• Still Life by Louise Penny *** (of 4)

    An aging, blue-haired, naif artist with a secret is killed by an arrow in a small, eccentric village outside Montreal.  An elegant Francophone detective interviews towns people who include among their numbers a flamboyant gay couple running a bistro, a black female psychologist prone to the preparation of flower arrangements with kielbasas at their centers, a belligerent but lovable biddy, and quirky artists.  Together they form a believable community of outsiders entrapped in a much better than average mystery.

  • Double Whammy by Carl Hiassen *** (of 4)

    Vintage Hiassen. The murderers and bad guys are Florida tele-evangelists and unscrupulous land developers, assisted by rednecks with brains the size of ‘possums. The good guys are a black cop, a cuban detective, an anti-development woodsman with a log cabin full of great books who lives on roasted roadkill animals, and a photographer with a bad temper, but a good heart. It’s like many of Hiassen’s other books. Wonderful parody of Florida’s hucksters. In the end bad things happen to bad people and the reader cares a little bit more about the environment and the victims of racism, sexism, or classism. He’ll make you laugh aloud. October 2006.

  • Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander **** (of 4)

    Auslander carries all of Woody Allen’s neuroses into the 21st Century and does it with panache. This autobiography is a therapeutic disgorging of growing up under the thumb of an abusive father and overbearing God in an orthodox Jewish home in Monsey, five minutes from my boyhood town. While, in my opinion, he hasn’t yet distinguished his parents’ mishegas from his Yeshiva’s he acts out his youthful frustration by alternately worrying God is going to kill him for going to the Naunuet Mall on Shabbat and giving God the finger for messing with his life. I laughed aloud at scenes such as God’s testing the young Auslander by placing porn magazines behind a stone (not unlike Moses’ stone on Mount Sinai) in a test of faithfulness. My parents thought it was a whiny kvetch book. I loved it. You decide. November 2007

  • The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson **** (of 4)

    Bryson recounts his Iowa childhood of the 1950s writing scenes so effectively that I could see every lincoln log (he peed on), smell the pages of each comic book he read (11 times), knew personally every one of his childhood friends (the fat one, the sneaky one, the moron, the best friend), and recalled the stickiness of a Rambler’s vinyl seats. In fact, he so perfectly recaptures childhood that his stories take on a universality that extends to readers who did not grow up in the 1950s. July 2007.

  • To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever by Will Blythe *** (of 4)

    One of the great first chapters in literature. Blythe’s book is a rant about basketball, specifically Duke vs. North Carolina. At the book’s opening he draws upon Greek Myth, Shakespeare, the Civil War, class conflict in America, Democrats vs. Republicans, Uma Thurman, Ichabod Crane, Mr. Rogers, Brideshead Revisited, and most of all how much he hates Duke because he is a fan of North Carolina. Remarkably, Blythe keeps up his hatred and his seriously educated investigation of philosophy and religion for the whole book. All the while talking about college B-ball. A rant this long, however, grows shrill. Make the book seventy pages shorter and it could have been a masterpiece. January 2008.

  • Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost *** (of 4)

    In the style of Bill Bryson, self-effacing and laugh aloud funny, Troost describes his adventures on the Pacific isles of Vanuatu and Fiji. He leaves you with no illusions. These islands may be paradise for the rich and famous that can afford secluded beaches, but for the natives, and those imported by British colonists, these are third world countries rife with poverty, corruption, inept government, and apalling colonial legacies. Still, it’s funny. November 2009.

  • The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs **** (of 4)

    Jacobs takes a year to live strictly adhering to the bible.  He doesn’t know bubkes when he begins and figures he’ll start reading Genesis and do whatever the bible says he should as he moves from chapter to chapter.  His book contains a series of short, humorous anecdotes whose collective weight provide profound insight into the value of religious observance and the dangers of fundamentalism.