Losing Mum and Pup » (Unabridged, 6 CDs)

Christopher Buckley is the author of fourteen books, including Supreme Courtship, Boomsday, and Thank You For Smoking. He is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine, and was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence. He lives on the Acela train between Washington, D.C. and New York City.

In twelve months between 2007 and 2008, Christopher Buckley coped with the passing of his father, William F. Buckley, the father of the modern conservative movement, and his mother, Patricia Taylor Buckley, one of New York's most glamorous and colorful socialites. He was their only child and their relationship was close and complicated. Writes Buckley: "They were not - with respect to every other set of loving, wonderful parents in the world - your typical mom and dad."

As Buckley tells the story of their final year together, he takes listners on a surprisingly entertaining tour through hospitals, funeral homes, and memorial services, capturing the heartbreaking and disorienting feeling of becoming a 55-year-old orphan. Buckley maintains his sense of humor by recalling the words of Oscar Wilde: "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."

Just as Calvin Trillin and Joan Didion gave readers solace and insight into the...

The Barnes & Noble Review

Christopher Buckley prizes being debonair and puckish the way Dolly Parton has long valued being a 40DD, and for pretty much the same reason. Having established up front that boredom isn't in the cards, he and she can both talk about whatever they like. His comic Washington novels often wear thin on me, especially when he lets a larky premise do all the work and treats the rest as mere typing. But his Beau Brummell jests about politics and other train wrecks are the main reason I regularly check out Tina Brown's Daily Beast website, his perch for current events commentary since last fall.