The book sets out to provide the public with a national update on college fraternities, claiming that Greek life today “makes Animal House look like a Pixar movie.” It promises a hilarious and enjoyable reading experience, tracking the journey of college freshman Townes Prescott as he encounters the college party scene for the first time.

Current and former college students alike might find themselves smiling at the familiarity of the classic college experiences he describes, such as Prescott’s first college party, first college hookup and initiation into his fraternity.

Other familiar issues are introduced to the reader as well, most notably the freedom that ensues following the separation from one’s parents and a failed attempt to make that classic long-distance high-school relationship work.

The book seemingly intends to be every teenage boy’s dream and every mother’s nightmare. TFM flaunts a barrage of alcohol, drugs and debauchery from page one, said W.R. Bolen, the book’s author.

“The point of me writing it was to create the most entertaining and hilarious book possible, focused on capturing the unique insanity that comes with this incomparable lifestyle,” Bolen said. “I want people to have the [best] time they’ve ever had reading a book. Personally, I can’t get through a chapter without wanting to go out and rage.”

The website that inspired the book rose to notoriety over the past few years for its postings about fraternity life in college, amassing comments and stories from Greek communities across the United States.

The site was so successful that it garnered the attention of literary agent Byrd Leavell, who submitted an inquiry to the TFM website.

“I came across the message, we got in contact with him and the next thing I knew I was writing this thing,” Bolen said. “A few months of writing later, Byrd sold the book to Ben Greenberg at Grand Central Publishing, and the rest is history.”

Bolen started his career writing for TFM in college. The original founders of TFM, Madison Wickham and Ryan Young, were two of Bolen’s older fraternity brothers. They reached out to Bolen during his last semester of college and he began writing for TFM, launching the “Columns” section. A few weeks before graduation, they offered him a job as a staff writer, and Bolen was brought on as TFM’s first employee.

“Writing was always something I wanted to do and I was already working as the staff writer for TFM, but I never would’ve imagined the opportunity to write a book would come just weeks after I graduated,” Bolen said.

As far as inspiration for the actual material inside the book goes, everything was either ripped from events in Bolen’s life, friends of his or stories he had heard.

“It was obviously very important to me that the book be as real as possible,” Bolen said.  “I made sure there was inspiration behind everything, instead of just [making stuff up] and slapping it down on paper.”

Bolen is new to publishing, but he said the creative process ran pretty smoothly, even if it did go by in a blur.

“The writing part was a nice little crash course for me as a first-time author. It turns out that writing a book isn’t like writing an essay for class, or writing a column to post on your comedy website,” Bolen said. “Fortunately, I got the hang of it pretty quickly.”

And it’s a good thing he did, as Bolen has crafted a tome of over-the-top collegiate hijinks that will likely trigger a bit of nostalgia in many who peruse it.

“[The book will] make you wish you were still in college, wish you’d done more when you were there or want to go out right now,” Bolen said.

The Casual Vacancy deals with the aftermath of the sudden death of Barry Fairbrother, a well-liked parish councilor who delicately held together the various social and political factions of the town. His passing creates a “casual vacancy,” an open seat on the parish council, setting off a fight for the empty seat. Through the course of the election, the serious but hidden tensions of the town are revealed. The most controversial issue is the Fields, an estate of public housing. Traditional Pagfordians see the Fields as an imposition from the larger neighboring city of Yarvil, a drag on parish resources spent on junkies who attend the Bellchapel Addiction Clinic, and an overall blight on all that is good and right about wholesome Pagford. The fight over parish control of the Fields and Bellchapel ultimately eclipses Barry Fairbother’s casual vacancy that starts the story and exposes marital struggles, teenage angst and parental attempts to handle it, class conflict, and cultural divides.

The Somewhat Good, the Bad, and the Worse

No character in the novel is truly likeable. They have occasional, fleeting moments of goodness or sympathy. The reader spends the story placing each character on a spectrum of disagreeability in relation to their fellow townspeople. A prime example is Howard and Shirley Mollison, long-time residents of Pagford who see themselves as fixtures of Pagford and all that the town stands for. They are also the leaders of the anti-Fields “movement” in Pagford. Howard and Shirley, like others, mourn Barry Fairbrother’s death very briefly, and only because it is the socially acceptable thing to do. Their thoughts reveal their almost immediate scheming to capture Fairbrother’s newly vacant seat so as to augment the anti-Fields faction and finally get rid of the Fields. Howard and Shirley are gossipy, petty, prejudiced, and entitled.

The novel’s teenagers are the most vibrant, relatable, and best portrayed. Considering Rowling’s past in adolescent fiction, this is unsurprising. Though they deal with serious issues, they focus mostly on typical teenage problems: crushes and sex, conflict with parents, and the general tendency to see things in binaries. One of the most notable teenagers is Krystal Weedon, used as an example of both the good and bad of the Fields in which she lives. Krystal is promiscuous, violent, angry, truants often, and occasionally steals. She is also the effective caretaker of her addict mother and infant brother and helped lead the local girl’s crew team to success. Krystal’s troubled history, her abject living conditions, and the stark choices she faces create sympathy for her situation, yet they do not completely erase her rough, defensive exterior.

Reality, Crude and Uncensored

The Casual Vacancy is a raw description of human character and its many immoral imperfections. In Rowling’s sometimes heavy-handed inclusion of almost any horrific experience that people can have, there is little room for redemption for any of the characters. This is a stark difference from the tale that made J.K. Rowling a household name and The Casual Vacancy. This novel is no doubt completely different in genre, perspective, and setting from Harry Potter; not even an about-face, it is on an entirely different literary plane. One of the most noticeable differences is the prevalence, often overly saturated, of sexuality and vulgarity. While Harry and his friends did not even start to like people until they were fourteen and kissing them until they were fifteen or sixteen, the teenagers in The Casual Vacancy have sex on their minds more often than not, either the real thing or the online porn they know far too well. In addition, words like “fucking,” “cunt,” “shit,” and the like are heavily used. One character notes that Krystal Weedon “used ‘fucking’ interchangeably with ‘very’, and seemed to see no difference between them.” Rowling herself is guilty of a similar authorial charge.

 “Little Vacancies” Not Totally Filled 

The Casual Vacancy has Rowling’s signature strong and engaging writing, but this does not make it easier to digest the novel’s stark subject matter. Frustration, sadness, even slight horror may come up in reading the stories of the interwoven lives of Pagford residents. Barry Fairbrother’s vacant council seat catalyzes and ultimately becomes irrelevant as the town is further embroiled in personal conflicts. Several messages from “The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother” left on the parish council website reveal intimate secrets of various town-members and contribute to the messy drama surrounding the election. Between an eventful council meeting and two more sudden deaths, the superficially polite and delicate seams holding together picturesque Pagford come apart. The town becomes aware of its glaring problems, but solutions are not initially obvious. The end of the novel leaves a sense of opportunity for improvement but uncertainty about Pagfordians’ ability to realize it.

Just as in her Harry Potter series, Rowling notes that her new novel deals with “mortality and morality, the two things that I obsess about,” as she told The New Yorker. The Casual Vacancy gives many glimpses into how these themes play out in real life, but does not provide much hope for their future resolution. Rowling, in the same New Yorker interview, says that she “was dealing not only with responsibility but with a bunch of characters who all have these little vacancies in their lives, these emptinesses in their lives, that they’re all filling in various ways.” The characters of this novel and the ways in which they interact to form a community are the true focus of this story. The political jockeying that lead to these events is just a premise, becoming secondary to the crude humanity Rowling presents.

At the start of the novel, Howard and Shirley Mollison “were contemplating the casual vacancy; and they saw it, not as an empty space but as a magician’s pocket, full of possibilities.” This novel is worth the read, but the possibilities it presents are dark and unpleasant, with no magic available to lighten the load.

But if you want to know about all that, you’ll read the 500 pages yourself. I’m here to answer the real question people have, whether they plan on opening the book or not: how does “The Casual Vacancy” compare to the Harry Potter series?

Here’s the short answer—it doesn’t.  And I mean that in the best way possible.

In some ways, “The Casual Vacancy” is the antithesis of “Harry Potter.” Harry’s story unfolds in a world that is entirely Rowling’s creation, a society built on magical foundations. “The Casual Vacancy” is rooted in a world that is resolutely normal and all too familiar. The book’s greatest appeal is that it delves so deeply into this mundane Muggle society, uncovering layers of conflict in a story that is rather unremarkable on the surface.

The plot kicks off with the sudden death of Barry Fairbrother, a resident of the fictional town of Pagford in southwestern England. His death leaves an empty seat on the Pagford Parish Council, the political powerhouse of the town. The general grief over Barry’s passing gets buried in a bigger question: who will fill the vacancy?

In the battle that ensues over the Council seat, the main source of contention is The Fields, an area of public housing projects that also houses a drug rehabilitation clinic. The Fields are technically a part of Pagford, but some members of the Pagford Council are determined to give up responsibility for the area, feeling that its persistent poverty and negative reputation should be totally severed from the idyllic Pagford community.

Barry Fairbrother was in favor of keeping The Fields a part of Pagford, rather than handing it over to the neighboring city of Yarvil. But in his absence, the head honchos of the Pagford Council are determined to override the pro-Fields contingent. The decision depends on who gets elected to replace Barry.

The novel’s central conflict isn’t especially gripping. It’s the story’s implications—the ever-present problem of class warfare, the question of who should take responsibility for whom—that make “The Casual Vacancy” a culturally relevant and compelling read.

Caught up in this struggle is Krystal Weedon, a teenage Fields resident whose foul mouth and reputation for indiscretion disgust many Pagford residents. While she seems like just a waste of space at first, we soon find out how complex and sad her story is. She essentially has to raise her little brother while her single mother continually fails to quit her heroin habit. If the anti-Fields people had their way, the local methadone clinic would close down, making her situation worse than ever.

Krystal’s story is the most tragic one in the book. Her problems pose a stark contrast to the petty preoccupations of Pagford’s more affluent residents. The members of the Mollison family, who lead the anti-Fields regiment, are unsurprisingly on the opposite end of this spectrum from Krystal. By constantly shifting perspectives, advancing the story through the eyes and minds of all of her characters equally, Rowling makes this contrast all the more apparent.

It would take way too long to go through this novel’s entire cast of characters. So many people factor into the novel’s plot that their interconnecting storylines are at times hard to keep up with. Rowling makes an admirable effort to get inside each of her characters’ minds, exposing attitudes and flaws that go beyond appearances. Sometimes she goes overboard or misses the mark, but the characters are generally believable.

The one thing they all have in common is that they are all somehow unsatisfied with their own lives, whether they are unhappy in their romantic engagements, lusting after people they can’t have, or struggling with self-consciousness. Unfortunately, this dissatisfaction is the unifying factor that makes them so relatable. There are only a few truly likable characters, but that’s to be expected when you’re taking such extensive trips inside each of these people’s heads.

Rowling is really in her element when she delves into the lives of Pagford’s younger residents. The kids play an indirect but crucial role in the outcome of the town’s elections. But they also are involved in their own sub-plots—stories of insecurity, frustration, and sexual curiosity that are convincing without being contrived. Their narratives often provide a refreshing break from the adults’ melodramatic woes.

That being said, this book is decidedly not for children.  Its content is raw and often sexually explicit, and it deals with cases of self-harm, child abuse, drug addiction, and rape. Parents of young Harry Potter fanatics should take heed.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Rowling said that the idea to write about a local election came to her on an airplane trip, in a “rush of adrenaline.” It’s a bit difficult to understand how small-town politics could inspire such excitement, and I found it hard at times to sustain attention on an issue that was fundamentally not that interesting. But Rowling’s psychological exploration of her characters makes up for the places in which the story itself is lacking.

Though this novel definitely has its funny moments, it is by no means an uplifting book. If you’re prepared for a dose of disillusionment, “The Casual Vacancy” is worth a read.

My sense of name inferiority finally disappeared in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” when J.K. Rowling introduced one minor character, Leanne, Katie Bell’s friend. No, it wasn’t exactly my name, but who cared. If “Leanne” was a name worth including in the same paragraph as Harry and Hermione, I might as well have been a wizard.

It’s still possible to connect with “The Casual Vacancy,” Rowling’s latest tome, but the grounds of connection are surprising in their immediacy to everyday life. She accompanies a funeral with Rihanna and Jay-Z’s song “Umbrella” instead of Dumbledore’s phoenix dirge, explores teenage sexuality through internet porn and unprotected sex rather than love potions, and even replaces Quidditch with crew. Yet through it all, some constants remain: a deft skewering of small-town life, youthful disillusionment, and a character named Leanne. Only the Leanne of “A Casual Vacancy” is not walking back from Hogsmeade with Katie Bell. She’s the best friend of Krystal Weedon, a promiscuous, foul-mouthed child of a welfare heroin addict. We hear you loud and clear, J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter, this isn’t.

