The Wave

by Walter Mosley

At just over 200 pages, this science fiction book could pass for young adult. I'm used to sci fi being longer, and I was worried by the slimness of this volume. Having read it, though, I think this is how sci fi ought to be: vast in scope, but focused like a laser.

I haven't read any of Mosley's other work, so I wasn't sure what to expect. His style is very clean and crisp — except for a few idiosyncratic fillips and phrasings — and indicative of his beginnings as a mystery author.

Zombies and primordial ooze; homeland security goon squads and torture chambers; and a billions-of-years-old cosmic romance are woven together into a fast-paced narrative in which loyalties are tested and long-buried secrets are revealed.

Prince William, Maximilian Minsky, and Me

by Holly-Jane Rahlens

OK, first of all, I don't care how big the print is or how much blank space there is on the page, YA books are not supposed to be 300 pages long! (Unless they're really, really, really, really good.)

This book, sadly, is not. A sweet, nerdy Jewish girl with a crush on Prince William gets pre-bat mitzvah basketball lessons from a hunky 15-year-old punk rocker — should be great, right? Another great concept poorly executed: the protagonist's voice is unconvincing, and the whole things seems forced even while the overall structure is loose and sloppy.

Real Ultimate Power: the Official Ninja Book

by Robert Hamburger

Hi, this book is all about ninjas, REAL NINJAS. This book is awesome. My name is Robert and I can't stop thinking about ninjas. These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

That kind of says it all, doesn't it? Well, actually, you can go ahead and add some crazy wailing on the guitar, huge boners, hilarious illustrations, a diaper-wearing babysitter, and...hippos. These are just some of the things on the mind of our totally pumped (ADHD) 10-year-old escort into the mysterious — and sweet! — world of ninjas.

In conclusion, this book is so awesomely funny, I almost crapped my pants.

A Spot of Bother

by Mark Haddon

Anna Karenina begins with the immortal line: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Even so, not every book about an unhappy family is unique. At some point, I burned out on Oprah books. I realized that, although the details differed, they were at heart all the same: looking at someone else's pain as a way of avoiding one's own — or validating one's own — or reassuring oneself of the non-pain of one's life. (My fault, really, for expecting something other than emotional voyeurism from a talk-show host; Oprah seems rather dignified, but she's just Springer without the hair pulling and chair throwing.)

When it comes to domestic drama, I've always liked to recommend All Families Are Psychotic, which is actually a very funny book — because, after all, what's funnier than someone else's misery? A Spot of Bother is somewhat in the same vein, made even funnier by being British. All the character's lives are quietly imploding, and I sympathized, but I also laughed out loud about 20 times, including once on an otherwise very quiet bus.

These sort of books aren't for everyone, of course. I think it helps if you're familiar with the use of humor as a defense mechanism and/or if you survived your own unhappy family. (In my family, it's not a holiday until someone cries.)

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By

by Georges Simenon

From the author of the Inspector Maigret mysteries (and a lot of other pulp fiction), a serious psychological drama — roman dur, or "hard novel," as the introduction calls it — that's part J.P. Sartre and part Patrick Bateman (of American Psycho), about ideas of freedom and (or, versus) control.

I have a tendency to dismiss mysteries as low-brow entertainment for people who want to seem high-brow by reading but really don't want to have to think very hard about what they're reading — beach books, if you will (which, mind you, have their place). This, on the other hand, this is freakin' literature. Of course, it's not a mystery itself, but I wouldn't have expected a mystery writer capable of this. It might be the literature-in-translation effect, or perhaps it's to do with the era in which it was written (you know, the era when grammar mattered) — whatever it is, this book oozes seriousness, not only in substance but in style as well. I don't mean to say it isn't captivating or isn't a pleasure to read, but it isn't the sort of thing you tear through con brio. Like Nabokov's writing, it's rich and deep, which, depending on your own style, could feel like slogging through mud or luxuriating in a mud bath.

The Puritan Ordeal

by Andrew Delbanco

"Reading is rapture (or if it isn't, I put the book down meaning to go on with it later, and escape out the side door)." --William Maxwell (1908-2000)

I didn't finish this book, and, thanks to the above quotation, I did not feel bad about it at all.

