Books: 779

“Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean”
Jason Colavito
Applause
$29.95

Colavito tackles the acres of James Dean material scribbled since his death at 24 on September 30, 1955. Crude maverick disliked by many or inspired actor adored worldwide then and now, his sexuality is still a point of contention. It mattered in the 1950s. Rock Hudson (Dean-hater) played straighter-than-straight, until AIDS, while any emotional male was designated gay and shunned. However, one pigeon-holed him, and everyone was forced to acknowledge that once Dean stepped onto the set and the cameras started to roll, once he’d unleashed the turmoil, pain and loneliness trapped inside, the very heavens opened, leaving a stunned audience speechless. Seventy years on, James Dean is still lauded by male and female acolytes. Seventy. And we’re still obsessing over manliness, insisting real men don’t show emotion.

“The Boxcar Librarian”
Brianna Labuskes
William Morrow
$19.99

Labuskes, author of “Librarian of Burned Books” and “The Lost Book of Bonn,” offers another historically-based mystery from our own grim Depression years. A potential political scandal looms and Works Progress Administration (WPA) editor Millie Lang is sent from Washington to hinterland Montana to solve a problem concerning that state’s (real) “American Guide Series.” In Montana, Copper was King — and still is. As Labuskes has done so successfully in earlier novels, the story unfolds through Millie’s 1936 present, reaching back to Colette in 1914’s Hell Raisin’ Gulch and Alice in 1920s Missoula. There’s betrayal, murder, hard times, hints of romance and books. Ever present in Labuskes’ plots, characters themselves, now aboard a boxcar library servicing the needs of those in the scattered Coppermine camps, lonely and overburdened.

“A Little Queer Natural History”
Josh L. Davis
U. Chicago Press
$16

“There are only two sexes.” Really? Many species do have large and small sex cells (egg and sperm), but many other lives share this sphere. The Splitgill mushroom, of 150,000 fungal species known so far, has some 23,000 “mating types,” used since sexual fungi employ same-sized (isogamous) cells. It’s a headily diverse world. Mammalian sex is often determined by XX and XY (usually M & F) sex chromosomes; other species, arthropod roly-polys, by ZZ and ZW (M & F). But, roly-polys (pill woodlice) actually derive their sex from an infection by a Wolbachia bacterium. Admittedly outré, but habits of familiars; giraffes, swans, bluegills, hyenas, penguins and low-land gorillas may shock and surprise in this nifty compendium of what actually makes the world go ‘round.

“Slum Boy”
Juano Diaz
Octopus Books
$17.99

A wrenching account of a boy surviving life in Glasgow’s slums. His birth father has disappeared, and his addict Mum lives with Daddy Ronnie. Four-year-old John MacDonald, after five months in foster care, “because they were too sick from drinking beer to take care of me,” is at Barrhead Dams Family Day. Playful Ronnie drowns, and John’s alone with Mummy. Her subsequent derelictions reported, the boy is removed to the care system and eventually adopted by a caring family in the Romany community and offered education and a stability foreign to his chaotic background. And he realizes he’s gay. Eventually, the now-grown lad is saved through his art, and his determination to reunite with Mum. He persevered, and today is known internationally in his reclaimed true identity as Juano Diaz.