It nevertheless remains nearly impossible to read, analyze, and absorb “The Casual Vacancy” without invoking Harry Potter. How do you turn the page on a cultural milestone and open to a small town in southwest England, where the greatest drama involves a local election rather than a corporeal force of evil? Rowling’s tendency to rely on excessive adjectives and adverbs has lessened, yet she retains just enough of this trademark style to enliven descriptions: “The sky was a cold iron-gray, like the underside of a shield.”

This iron-gray sky lies over Pagford, a provincial town in the shadow of its larger neighbor, Yarvil. The story opens at the death of Barry Fairbrother, more an idea than a man, whose quest for social justice and equality reaches beyond the grave. His death leaves a gaping hole on a divided town council, and various citizens hurry to fill his shoes and exert their influence over the fiery controversy du jour: the inclusion of an area of low-income housing, The Fields, in Pagford’s upper-crust school district. This social commentary forms an intelligent backdrop against which to parade and judge a score of characters. From this unsuspectingly common premise, Rowling artfully exposes the intricacies of human relations with a colorful, memorable set of players.

Fraught with duplicity, seething with anger, and at times starkly hopeless, the citizens of Pagford often appear more as caricatures than realistic people. At times, indeed, the narrative feels overstuffed. Rowling careens from one third person limited point of view to another; this is certainly a more holistic approach than her singular focus on Harry, but at times the array of characters is dizzying (though Rowling helps the reader out by periodically repeating their names and occupations).

All these perspectives do not always serve the story well. The beauty of Harry Potter was its single-minded devotion to the end battle. Any side adventure that occurred was almost always in service of a greater narrative. “The Casual Vacancy” may be significantly more adult in its content, but Rowling risks losing readers along the way due to narrative offshoots. The book could have benefitted from a more condensed focus, yet Rowling’s ambition to fully explore the disparate lives of so many characters is admirable in its scope. Several books could have been written about the most compelling ones—adventurous and outspoken Fats, self-destructive yet compassionate Krystal, pimpled and besotted Andrew, corpulent and corrupt Howard, steely and driven Parminder, and the elusive, deified Barry Fairbrother.

If Rowling’s goal was to expose how different worlds can haplessly intersect, she’s done her job. She has frequently stated her adamant support of social welfare, and perhaps partially informed by her own pre-Potter bout with poverty, Rowling’s descriptions of privation, neglect, and drug abuse are often shocking in their audacious power of prose. “But she had seen far worse,” thinks Kay, a social worker, “welts and sores, gashes and burns, tar-black bruises; scabies and nits; babies lying on carpets covered in dog shit; kids crawling on broken bones; and once (she dreamed of it, still), a child who had been locked in a cupboard for five days by his psychotic stepfather.”

Rowling seems nearly to wink at her Harry Potter fanbase with this cupboard reference—“Think Uncle Vernon was abusive, do you?” she might be asking. “This is the real world.” Harry Potter was an introduction, through the lens of magic and ultimate happiness, to momentary loss, disappointment, and death. Here, though, when a relative, spouse, or friend is gone, they’re lost forever. Characters may have jarringly conspicuous access to the latest technology, but with no Resurrection Stone, “Priori Incantatem” spell, or Mirror of Erised at their disposal, this new treatment of death is decidedly harsher.

The final Harry Potter book was released four days before my 15th birthday. I was living in Chile for the summer and anxiously journeyed to the nearest mall to get the book. Dawn crept through the curtains as I finished it the next morning. It hadn’t been released in Spanish yet, and my host siblings begged the main details out of me the second I was done reading.

I nonchalantly bought “The Casual Vacancy” two days after it appeared in stores. It took me three days to read rather than a night—the driving tension, both on my part and on Rowling’s, simply was not there. Rowling, however, is not a one-hit wonder. Darkness, redemption, and even humor are more layered and complex in her latest effort. But the “Potter” cohort is grown up and probably ready to spend more than one night digesting the moral maelstroms of a book. A fast read isn’t always the best read. “The Casual Vacancy” has its moment of gut-wrenching horror, finely sketched characters, and steady-handed authorial intention. Rowling can’t babysit the literate youth of the world forever; finally, she drops the hand holding for a hard but welcome slap of reality.

Albom is the writer of beloved tales such as “Tuesdays with Morrie” and “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” which both contain insightful, relatively understated glimpses into the lives of interesting characters. In “Tuesdays With Morrie,” Albom chronicles his 14 weekly meetings with Morrie Schwartz, his 78-year-old former sociology professor at Brandeis University who was dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” Albom recounts the story of an elderly man named Eddie who dies while trying to rescue a little girl on a ride at Ruby Pier, the amusement park at which he is the head of maintenance. Eddie then meets five people with whom he was somehow connected in life, even in seemingly insignificant ways.

While “Tuesdays With Morrie” and “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” certainly portray common themes of love, happiness, human interconnectedness and the trajectory of life, Albom relates these themes in unique ways ­— through conversations with a professor and imaginative, yet understated, stories of the life encounters of an ordinary man after death.

In “The Time Keeper,” however, Albom draws on the experiences of trite, archetypal figures ­— a moneyed businessman mired in his work and a nerdy high school senior in the throes of a first crush — to elucidate the theme of life’s ephemeral nature and the preciousness of time.

Protagonist Victor Delamonte is a successful businessman — the 14th wealthiest person in the world — and he is dying of kidney cancer. He hopes to cheat death by freezing his corpse in a cryonics lab to be revived when medicine is advanced enough to cure his disease. Victor is a classic workaholic. He works into his mid-80s, ignores his wife to run his company, stays awake for West Coast business hours and has his assistant brief him on office matters while he is in the hospital undergoing dialysis. Incredulous at his immortality, Victor cannot “imagine the world without him” and hopes to be reanimated by cryonics in another life.

The book’s other main character, Sarah Lemon, is an awkward, chubby high school senior who develops a dangerous crush on a boy named Ethan, who once tried to seduce her but has since shown no interest. She texts him obsessively, travels to New York to buy him an expensive watch and asks him to meet her on Christmas Eve to present her gift. When Ethan rejects Sarah’s advances, she tries to kill herself.

Victor and Sarah’s plotlines converge at the end of the novel when the two meet Dor, or Father Time, who grew up in ancient Babylon and created the first clock. Dor was imprisoned in a cave for 1,000 years for attempting to measure time. In a bizarre, “Christmas Carol”-esque sequence of events, Dor shows Victor and Sarah scenes from the future. Sarah witnesses Ethan’s apathy after her death and her mother’s enduring grief. Victor sees his revived body, which lies mangled and disfigured in a tube while his memories flash on a video screen before an audience of viewers.

As a result, Victor and Sarah realize the precious nature of time and the need to spend it with the ones they love. Victor decides to die and be buried naturally and weakly calls for his wife on his deathbed, but not before improbably donating his wealth to fund Sarah’s education. Sarah, in turn, attends an unspecified Ivy League school and finds a cure for “the most dreaded disease of our time” that will “save millions of people, and life will never be the same.”

While Albom’s “carpe diem” message is abundantly clear, readers are left wondering why Albom even attempted to join the ranks of those such as Thomas Mann (“The Magic Mountain”) or Gabriel Garcia Márquez (“One Hundred Years of Solitude”) who have written true classics about humans’ relationship to time. Perhaps Yvonne Zipp of The Washington Post said it best when she wrote, “Time is precious. The good news is that readers can save themselves tens of valuable minutes by skipping [Albom’s] novel.”

Patton was one of the most celebrated, yet controversial men of his time. His daring leadership earned him the admiration of his men and many in the American public during the war, but his temper made him a complicated figure. He once slapped and kicked a shell-shocked soldier in Sicily because he believed the man might be dodging his duty.

Posnanski writes that Paterno particularly loved a line from a 1944 speech, delivered by Patton to troops before the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France and famously portrayed by actor George C. Scott in the opening scene of the 1970 film “Patton.”

“An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team,” Patton said. That’s the part Posnanski included in the book. The rest of the quote?

“This individual heroic stuff is pure horse s—t. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about f—ing!”

At a time when fierce criticism of the way Paterno handled reports of child sex abuse involving Jerry Sandusky is clashing with staunch defenses of the coach, Posnanski’s decision to link these two men early and throughout his book is brilliant.

As much as some on both sides of the debate over Paterno’s legacy might hope he’ll be remembered as some type of cartoon character — a moustache-curling villain to some and a close cousin of the Archangel Gabriel to others — Posnanski signals his intention early to write of Paterno’s humanity, and it’s a theme he wisely sticks to throughout the book.

He writes of the coach’s well-documented contributions to the Penn State community. Vignettes with former players capture every emotion they felt about the coach, from deep resentment to unwavering appreciation.

Posnanski also sheds light on some of Paterno’s deepest insecurities: failing to live up to his father Angelo’s expectations, dying shortly after retiring from coaching like former Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant and failing to intervene in Sandusky’s abuse.

At one point, Paterno asks Posnanski what he thinks of “all this” — Paterno’s role in the Sandusky case. Posnanski tells Paterno he thought he should have done. Paterno tells his biographer, “I wish I had done more.”

This moment, which Posnanski said he included because he thought it was “important,” really crystallizes the image of Paterno that the writer is trying to project, one that sees Paterno not as “good” or “bad,” but human.

Those looking to this book for a wealth of new information about what Paterno knew about Sandusky’s crimes and when will be disappointed. Posnanski offers a gripping view of how Paterno and those close to him handled the media firestorm in the wake of Sandusky’s indictment, though few fresh facts pertinent to the case pop up.

Those hoping the work will reinforce a polarized point of view of Paterno will probably find little value here, too. It’s likely that’s why many reviews of the book to this point have been lukewarm (The Atlantic calls it “a relentless, failed defense,” while the New York Times says it’s “breezy and largely sympathetic).

But the way Posnanski highlights both Paterno’s strengths and flaws, much in the way “Patton” shows the good and the bad of the legendary commander, gives the book a chance to stand the test of time and become the authority on the man’s life when the rabble-rousing and sanctimony coming from both sides fades away.

Abrahm Lustgarten

W.W. Norton

April 2012

Imagine an unremarkable character. Someone whose life is mundane, even tedious. She goes to school. She does homework. She looks for the meaning of life in cereal dregs. She is you, and reading about her uninspired routine is incredibly unfulfilling. Where is the journey? The star-crossed romance? The feeling of something greater?

After months of unending trailers and promotional videos, I caved and sat down to read the increasingly popular “The Hunger Games” trilogy by Suzanne Collins. And that’s when I was reminded how thin the line between wrong and right is when it comes to fantastic fiction. And to all those who have not been subjected to “The Hunger Games”: There are spoilers in this article.

I remember when I bought the books: The girl at the register grunted at the site of the three glossy novels and I asked if she had read the trilogy. She began to dissect the motives of each character while the line of tired, exasperated book buyers grew ever-longer behind me. I quickly paid and got out — but I soon learned that nowhere was safe. My friends, people who I thought I knew, began to preach about the pros and cons of Kale (a Katniss/Gale relationship) and what Peeta would have done had another tribute been chosen.

Whether they liked the stories or not, they were engrossed in the delicacy with which Collins apparently painted the imaginary world where the characters lived.

Would the books really live up to the hype? Could they really be so fascinating and relatable? Would they be the next “Harry Potter” series? OK, so they couldn’t be “Harry Potter,” but I was willing to give them a chance. So I began with “The Hunger Games,” and then, somewhere near the end, something went wrong.

The story transformed from moderately thrilling to entirely insignificant.

I forced myself to forge on, partly because I felt like I must be missing something: Everyone who has read the series feels strongly about it, one way or the other. I must have misunderstood the first book.

But as I finished the second and the third novels, it finally dawned on me why I was so apathetic to the series: The main character, the window through which readers creep into the wonderfully foreign worlds of books, was unimportant to the rest of the story. Katniss Everdeen was not the most heroic, the most noteworthy, the most beautiful or exceptional character. She was average. She was mundane.

I can already hear the hoard of Hunger Game fanatics struggling to contain their bows from firing arrows my way: “She’s a very strong person for a 17-year-old. She won the Hunger Games! She’s the Mockingjay! She killed the President! She saved Peeta’s life and the entire country!”

I only saw three remarkable things happen for Katniss. First, she wins the hunger games. This is the part of the first book I enjoyed reading. Then, Katniss takes down a couple planes that were bombing wounded people in a hospital with her bow, which is awesome. Finally, Katniss’s shining last moment happens when she kills President Coin and stops being a useless heap of morphling and uncertainty … only to return to that heap afterwards.