I found out about The Puritan Ordeal from a review of another book, and it's idea intrigued me: not just a social or intellectual history, but an emotional history of the white people who colonized North America, how they experienced and reacted to religion, the new landscape, etc. It turned out to be too academic for me, with too-long excerpts from historical texts and diaries, when all I really wanted was the author's conclusions. Of course, apparently unsupported conclusions would not have been quite right either, but the balance was a bit off for my taste.

Birdwing

by Rafe Martin

A year or two ago I really enjoyed the Sevenwaters trilogy by Juliet Marillier, which is based on the fairytale about the six brothers turned into swans and their sister who tries to reverse the spell by weaving shirts for them out of starwort and nettles while not speaking, laughing, or crying until she was done. So I was rather excited when I came across this book about the youngest brother, who becomes human again but still has one wing instead of an arm because his sister couldn't finish the last shirt.

As it turns out, the character in this book is not quite as tortured and mysterious as I had hoped, as I expected from the way he was in the trilogy. At least part of the problem is the loss of complexity inherent in the young-adult formula — and, omigod, is this book formulaic! Disappointing overall, amateurish and clumsy at times, a great concept poorly executed.

Winkie

by Clifford Chase

Another book that sounds really stupid if I try to explain what it's about: a teddy bear; animism; parthenogenesis; terrorism and the Patriot Act; the unbearable lightness of being; etc. (Not for nothing, that last reference; as ridiculous as it sounds, Winkie really does have the philosophical depth of a Milan Kundera novel.)

Reading this book reminded me of watching the bootleg video Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, directed by Todd Haynes, in which a remarkably nuanced examination of anorexia, and the life of a woman who literally starved to death in the spotlight of celebrity, is acted out with Barbie and Ken dolls. Rather than making light, the bizarreness actually heightens the poignancy of an already moving story.

The Ruins

by Scott Smith

Holy crap, this book is awesome!

This is the kind of book that keeps you up late at night, waaaay past your bedtime, struggling to stay awake so you can find out what horrible thing is going to happen next. Everything is fine and normal, then something bad happens, then something worse, and worse — and when you think it can't get any worse, of course it does. It makes you wonder what kind of freak could imagine this stuff, let alone write it down.

I got this book after reading a review, but I can't remember what it said that convinced me. One of the back-cover blurbs compares it to Stephen King and Thomas Harris, which would have been a turn-off. (Yes, I read tons of that stuff when I was a teenager.) The plot summary sounds stupid; there isn't much you could say without spoiling the suspense, but a longer description would probably sound even stupider. The premise is very simple (Smith's last book was A Simple Plan) and kind of stupid, yet it works. The jacket is very well-designed, but if I had started there and then read the blurbs and the inside flap copy....

It's hard to explain; you just have to trust me.

You have to trust me, OR ELSE WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!

Corydon and the Island of the Monsters

by Tobias Druitt

Aw, I hate to give a bad review, but the only reason I finished this book is that it is very short. I kind of had to force myself to read it.

It's about a deformed Greek boy who turns out to have an immortal father, gets driven out of town into the wilderness, where he hooks up with a bunch of mythological creatures, travels to the underworld, and defeats a bunch of idiotic guys who are trying to become heroes by slaying the so-called monsters, who actually show more humanity to Corydon than any of the actual humans in the book — so I thought it would appeal to the eight-grade mythology geek still trapped somewhere inside me, but somehow it didn't. It just came off as sort of dumb, excepting a few clever revisions to the familiar tales of Greek mythology and the fact that the story pits the Chthonic gods against the Olympian gods.

There will be at least two sequels; I will not read them. Maybe someone who's even more into mythology than me (and still in eighth grade) will enjoy them.

The Fly on the Wall: how one girl saw everything

by E. Lockhart

I just could not resist the premise of this book: a quirky sophomore feels the ordinary frustration girls have trying to understand boys, so she idly wishes she could be a "fly on the wall" in the boys' locker room, and her wish comes true long enough for an in-depth study of the anatomy and sociology of high school boys.

