Elizabeth Warren Thinks of Jon Stewart and Vomits. Twice

Elizabeth Warren, in trying to get visibility and promote her views, had to get over her stage fright. That's just one of the non-political anecdotes in her new book, "A Fighting Chance," which makes for varied reading. In other words, the woman who helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has presented a very human view of herself as well as her causes.

Warren faced her first financial crisis at 12, when her father suffered a heart attack and the family's income sank. Her mother had to go find a minimum-wage job at Sears.

But perhaps some will find the most sympathy for this potential 2016 Presidential candidate in reading about how unsettled she became in making her debut appearance on "The Daily Show" in 2009: "I was miserable. I had stage fright — gut-wrenching, stomach-turning, bile-filled stage fright...I was having serious doubts about going through with this. I had talked to reporters and been interviewed plenty of times, but this was different. At any second, the whole interview could turn into a giant joke, and what if the joke turned on the work I was trying to do?"

Stewart's questioning style didn't help, and Warren got even more rattled when "he immediately began hurling baseballs straight at my forehead. The beginning was a disaster." But fortunately, she calmed down and has since proved to be an entertaining guest on what an often be a dull, confusing subject. Some of her best TV appearances of late have come as a guest on…no, no…as a guest on "Real Time with Bill Maher."

JACK THE RIPPER: THE FORGOTTEN VICTIMS

"No...please, God, no, no, no, DON'T DO IT!"

The cry of a victim of Jack the Ripper? Possibly. It might also be the cry of most true-crime fans who are simply sick of books about Saucy Jack. The good news is that this one, coming after a bloody siege of tomes that "honored" the Ripper's 125th anniversary last year, is not one that speculates all that much on what famous artist or Royal was actually a psycho killer. It's about another facet of the fascinating case...some crimes that the madman did not take credit for via jeering letter...and ones that didn't quite fit the pattern of technique and location.

The authors take into consideration the theories that include Saucy Jack fleeing Whitechapel to continue his vicious assaults in New York. Or Nicaragua. While many tomes of this type tend to be exploitive, and written by purple-prose dripping hacks, the authors here tend more toward surgical dissection of facts. After all, this book doesn't come from some penny-dreadful publisher, or worse, an eBook company; it's from Yale University Press. Not drily scholarly, there are plenty of chills for the average Ripper-fan as the scenes of carnage are examined, as well as the testimony of the few women who managed to survive Ripper (or Ripper copycat) attacks.

After 125 years, there's still a lot of misinformation and mythology about Jack the Ripper. The authors do deal with some of that. There will probably never be a definitive answer to who the murderer and taunting letter-writer was, and if it was one on the list of most logical suspects (Kosminsky, Klosowski, Pizer, Tumblety or Druitt). But this book honors and focuses on victims of violence...women who should not have died, whether at the hands of the Ripper or some other madman, including: Jane Beardmore, Annie Millwood, Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram and Ada Wilson.

Not S&M or B&D, just: 300 Best Homemade Candy Recipes

Here's a forbidden book for you!

No, it's not "50 Shades of Grey" or any of the alarmingly hundreds of dreadful copy-cat eBooks from other talentless amateur practitioners of "mommy porn." It's a book that dabbles, dribbles and drizzles through a world of exotic, bad-for-you excess: Brittles, Caramels, Chocolate, Fudge and Truffles. And more.

Author Jane Shamrock throws caution to the wind, and passion into the stove, as she offers her photo-filled guide to how to fill yourself with sugary excess. At a time when people are warning that most anything can cause diabetes, and when even healthy people are (needlessly) buying gluten-free cookies, and when Coke and Pepsi are discovering less people interested in their sugary drinks and even less buying the dangerous sugar-free alternatives...here's Jane explaining ALL the secrets to re-connecting with lost childhood treats and discovering new ones.

Oh, oh, oh: Old-Fashioned Hard Candies, Caramels, Clusters, Chocolate-Coated Candies, Fondants, Farmhouse Favorites Candied and Spiced Nuts, Popcorn Candies, Short and Sweet Simple Barks, Speedy Candy Rolls and more! This is not for the person who is simply content with a Milky Way bar, but wants to impress at a party, amaze at a child's birthday, or just conjure up something unique and personalized.

The book might even be of interest to those who simply wonder about how one creates a filled-chocolate, or whether you need mallow to make a real authentic marshmallow. Sweet!

ANOTHER SIDE OF BILLY GRAHAM

For the past few years, there have been some health-scare news items on veteran Evangelist and TV personality Billy Graham. The man who has served as an inspiration for thousands, if not millions over his long career, now seems to be inspiring authors to hurry up and write a book about him. He's 95, and has written some fairly current books about himself and his philosophies, so at this point, what more is there to say?

Billy Graham's grandchildren have come up with a cut-and-paste job called "Thank You, Billy Graham," which assembles inspirational stories told about him from people all over the world. It's obviously preaching to the converted.

