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.