May 29, 2008 | About Last Night

• What you’ll find in Alberto Manguel’s 30,000 volume library in rural France: A section devoted to versions of the Faust legend, Isak Dinesen’s Seven Gothic Tales, lots of John Hawkes and Cynthia Ozick, Plato, thousands of detective novels, and “dozens of very bad books that I don’t throw away in case I ever need an example of a book I think is bad.” What’s not in the library: Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, because “I felt [it] infected the shelves with its prurient descriptions of deliberately inflicted pain.” (This is an older link but a goodie. Via Bookdwarf.)
• Zadie Smith’s appreciation of the best of all books, Middlemarch, begins with a look at Henry James’s review of the novel, written when he was 30: “To James, Dorothea is a serious element, Fred a trivial one. It’s strange to see wise Henry reading like a dogmatic young man, with a young man’s certainty of what elements, in our lives, will prove the most significant.”

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)

• August: Osage County (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• Boeing-Boeing (comedy, PG-13, cartoonishly sexy, reviewed here)

• A Chorus Line (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Cry-Baby (musical, PG-13, mildly naughty and very cynical, reviewed here)

• Grease * (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

• Gypsy (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• In the Heights (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)

• November (comedy, PG-13, profusely spattered with obscene language, reviewed here)

• Passing Strange (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)

• Sunday in the Park with George (musical, PG-13, too complicated for children, closes June 29, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Adding Machine (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, too musically demanding for youngsters, closes Aug. 31, reviewed here)

PORT%20AUTHORITY.jpg • Port Authority (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes June 22, reviewed here)

IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

• Julius Caesar/Antony and Cleopatra (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, too musically demanding for youngsters, performed in alternating repertory through July 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• From Up Here (drama, PG-13, closes June 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN NEW HAVEN, CONN.:

• Carousel (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)