#32: I Remember Nothing Nora Ephron

Jacket Copy: Nora Ephron returns, taking a cool, hard, hilarious look at the past, the present, and the future, bemoaning the vicissitudes of modern life, and recalling with her signature clarity and wisdom everything she hasn't (yet) forgotten. Ephron writes about falling hard for a way of life ("Journalism: A Love Story") and about breaking up even harder with the men in her life ("The D Word"); lists "Twenty Five Things People Have A Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised By Over and Over Again" ("There is no explaining the stock market but people try"; "you can never know the truth of anyone's marriage, including your own"; "Cary Grant was Jewish"; "Men cheat"); reveals the alarming evolution, a decade after she wrote and directed You've Got Mail, of her relationship with her in-box ("The Six Stages of Email"); and asks the age-old question, which came first, the chicken soup or the cold? All the while, she gives candid, edgy voice to everything women who have reached a certain age have been thinking...but rarely acknowledging.

Why I Like It: This is a short, breezy read, with lots of humor and insight. Although there is certainly a lot about aging in it, I think women of all ages will find it a good read. You don't have to agree with the opinions Ephron sets forth to acknowledge that they are innovative, refreshing, and have some grain of truth to them. This is a book that makes you think, but at the same time doesn't require intense concentration and doesnt bore you to the point of drifting off to sleep.

#31: A Man Without A Country Kurt Vonnegut

"We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. and like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on."

"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you different."

"For some reason the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But often, with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings."

Jacket Copy: In a volume that is penetrating, introspective, incisive, and laugh-out-loud funny, one of the great men of letters of this era-- or any era-- holds forth on life, art, sex, politics, and the state of America's soul. Whether he is describing his coming of age in America, his formative war experiences, or his life as an artist, this is Vonnegut doing what he does best: being himself.

#30: Blind Sight Meg Howrey

"Love isn't like this thing that people say it is. Like some big thing that only happens once in awhile when you really get to know someone and share all the same life goals and all that. That's something else. Love happens all the time"
"So then what's the other thing? The something that isn't love?"
"Contract negotiations."

Jacket Copy: This spellbinding story introduces the unforgettable seventeen-year-old narrator, Luke Prescott, who has been brought up in a bohemian matriarchy by his divorced New Age mother, a religious grandmother, and two precocious half-sisters. Having spent a short lifetime swinging agreeably between the poles of Eastern mysticism and New England Puritanism, Luke is fascinated by the new fields of brain science and believes in having evidence for his beliefs. “Without evidence,” he declares, “you just have hope, which is nice, but not reliable.” Luke is writing his college applications when his father—a famous television star whom he never knew—calls and invites him to Los Angeles for the summer. Luke accepts and is plunged into a world of location shooting, celebrity interviews, glamorous parties, and premieres. As he begins to know the difference between his father’s public persona and his private one, Luke finds himself sorting through his own personal mythology. 
     
By the end of the summer Luke thinks he has found the answers he’s been seeking, only to discover that the differences between truth and belief are not always easy to spot, and that evidence can be withheld: when Luke returns home, his mother reveals something she knows will change everything for him. 
     
With Blind Sight, Meg Howrey gives us a smart, funny, and deeply moving story about truth versus belief, about what we do and don’t tell ourselves—with the result, as Luke says, that we don’t always know what we know.

Why I like it: You'll notice there isn't a "similar to" section for this book. That's deliberate. I honestly feel this writer has a style all her own, and can't wait until her second (and hopefully many more to come) novel comes out. 

#29: My American Unhappiness Dean Bakapoulos

Jacket Copy: “Why are you so unhappy?” That’s the question that Zeke Pappas, a thirty-three-year-old scholar, asks almost everybody he meets as part of an obsessive project, “The Inventory of American Unhappiness.” The answers he receives—a mix of true sadness and absurd complaint—create a collage of woe. Zeke, meanwhile, remains delightfully oblivious to the increasingly harsh realities that threaten his daily routine, opting instead to focus his energy on finding the perfect mate so that he can gain custody of his orphaned nieces. Following steps outlined in a women’s magazine, the ever-optimistic Zeke identifies some “prospects”: a newly divorced neighbor, a coffeehouse barista, his administrative assistant, and Sofia Coppola (“Why not aim high?”). 
A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders of strangers, a quixotic renegade when it comes to the federal bureaucracy, and a devoted believer in the afternoon cocktail and the evening binge, Zeke has an irreverent voice that is a marvel of lacerating wit and heart-on-sleeve emotion, underscored by a creeping paranoia and made more urgent by the hope that if he can only find a wife, he might have a second chance at life.

Similar to: Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint; Nicholson Baker; Richard Ford's The Sportswriter