Photo: Marko Metzinger/Studio D

By Larry McMurtry
192 pages; Simon & Schuster

"For much of my adult life I've been tempted, sporadically, to visit fortune-tellers, just to get their opinion on my prospects, as it were," says Larry McMurtry in Literary Life, his second memoir in the trilogy that began with Books and will culminate in Hollywood, a juicy (we hope) exposé of his screenwriting years. Whether ogling racecars with Susan Sontag or waxing skeptical about winning the Pulitzer Prize, McMurtry, now 73, is the master of the showstopping anecdote: Stumped midway through a novel, he saw an old church bus parked alongside the road near Ponder, Texas. On its side: LONESOME DOVE BAPTIST CHURCH. Writer's block, hasta luego. —Kristy Davis