It's a short book, a very quick read, without heavy drama or lessons (well, a little divorce for seasoning), totally possible to read in one sitting. I loved the protagonist's sense of humor and her butt-rating system, but I could have done without her insistence on calling the other naughty bits "gherkins." Overall, I was a bit shocked by the book's frankness — and I ain't easy to shock — but I wasn't complaining.

Boys Be, second season

by Masahiro Itabashi

This is a great series of vignettes about the love lives of teenage boys. Do I have to say anything else? It's on DVD too.

You don't need to read them in order. Best for older teens: ranges from cute crushes to peeks at panties and all the way to actual nudity.

I've read volumes 1, 4, 8; not sure which DVD I watched.

It's Kind of a Funny Story

by Ned Vizzini

As a hypochondriac, I have very little sympathy for the symptoms of other people. I find it particularly difficult to empathize with people who suffer from depression, because their complaints sound like things we all go through, to some degree, and I tend to feel as if they're over-reacting and/or being self-indulgent. I know, of course, that's not true, and I want to understand (as much as possible), which perhaps explains the appeal of books about depression.

This book, written immediately after the twenty-something author's own brief stay in the psych ward, chronicles a teen's rapid and (to an outsider) sudden descent from mere depression to suicidal ideation (the technical term for wanting to kill yourself). At first, the descriptions of the kid's thought patterns and mental states (tentacles, cycles, etc.) made me feel as if I were getting somewhere in my quest for greater understanding; ultimately, however, they amounted to nothing more than how's when I was really looking for why's. Why does a negative experience or emotion make one person have a crappy day and make another person seriously consider jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge? For that matter, why can most of us shrug off a crappy day (or even a few) while others fall into a paralyzing depression?

Even though I didn't find what I was seeking (should I be depressed about that?)(sorry, that isn't funny, is it?), I'd say the book was pretty good overall. It's well-written, the pacing is good, the conclusion is hopeful without being sappy or too optimistic. If you don't mind books that leave you feeling a bit drained and/or melancholy, if you want an intense emotional experience, if you liked The Burn Journals, give this book a try.

The Cult of Personality: how personality tests are leading us to miseducate our children, mismanage our companies, and misunderstand ourselves

by Annie Murphy Paul

Did you know that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (you know, the test that tells you you're an ENJF or an INFP, etc.) was created by a housewife? A very well-educated housewife, admittedly, but definitely not someone participating in the research-based and peer-reviewed world of academic psychology.

As a matter of fact, as revealed in The Cult of Personality, there's little to no empirical evidence that any personality test is anything other than a parlor trick. Well, OK, that's an exaggeration, but even the ones that seem to have a more scientifically rigorous origin — the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, for example — aren't very good at diagnosing what they were designed to detect, let alone all the other uses they've been given since their creation.

On the other hand, the very well-informed author does a crack job of sympathetically analyzing the enduring appeal of personality tests, to professionals and laypersons alike, even while exposing the careless misuse of personality tests and the flaws of the test creators themselves.

Want to take some personality tests, just for fun? Try Tickle.com, the new name for Emode, a Web site mentioned in the book. (I took a test to see how hip I am, and it told me I'm a bookish go-getter; my movie star double is Benjamin Bratt, which is quite a bit more of a compliment.)

The Lonely Ring Finger

(Only the Ring Finger Knows, vol. 1)

by Satoru Kannagi

OK, this is weird. I've seen — and frowned upon — novelizations of movies and television shows. But this is weird: the novelization of manga.

Not only that, but it's also the manga-ization of Victorian romance, complete with the I-love-you-so-much-I-hate-you-because-I-think-you-don't-like-me-but-you-secretly-do plot and the deliciously agonizing frustration of characters who never say what they mean and never understand what the other is implying. But instead of the poor yet intelligent and respectable middle daughter alternately pursuing and being pursued by the grotesquely rich (though still young and handsome) lord of the manor, this is manga, so it's the awkward but cute sophomore boy and the gorgeous most-popular senior boy in a torturous high school romance. How could I resist?

After the thrill of reading Play Boy Blues, and the tamer but still tingly Boys Be series, I was worried I'd be disappointed by the lack of pictures. (There are a few illustrations, but nothing too racy.) My fear was unfounded. Aside from the occasional awkward translation — and the aforementioned deliciously agonizing frustration — reading this book was time well-spent. Intense, romantic, believable: what more could one ask for?

