Kevin Kwan
In the dark days of Covid-19, any small distraction is so very welcome. Sex and Vanity is a slab of gooey chocolate cake with those fancy chocolate curls all over it. The relatively straight-forward story of “girl meets boy, falls for boy, then fights it like crazy to …
James Hilton
Published in 1933, Lost Horizon, came at the twilight of the great, grand, adventure books, like its predecessors, including Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Lost World by Conan Doyle. The tale is an enjoyable fantasy of normal, everyday folks ending up …
Graeme Simsion
This sweet, funny story follows professor of genetics Don Tillman as he tries to find the perfect wife. It soon becomes clear that Don has Asperger’s Syndrome. That is, it is clear to everyone but Don. Deciding a large questionnaire is needed to weed out unacceptable applicants, Don …
Michael Perry
On Christmas Eve itself bachelor Harley Jackson stepped into his barn and behold there illuminated in straw a smallish newborn bull calf upon whose flank was born the very image of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
‘Well,” said Harley, “that’s trouble.”
And thus begins The Bard o’ …
Lionel Shriver
Shriver’s oh-so-plausible dystopian novel follows four generations of the Mandible family. From the incredibly wealthy great-grandfather to his granddaughter and great grandson ( barely scraping by), the family fortunes run the gamut of the economic ladder. But all are soon falling, and fast.
What makes this novel both …
Jonas Jonasson
Jonas Jonasson is the Scandinavian Carl Hiaasen, retelling a 20th-century Thousand and One Nights.
Not enough of a description? Huh.
Like Hiaasen (and his Florida-insane cohorts Tim Dorsey and Dave Barry), Jonasson starts with the every-man anti-hero who gets sucked into an increasingly unbelievable series of events. …
Simon R. Green
Green’s Nightside series is the perfect read for Neil Gaiman and Jim Butcher fans waiting for their next fix. The first title, Something from the Nightside, does tend to feel heavily derivative of of Gaiman’s Neverwhere and Butcher’s Dresden Files in places. However, there are definitely …
Giles Foden
I was sad to discover that The Last King Of Scotland is a piece of fiction. Read it anyway. The plot is so unbelievable as to be highly believable. Picking up speed as the madness of dictator Idi Amin spins out, young Dr. Nicholas Garrigan is drawn into …
Joshua Ferris
Anyone who has worked in an office will feel a strong sense of understanding, if not deja vu, when reading Then We Came to the End. Written in a chatty, meandering stream-of-consciousness style the narrator shares stories of coworkers and their jobs as they are downsized one …
Trenton Lee Stewart and Catherine Jinks
Like all sequels to excellent books, these two YA titles are a teeny bit of a letdown – primarily because they aren’t the first book. Both take a few chapters to hit their stride, Genius Squad more so. However, I had no complaints by …
D
ouglas Coupland
The Gum Thief lives up to Coupland’s usual excellent standard. While the formula may be quite familiar – outcast/losers from different backgrounds band together – Coupland once again manages to make the sad and mundane beautiful. Set in a Staples store, Coupland tells the story of the …
Garrison Keiller
Told in his gentle, rolling monologue, Pontoon is all one can hope for in a Lake Woebegon story. Looney characters gently drift through, some angst on a small-scale Lutheran level, gentle teasing of Californians and many familiar names and faces. Interestingly, I think this is the first Keiller …
Laurie Notaro
In her first non-fiction novel, Laurie Notaro writes with her same funny, off-kilter and slightly neurotic voice she has recorded her life with in her fabulous autobiographical short stories. Although a bit slow to get off the ground, once she hits her stride the story takes off on …
Douglas Coupland and Lincoln Child
Coupland and Child are two of my favorite authors but I was rather disappointed by both of their newest books. Jpod seems slightly stale, though the base story is pretty interesting. For some inexplicable reason, Coupland felt the need to inject himself as a character …
Nick Hornby
You know what is really funny? Dogs, with socks on running. You know what else is funny? I actually read this book years ago and had no memory of it until I got about 7/8 of they way through. Then I realized “Oh, this is that book about …
Marian Keyes
The latest installment in the Walsh family soap-opera is a doozy. Anna, the youngest Walsh girl (the spacy-new age one) gets her act together with the help of her brother-in-law Garv and moves to New York to work in marketing. The story picks up with Anna back in …
