Are you a great lover of literature? Do you have a special fondness for mysteries set in the Southwest? Or are you just a pompous egomaniac?

Albuquerque Contemporary 2004 at the Albuquerque Museum

Gronk is roughly the sound a goose makes while chasing away a potential predator, but don't let that confuse you. Gronk also happens to be a renowned Los Angeles performance and visual artist best known for his spectacular murals. This year, he was also the juror responsible for selecting entries in Albuquerque Contemporary 2004, Magnífico's 15^th annual exhibit of some of the best contemporary artists from the Albuquerque area.

“Sud Americana Shelf Life” by Erin Currier

Parks Gallery

John Edwards isn't the only one who thinks there are two Americas. Erin Currier's complex, multi-media paintings take a nose-dive into the inky pit of our multicultural nation, revealing that the United States is considerably more than just a bunch of pansy white boys like me (and John Edwards). Currier's exhibit, The Other America, opens this Saturday, Aug. 7, with a reception from 4 to 7 p.m. at Parks Gallery in Taos. It's worth the long ride to check out this amazing art. The show runs through Aug. 24. (505) 751-0343.

As a firmly anti-hysterical liberal, I began reading The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq with a hint of skepticism. I feared that the bold title and sensational packaging were giveaways that the book was a self-gratifying screed, and an unusually shallow one at that. Fortunately, I was wrong. Far from a work of pop-leftist propaganda, Lies is a damningly precise sheep in partisan wolf clothing.

Did you catch that popular black comedy Fight Club a few years back? If in addition to making expensive bath soap out of fat stolen from liposuction clinics, the subversive heroes of that film had turned their ambition to producing a periodical of startling fiction and articles, the Los Angeles-based quarterly Small Doggies might have been the result.

Several entries in this elegant new book of short stories incorporate elements of imaginative fantasy. This Little Black Book should prove to be yet another celebrated collection by one of Britain's most talented living fiction writers.