TENTH OF DECEMBER by George Saunders

One more great read. The latest collection of stories by the acclaimed Saunders. Even Thomas Pynchon has come out of his hidey hole to praise the writer’s “graceful, dark, authentic and funny” voice. A study in getting inside characters’ heads, Saunders thinks the think and talks the talk of his motley bunch. Here's how to do interior monologue with brilliance and wit. Wildly original. What an ear!

LOVE, DISHONOR, MARRY, DIE, CHERISH, PERISH by David Rakoff; BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS: LIFE, DEATH, AND HOPE IN A MUMBAI UNDERCITY by Katherine Boo

LOVE, DISHONOR, MARRY, DIE, CHERISH, PERISH by David Rakoff

Deserves every syllable of adulation it’s getting in the press. Multiple stories of Americans over the course of the last century, that intersect in small but poignant ways. Lest that sound like a sprawling epic, these are slender vignettes in Seussian-metered verse (with the occasional cartoon-like illustration). The whole book clocks in at 128 pages, but is a tiny, potent firework, packed with plot and character, heart, insight and joy of language. Like nothing I’ve read before. Tragic, funny, acerbic, fresh… this is the Great American Novel refashioned into a completely different beast. Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish was published posthumously. I hope Rackoff is looking down and enjoying his work’s success.

BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS: LIFE, DEATH, AND HOPE IN A MUMBAI UNDERCITY by Katherine Boo

Important, superbly researched, well written, highly readable. The inhabitants of a slum at the edge of the Mumbai airport struggle to survive and maintain their humanity. An eye-opening look at India in an age of global change, and also a clear-sighted picture of the nearly insurmountable hurdles for anyone at the bottom of a society’s social and economic pile. A worthy companion to Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickeled and Dimed.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN by Penelopy Lively

The construct for this novel is 'the butterfly effect.' An older woman gets mugged; various relationships change in the wake of this. But that's simply an organizing principal for the interwoven stories of nine Londoners, in this particular slice of time. Lively draws her smart, sharp portraits with prose that's both snappy and elegant, funny and tender, with insight into her characters--from the inside and from the outside, and with perfectly controlled story-telling. I loved this book.

THE YELLOW BIRDS by Kevin Powers

Gorgeous. One small story that paints a poignant, sweeping picture of what it's like to go to war. Exquisite, painful, poetic, immediate. Add to the canon of must-read war literature, with Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.

WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE? by Maria Semple

A terrific beach read for people, like me, who aren't the beach read type. When brilliant, sharp-tongued, socially phobic Bernadette goes missing, her 8th grade daughter, Bee, seeks to find her. At once a satire about life in Seattle and sweet mother-daughter story, well crafted, well written, nicely built characters, funny. I devoured it in in a few sittings.

WILD by Cheryl Strayed

A lot of my fantasy life is devoted to planning the big adventure... getting in my car in NYC with no itinerary, and driving until I reach Patagonia; hiking the G-7, moving to a cabin on the coast of fill-in-the-blank. Maybe this is in my future, when my kid finishes school and I retire from my steady gig. Meanwhile, I'll content myself with my little adventures--two weeks solo in Cuba; paddling, hiking, busing and training from California to Canada; three weeks of eating my way through Laos and Vietnam; and instead of an endless summer, the endless coffee break--body surfing wherever and whenever I can, in little snippets of free time. And while I dream bigger, I'll read about the folks who dreamed and actually did. Cheryl Strayed hiked the Pacific Coast Trail by herself, and wound up more at peace with herself. Her story is highly entertaining and well-crafted. She writes a good sentence, knows when to show, when to tell, what to put in and what to leave out. A vicarious thrill. Thanks, Cheryl!

WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU COULD BE NORMAL? by Jeanette Winterson

On page 64, and about to give up. Loved her early books, got lost and fell away from her later ones. Phillip Lopate advises memoirists "To Show and Tell." This book is all tell, tell, tell... whine, whine, whine. Little bits and pieces that never take flight. Get over how much you hate your mum. We all do our best, and it's never good enough. NYT bestseller. Vogue calls it a tour de force. Bored, recently, by a string of critically acclaimed books. Is it me?