Out of three books, there were three shining moments for Katniss. Compared to the bravery of other characters, this is incredibly unfulfilling. I think the most disappointing part of “The Hunger Games” trilogy is that you really want to like Katniss. She’s a teenager, and while she’s strong at times, she’s also angsty and sassy — she could be you. If you were, you know, a poor girl from a forlorn district that hunted squirrels her entire life.

But none of that matters the moment Katniss shuts down after the second hunger games, after everyone begins protecting her and fawning over her. She becomes uninterested in the rebellion, halfheartedly agrees to be the Mockingjay, and after a while, her unending stream of self-loathing makes me hate her, too.

Without a sturdy main character, the fantasy genre falls apart. Adventures and romance and bravery of other characters can only hold your interest for so long until you feel yourself emerging from their world and back to yours. It is not a love story. It is not a story of a girl that finds herself through hardship. It is not the story of a resolved soldier. Katniss can’t make up her mind, but thanks to her, mine’s made up.

Sebastian Seung, an MIT professor of computational neuroscience, believes that the secret to understanding how the brain works lies in finding all of those connections and mapping them, and he explores this idea in “Connectome,” his fascinating new book. It seems simple enough that we should understand how the brain works once we figure out all of those connections interact, but that’s even less elegant than trying to understand the way weather works by keeping track of all of the particles in the atmosphere.

Still, for confounding questions like how we learn, perhaps a brute force method may not be such a bad idea.

The idea of a connectome, or map of the brain, forms the backbone of the book. That’s not all it’s about, but it does provide structure for Seung to address some of the questions that many readers will have about the brain and explain some interesting experiments, including one that suggests that individual neurons may be responsible for recognizing specific faces (the “Jennifer Aniston neuron,” for instance).

Seung’s book also addresses questions of nature and nurture by explaining that things aren’t so simple that they can be so easily categorized. Brains are far too complicated to be explicitly described in our genes, but that doesn’t mean our genes can’t build them. As a result, identical twins have unidentical brains, since their experiences have been different. At the same time, they’re more similar than fraternal twins as shown through personality and IQ tests. In other words, both nature and nurture seem to have an effect on the brain.

The final portion of the book may be the most exciting for many readers, though it’s also the most speculative. In it, Seung discusses immortality and two different ways of achieving it, neither of which seem particularly appealing. The first involves cryonics, or freezing the body of a near-death patient in the hopes that future generations will be able to unfreeze and cure him. There are a lot of “if’s” in the idea, but since we’re playing with your life and the risks are negligible, it’s worth a shot.

If you lose, you die, but if you don’t play, you also die. The second involves transferring your brain to a computer, where a virtual you would live forever, but if it’s a true and exact copy of your brain, is it really virtual? Seung takes the correct approach here in presenting these as speculative ideas that may or may not pan out, rather than committing to them as absolute certainties. If he’s learned anything by studying the brain, it’s to be cautious in predicting the future of our understanding.

“Connectome” is a book about a topic that we’re only slowly beginning to understand. The brain may very well be the most difficult mystery for science to crack, continuing to baffle us even as it solves mysteries of the entire universe. Seung does a good job of putting things in perspective, and manages to engage the reader while doing it, but if the book makes anything clear, it’s that we’ve still got a long way before we understand that hunk of grey matter that exists between our ears.

Few men are as reviled as Michael Moore. The director of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko has made himself notable not only for his Oscar nominations but also for the incredible hate he has inspired in countless conservatives. Even the Democratic Party has a strained relationship with the documentarian. Among the top search hits for Moore’s name is a website dedicated to exposing Moore’s lies and excesses. The director has even claimed that he has received numerous death threats.

But Moore can take comfort that there is one man who remains loyal to him, one man who knows the truth of Moore’s life long crusade to fix the United States: Michael Moore.

Moore’s belief in his own specialness is on full display in his recent memoir, Here Comes Trouble. The book focuses mainly on his early life growing up in Flint, Michigan and his perspective on the political and social events that defined the Baby Boomer generation. The book is essentially an anthology of Moore’s favorite stories from his life, ranging from the brief period he was on the path to a Catholic priesthood to his election to the local Board of Education at only eighteen.

Ignoring Moore and reading the memoir only as a collection of short stories rather than an autobiographical account of Moore’s life, Here Comes Trouble is an engaging and frequently touching read. A note from the author even admits the odd semi-fictional nature of the book. Names have been changed, events slightly altered, and winners and losers in every story clearly defined. With this in mind, and one’s own knowledge of the present Michael Moore pushed aside, there is a charming Forrest Gump quality to the book. The major events of the last 50 years are suddenly seen through the eyes of a child, a teenager, and a young adult.

The brief moments of brilliance in his memoir occur when Moore accepts his peripheral role in history. In those few stories where the winners and losers are ambiguous, Moore’s ability to hone in on the emotional impact of events is impressive. The chapter dedicated to his mother’s death is the most moving by far. There is anger, frustration, deep sadness, and not an instance of the author asserting his own superiority. For a moment, the reader is allowed to get to know Michael Moore the man.

But sadly these moments are few and far between. Too often Moore writes as if he has something to prove, and he forces the idea that he has tirelessly worked to improve the United States far too often to be convincing. Instead of the humble appreciation that is expected in most memoirs, Moore has no qualms about pointing out his own success. The person he portrays in the book is more saint than man, and more tiresome than entertaining.

The example that jumps to mind is perhaps one of the less innocuous instances in the book, but still typifies the book’s nauseating self-promotion. Moore writes in one chapter about his time running the Flint Voice, an alternative newspaper in his hometown with an emphasis on muckraking. Moore describes how the local government went after the small paper, even raiding the newsroom to find incriminating evidence, only to find itself with a massive public relations problem.

Alone, this story is interesting, albeit somewhat self-aggrandizing. But it is the aftermath of the incident that is truly grating. Moore gleefully recounts receiving a personal call from John Lennon, who allegedly indicates that he wants to do some sort of benefit for the small paper as a sign of solidarity. And while an interesting moment, Moore’s account of Lennon’s subsequent death dwells more on the tragedy of the singer not helping Moore than the tragedy of the death itself. The conclusion makes the reader wonder whether Moore included the story simply to associate himself with a Beatle and once again display his saintliness.

Indeed, there are few chapters where Moore is not the hero. In one, he publicly condemns the Elk Club for its racism as only a young man and receives national attention. In another chapter, which seems more of a pat on the back than an exploration of a formative experience, he explores how he rescued a friend after a botched abortion.

This is not to say that Moore’s memoir is uninteresting or poorly written. Indeed, most of the stories are engaging, humorous, and on rare occasions even inspiring. But what they lack is the feeling of reality. Moore paints his characters with too broad a brush, his own role as hero forced on the audience in every story. Readers will learn little more than they already knew, that Michael Moore is his own biggest fan.

The dedication to the book is ultimately the best warning to readers. “For my mother,” Moore writes, “who taught me to read and write when I was four.” Even in a moment of thanks, he simply cannot resist pointing out who the smartest man in the room is.

And come together they do, though by the time that occurs, most readers will have long figured out how. Unfortunately, the characters aren’t interesting enough to overcome the sheer predictability of the narrative. Gottlieb uses most of his words to explore what the characters are thinking, and they are ultimately more interesting for who and what they are than how they think. The concept of a body language expert is intriguing, but the particular one in this book isn’t.

Despite all of this, “The Face Thief” is never dull and there’s something about it that demands just one more chapter before bed. Gottlieb’s a good enough writer to grab the reader and make them wonder what will happen next, even after the ending’s been figured out.

Additionally, the book’s structure, broken into three chapter sets — one for each story line — adds suspense, because right when the reader becomes involved in what will happen to one character, the narrative jumps to a different one. If Gottlieb isn’t an expert of plotting, he at least knows how to structure the book to exploit the ability he does have.

Still, there’s a feeling of rigidity to the whole book, as if Gottlieb is too stuck in the outline of the story to have some fun with it. Every beat is deliberately set up so that it can pay off later. There are few moments where characters get to just be themselves and interact with each other without it being overly expository.

“The Face Thief” defies classification into a particular genre, but perhaps fits nicely into a thriller in terms of feel, if not the specific cornerstones of what one expects. It’s a quick read and ideal for a long flight as it moves along quickly and doesn’t demand much in terms of thought. It also happens to be almost instantly forgettable.

As far as airport fiction goes, it does its job effectively, although one senses that Gottlieb is still finding his footing as a writer and hasn’t reached his full potential yet.

The first half of “Blood, Bones, and Butter” is a fast-paced torrent of glittering youth, image after image piled high with beauty and significance. Gabrielle grew up in the “burnt-out ruins of a nineteenth-century silk mill” with an artist father, a ballerina mother, and a veritable warren of older siblings. Her early life was spent gamboling through the forest of legs grown from glamorous people at lavish parties, or sweating in the heat of her mother’s six-burner kitchen. Then, as her parents’ marriage disintegrates and she is left on her own (in an abandoned mill at age ”3? Oh for the days before child services!) darkness replaces the light.

The darkness is thick and choking for Gabrielle, but smooth and ever-moving for the reader. She travels to the big city for a fast-paced life of coke and booze, losing track of dreams but building a reservoir of experience. Then, at the nadir of her existence she breaks, and runs off to find herself (if there is indeed any self left) in the towns of Europe.

Gabrielle gets her life together, goes to a school (an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Michigan grad school? Not bad, Ms. Cokehound), and starts living a steady life of catering gigs and summer camp chef-ery. Eventually she moves back to New York, starts an immediately world-famous restaurant on a whim, and marries a motorcycle-riding Italian doctor. Is that the perfect Cinderalla story or what, folks?

Spoiler alert: read no further if you want to be surprised by Gabrielle’s lack of fulfillment in her new life as Top Chef/Supermom.

The difference between the first half of the book (childhood through to restaurant opening) and the second is astounding. Gabrielle’s life is mediated by food, by cooking, by the culinary creations of the people around her. Her emotions are expressed through braised rabbits and fresh vegetables, the kinked hands of an old French chef crafting a perfect omelette with just a fork and decades of utter compassion. If the production of a plump Italian eggplant is slow, natural, and surrounded by love then Gabrielle is happy, if food is ironic or shallow or unfelt then the author pines. The cruel and utter irony of the book is that Gabrielle loses touch with food when she starts Prune (her restaurant) and her family, that food becomes a given and not a wonder.

When Gabrielle is stuck in the deepest trenches of apathy during her teenage years, some safety line of braided, handmade spaghetti is always thrown down to tow her up. Food brings wonder and joy enough to change her course, and sometimes enough pain to do the same. There is one particularly brutal scene wherein a bunch of stoned summer camp counselors “liberate” her torpor-ridden lobsters into fresh water. The sea-creatures start to drown and crawl out over the floor, leaving a trail of mangled bodies for her to find in the morning. She never goes back.

Somehow, when food (on her own terms) becomes a central part of Gabrielle’s life, it loses its emotional power. She cooks what she wants as head chef at Prune, yet can only complain about the constant hours of back-breaking labor. She spends hours a day basking in the sight and scent of perfect cuisine, yet harps on her blood-sugar issues constantly. She has children of her own to feed and nourish, and they become a burden (albeit a much-loved one) in conjunction with her endless hours and loveless marriage (getting married to a man so he can get his green card rarely works out, ladies). Food is no longer powerful, except as a medium for conflict and power struggles, a metaphor for failures and strange futures.

Gabrielle does love her life as a chef, it seems, and certainly writes beautifully enough about food to show that it still holds a deep place in her heart. Is it merely nostalgia, then, that drives the dichotomy between her past and present? Or did the movement, inconstancy, and adventure of her past create the proper scenario for revelations and great emotional apotheoses? I do not know which part of her is more real, the Bourdain or the Martha Stewart, but regardless or where her own truth lies the truth of the book is evident: food is a great human medium, the connection between individuals and the land they inhabit. It has an amazing power if used correctly, and will be our undoing if it remains ignored. It also makes for great writing, and in turn, a huge [expletive] appetite.

In his new book “Nixon’s Darkest Secrets,” Fulsom said Nixon sabotaged the 1968 Vietnam peace talks, was an abusive husband and may have had a gay love affair with a banker tied to the mob. Fulsom enlisted the help of his students to write the book, to be published Jan. 31.

Fulsom said Nixon was as a paranoid, troubled, depressed man who was “a menace to our democratic republic.”

“Nixon was our most complex and crookedest president, and I thought people should know about it so we don’t make that mistake again,” he said.

