A garrulous hodgepodge of household memoir, off-the-cuff advice, snack-size histories and in-the-field reporting ... "Sheetrock & Shellac" is, like its subject, both fascinating and mundane — sometimes simultaneously. ... And Owen's writing, though less jaunty than in "The Walls Around Us," still crackles and pops: "Good showers," he writes, "rank up there with caffeine, martinis and Prozac as restorers of human equilibrium." Ultimately, though, "Sheetrock & Shellac" is an updating, a work of maintenance rather than a full-scale renovation.