Monday, July 9, 2012

Adult Books for Adults



You all certainly know what Americans are eating--including but not limited to burgers, fries, pizza, pasta, lobster, ice cream, cookies, cakes and candy, foot-longs from Subway and lots of deep-fried anything--but are you up to speed on what Americans are reading? I was not, until I overheard a conversation about a salacious novel that has won this year's Beach Blanket Bingo. Convinced it was only a rumor, I checked yesterday's New York Times and found out the awful truth: it's the awful truth. The top three spots on the national best-seller list are occupied by one author, who wrote a book called Fifty Shades of Grey and followed its wild success with Fifty Ways to Fleece the Public and Fifty Ways to Spend My Fortune. (Not really, but those are more accurate than the real titles.)

It seems that the "erotic trilogy" is all about a young woman and her sadistic lover who is into bondage and other party games. It's chock full of lurid and detailed descriptions a.k.a. instructions of their sexual encounters, verging on what one reviewer called "soft porn." I will not be reading any of the Fifty Shades because A, I don't read at the beach and B, unless I'm directly involved, sex is boring. So I checked further down the list to see what else is out there. The current best-sellers include tales of a young woman who disappears on her anniversary and may have been killed by her husband, two lunatics who are obsessed with each other, rubbernecking at a deadly car crash on Nantucket, and Abraham Lincoln's little-known vocation as a vampire killer.

Just say no to all those, and instead read any or all of my suggested Great Books. You'll be out of the loop at the beach, but you'll be much wiser in the ways of the world.
1. White Noise by Don DeLillo
2. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
3. Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton
4. The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
5. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
8. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
9. Maus by Art Spigelman (a graphic novel)
10. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (non-fiction)

Sorry to say that there is no sex to speak of in any of these, so you'll have to figure out how to do it on your own. As for reading at the beach, take a stab at A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, followed by the next two in his non-erotic trilogy, Another Year in Provence and Toujours, Provence.

4 comments:

  1. Hmmmm. Here's my list:
    100 years of Solitude by gabriel garcia marquez
    House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
    Time and Again by Jack Finney
    A Reckoning by May Sarton
    Birdy by Dan Wharton
    The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
    Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
    A girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel
    Kingbird Highway by Kenn Kaufman
    The Last Living Confederate Hero Tells All by Alan Gurganis

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the list, Deneb! I have only read two of them, and will get started ASAP on whittling away the others....although not that one by Zora Neal Hurston, Zack had to read that in high school and complained bitterly the whole time. What's your pick for the best?

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  2. I don't read anything that is too intense. I read for enjoyment and want to feel good at the end (don't care for humor in a book format - live only). A lot of books are depressing, too deep or not the genre I like. I always find tons of books (used is best) to last me months at a time.

    GL

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  3. Yay! More books to add to my "To Read" list. I only have about one hundred fifty on there so far. lol

    Surprisingly, as much as I have read, I myself do not have a recommendation list. Of course, I do not have my books in front of me to choose from. They're a thousand miles away back home in Nashville. And I have NO idea when I'll get back to them. :-( But if I HAD to pick five, well six after some more thought, I believe those would be:

    1. The "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy, consisting of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", "Life, the Universe and Everything", "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish", and "Mostly Harmless". - Douglas Adams

    2. "The Story of B" - Daniel Quinn

    3. "The Time Quartet" consisting of "A Wrinkle in Time", "A Wind in the Door", "Many Waters", and "A Swiftly Titling Planet" - Madeleine L'Engle

    4. "Frankenstein" - Mary Shelley

    5. "Emily Climbs" - Anne M. Montgomery

    6. "1984" - George Orwell

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