Fulsom’s research drew heavily from his own notes and those of some friends and former reporters who covered Nixon. He has reported for United Press International on the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton administrations.

Fulsom said he also talked to Nixon administration officials, White House staff, Secret Service and household staff as he wrote the book.

His motivation to write the book came from the release of previously unheard tapes and records. He said he wanted to perform a public service by getting this information out.

“[I want] to let people know that Richard Nixon was even worse as a president than we thought,” he said.

Four AU students helped Fulsom write the book, including one who helped to write an entire chapter.

Avi McClelland, a senior in the School of Public Affairs, took Fulsom’s class, “Watergate: Constitutional Crisis,” last fall. She said she agreed with Fulsom’s unsympathetic view of the 37th president.

“He had no business holding the highest office in the nation,” McClelland said in an email. “He was responsible for thousands of deaths of Americans, Vietnamese and Cambodians, not only during his time in office but even prior, as he intentionally and directly sabotaged Johnson’s Paris peace talks by urging the South Vietnamese to refrain from making a deal.”

McClelland was the manager and coordinator of the class’ final project. The students developed a wiki page on Nixon’s grand jury testimony, based on extensive research of the newly released tapes. The project can be found at nixondetached.com.

McClelland called the project “one of the greatest things I’ve participated in over the course of my academic career.”

However, not everyone agreed with Fulsom’s take on Nixon.

Kirkus Reviews, a book review site, said some of his claims seemed sensationalistic.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Fulsom said. “The possibility that he was having a homosexual affair is sensationalistic, but I don’t make that claim and I don’t come to a conclusion on it. He [Nixon] was a racist, he was a misogynist and he hated everybody.”

Having researched Nixon first-hand, McClelland defends Fulsom and his book.

“It is vital to keep in mind that the professor’s claims are all just that. He suggests certain possibilities and presents the evidence behind them, but has never been dogmatic as to the voracity of the claims,” McClelland said in an email. “He allows the evidence to speak for itself, and the readers to interpret.”

With his knack for writing sharp dialogue, biting humor and characters who only look out for themselves, Leonard remains one of the great writers of the can’t-put-it-down crime genre, featuring stories about criminals who you’d never want to run into in real life, but love to meet on the written page.

Givens is no exception, and although past experiences of his are alluded to, “Raylan” isn’t so much a sequel to “Riding the Rap” or “Pronto” as it is another adventure featuring the same character. Those who aren’t familiar with the other books won’t find themselves lost at all.

In this novel Givens goes looking for a criminal to arrest, but finds him naked in a bathtub full of ice with both his kidneys gone, instead of running from the law. If this sounds like straightforward mystery fare, where the novel is spent searching for the kidney thief, it’s not. Indeed, among the novel’s flaws is how aimless it is. The mystery is cleared up a few chapters into the book and by the halfway point, the narrative has already gone down a completely different pathway with new characters and new trouble for Givens to get in.

Givens is known in the Leonard universe for his catch phrase, which he’ll share with anybody who’ll listen: “If I have to pull my gun, I’ll shoot to kill.” And by the end of this book, he gives the reader no reason to question his commitment to the mantra. The body count is very high, which is a tad disappointing, since the bad guys — featuring an assortment of dumb criminals, femme fatales and exploitative millionaires — are often as compelling as the hero (and also have the best lines).

And though the story wanders and the characters are standard issue, the writing is confident and fun enough so that those seem like minor issues. The dialogue is a joy to read, with the characters really playing off of each other’s words and exchanging dry witticisms while contemplating whom to shoot next.

Perhaps also to ride on the coattails of the success of “Justified,” William Morrow Paperbacks released “Fire in the Hole,” a collection of Leonard’s short stories, earlier this month. For longtime Leonard fans, this collection is unnecessary since it’s a reprint, as opposed to “Raylan,” which is a new adventure.

“Fire in the Hole” was previously published under the title of “When the Women Come Out to Dance,” and is a fantastic collection that includes an exciting story featuring Givens that was adapted into the pilot of “Justified.” For those unfamiliar with Leonard’s work, it’s a perfect opportunity to discover an author who can do more in a few pages than most writers can do in a full-length novel, regardless of the title it’s published under.

“Raylan” is not Leonard’s best novel, nor is there one that is universally considered to be his “best.” Each new book features the same ingredients, but the chef cooks them together with such joy and imagination that the meal still feels fresh. And while one could criticize Leonard for not reinventing the wheels on the buggy that he first built several decades ago, it’s better to sit back and enjoy the ride.

The novel picks up six years after Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s marriage, and they are settled happily at Darcy’s famous Pemberley estate. Unfortunately, the couple’s peace does not last long; while the novel still explores the marriage theme, murder becomes the central premise in Death Comes to Pemberley.

Rather than catapult the reader straight into the murder, however, James first brings the reader up to speed with the events of the past six years, developing each character so that the reader can ignore past bias and clearly see each person’s possible involvement in the murder. Consequently, when a reckless carriage brings distressing news to Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s door, the reader already feels immediate interest in the murder mystery to follow.

James also introduces new characters as the reader learns more about the Pemberley estate, which retains its descriptive grandeur but holds secrets which Austen’s novel did not reveal. The novel gradually unravels mysteries which lurk in the woods, including a possible haunting and an old tale of suicide.

Although James uses Austen’s characters in a setting and genre which are not completely cohesive with Pride and Prejudice, his story does not seem unrealistic or forced — even for Austen fanatics such as myself. Instead, James eases the transition by appropriately adapting each character and allocating time for the reader to properly adjust. As a well-known and respected detective story writer — the 91-year-old writer’s diverse career has garnered awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the British Book Awards — James fully capitalizes on her exceptional plotting and clue-planting skills. She avoids detracting from the value of Pride and Prejudice by using the characters in a plausible way and constructing an enjoyable story which is sure to satisfy Austen fans as well as lovers of murder mystery.

Noam Chomsky

176 pp. Seven Stories Press. $13.95.

Following 9/11, few people questioned whether the American government was right to invade Afghanistan, and certainly did not blame the American government for the attacks on the World Trade Center. Noam Chomsky was one of the few dissenters. His book, 9-11: Was There an Alternative?, is a new edition of the collection of interviews and essays he composed in the months following September 11^th (originally published in 2001 as 9-11), as well as a recent, retrospective essay he wrote following Osama bin Laden’s death. Throughout both the historical and recent parts of Chomsky’s work, he is unrelenting in his desire to point out what he considers incidences of American terrorism in sovereign states like Nicaragua and Sudan, and the U.S.’s double standard of promoting terrorism while condemning it. All the while, he strives to answer the question of whether there was an alternative to that disastrous September day.

In his original interviews and essays, Chomsky analyzes the reasons why the Muslim world harbored such deadly resentment against the United States prior to 9/11, and it grew as a result of America’s militarized retaliation. According to Chomsky, Bush called for a “crusade” against the Muslim world. That, combined with the subsequent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, played into the hands of radical figures like Osama bin Laden. Bush’s choices ruined a moment of potential political redemption for the US. Chomsky argues that the sympathy of the world lay with America after 9/11; even prominent radical Muslims like Hezbollah cleric Sheikh Fadlallah criticized the tragic event. Yet the US response to 9/11 further radicalized the Near East. While Osama bin Laden did not enjoy wide support prior to 9/11, his base grew exponentially when bombs began to fall on Afghanistan and Iraq. As Chomsky predicted, Muslims suffered widespread resentment against a Western nation invading their own.

Chomsky also examines the multiple double standards that he claims the U.S. government follows in condemning terrorism. He presents several examples of what he considers U.S.-sponsored terrorism in multiple countries, such as South Vietnam, Sudan, and Nicaragua. Chomsky cites the U.S. bombing of Sudan’s Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in 1998 as one such incidence. The plant produced 50 percent of Sudan’s medicinal products, but Americans argued that the plant was producing chemical weapons. Even when bombing uncovered no weapons, America still refused to resupply Sudan or send aid to the thousands dying from preventable diseases in the country’s rural areas. Estimates of deaths traced back to the plant’s destruction are sometimes placed in the hundreds of thousands. By Chomsky’s account, the crime had enormous historical significance, yet it remains largely ignored by the Western world.

Many of the warnings Chomsky presented in the original 9-11 have been almost hauntingly vindicated. For example, he warned a massive American military response to 9-11 would provoke anger and condemnation in the Muslim world, allowing al-Qaeda to radically increase the number of soldiers it enlisted. He claims that, in this way, the US did more harm than good in invading Iraq and Afghanistan. The invasions fulfilled al-Qaeda ideology by proving real the physical Western threat. Chomsky likewise feared that a violent reaction to 9/11 would only lead to more violence. Now, ten years since the event, American troops still occupy Afghanistan and are only slowly withdrawing from Iraq. Drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen currently kill civilians as well as militants.

Chomsky’s criticisms came at a time when his dissent was labeled as anti-American; therefore, they fell on deaf ears. In some ways, however, the trenchancy of Chomsky’s criticisms may have made him the most pro-American all along.

The story of a person’s life is more about that person’s place in the grand narrative of history than a simple timeline of the events in their life. Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, is the portrait of an entrepreneur from beginning to end, examining the nuances and contradictions that made up his character, and an atlas of the counter-cultural West Coast. A period and intersection of the figures that would lead a revolution in technology and human interaction.

The biography doesn’t generally feature any startling revelations that haven’t already been revealed on general news sources, but it does provide an intimate portrait of a larger-than-life figure through the his eyes and those around him.

Isaacson’s style is conversational and almost anecdotal. It is a pastiche of the various viewpoints and commentary of the characters Jobs had surrounded himself with throughout his lifetime. The story perfectly balances the points and counterpoints of Steve Jobs, his friends and his family without taking sides. The author himself almost disappears within the narratives, giving precedence to the multiple figures in Jobs’ life.

One of the more interesting themes that pervades the book is the importance of spirituality. From dropping acid and listening to jam band music to Zen Buddhism and Yoga, the importance of intuition and centered-thinking is what differentiates the people who started Apple, Inc. from other entrepreneurs and businesspeople. The anti-analytical, humanistic approach to business seems to have been a goal of Jobs and Apple from its beginning years to present day.

The first half of the book drives home the point that the inception of many tech companies came about at a unique point in history: the moment when the radicalism and optimism of the early sixties blended with free enterprise and technology. This system and the individuals within it were what allowed technological progress of society while encouraging creativity and radical individualism in product development.

By allowing perspectives from all ends of the story, Isaacson crafts an experience that almost forces the reader to evaluate the morality and character of certain people and decisions. No one, Jobs especially, is portrayed as either an angel or a demon.

The stories provide several instances where Jobs’ actions seem idiosyncratic and almost incomprehensible. Jobs’ childhood is filled with these moments, such as his near-overbearing sense of self-entitlement. There isn’t a single moment in the book where Jobs doesn’t take or do what he wants.

There’s a brief scene when he enlists the help of the genial Steve Wozniak and then proceeds to pocket the resulting bonus without telling him. It’s a moment that Jobs will deny decades later, yet seems to have occurred based on eyewitness accounts. Wozniak’s predicament in this is made particularly upsetting since he was more than willing to work for Jobs for free and just wanted openness and honesty between them.

One of the book’s most noteworthy lessons is the importance of failure and experimentation. Given the image Apple has today, most people would expect that its success was fated in the stars; yet the early years of Apple were plagued with conflict and clash.

Without the luxury of hindsight, Jobs and his co-workers seem as though they were wandering aimlessly and pursuing passions they could only hope to see connected into a coherent vision.

Then there’s the forced exit of Jobs by John Scully and the Apple board of directors, a prime case of learning from defeat when Jobs moves on to start Next Computer and Pixar.

Creativity and innovation are revealed to be less enlightened moments and more driven stochastic processes. Jobs’ primary method of discovering new ideas is to survey or research new fields saturated with mediocrity, such as the early music player industry. In doing so, the end result is not so much about originality as it is superiority.

This biography is at its best when it moves beyond the business realm and into the psychological one. It provides the highly subjective stories and tales that lie behind the birth of one of the world’s most famous organizations.

The book ensures its lead character isn’t spared from his long list of shortcomings and provides a raw and honest look at an unorthodox life lived fully and passionately.

From her first break writing and starring in the play “Matt and Ben,” Kaling has gone on to become an actress, an Emmy-winning writer, an executive producer on “The Office,” and now, an author.

Drawing from these experiences, many of her essays focus on Hollywood, especially its take on women. Her chapter “Flick Chicks: A Guide to Women in the Movies,” which ran in “The New Yorker,” addresses this issue brilliantly.

