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If only Huston had kept to these meticulously drawn action sequences, which punctuate the narrative with a forward-moving drive. But the action comes bracketed with a load of rhetoric, page after page tricked out in a blinding avalanche of lists of 21st century mishaps and mayhem that sounds like a blend of William Gibsonish future patter and Thomas Pynchonesque conspiracy mash. Take this description of material from a cache of maps that Jae finds in a file box, once the property of a murdered high-level CIA boss. "Brazil highlighted, undersea telecom cable landings and several mineral resources. Battery grade manganese, niobium, etc. India. Chromite mines. Pharmaceuticals manufacturing, chemotherapy agents," and then an info-dump of TOP SECRET CIA files. "War. Inlet. Penultimate. Cause. Contraction. Tides. Resources ... Bio-disaster event horizon. Liquid metal fast breeder reactor. Orbital mirror array. Al Qaeda franchise structure. Black start. Neutron poison ..." This keeps on pouring from the page, eventually overwhelming the physical action itself.

"What has happened before," Huston writes, "are any number of things that feel similar. 9/11. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. London subway bombings. Bombay attack. Madrid bombings. Asian Tsunami. European heat wave. Darfur. Somali pirates" and so on — and on — into a novel I couldn't wait to read and ultimately found terribly disappointing. Alas, like that drug Dreamer from Huston's previous work, it put me to sleep.

Read an excerpt of Skinner

Many whose attendance in God's house on a weekly basis was mandatory will sympathize with the young Jeffrey banging his head against the pew in boredom or furtively reading human biology books in his father's office. Or with the a-w-k-w-a-r-d scene in which he shares his newfound apostasy with his parents — an announcement that meets with silent, blank stares.

On the other hand, Brown conveys his own sense of the divine in small moments: a stubbed toe, fear of bugs, a confusing childhood memory, acts of kindness in everyday life. These trifles are infused with meaning and cherished by the author in a way that evokes the New Testament notion of Jesus in all things — but for Brown, without the Jesus part. He acknowledges, in another series of panels overlooking glorious mountain vistas, that where others see God's presence he sees beauty and wonder, but not a celestial presence.

Like all accomplished serial memoirists, Brown has mastered the art of mining the same veins of material over and over — looking at the same incidents from a different vantage point, highlighting a new stream of consciousness, focusing on an event that took place offstage in a previous work or with added bathos, in this case, abetted by the birth of his son. With each new round of toil he extracts new, rough-hewn gems — of which A Matter of Life is the most profound.

Did I mention that Brown's work is hilarious? That you will smile and laugh throughout? That you'll be inspired by the Brown family's goodness and gentle relationship with each other and the world? Reading this is a joy. Rereading it is, too.

Read an excerpt of A Matter Of Life

Americans will get the same ham slabs and bacon slices they have enjoyed for generations, even after Smithfield Foods becomes a Chinese subsidiary, Smithfield CEO Larry Pope told Congress on Wednesday.

"It will be the same old Smithfield, only better," Pope said at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing.

But several senators weren't buying the bacon-will-be-unbroken story once Hong Kong-based Shuanghui International Holdings owns Smithfield.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

The Ender's Game author and anti-gay activist Orson Scott Card responded to boycotts threats against the upcoming film adaptation starring Harrison Ford. The queer geek group Geeks OUT is organizing boycotts and "Skip Ender's Game" events in several U.S. cities because of Card's views on homosexuality. He wrote in 2008 that "marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down." Card responded to the backlash in a statement to Entertainment Weekly: "With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. ... Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute."

A few weeks after a historic collection of black history books was discovered in a dumpster outside a school in Highland Park, Mich., protests continue and a school board member has resigned. City Emergency Manager Donald Weatherspoon said the collection had been thrown away by accident but noted that the city didn't have the resources to maintain it, according to The Detroit Free Press. Residents pulled about a thousand books on black culture and history from the trash. The collection was started after the civil rights movement, when demand began to grow for a school curriculum that included black history.

Amazon announced Tuesday that it will launch a comics and graphic novels imprint called Jet City Comics. One of their first publications will be a comic adaptation of George R.R. Martin's short story "Meathouse Man," which Martin says is "one of my strangest, darkest, and most twisted short stories."

GOP Colorado Senate candidate Jaxine Bubis was recently revealed to be Jaxine Daniels, author of steamy erotic novels. Bubis joins a list of porn-dabbling politicians, including Scooter Libby and his 2005 novel The Apprentice.

Rejoice, unhappy spinsters of America — the "Princeton mom" is writing a self-help book to help you "avoid an unwanted life of spinsterhood with cats."

Reed Johnson writes about the enigmatic "Voynich manuscript," a medieval text written in an unbroken code, noting "the perverse sway that the book has over its would-be conquerors." He writes: "But as much as each of us strives to be the one to crack the code, I think few of us would truly like to see it solved ... the book's resistance to being read is what sets it apart. Undeciphered, the manuscript exists in a sort of quantum indeterminacy — one that collapses into a single meaning the moment the text is finally measured and understood. And no matter how thrilling such a text might be, it will remain a disappointment for being closed off, completed — for being, in the end, no longer a mystery."

According to The Mumbai Mirror, Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of the newly-merged Penguin Random House, has asked the author Vikram Seth to return a $1.7 million advance for failing to turn in his manuscript for A Suitable Girl, the sequel to his hugely successful (and, at about 1,400 pages, huge) novel A Suitable Boy. Seth's agent told The Mirror by phone that "Vikram has been known to take his time with his books. Our aim is to settle this new date with Hamish. If we can't, then Vikram will decide what he wants to do next."