Press and Sun-Bulletin from Binghamton, New York • 57

Books Press Sun-Bulletin presscon nects. com PAGE 8F SUNDAY JUNE 18,2006 Best Sellers Author's depression leads to book, life lesson fb llTN if 4 FICTION 1 "The Husband" by Dean Koontz (Bantam) 2. "Beach Road" by James Patterson, Peter de Jonge (Little, Brown) 3. "At Risk" by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam) 4. "The Book of the Dead" by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child (Warner Books) 5.

"Terrorist" by John Updike (Knopf) 6. "The Saboteurs" by W.E.B. Griffin (Putnam Adult) 7. "Dead Watch" by John Sandford i (Putnam) 8. "The Cold Moon: A Lincoln Rhyme Novel" by Jeffery Deaver (Simon Schuster) 9.

"Dark Side of the Moon" by Sherri-lyn Kenyon (St. Martin's Press) 10. "The Rapture: In the Twinkling of an Eye, Countdown to the Earth's Last Days" by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins (Tyndale House Publishers) 11. "Star Wars, Legacy of the Force: Betrayal" by Aaron Allston (Del Rey) 1 2.

"Killer Dreams" by Iris Johansen (Bantam) 13. "The Hard Way" by Lee Child (Delacorte Press) NONFICTION 1. "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" by Ann Coulter (Crown Forum) 2. "Wisdom of Our Fathers" by Tim Russert (Random House) 3. "Dispatches from the Edge" by Anderson Cooper (HarperCollins) 4.

"Marley and Me" by John Grogan (Morrow) 5. "Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems" by Cesar Mil-Ian, Melissa Jo Peltier (Harmony) 6. "The World Is Flat (Updated and Expanded)" by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 7. "Mayflower" by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking) 8.

"Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow) 9. "Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupid- ity" by John Stossel (Hyperion) 1 0. "My Life in and out of the Rough: Truth Behind All That Bull- You i Think You Know About Me" by John Daly (HarperCollins) 11.

"Lies at the Altar" by Robin L. Smith (Hyperion) 12. "The Alphabet of Manliness" by Maddox (Citadel Press) 13. "Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf? China Floats, Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War" by Greg Palast (Dutton Adult) I Publishers Weekly Young man's successes are part of his dilemmas By NAHAL TOOSI Associated Press NEW YORK It is both inspir-' ing and dispiriting to talk to Ned Vizzini. He's 25 and has already published his third book.

Yet, he struggles with depression severe enough to require medication. He's humble and wants young people to keep their personal dramas in perspective. Yet, when he describes his own future happiness, much of it hinges on book sales. "There is a certain perception that because I've done what I've done I have sort of made it," Vizzini says. "That's not true.

There's a lot more work to be done. But that is about where the logic ends. The rest of it is illogical. Yeah, depression is illogical." It is also the subject of Vizzini's most recent book, "It's Kind of a Funny Story." The novel tells the story of Craig Gilner, a Brooklyn teen who studies like crazy to get accepted at Manhattan's prestigious Executive Pre-Professional High School. Once in, he realizes he may have sacrificed the satisfaction of being exceptional among average students to become average among exceptionals.

It's a feeling he really can't handle. Of course, much depends on how you define "average." A grade in the low 90s apparently doesn't cut it in Craig's confused young mind. His closest peers, a bunch of pot-smoking, hormon-ally raging annoyances, don't help. Vizzini, a tall, dark-haired young man who grew up in Brooklyn and carefully measures his responses, has some special insight into the challenges facing Craig. He attended New York's uber-acclerated Stuy vesant High from the time they're 8 or 9." Fame is not always fun For Vizzini, being a young author proved far more daunting than he'd expected.

His writing career began with articles about his life that he wrote for the New York Press in the 1990s. Using many of those stories, he published a quasi-autobi-ography, "Teen Angst? when he was 19. "Be More Chill," a novel about a young man's quest for coolness in high school followed four years later. And the heat was on for him to produce more. "Early on, I think I was a little bit ignorant of what it meant to have your name in a newspaper," he says.

"I thought it was all fun and games, you know, and it's not. It brings with it pressures and responsibilities that could be difficult." Vizzini worried about his ability to produce another book. The worries wouldn't go away. "I was having a dinner with someone and I threw up. I couldn't eat," he recalls.

"I went into the bathroom. And I was like, 'This is a good meal. Why can't I eat It was because I was worried about my book worried that it was going to be a failure, worried that I was going to be a failure." One night in November 2004, the thoughts, got so intense suicidal, actually that Vizzini checked himself into a hospital's psychiatric wing. Craig, too, opts to go to a hospital instead of committing suicide. Both Vizzini and his fictional protagonist experienced a time out from the world.

In the ward, simple tasks mattered most. Now you wake up. Now it's time to eat. Now you're in a group. Now you go to sleep.