“I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world,” Kaling writes. “For me, there is no difference between Ripley from ‘Alien’ and any Katherine Heigl character. They are equally implausible.”

She also elegantly deals with the size issue. Kaling writes that by being neither “model skinny” nor “fabulously owning my hugeness,” she falls out of the two Hollywood-worthy body types. Also on a more personal note, Kaling discusses high school life, college life and broke-living-in-New-York-post-graduation life in detail, all of which resonate deeply with 20-something-year-olds.

Even when her opinions are somewhat brash, Kaling manages to come off as reasonable and light-hearted.

In a rare overlap with her character on “The Office,” Kelly Kapoor, Kaling expresses her strange love for trying new diets as something of a hobby. Displaying her unique understanding of the subtleties of American culture, she states, “We always think of a diet with a big groan. But I think diets are fun. I think it is an American pastime for a lot of women.”

It is from statements like these that Kaling’s charm is evident. Her open honesty about both her strengths and flaws makes her more relatable. Her embracing of both the quirky, like her love of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and mainstream, e.g., her obsession with Beyoncé, aspects of pop culture make her real, like someone you know.

From revenge fantasies to rules and regulations for best friends, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” is laugh-out-loud funny and a quick read.

Grade: A

Author: Kevin Seccia

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Without giving it much thought, the premise behind “Punching Tom Hanks” seems like a throwaway concept. But over the course of 200 pages, New York-based comedy writer Kevin Seccia delivers enough wit, nonsense and comedic machismo to keep you laughing the whole way through.

Born out of a blog started by Seccia three years ago, “Punching Tom Hanks” is a screamingly hilarious collection of rambling, how-to absurdity that acts as a guide to beating up, well, pretty much anything. Cutting into everything from time-traveling cavemen to alligators to the ever-charming George Clooney, there are few demographics ­— real or not — that Seccia shies away from. It seems like an absurd concept, but that’s kind of the point. The book colors outside the lines of reality too with Seccia even explaining how to defend oneself from Trojan horses. An enemy that he describes as an “all-too-common foe.”

Because of the discursive nature of the book, there are moments where Seccia’s essays become more focused on the subject itself rather than step-by-step punch-out instructions. And while there are some occasional lulls in hilarity, Seccia’s imagination and knack for pop-culture musings makes the bulk of it entertaining.

Unlike so many other comedy books nowadays, “Punching Tom Hanks” doesn’t waste time any time taking itself too seriously. With dozens of subjects, a two-part “Note On Weapons” section and a conclusion that outlines the ten cardinal rules for beating up anything, “Punching Tom Hanks” is the kind of book you can put down and return to later at any given hour. It’s gut-punching nonsense that’s bound to get even the most hardened cynics shutting up for a few minutes – this one included.

3 out of 4 stars

Despite removing many interesting elements of the classic Bond, “Carte Blanche” has, unfortunately, kept some of the more unpleasant aspects of the original series intact. The book is astoundingly condescending toward women, portraying female characters only in relation to how attractive they are. Even the strong women in the novel come off rather poorly, as their strength only matters in terms of how it looks against Bond’s. In a characteristic scene, Bond notes that a charity leader’s “cool, efficient handling of the incident … made her all the more attractive.” And of course, no matter what, all of the women are at least a little in love with the super-spy.

But perhaps this insensitivity is the necessary consequence of the novel’s funneling everything and everyone in its world to focus on Bond. The book speeds from scene to scene, puffing up Bond while his spectators stare in awe. And in this race to capture the glory of Fleming’s hero, “Carte Blanche” fails to realize what made the original Bond so memorable in the first place: his humanity. Bond was always interesting because he was not just some sort of demigod. He made mistakes, was forced to rely on assumptions that often turned out to be false, and at times, even blew entire missions. Without this humanity, the novel loses its ground and drifts into an overlong, overexcited fantasy.

I’ve never been the voyeuristic type. The “Royal Wedding” fever during the last few months was almost an annoyance, and I wouldn’t be upset if in a fell swoop all reality TV shows were cancelled. But I read “Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century” recently, and fell in love with it. After spending two weeks with a copy from the Fayetteville Public Library, I went and bought my own.

I’ve always enjoyed classic Hollywood movies, but Taylor was never one of my favorites. So when I picked started the book I knew little about her– even less about Burton. Authors Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger connect the details of Taylor and Burton’s childhoods, and explain how it shaped their individual lives and their marriage. They discuss how Burton’s having an official and unofficial father influenced how he viewed himself, how the early control Taylor received from the studio and her mother affected the rest of her marriages.

But it is not the writing that carries the novel, but the personalities and  interactions of Taylor and Burton; to put it simply, they are electric and larger than life. Their affair was condemned by the Vatican. The book is extremely personal and indulgent, some of Burton’s diary entries and letters to Taylor were included.  It is easy to forget the Burton-Taylor marriage is synonymous with tumultuous relationships.

The authors are at times too fair with Taylor. Despite the complexity of her mutual obsession with Burton, on multiple instances they paint wanting to be a good wife as the sole motivation to Taylor’s actions. Doing so humanizes, but simplifies the actress. But at the same time they don’t shy away from some of the couple’s problems including Burton’s alleged affairs and alcoholism.

The book is perhaps, more than anything else, a warning about the effects of the modern paparazzi, celebrity obsession and a window into what happens when celebrities’ public personalities overtake their private lives.

Fey begins “Bossypants” by highlighting her hilarious summers as a ticket taker at a youth theater/gay teen safehaven in Upper Darby, Pa., where she discovered her love of acting and the theater. She describes her awkward, sexless college years, her grim days working at the local YMCA, her comedy beginnings at The Second City in Chicago and her time writing for “Saturday Night Live.” The book is also full of what she calls “unsolicited advice,” which Fey gathered from her struggle to “man up” in various aspects of her life. She devotes an entire chapter to addressing her haters on the Internet, responding to them in a “Dear Abby” fashion. And for the many avid “30 Rock” fans that are bound to have bought this book, Fey doesn’t disappoint. She offers insight into the frightening process of creating her own show, writing the part of conservative, mega-rich GE exec Jack Donaghy for brashly liberal Alec Baldwin, working with Tracy Morgan/Jordan and having little-to-no faith in the show that ultimately became a favorite of critics and hipsters.

What I enjoyed most about “Bossypants,” though, is the element that gave it its title — Fey’s success in a business that is almost unequivocally confirmed as a man’s world. When looking back on her first interview to be a writer for “SNL” in 1997, she remarks, “Only in comedy does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity.” This thread is strong throughout “Bossypants,” but is pleasantly free of bitterness. She simply accepts the misogynistic nature of the business as a status quo that must be changed. Fey is headstrong, opinionated and forward. When the stress and strain gets to her, Fey reminds herself and her audience that she feels the need to get to the top not for the success, but to provide opportunities for other intelligent and innovative women. And also a little bit for the success.

Beginning in the 1980s, as a “suburban feudal subject” in Sterling, Virginia, Oswalt’s book throws you into his world as an employee at the local cineplex with equal parts absurdity, fascination, and regret. For him, it was a transformative experience where popcorn was buttered, assistant managers smelled of “corpse fart” and terrible movies graced the silver screen. An idyllic life to be sure. Framed by the lyrics of R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction, the teenage tale of small-town shenanigans and southern life culminates at the moment when Oswalt’s cultural awakening took place – in an underground theater, listening to Michael Stipe as “Adventures in Babysitting” played in the background.

Like the opening essay, Oswalt’s book contains a manic combination of references which serve to match the equally crazed mind that wrote it. It’s a memoir-comedy hybrid that stretches the gamut of genres from childhood whimsy to vampire comics to an epic poem about his childhood D&D character, Ulvaak. As Oswalt’s fantasy warrior, Ulvaak can “wade through blood and gore/claim a treasure” and “bed a whore.” He’s a jack of all trades and more to the point, so is his creator. Not only is Oswalt able to pen a poem which reads like the mental melding of Jonathan Swift and Gary Gygax, but he is also able to transcend these literary styles without hesitation.

One moment we’re given a dazzling set of faux greeting cards and the next, we are introduced to the bygone era of hobo songs (my favorite being “Squirrel House Christmas”). The seemingly random collection can be initially jarring, but ultimately rewarding due to its rich sense of creative flair and acerbic observation. Oswalt, after all, is a comedian and observation is what he does best.

Like his fellow Gen X-er Chuck Klosterman, Oswalt critiques and analyzes the culture he lives in with – one made up of three subgroups: zombies (those who simplify), spaceships (those who leave) and wastelands (those who destroy). It’s an incisive and personal dissection of the world he grew up in where the zombies, spaceships and wastelands of the films “Star Wars” and “The Road Warrior” became inextricably linked to the people who watched them – the fans.

More than just for fans, it’s a book for the nerds and the geeks – the products of Oswalt’s generation – who experience their lives through an intimate connection with pop culture. In fact, the progress of Oswalt’s comedy career – recounted in the thoroughly riveting “A History of America from 1988 to 1996″– can be tied to the rise of the nerd, from fringe loner to mainstream winner proving only one thing: This is the age of Oswalt. It is an era where, now that everything is available at one’s fingertips, the exclusivity of an album like Fables of the Reconstruction becomes moot once it’s available on iTunes. For Oswalt, this broadened accessibility is exciting and often humorous, but also somewhat troubling.

In the YouTube generation, this immediacy to music videos, films, and internet memes can produce a certain type of attention deficiency. Look to the end of Oswalt’s chapters where he lists the items which distracted him during his own writing process. It’s perhaps a trivial detail, but one which captures the wry, imaginative and frequently honest scribblings of this possibly mad man to a tee. More than just lists of Wikipedia articles and Google searches, they are, like Oswalt’s book, an account of the specific references and cultural connections which have affixed themselves as much to our identities as Darth Vader’s helmet has to his pasty head.

“The Lover’s Dictionary” is literally formatted like a dictionary, with nearly 200 definitions arranged in alphabetical order. However, Levithan replaces the dry, detached definitions of a typical dictionary with short vignettes that tell of a couple who meet online and embark upon a passionate yet tumultuous relationship. This is how Levithan attempts to define a concept as nebulous and elusive as love.

The words and their definitions include the passionately sincere (“breathtaking, adj. Those mornings when we kiss and surrender for an hour before we say a single word”), the sweet and mundane (“qualm, n. There is no reason to make fun of me for flossing twice a day”) and the wryly humorous (“celibacy, n. n/a”). The entries read more like prose poetry than a typical novel.

The anonymous male narrator is shy and withdrawn, uncomfortable at parties and revels in spending time with his journal. The narrator’s partner, also anonymous, is gregarious, impulsive and feels most at home being the center of attention. These differences account for the couple’s electric attraction, but also open up the doors for the insecurities and resentments that threaten to tear them apart. For example, her drinking, which at first is charming, is later the crux of several arguments.

Levithan doesn’t allow the romance of “The Lover’s Dictionary” to become too sweet; the brief novel is also tinged with sadness and heartbreak. The entries range from silly to poignant to painful, and although some entries are as short as one line, each is a micro-story that contributes to the overall narrative.

Unfortunately, the character of the partner often makes it difficult to fully connect to the narrator’s emotional ups and downs — while the narrator obviously cares deeply about his partner’s happiness, the partner often flirts right in his face and shows no discernible regard for his feelings.

Despite this, Levithan has a knack for creating a compulsively readable story. “The Lover’s Dictionary” is made for spontaneous, easy-to-read browsing. “A Lover’s Dictionary” isn’t revelatory by any means, but it’s undeniably addictive, enchanting and satisfying to read.

King tends to avoid the supernatural in this collection of four stories. Instead, he focuses on the darkness that resides in even the most unexceptional, ordinary Americans. Those who enjoy King’s nonmystical side (“The Shawshank Redemption,” “Misery”) will especially relish the largely realistic horrors of “Full Dark, No Stars.”

The opening volume, “1922,” is the first-person confessional of Depression-era Nebraskan farmer Wilfred James, who murders his wife, involving his impressionable 14-year-old son in the gruesome process. As the guilt and paranoia inherent in such a deed creeps up on Wilfred, a series of adverse events befall him and his son and eventually drive Wilfred into madness. He is particularly haunted by the largely imaginary rats that eat away at his wife’s body as she lies rotting at the bottom of the family well. “1922” is a slightly unusual story for King, who doesn’t often do first person or historical fiction. Nonetheless, this story is the creepiest of the bunch and ends with King’s typical outlandishly horrifying flare.

“Big Driver” reverts back to typical King narration: deceptively casual and conversational, despite the story’s content. The story of mystery author Tess’ rape and her subsequent emotional upheaval and manic revenge scheme is compulsively readable and relentlessly suspenseful.

