Scat

Carl Hiaasen's YA novel is a pleasant diversion for readers of all ages, with timely themes of habitat loss and rampant development.

Tough Guys Don't Dance

The story in this Norman Mailer novel put me in mind of the 1946 film version of The Big Sleep: The plot is both labyrinthine and not all that important to the finished product. Tough Guys is a neo-noir with plenty of drinking, dames, and sex. The prose quality exceeds the standards of the genre, making it a fascinating hybrid.

Catastrophe and Other Stories

Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe is one of a handful of novels whose impact on me will never fade, so I was eager to read this collection of short stories. What comes through, in addition to the supernatural and bizarre effects, is Buzzati's keen and penetrating understanding of the mass mind, especially in "The Scala Scare." Herd mentality, willful disbelief of obvious facts, pursuits of chimeras -- these are the ways humans engineer their own downfalls, and Buzzati is there to point a finger, with just the merest trace of a smirk on his lips.

Brave New World

Huxley impresses more as a thinker than as a stylist, and the issues raised in Brave New World remain vital nearly a century later: security vs. freedom, high culture vs. low, and what it is that makes life worth living.

Portnoy's Complaint

For all the complaining Portnoy does about his mother, the tender heart of this novel consists of the nostalgia with which a lost 33-year-old looks back to the home, neighborhood, and family of his youth. All of that anger and sex and bitter humor is but a flimsy screen behind which resides love.

We Bombed in New Haven

Joseph Heller's play was first seen in New Haven, as it happens, in a Yale production with Stacey Keach in a leading role. It went to Broadway in 1968 and had a respectable run. It is a tribute to the playwright that, reading the play 50 years later, it is possible to imagine a relevant and hilarious staging today. Problems of war, death, and individual autonomy never go stale in the hands of a skilled writer.

South and West

It is to Joan Didion's credit that her notebooks from a trip through the South and to California in the 1970s remain startlingly relevant 40 years on. The observations of Southerners and their habits are particularly keen.

Lincoln in the Bardo

I detected a tiny bit of padding in this inventive and affecting novel, but that is about the only negative that comes to mind. The tone and language are perfectly pitched: resembling the speech of 1862 but not exactly, more like formal modern speech heard through a sepia filter. The story is grave and the emotions are pure and real. The technique is redolent of the Dos Passos newsreels but comes off as strikingly original. A beautiful and memorable work.

The Uncommon Reader

Alan Bennett's short novel finds Queen Elizabeth II discovering the joys of serious reading. In a way she stands in for all readers who attempt to tackle difficult or unknown books: All she needs is a quiet room and focused attention. Reading turns her to writing, and to a surprising and satisfying ending.

City of Green Benches

Published in the 1980s about St. Petersburg, Fla., this work of contemporary anthropology focuses on how old people live and, more importantly, the factors that allow them to have a full and satisfying old age. Some of the successful programs mentioned here (adult day care) have since been discontinued, although Meals on Wheels continues to be a vital social link and nutritional necessity for many aged in St. Petersburg. The author, Maria Vesperi, is the best kind of observer: sensitive and meticulous.