Enetertaining Disasters by Nancy Spiller

I am in love with this book. Conceptually, it's rather like "Mrs.Dalloway" but has a strong sense of dark humor. A great winter weekend read--and since the book includes recipes, you've got plenty of ideas for dinner on hand.

Testimony by Anita Shreve

As a fan of Anita Shreve I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by her latest novel. Testimony is the story of how a seemingly isolated event at a private school can ruin the lives of everyone associated it with it. Those involved include: the headmaster, three basketball players, the alleged “victim”, the parents of all the students involved, the wife of the headmaster, the headmaster’s replacement, a reporter, etc. While it’s admirable of Shreve to try and show us what happened, how it happened, and why it happened from so many different perspectives, the end result is a disjointed novel. Each chapter jumped around from voice to voice and it took me a while to get “in character” and remember what had happened to that particular character up to that point. The characters themselves ended up being too one dimensional.

The “what” and “how” is easy: one night, after a dance and too much to drink, three boys and a girl go back to one of the boys’ dorms and engage in sexual acts. It is the “why” that we don’t find out till the very end. And that left me with some questions. It was entirely too anticlimactic and it also didn’t ring true. The book focuses on one boy in particular and what leads him to that dorm room. His reasons just felt, for lack of a better word, lame. I had a hard time believing that what he learned would lead him to lash out the way he did. Maybe if Shreve hadn’t spent so much time writing about inconsequential characters, she would have had time to develop this one (Silas) so that I could believe in his reaction.

Forever Young by Bob Dylan

While not strictly speaking an adult book, this is my pick for a graduation (never too early to start thinking!) gift. The lyrics and message of Dylan's folk classic is beautifully enhanced by Rodgers' illustrations. They are reminiscent of 60s advertisements and he gives loads of inside information about the 60s music scene in the notes at the back of the book.
Anyone who likes folk music and/or art, Bob Dylan or the 60s would appreciate this!

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

I started writing, “The Gargoyle is the story of…” and realized that the narrator has no name. It just now occurred to me. That gives you an idea of how deeply engrossed I was in this story. The narrator is a burn victim, but a very unsympathetic one considering his accident occurred while driving under the influence. He’s an unrepentant pornographer, atheist, drug addict and womanizer. While recovering in the hospital he gets a visit from a woman who claims to have known him before…in the 1300s. She has been searching all her life to find him. Because he has nowhere to go and is more than a little curious about Marianne, he moves in with her. What proceeds is a love story unlike any other. Not only does she tell the story of their life and love, but she shares four different love stories that bolster her belief in love and redemption.

Although this story has been told before: remorseless man meets woman who changes his life and he’s no longer remorseless…it has never been told quite like this.

~Eris

Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith

Smith provides a fascinating look inside Stalin-era Soviet life in the guise of a murder mystery. The protagonist is an agent in the MGB, the secret police force, who becomes involved in a search for a serial killer who murders children along thousands of miles of railway. A jealous colleague sets in motion the events that allow him to conduct an unofficial investigation, unofficial because the state considers murder to be impossible in the perfect Communist society, making anyone believing a murder to have occurred an enemy of the state. Along his journey, emotional as well as literal, the reader experiences the Soviet Union at multiple levels: the day-to-day impact of Communism on regular citizens' lives, the long-term impacts of fear on the populace, the physicality of the landscape, and the juxtaposition of the ideals that are the public face of the government and the people with reality. --Inanna

World Made by Hand

by James Howard Kunstler

Kunstler here presents a different sort of apocalyptic novel. It's not the Russkies or the Infidels who destroy American society but rather American society itself, which proves itself unsustainable once the oil dries up. This novel takes place perhaps 10 years after the new world begins in an upstate New York town first decimated by the downfall of modernity and then by influenzas and other diseases. Areas of the country that haven't been destroyed outright by hurricanes (Manhattan) or nuclear arms (Washington, D.C.), have moved back 200 years in time as the energy required to run the technology and the machines no longer exists. Governments are no more, and each community is a jurisdiction unto itself. The protagonist is a former exec who now works as a carpenter. Because paper money is worthless, his work earns materials and services through an informal barter system. His wife and daughter have died; his son has left to see what's left of the country. But the life he has built, and the lives of all those in Union Grove, will shift again through a variety of events: a murder by a member of a scavenger gang, the purchase of the former high school building by a religious sect escaping racial troubles in the South, and the disappearance of a boat crew and the goods they were carrying downriver to Albany. Kunstler provides a fascinating and frightening look at an all-too-imaginable future. -Inanna

The Beach House by Jane Green

Being from New England, naturally I give anything with a New England (especially if it's coastal) setting a chance. Also, as far as light reading goes, I'm a fan of Greens work. This one gives a slightly older narrator than her usual fare and an Austen-like plot...complete with happy endings for the nice people and a comeuppance for the not.
A book that goes very nicely with a tall glass of iced tea.

Are you there Vodka? It's Me Chelsea.

Definitely not as funny as her show since the reader lacks the immediacy of her delivery and the snarkiness of her tone is not as well conveyed in print--as one would expect. But if you're a fan it's a fun read and the essay format makes it perfect for just before bed or the beach.

Sloop by Daniel Robb

To be honest, I only skimmed this book but very much liked what I read. It's both a story of a man's future and an elegy for a lifestyle long gone. The dialogue is a bit stiff but sailors are doers not talkers. This may especially appeal to anyone with a Cape Cod connection.

The Gossip of the Starlings Nina de Gramont

This book will undoubtedly be comopared to A Separate Peace(and the quote from John Knowles in the frontspiece won't help) but it is much much more than the update of a classic. The reader immediately reminded of their own adolesence, and with that reminder, finds themselves holding their breath for these girls. It is a gripping story of the power of the friendships that we have in youth--and how those friendships color who we are as adults. Do not miss.