, Botox — nothing worked. One New Agey chiropractor puts a burlap sack that supposedly was used in the delivery of a Peruvian baby on Kamen's stomach — how that was supposed to help her headache is anyone's guess. Kamen has moments when the pain is lessened, but it never truly goes away. What do you do when nothing makes you feel better?

Kamen's personal story, and her quest for relief, is fascinating. Unfortunately, she fills out the book with long dissertation-type sidebars, as if turning a personal memoir into the ultimate book on chronic pain. I would have liked to just stay with Kamen's own story, which is told so vividly that at one point I dreaded picking up the book, convinced that just reading about her headache would somehow transfer it to my own head.     —Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

And the Oscar goes to...

Faber &Amp; Faber

As someone who religiously sits down and watches the Academy Awards every year — even when I know a movie I hate is going to win (ahem, “A Beautiful Mind”) — I enjoyed soaking up the backstage scoop from Steve Pond’s “The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings, Backstage at the Academy Awards” (Faber and Faber, $26). Premiere magazine readers may be familiar with Pond’s yearly behind-the-scenes articles. He’s been writing each year since 1995, when “Schindler’s List” took home the big prize. The book is more than a compilation. Pond tells the full story of the show in all its wonderful or awful glory.

The fun of this book is, of course, getting a glimpse of when things go wrong. The chapter about the year David Letterman hosted is one of my favorites, if only because we find out that Letterman was enjoying his hosting stint about as much as the audience. At one point he tells Clint Eastwood, “I feel like I sort of want to go home.” Little moments like those that make Pond such a compelling story teller. He completely gets out of the way and lets readers view events as they unfold.

The book offers a lot of behind-the-scenes tidbits, yet manages to not feel overly gossipy. Perhaps that's because Pond really seems to love the awards and does his best to show how hard producers like Gil Cates, Quincy Jones and Laura Ziskin sweat out the details. Pond also gives a good abbreviated history, explaining why this year’s awards called the 2004 Academy Awards even though they take place in 2005 ('cause that’s how the Academy wants it, folks!).

For movie lovers, this book should be a hit — and it'll forever affect the way you tune in on  Oscar night.      —Paige Newman

He’s my brother

Pantheon

Graphic novels are more than comic books for adults. Sometimes a combination of pictures and words can tell a story that words alone simply can't manage. Such is the case with the astounding "Epileptic" by French comic artist David B. (Pantheon, $25). The author tells the story of growing up with an older brother, Jean-Christophe, who began suffering from epilepsy at age 11.

His desperate parents tried everything to cure their son, including macrobiotic communes and a pilgrimage to Lourdes, but nothing works. And the lives of David (then called Pierre-François) and his sister Florence are forever twisted and changed by their brother's illness.

The author is helpless to help his brother, but he creates his own world that he can control, drawing endless pages of bizarre monsters and battles. Those scenes seem to pull the reader away from the Jean-Christophe plotline, but yet they're a vital part of the book. Despite the title, this is not Jean-Christophe's story alone, it's the story of a family, fighting to stay together when a monster declares war against it. His artwork is sometimes comic, sometimes fierce, but always complex, always stark. Don't confuse this with a comic book: The drawings demand as much focus as the story.

In a heart-rending epilogue, Jean-Christophe and the author ride horses through David B.'s drawings and have a heart-to-heart about how epilepsy colored both of their lives. It seems as if this discussion was a wistful version of a talk David B. wished they'd had. Perhaps the book is that talk given substance.   —G.F.C.

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