Several weeks ago, I shared the story about how a book club decided, from a stack of possibilities, on a book to read with me. They finished the novel they chose, and we got together to talk about it. Here are highlights of the discussion.
Category: Good Books
A philandering poet’s fatal attraction
Deborah Levy's novel packs a punch in a mere 157 pages. She puts a deeply unsettling spin on the impulsive, lusty fling gone wrong when vacationing Brits invite a mentally unstable beauty to stay with them. They don't know her presence is dangerous, but we do, which makes this a tense, engaging read.
You’ll take leave of your senses
NYRB Classics reprinted Thomas Tryon’s 1971 bestseller "The Other" this month, a chilling story that sold millions of copies during its day, which was the decade of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Exorcist." But of these three hair-raising novels, "The Other" unsettled me the most. Here's why. Also: An interesting database of 20th-century American Bestsellers book collectors will enjoy.
A book club’s selection process
How do you decide what to read next? Here's an inside look at what happened when I presented six books to a book club.
An accidental crime
Michael Kardos published his debut novel this fall, a thriller that starts with an annual golf get-together among three Princeton grads and turns nightmarish. His narrative style is brisk, making "The Three-Day Affair" a fast-paced read with surprises you won't see coming.
Confessions from American suburbia
The University of Georgia Press announced this week the winners of the 2012 Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Awards, but I've been hooked by a previous winner -- Andrew Porter's "The Theory of Light & Matter." Here's why, plus an "all hail the short story" burst of thought.
A forever within the numbered days
John Green's "The Fault In Our Stars" is a 2012 New York Times best-seller. Written for a young adult audience, it tells an unflinching love story between two teens with cancer. But don't for a moment believe 1) it's not for you because you're an adult; and 2) you need a hanky. Instead, be prepared with guaranteed reading time because you won't be able to put this book down.
The Best They’ve Ever Read
If you're looking for great crime novels to absorb you during reading time, here's a gold mine of suggestions. It's a list compiled and maintained by the owners of Partners & Crime Mystery Booksellers, a store in New York City that's sadly closing September 20, 2012. I've printed the list for future reference, and here describe my first three picks.
A Vietnam War novel from 1984
This is the kind of novel I would've stumbled on in an independent bookstore, if only those wonderful, passionate indie booksellers still dominated the brick-and-mortar landscape. Instead, I discovered "Fragments" by Jack Fuller online, while looking into a 1962 Vietnam pocket guide reissued by Oxford's Bodleian Libraries. Here's how the discovery happened.
Blunders of the lonely in 1950’s England
I purchased Peter Cameron's new novel "Coral Glynn" at Crawford Doyle Booksellers on Madison Avenue during a trip to New York. The clerk asked if I'd read Cameron before, and I said I had not. "You're in for a treat," she said. She was right. Also, heads up to those who love the book arts. Read the last paragraph to learn about the author's endeavors in this field.
Out of sync with the world’s ambitions
Mention the hippies of the 1960s and 1970s and those of that generation will instantly remember their peace signs, tie-dyed clothing, LSD trips and anti-government protests. Reading "Arcadia," a novel set in a hippie commune in upstate New York, those memories came back, only I experienced what felt like a more intimate view of this countercultural group. A moving fictional story written by the talented Lauren Groff.
Notes from a secret Paris
Here's an atmospheric, seductive journey into what the author says is "a secret city" of Paris. Written during the mid-20th century, these short essays are far from travelogue and more visual nostalgia. The book runs less than 200 pages, even less reading pages because it's a bilingual edition, with French on one page and the English translation on the other. My trip to Paris many years ago took me off the beaten tourist path. But it was nothing like this.
How a life blooms: the signposts of destiny
Molly Peacock's "The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72" is more than a great biography about an 18th century woman. It's a meditation on late-bloomers and the significance of choices made throughout one's life. Molly Peacock is an award-winning poet, and her "leaps of the poet's mind" transport us into wonderful places, real and profound.
18th century greed and utopia
In 1992, Michael Ondaatje won Britain's top literary prize, the Booker, for "The English Patient." But he didn't win it alone -- he shared the prize with Barry Unsworth's "Sacred Hunger," an involving novel about the British slave trade in the 1700s. The author's death last week brought the epic to my attention for the first time, a masterpiece likely unknown to many of us. Here's what we've been missing.
The nature of extremity
In Jennifer Miller's debut novel, a biology teacher instructs his students how to think for themselves, using information about extreme-loving microbes called extremophiles. These microorganisms become a sort of metaphor for what happens in this literary mystery that takes place in a fictional preparatory school in NW Massachusetts. "The Year of the Gadfly" keeps you wondering and page-turning to the very end.
The Longest Chapter 