Amy Reiter

Phil Camp, the crabby protagonist of Bill Scheft’s novel “Everything Hurts,” is a man in pain. “The pain had started nine months ago. Innocently enough. In his left gluteus,” writes Scheft, erstwhile head writer for “The Late Show with David Letterman.” “That’s right. Pain in the ass.” Phil, a divorced former sportswriter who has accidentally remade himself as a self-help guru, spends his days (and nights) lying on a wrestling mat in his sprawling Manhattan apartment, writing a popular syndicated newspaper column based on his bestselling book “Where Can I Stow My Baggage?” He rises from time to time to limp to doctors and therapists. Nothing helps — until a peculiar man in sandals hands him a dog-eared copy of “The Power of ‘Ow!’ How the Mind Gives the Body Pain,” by one Dr. Samuel Abrun …

In Brief: “Everything Hurts” by Bill Scheft (The Barnes & Noble Review)

Donald Trump is all about unlikely success. His glittering urban towers, undulating golf courses, opulently outfitted wives (two former and one current, a fashion model), and prolonged reality TV moment serve as ongoing evidence that his boundless self-confidence can turn seemingly impossible dreams into reality. Now, with his new book “Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education in Business and Life,” written with Meredith McIver, the real estate tycoon and TV star generously fills us in on the secrets of his success — and explains how we, too, can prevail in our career endeavors …

Review: “Think Like a Champion” by Donald Trump (The Barnes & Noble Review)

Say you’re going on a wilderness expedition and can take with you only what will fit into one compact Altoids tin: What would you take? That’s just one of many thought-provoking survival questions addressed by Richard Wiese in his new book, “Born to Explore: How to Be a Backyard Adventurer.” Wiese, who has served as the Explorers Club’s youngest president and hosted a syndicated TV show, also fills in readers on how to: build their own canoe; start a fire without a match; make an igloo; cook “Road Kill Stew” (no, that’s not a euphemism); survive a moose attack; bake bread in a plastic bag; catch fish with a Coke bottle; chop down a tree; fashion a compass out of a sewing needle, a magnet, and a glass of water; and, well, a host of other useful things to know …

In Brief: “Born to Explore” by Richard Wiese (The Barnes & Noble Review)

What’s so special about the 11 women who grew up together in Ames, Iowa, who are the subject of Jeffrey Zaslow’s “The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship”? Well, nothing really — and yet, in another sense, everything. With this book, Zaslow, who writes the Wall Street Journal’s “Moving On” column, has set out to explore long-term female friendships — what makes them tick, how they evolve, what they mean to women — selecting this tightly bound group who grew up amid midwestern cornfields in the ’60s and ’70s and came of age in the ’80s, specifically because they are so typical …

In Brief: The Girls from Ames (The Barnes & Noble Review)

You may know her from ABC’s “Pushing Daisies” or the Broadway musical “Wicked” or as “Sesame Street’s” Miss Noodle, but you may not know Kristin Chenoweth as she comes across in her new memoir, “A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love, and Faith in Stages.” If Chenoweth — singer and sexpot, comedian and Christian, inspiration to hometown girls and drag queens alike — is a little bit wicked, she’s also a lot of bit wholesome: a lesson in surprising contrasts …

In Brief: “A Little Bit Wicked” (The Barnes & Noble Review)

Out of all the reasons to recommend a book to a friend, my motivation is rarely “This might help.” But twice now, since reading Amy Dickinson’s new memoir, The Mighty Queens of Freeville, I’ve passed it on in precisely that spirit. In one case, I thought a city-dwelling friend of mine, who’s lately missed the small midwestern town she grew up in, might find comfort in Dickinson’s loving description of her own rural hometown in upstate New York. In the other, a mother of three very young children revealed that her husband (the rat) had recently left her for another woman; I hoped she might find some salve in Dickinson’s survival under similar circumstances …

Review: “The Mighty Queens of Freeville” by Amy Dickinson (The Barnes & Noble Review)