ASHES IN THE RAIN Selected Essays <i> by Al Martinez (TQS Publications: $12) </i>

In this collection of essays, the Los Angeles Times columnist considers such topics of Southern Californiana as gun ownership, fitness and fatness and surviving 55-minute roadblocks. Martinez explains his selection of the title, referring to a piece about the new vegetation that reclaims a hillside after a brush fire: “I think that what I am in the long run is not so much a chronicler of woe or a satirist defining human folly as a messenger of redemption who believes that in the wake of every calamity, spring will come again.”