“Fair Extension” is not only the collection’s shortest installation but also the only one that relies on a supernatural conceit. The story, in which a terminally ill man transfers his bad luck onto his best friend, of whom he is viciously jealous, is in keeping with the collection’s overall theme. Unfortunately, the story tapers off anticlimactically towards the end and leaves something to be desired.

Luckily, “Full Dark, No Stars” ends with “A Good Marriage,” a tense and brutally realistic story of a woman who discovers that her husband of 27 years is a serial rapist and murderer, who King based on the real-life BTK (bind, torture and kill) killer. The story aptly encompasses and concludes King’s examination of the darkness of the everyman and leaves readers questioning the morality of their own actions, should they find themselves in such dire circumstances.

King is, as usual, unafraid to unflinchingly expose the dark, visceral side of humanity. As King himself eloquently asks his readers in the afterword, “If you’re going into a very dark place, then you should take a bright light and shine it on everything. If you don’t want to see, why in God’s name would you dare the dark at all?”

Grade: B

Decoded itself reads more uniquely than most memoirs. Jay-Z still maintains a focus on his own story, but instead of keeping his narrative singular, Decoded comes off as several things: a social statement, a chronicling of hip-hop’s rise, and, of course, the personal recollections. The unique variance of styles and intentions woven throughout.

In that fashion of jumping from tangent to tangent to create an interwoven story line, Jay-Z also he even admits to being non-linear and instead prefers to jump around in his story telling, creating whatever image he desires as the product of the chopped up elements he puts into his work, creating a beautiful flowing output.

The story starts of illustrating the days of a nine-year-old in the Marcy Houses housing project in Brooklyn, a little section of Brooklyn, discovering the magical burgeoning world of hip hop and rapping that was developing on the streets of New York. Very quickly, though, crack cocaine made it’s infiltration into his community and it wasn’t long before he, like everyone that surrounded him was hustlin’ and dealing coke to get by.

“I went straight,” he said, “[I] stopped selling drugs — but I also didn’t accept the false choice between poverty and breaking the law.”

So often celebrities write in their memoirs of vice’s they often get over for the sake of their career. It can be minor like in Kelly Slater’s scenario, junk food, or extreme like Anthony Kiedis’s longstanding addiction to heroine. Jay-Z’s main vice oddly enough was hustling. Throughout much of the early portion of his life he sold drugs, something that would scar him and strengthen him for the years to come.

He wrote about the intensity and harrowing experiencing of having friends die and constantly watching your back to the point of near mental breakdown and paranoia and how despite that, he was consumed by the lifestyle. There was always the hopes of achieving something better. As he illustrates, though, hustling is an integral part of street culture and often a problem that often is overlooked or severely mishandled.

Though an interseting part of the book, this where Jay-Z crosses over into messy territory. Throughout the book, his arguments range from racism amongst police, to government policies designed to perpetuate social disparities amongst difference races of people in America, with the word “nigger” spattered throughout. While these arguments are all interesting, philosophically engaging, and sound, some, especially the latter feature concrete warrants.

In this sense, Decoded has the opportunity to be much more intellectually fulfilling but blows it as Jay-Z makes overarching statements about the state of things in the government in comparison with the “hood,” without concrete evidence. Despite this he does provide an interesting springboard of social and political ideas that the reader can assess in their own time, he’s simply and perhaps unnecessarily passing the work of research to the reader though.

Jay-Z also makes compelling points outside intense controversy. Towards the end, he starts to break himself down theologically and philosophically on a deeper level than anywhere else in the book, making an already entertaining and insightful read, into something even more.

“Decoded” also features lyrical breakdowns at the end of every chapter, in which he describes many different aspects, inspirations, and motivations behind his words and the poetry he creates with them. While usually intriguing and unique, the breakdowns can become burdensome and annoying as they break the flow of the narrative.

Ultimately the experience is subjective and up to the reader in that sense. “Decoded” is in many ways just that — a look inside Jay-Z’s head and the world he lives in and has lived in decoded, and made sense of, for anyone to take a look at.

—

Grade: A

At its heart, “Salvation City” is really a coming-of-age story. In the midst of a worldwide flu epidemic, adolescent protagonist Cole Vining falls ill; by the time he awakens, he has been orphaned. Raised by atheists, Cole is adopted by Pastor Wyatt, an evangelical priest, and brought to a religious community. The story follows Cole’s life there as he witnesses both the hypocrisy and compassion of religion and is forced to figure out what kind of life he wants for himself.

Cole is an odd hero because he can be so damn unlikable. As “Salvation City” begins, he is alternately apathetic, self-loathing and self-pitying. In flashbacks, he reveals that he could barely muster up any feelings at all while the apparent end of humanity was unfolding. The television shows stacks and stacks of corpses being set afire, and Cole only shrugs. And when he is given false hope that the flu has ended, he almost seems happy. “He believed his parents when they said they weren’t going to die,” Nunez wrote. “They would all go on living, day after day, in the same dumb, totally fucked up way.”

Thankfully, Cole grows over the course of the novel. This takes quite a while, but there are other, strongly written characters to amuse readers in the meantime and to guide his development. Pastor Wyatt, for example, is a deeply complex character. He comes from an alcoholic background and struggles with his demons as he tries to care for both Cole and his church. Perhaps even more interesting is Wyatt’s wife Tracy. On one hand, she is almost absurdly stupid; when she tries to home-school Cole, she writes “Eggsssellent!!!” on all of his assignments. On the other hand, it’s undeniable that she cares about him. When he has a panic attack, she is there to try to comfort him, even as he kicks and bites at her. Characters like these fill the novel, making Cole’s evolution from unintelligent jerk to sympathetic adult both believable and stirring.

“Salvation City” is not without its flaws, most of them stemming from Nunez’ attempts at a political message. All of the characters in the book have politics that fall cleanly into one of two categories: Bible-thumpin’, gun-totin’, dumb-as-nails conservatism or snooty, Europhilic high-and-mighty liberalism. There’s even a scene where Cole’s mother pops antidepressants and whines that all Midwesterners care about is “fucking basketball.” The book is so filled with heavy-handed partisan stereotypes that it’s nigh impossible to get anything out of its political moments.

Still, this stumbling does not occur too often, and does not detract much from the very human nature of the characters. In “Salvation City” Nunez manages to show the resilience of humanity in the face of absolute horror. It’s an apocalyptic novel that, for the most part, respects its readers enough not to taunt them with clichéd horror and emotional manipulation.

But, I reasoned, enough time has passed that surely he’s figured out how to make his characters three-dimensional and write slightly more decent dialogue. I was wrong.

“The Lost Symbol” follows Brown’s heroic symbologist, Robert Langdon, as he solves riddles in Washington D.C. revolving around the Founding Fathers and the Freemasons. Brown’s descriptions of the buildings are fantastic and really make me want to go there; the symbols and little backstories behind everything make for really fascinating history; but the dialogue is stilted and fake, set up in a way that Langdon always gets to launch himself into a speech that makes him sound smart:

“Gosh, it sure is hot today.”

“How hot is it, professor?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Timmy.”

And it just goes on like that. Lame.

Brown’s characters are about as deep as a rain puddle. The villain is a carbon copy of the one from “Da Vinci,” with the same cold, disconnected personality and the same trains of thought, only instead of whipping himself, he tattoos himself. The women are all impulsive and smack of desperation, especially CIA Director Inoue Sato. Langdon’s claustrophobia comes off as an excuse to wet his pants every other chapter. I felt no sympathy for any of the characters and was glad when some of them started dying. I only wish more of them had, and sooner.

Perhaps the most irritating was the format. Brown insists on ending almost every single chapter on a cliffhanger, egging the reader to press on and find out what happens next. This works well for the first 20 chapters or so, but Brown unfortunately decided to make most of his chapters only two or three pages long. By the time chapter 50 rolled around, it was getting old. By the time chapter 90 rolled around, I wanted to set my own hair on fire just to get something accomplished.

I rate this book three out of five stars. I agonized for hours over what to rate it. It came down to a simple question: would I recommend this book to anybody? The answer is yes, but cautiously. Don’t read this book for the characters, and only read the dialogue for informational purposes, not for enjoyment. The more you distance yourself emotionally from this book, the better.

I recommend “The Lost Symbol” for the ideas behind it. Brown is an idea man, not a novelist. He desperately needs to co-write his books with someone who can create some believable characters and dialogue that doesn’t feel like oral surgery. If he can’t stand the idea of sharing his name on the cover with someone else, I suggest Brown switch to writing the kind of nonfiction conspiracy theory books I used to read in grade school about Bigfoot and UFOs.

While the analysis would seem harsh for any other author, Max welcomes the criticism and embraces the fact that he embodies it. But, in “Assholes Finish First,” he is over-indulgent with the image he has created himself to be. The shtick that made “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell” so shocking and original is now tired and boring: short stories that are intended to leave the audience in stitches will instead find them rolling their eyes at Max as he further fans the fire that is his overblown ego.

What made “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell” so special was that it was cleverly written and found choice stories that were best saved between close friends. Max didn’t hold back when writing his first biography, writing his absolutely ridiculous stories with impeccable comedic timing while completely disregarding his own dignity.

His previous work was fresh and inspired, with no need to be reproduced. “Assholes Finish First” feels like a collection of stories that didn’t make the cut for the previous biography. Many of the stories are simply rehashed nights of Max going out and finding new women to sleep with, with slight variations on what makes each woman eccentric and disposable. Max’s adventures would make for an entertaining hung over breakfast shared with close friends, but became simultaneously dull and offensive reading for a wider audience.

A collection of short stories such as these should be able to leave the reader with distinct memories of what made the book such a fun read. “Assholes Finish First” has trouble creating any distinguishing factors between any of the short stories, whether it be shock value or entertainment. All of the stories blend together, creating essentially a 400-page narrative about Tucker Max’s weekend. Any reader could realize, about halfway through this novel, that they could have written a weekend comparable to Max’s experience with enough shots of Dubra and a few frat parties. Surely it wouldn’t be as regrettable as sitting through reading about Tucker Max being a professional dirtbag.

In his first book, Max’s over-the-top and repulsive personality was somewhat endearing for comedic purposes. In “Assholes Finish First,” it’s insanely irritating and impossible not to loathe. Much of the material is simply a love ballad Tucker Max writing about how much he loves Tucker Max. The fact of the matter is that, as the stories trudge on, the reader sees no reason to love Tucker Max, or even consider him interesting enough to sustain a whole book.

That said, I encourage Max to continue to make efforts toward being a comedian. Despite the fact that “Assholes Finish First” is trash, it still has brief flashes of humor that show that Max isn’t as half-witted as the stories draw him to be. “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell” is a great example of how the man has the potential to be an excellent comedian.

If he had some variation in the stories he was telling in his books, he could be comparable to Chelsea Handler, who writes similar material but is successful in creating hilarious and distinguished biographical collections of short stories. But if Max continues along the path he is writing, the general public will catch on that his routine simply isn’t funny or entertaining.

Handler, famous for the “A Series of Unfortunate Events” books, written under his pseudonym Snicket, visited the Bank Street Bookstore in New York on Friday, to celebrate the store’s 40th anniversary and promote his newest children’s book, “13 Words,” to be released on Oct. 5. Each chapter of “13 Words” focuses on a different word—from conventional words such as “cake” to the more obscure “haberdashery.” The pages are filled with original illustrations by Maira Kalman, who has also illustrated covers of the New Yorker, in her signature painting style.

In the “Series of Unfortunate Events” installments, Handler traced the adventures and misadventures of the Baudelaire orphans, as they searched for a stable home after their parents’ sudden deaths. Handler has always been fascinated with mystery fiction, citing Roald Dahl, Edward Gorey, and E.L. Konigsburg as childhood favorites and key literary influences. Handler wished to adapt the sense of mystery he loved in their works, not only to the unfolding of the plot, but also to the identity of the narrator. “I thought it would be interesting for the book to be a mystery in itself,” he said, a feat accomplished by telling the story through a pseudonym.

Yet, “13 Words” shifts focus, from the fast-paced plots of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” to the musicality of words and their usage.

Handler planned his strategy of investigating words for months. He revealed that the manuscript was written specifically for the illustrator Kalman, with whom he wanted to work. “I’ve been a huge admirer of her work forever,” he admitted. “The idea was to write a manuscript and then charm her into illustrating it.”

After Handler finished the first draft of “13 Words,” he took Kalman out to a restaurant in San Francisco which, he said, “serves an unbelievable roast chicken.” Kalman agreed to the offer. “I think the moral of the story is to take anyone to that restaurant if you ever want to convince them to do anything,” Handler said, laughing.

