Columbia native Michael Chabon, whose quirky novels have featured unlikely characters such as golems and a colony of Alaskan Jews, takes a close look at his own family life in his new book, "Manhood for Amateurs." In a review in today's Baltimore Sun, Steve Almond describes the book as "a raft of shortish essays that traces his progression from a lonely, bookish boy to a thoughtful if addled husband and father." Here's an excerpt from Almond's review:

His focus swivels from unrepentant geekitude (comic books, Carl Sagan, "Planet of the Apes") to the sorrows of divorce, with welcome excursions into the wonders of Bisquick, telescopes, basement lairs and Roberto Clemente. Chabon is more or less incapable of writing a boring sentence. Like Updike, he is an inveterate noticer, and the central appeal of his style lies in its lyric precision, whether he's describing a pack of stickers "scented with the sweet dust of bubble gum" or a fudge upside-down cake "floating like the earth's mantle on a glutinous brown magma." If the book has a unifying theme, it is the need to preserve our sense of wonder against an incessant tide of marketing. Chabon takes direct aim at the forces eroding our cultural imagination. He is especially good at diagnosing the neuroses of what used to be called the bourgeoisie. Here's his take on the paranoia that plagues modern parenthood.