“Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman,” edited by Alan Taylor. (Henry Holt, $32.)
Clearly, Alan Rickman wrote these journals only for himself; the entries are terse, revealing little. (As the New York Times said, if Rickman had written “The Metamorphosis,” it would have been one line: “Woke as bug.”) Still, for fans of the late actor these entries are glimpses into his world, if not his soul: buying a blender, taking the Eurostar to Paris, getting the terrible news that Natasha Richardson had died in a ski accident. Of his own death sentence — a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer — he wrote only, “A different kind of diary now.” Six months later, he was gone.
“Wonderlands: Essays on the Life of Literature,” by Charles Baxter. (Graywolf Press, $17.)