“13 Words” tells the story of the friendship between a despondent bird and a loyal dog. The title references the 13 words used in the text—words Handler loves and words that, he feels, are not used enough. Words like “goat,” “panache,” “baby,” and “mezzo-soprano” tie together the narrative of a quirky tale.

Concerning the book’s target audience, Handler said, “it’s hard to differentiate between adults and children. The funny thing about words is that I meet more children than adults who actually know what they mean, because children are asked to memorize and look up words they don’t know.”

Handler’s talents extend beyond the literary sphere. He composed the song to his video trailer advertising “13 Words,” which is posted on his official website. “Hello, this is Lemony Snicket,” his voice booms, after which he proceeds to discuss each of the words with a sense of underlying sarcasm.

But this is not Handler’s first venture into the world of music. “I was a boy soprano for a long time, before puberty hit and wrecked my career,” he recalled with a smile. During his time at Wesleyan College, he began playing the accordion and has since played for a variety of independent bands and artists. Offering a sample of his musical taste, Handler recommends “Sound Sun Pleasure” by Sun Ra and “Sandinista!” by The Clash as two albums everyone should listen to before they die.

After a personal meeting with Handler, it is difficult to imagine that he is the man behind the mysterious Lemony Snicket persona. However, upon closer inspection, one realizes that Handler’s deep appreciation for the mysteries in life makes a pseudonym the perfect channel through which to share his stories.

Asher’s book takes the reader back and forth over the course of five years into the lives of three seemingly unrelated characters: Jaye, a library worker in the midst of a quarter life crisis, Julie, a young woman trying to find a compromise between love and reality, and Anna, a widowed mother looking to start her life over again. Over the years, they discover that their actions (their seeming insignificant moments) have a huge impact on their own their lives and the lives of others. Companionship, grief, marriage, and love both won and lost lace each of their stories as they learn that life so often mysteriously works out for the best.

Though Insignificant Moments does tend to fall into a pattern of predictability that is often found in romances, Asher does a fairly good job of incorporating all loose ends together which ties each all the characters’ lives together in sometimes surprising ways. This is an enjoyable, feel-good book for any afternoon or evening of light reading.

Though she appears to be grinding a personal axe for Kinsey, calling him a “sexual psychopath”, her book offers a compelling and provocative question: Did the Kinsey studies depict an accurate portrayal of human sexuality or did they simply cause America to lose sight of sexual decency? This is not necessarily a new inquiry, and scandal has always surrounded the publications of Kinsey’s works. Nevertheless, it is a topic that has been put on the back burner for the past several decades as America regards sex in an increasingly open manner. Dr. Reisman insists that the studies cast American men and women of the Greatest Generation in an embarrassing and untrue light, naming many of them adulterers and sexual deviants (by her standards) due to its publication of high statistics of men and women engaging in such things as premarital sex, homosexuality, and masturbation. Ultimately, Sexual Sabotage offers some interesting substance for a heated conversation about sex and sexual morality, topics which Americans have always already shrouded in controversy.

But seriously, “Sh*t My Dad Says” is hilarious, and if you follow Justin Halpern’s Twitter feed that evolved into this book — it’s for you. The bio for the Twitter account reads, “I’m 29. I live with my 74-year-old dad. He is awesome, I just write down shit that he says.”

That pretty much sums up the core of the book. Each short chapter begins with a quote from Halpern’s dad, Sam, and ends with several quotes on varying topics. These blurbs are so quotable, it’s ridiculous. I read about 50 percent of the book to my roommate while I was reading it (it’s short — 176 pages — and mostly quotes, so don’t feel too bad for her).

Unfortunately, the elder Halpern has a penchant to swear. All the time. Finding something to quote in this newspaper review was a bit challenging.

But Sam Halpern is so funny, I had to give it a shot.

Some selections:

“The worst thing you can be is a liar… Okay, fine, yes, the worst thing you can be is a Nazi, but then number two is a liar. Nazi one, liar two.”

Then there’s this gem:

“Pick your furniture like you pick a wife: It should make you feel comfortable and look nice, but not so nice that if someone walks past they want to steal it.”

And then my favorite (at least that was fit for print):

“Are you wearing perfume? …Son, there ain’t any cologne in this house, only your mother’s perfume. I know that scent, and let me tell you, it’s disturbing to smell your wife on your thirteen-year-old son.”

And if you think you have a good idea of what Sam Halpern is like from those quotes, the chapters give an even better idea. The chapters tell stories from Justin’s childhood and young adult life — from Justin’s point of view.

They are embarrassing, funny and often kind of moving. There is clearly a lot of love between the father and son, and the chapters convey that even more than the quotes do.

I appreciate the occasional seriousness of the stories, because they temper the more raunchy or mean quotes. It’s not a one-dimensional book intended only for cheap laughs — it’s about a father and son and their relationship.

But it is funny as sh*t, too.

It is only natural that, Kathryn Stockett should be applauded for her attempt to write about these three words, her bravery to stand against the criticism she has naturally had to defend and her composure to simply tell a story that she knew would affect the world around her.

“The Help” is yet another story that helps to explain and describe the lives of black women in the South during the middle of the 1900’s. What sets this book apart from its predecessors is its ability to tell their stories along with the story of a white women living among them. Yes, Kathryn Stockett is white, and yes she grew up in the South, but whether or not she skewed the perspectives of the black or white women is left up to personal interpretation.

The book takes place in the 1960’s in Jackson, Miss. It is written from three different points of view. Two are black maids and one is a white, educated woman, still living at home, who seeks to write a book about what a black maid’s life is like in Jackson, Miss.

While racism is the main focus and theme, the fact that the perspectives come from only women brings in the theme of female discrimination as well. For example, Skeeter faces issues with her career and has trouble gaining respect because of her sex. Next to the racial threats for Aibileen and Minny, the two maids, this may seem small, but is nonetheless another pressing issue for the time.

Without giving anything away, “The Help,” involves secrecy, compassion, threat, romance, domestic violence, success and humor. In many ways it ends in a success story for both the black and white parties, which helps to diminish the separation between races.

The book highlights issues that have not been seen as readily as others concerning racism. One that clearly stands out is the description of childcare and love that the maids have for their “kids.” It is even explained that the children express more compassion for the maids than their own parents. Unfortunately, the children eventually grow up and abandon their compassion for their maids, despite the maids’ attempts to teach them to love beyond color.

“The Help” has a little bit of everything and appeals to almost anyone. While it will continue to be ridiculed because of the color of its author and made fun of for the audacity of its content, it continues to be a chart topper and “The Help” epidemic is spreading. People want to read it and need to read it. If you are looking for a book with a little bit of history, a lot of drama and a pinch of humor, give Kathryn Stockett a chance; she may just surprise you.

Justin Taylor’s collection of short stories, “Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever,” encapsulates the lives of individuals who never get that wake-up call or who press the snooze alarm of denial so many times it becomes the rut of their existence.

He creates a snapshot experience into these unrefined and aimless lives, which occasionally borders on the existential. There’s the small-town kid contracted to kill his uncle’s cat. There’s the twenty something-year-old who runs out of money, moves in with his family and hooks up with his brother’s platonic girlfriend through sheer lack of willpower. There’s the obsessive Tetris player oblivious to his girlfriend and the nearing apocalypse.

It’s as if the only thing that runs deep in these characters is that which is shallow and lingers in front of their noses, which perhaps is the essence of these snapshot-type stories and their similarity to episodes of our lives. Now, don’t get all, “Hey, guy, I’d never play Tetris while the whole earth was on fire and let my girlfriend die! I’m not reading this to be insulted. And besides, I’d probably play Starcraft 2,” on me.

Taylor doesn’t appear overly concerned with the sequencing or unfurling of the plot. Most events of gravity occur before and after the reader meets the characters. Taylor simply extracts the in-between spaces from lives that don’t appear to be going anywhere with great speed or direction. The relatability is all positioned carefully below the surface (thanks, ENGL 200). The author suggests that in our limited spectrum of “vision,” unconsciousness to a broader life or even the needs of others is common.

However, there’s nothing common about the way Taylor depicts these rootless occurrences. Mundane actions are brought to life by his use of raw and primal diction — describing slaps on a video game controller and crude smells as “sexual” in nature.

A former Miami resident, Taylor places much of the book in the Sunshine State. The manner in which he constructs the weighty settings (oppressively humid nights, muddy roads and raging hurricanes) brings the raw and clammy power of an environment that seems destined to preoccupy its residents with crushes, grudges and distaste for change.

In the context of the short story in which it makes an appearance, the title seems to suggest the worthlessness of cynicism. The narrator sarcastically describes the man who spray-painted “Everything Here Is The Best Thing Ever” on the sidewalk as a genius. It’s clear he thinks himself the man’s intellectual superior, and yet they share the same provincial reality, even the same sidewalk, but the cynic finds no innocent joy in the world around him.

Perhaps even more captivating than the traditional and realistic short stories are the brief interludes that stray from any resemblance of the others — this being the beauty of well-written short works. I enjoyed most all the offerings, but in case of an exception, a 10-page skip revealed a new slate of characters and a new voice from the narrator. “Amber at the Window in Hurricane Season” plays out like a letter or soliloquy from one corner of a love triangle to another in second person.

In “The Jealousy of Angels,” Taylor sets aside his fascination with the apocalypse and Judeo-Christian themes (Taylor is a lifelong Jew) and depicts a man with a girlfriend too beautiful for earthly existence being righteously killed by Gabriel and a group of angels. Preoccupied more so with his own chore of cleaning up her body than her demise, the man proceeds to watch some television over a few beers with Satan, who points out the merits of a relative rather than absolutist universe. These offbeat tales make for an agreeable change of pace within the collection.

Taylor, a seeming everyman of the literary field is the author of numerous short stories, a regular contributor to the literary blog, HTMLGIANT, and coeditor of “The Agricultural Reader” (an annual literary magazine). He is currently at work on his first novel, which may have an all-together different feel to it than anything in this collection, in which the author offers a choppy summary as a platform for rich description.

I’d be curious to see how the parameters of a beginning, middle and end suit the unconventional pace of this up-and-coming young writer.

Contrary to its advertising claims, it also reads very little as the thriller it purports itself to be, with a near-obvious end (that you can guess from the beginning), lacking suspense and deficient of any – ahem – mystery. The “murder” part is true, anyway.

Lee’s novel, released just last month, covers the real-life events leading up to and including the murder trial of Hans Thomas Reiser, a Bay Area native and UC Berkeley graduate. He single-handedly embodies the idea of computer geeks and CS majors as potentially autistic, asocial egomaniacs and – spoiler! (not really) – wife-killing sociopaths. Creator of the self-proclaimed world’s fastest computer filing system, ReiserFS, and accepted into Berkeley at only age 15, he is indisputably a genius, of the crazy-plotting-murder-genius kind.

The novel follows the disappearance and murder – Or did she run away? Or was she part of the KGB? Or? OR?- of Hans Reiser’s estranged ex-wife, Nina Reiser, a Russian doctor who reportedly met him through a Russian mail-order catalogue. They fell in love, she got pregnant (chronology under dispute), had a crazy wedding and moved to Oakland. It’s a telling sign of true love when the pre-nup stipulates that the wife must have children. And it’s certainly no indication of a doomed marriage when the groom states that she must “give up everything else.”

Amid an acrimonious divorce dealing with their children and Hans’ allegations that his wife suffered from Munchausen-by-proxy disorder and was over-diagnosing their children, Nina disappeared. The search-and-rescue turned search-and-recover process failed to locate a body, but instead revealed a scandalous past for the – by-all-accounts – great mother who searched Craigslist ads for sexual encounters and whose adulterous relationships included those with a jealous lover – whose ex-wife was nearly identical to Nina, and Hans’ former best friend – an S&M aficionado.

A writer for the Chronicle, Henry K. Lee has been a crime reporter in the Bay Area for 18 years. He began compiling the material for the novel during the Reiser murder trial, liveblogging the proceedings at www.sfgate.com/ZBLS. It was suggested by fans of the blog that he write a book. The thing is, unless you thrive in the tedious, you might be better off not reading it.

The novel is impressively well researched, though sometimes to its detriment, as Lee delves into tangents that relate the history of almost each individual and location. Often serving to weigh down the narrative and impede its flow, the excess material is of little interest and minimal importance. Lee’s descriptive powers, too, rely heavily on recitation and a brand of tell-don’t-show, both of which fail to capture a palpable, dynamic setting within “Dead”: “Nina wore a black-and-white sundress, a necklace with a blue stone and flip-flops. Rory had on a green shirt, and his sister … was wearing a yellow dress,” Lee writes.