"In many ways, I'm disturbed by how much I liked it," Vizzini says. "I shouldn't look back at it so fondly, because it's noi the real world. It almost feels like cheating a little bit to give yourself up. But it was definitely necessary." By the end of the book, Craig has realized his plight really isn't as bad as that of many others and that he may be more of an artist Associated Press Author Ned Vizzini, 25, uses his experiences with mental depression in his latest book, "It's Kind of a Funny Story." than an "executive pre-profes-sional." Finding balance But Vizzini, a Hunter College graduate who majored in computer science and will start teaching in New York City public schools this fall, never left writing. In fact, after five days in the hospital, he went home and within days began writing "It's Kind of a Funny Story." The writing was cathartic.

A month later he had the draft. "He's very savvy about the business, and he's very mature as a writer," said Alessandra Balzer, Vizzini's editor at Hyperion Books for Children. "Even people who don't maybe aspire to what he does can find some solace that someone as talented and savvy as Ned can have these insecurities and fears." Vizzini says the response among young readers so far has been both empathy and gratitude. He's free with his advice to teens feeling crushed by the burdens of the world. "The best coping strategy you need to have is a peer group, a group of people you're not competing with," he says.

"They're friends. They want to see you succeed. "I think it's really helpful to keep your own situation in perspective as a young person. If you read up on the way a lot of people in the world live you can realize how much you have to be thankful for." Still, Vizzini questions how successful he really is. At one point, in an awkward, almost unconscious way, he describes how he still looks at future book sales as one way to predict if he'll be happy.

Later, he acknowledges that's perhaps not the most healthy attitude. He still deals with depression, and continues to take meds. "I'm not suicidal," he says. "That option has been crossed out for me. That's really what this book is about, making that decision to live." ON THE NET www.nedvizzini.com to(B00KS Binghamton author publishes sixth book "No Hero's Welcome," a new novel written by Binghamton author Luke Mickum, is the sixth of the eight novels he has written.

"No Hero's Welcome" is a story set mostly in Baltimore, where Mickum attended law school. The book jacket reads, in part: "A modern saga played out from a Baltimore neighborhood. A place where everyone is hoping for some redemption that never seems to Everyone seems to have lost their way, not knowing where they are, or how they really got there. All of them knowing simply that they want to get back home, to where everything was clean and whole, and new again." Mickum first came to the area 14 years ago to work for NYSEG. He now writes full-time.

The book is in some bookstores. It can also be ordered by using ISBN 1-4241-2028-4. BU professor publishes book Binghamton University announces that Professor Marilyn Desmond has published a new book called "Ovid's Art and the Wife of Bath: The Ethics of Erotic Violence" (Cornell University Press). It is a major contribution to the study of gender and sexuality in the medieval ages, and has already garnered considerable praise by scholars in the field. Desmond is professor of English and Comparative Literature.

in New York City. Still, "It's Kind of a Funny Story" is supposed to be an indictment of zero-sum cultures in general, he says. "I would like for things to be a little bit different," he says. "I would like for people to be able to explore their interests a little bit more as young people, as opposed to be thrown into a cutthroat social and academic environment School. His experiences there have influenced all three of his books.

"I learned at Stuy," he says. "I learned about competition and kind of the absolute nature of life. There are winners and losers. High school was a brutal social arena where you learned the way the world really works." Vizzini acknowledges that his frame of reference is narrow, limited to elite, highly driven students Win Garano on the case in Cornwell's new thriller IIITl'ri'llHTIUTIII ffHUW.1HHllllMiIiil a Why, Win asks, would the state of Massachusetts care about her murder? "We solve some old case that people in the good oP South have left in a cardboard box for 20 years, and we're heroes," says the shrewish and manipulative Lamont, who has her eye on the governor's office. This is the final straw for Win, who objects to being used for Lamont's political gain.

He decides to quit. Then Lamont is assaulted in her home, and Win is forced to stay on the job. He asks Delma Sykes, a special agent with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, for help on the Knoxville case. Sykes is a smart investigator, but she doesn't have Win's special gift, which can give him an edge when he's working a case. Win has premonitions; he calls them "feelings." His grandmother, who raised him after his parents died, says it's in his blood.

"At Risk," which was recently serialized in The New York Times Magazine, motors along at a brisk 212 pages, unburdened by a lengthy and complicated back story. Cornwell skillfully blends her characters' personal and professional lives into a thriller that is neither predictable nor mundane. in hi ikiw: in ii ItlHTJ i By CAROL DEEGAN Associated Press "At Risk" (Putnam. 212 Pages. $21.95) is the latest forensic thriller from Patricia Corn-well, known for her numerous Kay Scarpetta mysteries.

But readers will care more about the main character, Winston Garano, than whether the case is solved. And that's not a bad thing. Garano, also known as Win or Geronimo, is an investigator with the Massachusetts State Police. His father was black and his mother was Italian, giving Win his exotic good looks. He wanted to attend Harvard and become a poet and a scholar like his father, or maybe a lawyer.

Although he's brilliant, his inability to score well on standardized tests derailed those dreams. Win's boss, District Attorney Monique Lamont, has sent him to Knoxville, to attend the National Forensic Academy. She then orders him back to Boston to investigate a 20-year-old murder. Lamont wants Win to show how decades-old cold cases can be solved using cutting-edge DNA technology. The case involves a 73-year-old woman who was beaten to death in her own home in Knoxville.

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