Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own

Wander through a steaming bathroom while Jane Smiley steps into the tub. Hers is just one of the welcoming, intimate remembrances of rooms past in Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of their Own. Richard Bausch conjures up a family porch from his childhood. Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes about sitting in a West Virginia kitchen tub watching the 1960s civil rights movement on the living-room TV. Lynda Barry conjures up a teen's bedroom complete with pet tarantula. These tiny autobiographies are curl-up, homey reads. And like a back-door handout, a sliver of the book's proceeds will go to Habitat for Humanity. A