Hanspeter Nüesch has come up with a more substantial angle: "Ruth and Billy Graham: Legacy of a Couple." It's got a foreward by Gigi Graham. That, and the Switzerland-based Mr. Nuesch being a member of "Campus Crusade for Christ International," should alert readers that this is not a tell-all, but a celebration. "At times I had to laugh because he seemed to know more about me and my family than I did," writes Ms. Graham. "Hanspeter's focused enthusiasm and obedience to what he felt God called him to do have paid off. This book is the finished product."

For those whose choice of reading is usually secular, there are still some interesting anecdotes and inspirational moments to explore as Ruth and Billy faced their challenges, which include being so visible as role models, and in raising their children. This love-letter book includes over 100 photos. The author lists ten traits that served this couple well, and that (well, without necessarily #4 on his list) any couple need to work on, if not master: "partnership, authenticity, humility, intimacy with Christ, focus, integrity, faith, global responsibility, empowerment, and grace."

The Telegraph's "Top 20 Books You Should Read"

Perhaps almost as bad as book burning and book censorship...are lists of "Books You Should Read."

Not every book, even a classic, is going to enthrall every reader. Even if we're talking about classic literature that is full of adventure and anecdotal humor ("Treasure Island" and "Huckleberry Finn" come to mind), these great books might not interest every age group or ethnic group. Camus' "The Stranger" might be over the heads of some, and "Tell-Tale Heart and Selected Short Stories of Poe" might possibly be irrelevant to people in a country where racial hatred and violence is the norm, and there's no interest in symbolism or pondering existential neurosis. Why kill? Why not!

There's also a question of whether to include a book that's just a "good read" and escapist fun, like, oh, "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie, or other tomes that simply encourage a reader to sit down and let imagination take over.

None of the four books I've mentioned made it to The Telegraph (UK newspaper) Top 40...while Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell did. At least Twain and Camus managed to land inside the limit of the Top 100!

You might think the list was slanted as the "Top 100 Books British People Should Read," based on an interest in British topics as well as what is considered "classic" literature, but very American authors made the lower regions of the list; Updike, Steinbeck and Salinger. Joseph Heller's "Catch 22" arrived at #77 and Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" at #87, not too far from the low-ranked "The Stranger" at # 82.

Below? I'm just quoting the Top 20, which will keep you busy enough!

20 Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
Samuel Johnson thought Sterne’s bawdy, experimental novel was too odd to last. Pah!

19 The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
Bloodsucking Martian invaders are wiped out by a dose of the sniffles.

18 Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
Waugh based the hapless junior reporter in this journalistic farce on former Telegraph editor Bill Deedes.

17 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Sexual double standards are held up to the cold, Wessex light in this rural tragedy.

16 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
A seaside sociopath mucks up murder and marriage in Greene’s literary Punch and Judy show.

15 The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse
A scrape-prone toff and pals are suavely manipulated by his gentleman’s personal gentleman.

14 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Out on the winding, windy moors Cathy and Heathcliff become each other’s “souls”. Then he storms off.

13 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Debt and deception in Dickens’s semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman crammed with cads, creeps and capital fellows.

12 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
A slave trader is shipwrecked but finds God, and a native to convert, on a desert island.

11 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Every proud posh boy deserves a prejudiced girl. And a stately pile.

10 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Picaresque tale about quinquagenarian gent on a skinny horse tilting at windmills.

9 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Septimus’s suicide doesn’t spoil our heroine’s stream-of-consciousness party.

8 Disgrace by JM Coetzee
An English professor in post-apartheid South Africa loses everything after seducing a student.

7 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Poor and obscure and plain as she is, Mr Rochester wants to marry her. Illegally.

6 In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
Seven-volume meditation on memory, featuring literature’s most celebrated lemony cake.

5 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
“The conquest of the earth,” said Conrad, “is not a pretty thing.”

4 The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
An American heiress in Europe “affronts her destiny” by marrying an adulterous egoist.

3 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy’s doomed adulteress grew from a daydream of “a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow”.

2 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Monomaniacal Captain Ahab seeks vengeance on the white whale which ate his leg.

1 Middlemarch by George Eliot
“One of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” said Virginia Woolf.

Captain Underpants Tops The BAN and BOO list

Once again parents and teachers have shown concern that their potty-mouthed kids are being influenced by a badly-drawn comic hero called "Captain Underpants." Nevermind that Dav Pilkey's picture books come from Scholastic Press!

Perhaps somebody will be able to prove that rappers wearing their pants around their thighs to show off their underwear, were all fans of "Captain Underpants" when they were in fifth grade.

The American Library Association's list of the most-banned and most booed books for students, once again shoots itself in the rear by including so many well respected titles.

Aside from "Captain Underpants" from Scholastic Books, rounding out the Unholy Three were Nobel laureate Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," and Sherman Alexie's 'The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." And yes, the un-PC word "Indian" had something to do with it, but sexual references in both of those books were cited as well.

Coming in at number 4 was the more logical choice for disgust, E.L. James' BD and BW (that bondage/domination badly written) book series "Fifty Shades of Grey." And rounding out the "I'll give you five and slap you silly for reading it" is Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games." The latter two are obviously considered as books no "decent library" should carry, even if under the counter and for adults who ask for them.