Books I’ve Been Salivating Over As of Late

May 19, 2009

(With snippets from GoodReads.com)

1. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide.Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.

2. Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert by Scott Adams - celebrates the 20th anniversary of Scott Adam’s office humor comic strip Dilbert.

3. God Debris: A Thought Experiment by Scott Adams - a story about a young delivery man trying to hand over a package to an old man, but delivering the package proves to be as difficult as trying to understand the meaning of God.

4. Genesis by Bernard Beckett - Confident about her history, Anax goes through a day of Examination to be admitted into the Academy (an elite governing institution of her utopian society) but finds out her history and the academy aren’t what she believes them to be.

5. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson - an extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of time.

6. The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III - a big-hearted and painful novel about sex and parenthood and honor and masculinity.

7. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides - the story of Cal Stephanides and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope.

8. The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante - the story of middle-aged divorcee Leda who is alone for the first time in years when her daughters leave home to live with their father.

9. Fat by Rob Grant - a satire of our obsession with body image.

10. The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven - introduces a startlingly talented writer in a rich tale that illuminates the desires, yearnings, and complexities of life in Israel.

11. The Inner World of Farm Animals: Their Amazing Intellectual, Emotional and Social Capacities by Amy Hatkoff - a combination of the latest research on the emotional and intellectual capacities of farm animals with touching and often surprising stories to bring their inner world to life.

12. The Wind in the Door
13. A Swiftly Tilting Planet
14. Many Waters

- the succeeding books in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quartet. The first one was my all-time favorite, A Wrinkle in Time.

15. Everything Is Wrong With You: The Modern Woman’s Guide to Finding Self Confidence Through Self Loathing by Wendy Molyneux - pretend advice about beauty, fashion and relationships for women who are pretending to care about that stuff.

16. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger - depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare’s marriage and their passionate love for each other, as the story unfolds from both points of view.

17. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris - a collection of essays that demonstrate the author’s ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art.

18. The Last Time They Met: A Novel by Anita Shreve - opens with two old lovers, both poets, running into each other at a writer’s conference.

19. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks - a Southern-fried story of love-lost-and-found-again, revolves around a single time-honored romantic dilemma: will beautiful Allison Nelson stay with Mr. Respectability (to whom she happens to be engaged), or will she hook up with Noah, the romantic rascal she left so many years ago?

20. The Weight of Heaven: A Novel by Thrity Umrigar - a rare glimpse of a family and a country struggling under pressures beyond their control.