Steve Alten
…Perfect summer read? Let’s see here:
Creepy cover with short, punchy title in large, raised letters? Check.
Wronged hero trying to right his life? Check
Snarky nemesis for said wronged hero? Check
Loyal sidekick/best friend? Check
Gorgeous dame to win in the end? Check
Fantastic prehistoric creature
Anne Thomas Soffee
For anyone harboring a soft spot in their heart for 80s hair metal bands, replete with spandex pants and girly faces, this is the book for you. Soffee chronicles her years of being the only rivethead at a prestigious and very preppie college. She describes her decision …
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 …
Shel Silverstein
I idly picked up this Shel Silverstein collection while wandering through a used bookstore the other day and gave it a flip. Oh my. This is NOT your usual Silverstein wacky, quirky drawings. Actually, they are. They just have a lot more nudity and swear words. With his …
Nicki DeFago
Yup, there it is. This is it, the perfect book for those without a maternal/paternal bone in their bodies (me). I like kids – in very small doses and at certain ages. However, I am more than happy to hand them back. Do I want any? Never! Touching …
Sidney Rothman
When Sidney Rothman, head writer for Letterman, is fired he decides to take some time off. After 10 years of frantically being “on” in the hyper-alert city of L.A., Rothman decides to go to the only place he ever remembers feeling relaxed in his life – Florida. So, …
Eduardo Rodriguez, Andrew Moore, Andy Grundberg
Once, years ago, our friend Rebecca asked us to come out and look at her recently deceased grandmother’s house. It had been built during the civil war and had received its only wallpapering at that time – which was still hanging in black shreds …
Catherine Murdock
I have no idea how I came across this title, but there it was in my hold pile. I can’t say I often peruse “young adult” chick lit., but this turned out to be an excellent book. DJ, a Wisconsin farm girl, has a busy, messy, broken family. …
A
gatha Christie
Do you know why Agatha Christie is such a popular writer? Because she is a damn good one, that’s why. I know I read all of her books in high school, but had forgotten how really excellent they are. The plots are tight and detailed, characters are …
Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio
Menzel and D’Aluisio, authors of The Material World have created yet another fascinating collection of photos, stories and statistics from around the world. While The Material World focused on the material possessions of households around the world, this collection focuses on the diet and foods …
Lincoln Child
This is a perfect summer beach read – fast-paced, exiting, lots of techie-details, (eat yer heart of Crichton) and interesting likeable characters. Utopia, the wondrous amusement park of the future, is described so clearly it seems a shame it doesn’t really exist. Satisfyingly long and rich with plot …
Andrew Ross
We Americans like describing ourselves as pragmatic realists – capitalists who make cold, shrewd decisions based on the market and the value of a dollar stretched as thin as possible. However, conjure up visions of white picket fences, front porches, little Susie on her bike and mom making …
Stephen Bloom
People are weird. Society just amplifies our weirdness. Take us out of our normal microcosm and dump us elsewhere, and we can be aliens to our own race of humankind. Postville is, or was, a sleepy little farming town in Iowa. A dinky, inbred but friendly burg, much …
Michael Bond
Does the name Michael Bond ring faintly familiar in your head? It should. Bond was the creator of the Paddington Bear books. Apparently Bond decided to free himself from a sea of marmalade and give mystery writing a whirl. Who can judge a book by its cover? I …
Robert Bennett, Jules Shell and Nick Kroll with a foreword by The Village People
You don’t need to be a Jew to appreciate this glorious collection. Bennett et al. collected thousands of Bar and Bat Mitzvah photos from the 60’s through the 80’s. And lord are they hideous. Acres of …
Hella Winston
I LOVE books on insular, orthodox religious groups. No idea why. They just fascinate me – Amish, Hutterite, Hasidim, Mormons. Why? Perhaps, as Winston points out in her introduction, we are both fascinated and revolted by the idea of living in such a close-knit, rule-ridden community because of …