Though it seems that the material is presented in full – it’s 445 pages long – the handling of it isn’t very objective, as the author’s description treats Nina with a gilded pen and Hans with tangible disdain. A multiplicity of noun-verb sentence structures plagues the novel, and the read gets tired quickly as the material fumbles in a deluge of minute details and un-varied construction. The writing is often repetitious and fumbles in details of little interest while it repeats itself; it often makes the same point multiple times again and again, repeating itself over and over.

“What would it mean if these crimes were just swept under the rug?” Lee asks in his foreword. “What if nobody cared? What if victims weren’t given a voice, an opportunity – sometimes from the grave – to be heard?” The questions are relevant, and the novel a testimony to the potency of crime reporting. But while Lee may be an adept reporter, he’s no novelist, and his narrative writing style is proof of an accomplished journalist who simply cannot provide a compelling account. The strength of “Presumed Dead” is based only on the riveting nature of the facts, and not Lee’s writing skill.

So what if nobody cared? Too long, too detailed and sometimes too boring, the book may be better “swept under the rug” itself.

Okay, that last one may not be your biggest concern, and you’re probably not hyperventilating over the other things either. But Gary Shteyngart is. As a satirist and a member of fiction’s New Yorker-anointed next generation, it’s his job to find cavities in our culture and perform root canals until it hurts. As a self-identified voice of the Russian Jewish immigrant experience, it’s his fate to be at least a little bit disappointed.

Shteyngart’s new novel, “Super Sad True Love Story,” is essentially a pop-literary version of “Idiocracy” — Mike Judge’s comedy about the dumb America of the future — in which the emotion doesn’t feel forced. In the author’s colorful new dystopia, the U.S. is a broke dictatorship where “Credit Poles” tell you to spend or save depending on your race, people don’t read because books are considered smelly, The New York Times has become The New York Lifestyle Times and Fox News, as Judge’s film also predicted, is doing just fine.

Protagonist Lenny Abramov — a fictional Stern graduate, FYI, which feels both terrifying and reassuring — works in Post-Human Services, trying his best to sell High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) on the idea of immortality. Love interest Eunice Park is a brash, naive ingenue who does most of her communicating on GlobalTeens, a site with the ubiquity of Facebook and the trashiness of MySpace.

In “Absurdistan,” Shteyngart’s last novel, the protagonist was an obese Russian immigrant who bumbled his way into the top bureaucracy of a backward former Soviet state and pined for a black girl from the Bronx. Now we have Lenny, a schlubby second-generation immigrant who’s doing about as well as you can do, career-wise, in America-gone-to-shit and who pines for a Korean girl from California. Are Shteyngart’s books autobiographical? I guess it depends on his taste in women. Whatever the case, there’s something very Woody Allen about the way he veers between self-deprecation and wish fulfillment.

What makes the book a “Sad Story” and, ultimately, a “True Story” is precisely what makes it more fulfilling than “Absurdistan,” the Onion News Network and every other doomsday satire short of “Dr. Strangelove”: a search for value. An appreciation for where it lies. Lenny, ensconced as he is in a culture that has been literally and figuratively devalued, falls for the aspects of Eunice, a fellow second-generation immigrant, that come from someplace else. In a world where her “Fuckability Rating” (a solid 800) is public info, Eunice falls hard for Lenny’s blind, old-fashioned devotion. The dollar is either inflated or pegged to the yuan; the human heart — the human body, even in the case of Lenny’s artificially youthful boss — proves priceless.

And boy, is Shteyngart in touch with the human body. To put it bluntly, his writing can be pretty gross. But it’s gross in a beautiful way, a lyrical way; you get the sense that he works really hard to string together unique combinations of inappropriate metaphors, bodily details and emotional profundity, like a master potter who can’t stop making clay penises. Witness one of Lenny’s many ecstatic observations:

“I’ve seen this particular gent publicly crapping before, but the pained expression on his face, the way he rubbed his naked haunches while he shat, as if the June heat wasn’t enough to keep them warm, the staggering grunts he spat at the direction of our city’s cloud-streaked harbor skies, made me feel as if my native street was slipping away from me, falling into the East River, falling into a new time wrinkle where we would all drop our pants and dump furiously into the motherland.”

In a characteristic reference to vagina, Shteyngart (okay, “Lenny”) describes “breathing in the slight odor of something authentic and human.” And that’s essentially what he’s trying to produce with his romance-within-satire experiment: raw, pungent humanity caught between the farts and belches of an overweight empire. It’s entirely to his credit that we can smell it, too.

“The Thieves of Manhattan” satirizes the current trend of publishing books written by politicians and celebrities famous for anything but their writing and storytelling skills. Langer, a former editor of the now-defunct Book Magazine and author of three other novels, focuses his novel on the Frey-like experience of aspiring writer Ian.

Ian embodied the aspiring-writer stereotype: living in New York City, working at a coffee shop and receiving rejection letters from each publishing house he sent his work to. But after meeting Jed, a jaded former editor, Ian finds himself in the midst of a literary scam when the two bond over their hatred for Blade Markham, a thug-turned-best-selling-author whose memoir, Ian and Jed believe, is full of lies.

Filled with jealousy, Jed convinces Ian to pass off a fictional novel as his memoir and, once the book becomes a hit, to reveal that they lied to embarrass the publishing industry and gain notoriety. But, of course, not everything goes according to plan.

“The Thieves of Manhattan” is full of literary references and paints a comedic, and at times bleak, portrait of the publishing world. But I’m uncertain of its mass appeal to people who aren’t literary agents or aspiring writers.

Langer uses his own vocabulary, substituting words such as “money” for “daisies,” which is a reference to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” Although he does provide a glossary of terms in the back of the book, it’s annoying to have to stop reading to look up Langer’s version of a simple noun or verb. This aspect of the novel detracts from the enjoyment of reading and can be confusing to many people who may not have read as many of the classics as Langer makes readers aware that he has.

Overall, I’d say that “The Thieves of Manhattan” is a solid satire for industry types, but to the average reader uninterested in the underhanded aspects of the publishing industry, this book lacks charm.

Grade: B

Like any dystopian novel, “Super Sad True Love Story” links all its social calamities to current political concerns. Set in the United States in the near future, the novel’s events take place against the backdrop of an ongoing oil war with Venezuela, a huge debt owed to China, a puppet president and a youth-obsessed culture.

The “super sad” aspect of the book manifests itself in the rambling diary entries of Lenny Abramov, the 39-year-old son of a Russian immigrant. One of the last literate Americans, Lenny often struggles between his love for literature and his even greater love for a youthful, bitter, Korean-American woman named Eunice.

Lenny and Eunice’s relationship is short-lived and awkward, as consumerism has a choke hold on the society they live in. Each character’s credit rating is made publicly available on each block, advertising their monetary worth. Buying into her culture’s mentality of money over romance, Eunice secretly pines for the affection of a younger man with a highly sought-after job at LandO’LakesGMFordCredit. Most citizens carry an “apparat” — an iPhone-like device that allows users to view anyone’s current location, ranking of sexual desirability and family history — essentially eliminating any sense of privacy.

The beauty of the novel is that despite the characters’ differences, they all share the same internal struggle, one that is strikingly similar to present-day anxieties: They wish to be eternally youthful but are limited by their past or their heritage. Lenny’s graying hair and love of all things tangible make him an outcast, especially at his job in Post-Human Services, an organization seeking to elongate the lives of “High Net-Worth Individuals.” Similarly, though Eunice is up-to-date on adolescent lingo, products and attitudes, her abusive Korean father binds her to an older, more traditional world.

Whether or not Shteyngart’s work will accurately predict the future of our country, his creative means of storytelling and ability to capture human struggle in a light, entertaining manner will be remembered — as long as we remain literate.

Grade: A

“What is this, an iPhone?” a character gawks in Gary Shteyngart’s latest novel, “Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel.” This sort of tech-minded snobbery and a departure from anything eternal is present throughout the narrative and makes the story an interesting, relatable read.

Like any dystopian novel, “Super Sad True Love Story” links all its social calamities to current political concerns. Set in the United States in the near future, the novel’s events take place against the backdrop of an ongoing oil war with Venezuela, a huge debt owed to China, a puppet president and a youth-obsessed culture.

The “super sad” aspect of the book manifests itself in the rambling diary entries of Lenny Abramov, the 39-year-old son of a Russian immigrant. One of the last literate Americans, Lenny often struggles between his love for literature and his even greater love for a youthful, bitter, Korean-American woman named Eunice.

Lenny and Eunice’s relationship is short-lived and awkward, as consumerism has a choke hold on the society they live in. Each character’s credit rating is made publicly available on each block, advertising their monetary worth. Buying into her culture’s mentality of money over romance, Eunice secretly pines for the affection of a younger man with a highly sought-after job at LandO’LakesGMFordCredit. Most citizens carry an “apparat” — an iPhone-like device that allows users to view anyone’s current location, ranking of sexual desirability and family history — essentially eliminating any sense of privacy.

The beauty of the novel is that despite the characters’ differences, they all share the same internal struggle, one that is strikingly similar to present-day anxieties: They wish to be eternally youthful but are limited by their past or their heritage. Lenny’s graying hair and love of all things tangible make him an outcast, especially at his job in Post-Human Services, an organization seeking to elongate the lives of “High Net-Worth Individuals.” Similarly, though Eunice is up-to-date on adolescent lingo, products and attitudes, her abusive Korean father binds her to an older, more traditional world.

Whether or not Shteyngart’s work will accurately predict the future of our country, his creative means of storytelling and ability to capture human struggle in a light, entertaining manner will be remembered — as long as we remain literate.

Grade: A

Though its title may evoke thoughts of lost love, don’t expect any romantic narratives in “Elegies for the Brokenhearted,” the story of a woman’s life told through the elegies of five people who have died during her lifetime, from a minor summer friend to her neglectful mother. In these elegies, readers are able to see the joys and follies of life, and that no matter how distant your family members may seem, they live on through the ways in which they shape you. Through Mary Murphy, the narrator and protagonist of the novel, we see the struggles that come with the search for identity or family and the natural longing for human connection.

The novel is not as depressing as the title may suggest. I found myself laughing out loud at certain parts, especially when Murphy describes her college years and her relationship with her college roommate. Author Christie Hodgen has a knack for creating quirky yet lifelike characters who may seem strange at first, but provide an intimate look at good and bad relationships and their effects on others.

The novel begins with Murphy telling her life story through the elegy of her beloved, alcoholic uncle who, like most people in Murphy’s life, disappeared and reappeared depending on jobs, drugs, alcohol and women. The second elegy is about Elwood LePoer, Murphy’s laughable high school acquaintance who, despite his low IQ and general oafish behavior, had a lasting impact on her life. By way of LePoer’s pitiful story, Murphy describes her teenage years and what led her to college. The story of Murphy’s college years is told through the elegy of her first-year roommate, Carson Washington, a poor woman with a huge secret covered up through many hilarious interactions between the two seemingly opposite women. After college, Murphy’s search for family and connection leads her to Maine, where she befriends a performer at a piano bar who has failed at what he wants to do the most and lives miserably in middle age. The final elegy is of Murphy’s beautiful, five-times-married and born-again Christian mother, whose story is as devastating as it is alluring.

No matter how horrible the characters might seem in this novel — populated mostly by alcoholics, cheaters, drug abusers and mothers who neglect their children — Hodgen captures each character’s redeeming qualities, creating a full view of the complexities of life.

Grade: A

Sheffield is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a frequent guest on MTV and VH1. His first memoir, “Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time,” made The New York Times best-seller list and received much critical acclaim.

Sheffield’s latest work, “Talking to Girls about Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut,” is a coming-of-age story filled with personal essays from Sheffield’s adolescence, each centered around an iconic song from the ’80s.

Sheffield loves the ’80s and Duran Duran and makes no apologies for this. He embraces the cheesy synthesizers and outlandish outfits that often characterize music from this decade and digs deeper to remind readers that there is more to time period than leg warmers and harem pants. He’s passionate about music — and it shows.

Through his writing, he takes readers back to a time when MTV actually played music videos and male musicians wore more makeup and hair extensions than any of the girls who came to their shows.

“Talking to Girls about Duran Duran” is highly entertaining, and Sheffield’s prose is both comedic and nostalgic.

Interestingly, the best essay in the novel is the introduction, a section often skipped by readers. For the most part, Sheffield is able to relate each of his personal essays to his ‘80s song of choice, but on occasion, the connection wears thin.

“Talking to Girls about Duran Duran” is perfect not only for anyone who came of age in the ’80s, but also for anyone with even a slight appreciation for the decade. Sheffield’s writing transcends generations and offers a funny and entertaining read for all ages.

Grade: A-