Montmorency and the Assassins

by Eleanor Updale

The third installment in Updale's series about reformed (or is he?) criminal Montmorency is another rip-roaring read. Although it's been quite some time since I read the other two, I'd say this one's better than the second and nearly as good as the first. Assassins is the thickest of the three, but it was so hard to put down I still managed to finish it in only a few days — despite the demands placed on my attention by my mother and my sister in Las Vegas in 100+ degree weather.

Though this story is set 20 years after the original, the interval hasn't slowed our hero. On the other hand, like a well-aged wine, the themes have matured and become even more young adult-y: antique pornography, anarchism and class struggles, murder, murder, murder, workaholism, and a mysterious paternity that strongly implies a generous sexuality on the part of the mother, to name a few.

The book's pace seemed a bit off, with the major crisis happening with only 30 pages left for denouement, yet somehow the author makes it work. And then she goes and throws in a very hurty ending that made me almost cry. I saw it coming, but I didn't want to admit it to myself, and it still hurt.

The other two books in the series are Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman? and Montmorency on the Rocks: Doctor, Aristocrat, Murderer?

Decoding the Universe: how the new science of information is explaining everything in the cosmos, from our brains to black holes

by Charles Seife

The title is a mouthful, and the book is a brainful. Although the author does a great job of "dumbing it down" for the layperson, it's still pretty heady stuff, so don't bother reading this if words such as cosmology, entropy, and quantum send you into paroxysms of frustrated boredom, or if they trigger your fight-or-flight instinct.

Most people (including me) who hear "information science" are going to think about computers, or maybe libraries. Decoding the Universe reveals the origins of info science in the world of telephony (how many phone calls can you fit on one wire?) and its probable future as the fundament of all other sciences. In the process of coming to understand information as a concrete property of matter and energy, you'll also learn a lot about entropy — it's a lot more than what your high school physics teacher told you.

My personal theory of black holes was enriched by the information found in this book.

Gentlemen and Players

by Joanne Harris

I don't normally read thrillers. To be honest, I consider the genre to be rather dumb — unintellectual, formulaic, opiate-of-the-masses type of drivel. The review of this book that I read (from the Powell's review-a-day e-mail service) probably didn't call it a thriller per se, otherwise I probably wouldn't have read it.

What attracted me to Gentlemen and Players was it's setting: an ivy-encrusted, tradition-steeped English boys' school (with the implied aura of homosexual, or at least homoerotic, goings-on). While my hopes in that regard were not entirely borne out, neither were they completely dashed.

Where the book really delivers is in the characterization and, I must admit, the thrilling plot. Oh, I thought I had it all figured out, but the author skillfully drew my attention elsewhere for just long enough to surprise me with a final plot twist that, in retrospect, I should have expected — since I'm so smart, and thriller's are for dummies. Well, this here dummy got a bit of sunburn because I was too engrossed to turn over or go inside even after I'd been good and truly baked.

The Brief History of the Dead

by Kevin Brockmeier

I guess you could call this speculative fiction. Alternating chapters relate the fates of the dead, "living" in an unnamed city for as long as they are remembered by someone alive on earth, and the doom of all as the last living human slowly perishes in the thawing but still cold enough to be deadly Antarctic.

It's a bonbon of a book, entertaining and brief, without a lot of depth. There's sort of a side plot involving mega-corporations run amok as governments crumble, but it isn't developed enough to be integral to the story; it isn't thought-provoking either, because we all already know corporations are evil and lame, right?

The Nimrod Flipout

by Etgar Keret

Short stories aren't for everyone, but if you're a fan, this crisp little collection is for you.

I've heard many writers called "master(s) of the genre," but only once before have I encountered a writer (Murray Bail) who can manage in two pages what takes others upwards of thirty. On the one hand, it can be a little frustrating to read such a short short story; after all, one should pause and let it sink in before barreling into the next story. Then again, what greater pleasure than the pure distilled essence of... a moment, a character, a life.

The stories in this collection range from the slightly humorous to the absurd, but, as you might expect from an Israeli writer, there's often a tragic or melancholy thread running through. The mood of this collection is captured perfectly by the cover illustration: