The Almost Moon

One day I went out with my best friend and when I came home, she had given me an armful of books to read. This is the first of them, and I have been letting it sit a while before talking about it.

The book received mixed reviews, with many people saying things like, “This entire book is just way too bizarre and weird for my taste,” or “The characters were wholly unsympathetic, their decisions and actions incomprehensible, and the plot implausible.”

But despite what might be an extremely uncomfortable reading, The Almost Moon deserves your attention. While the main character Helen does little to engender compassion, it is precisely her dysfunction that I spiraled down along with throughout the book.

Yes, it’s not a book for optimists. You’ve been forewarned.

The Almost Moon, $6.

The Time Traveller’s Wife

The Time Traveler’s Wife is a modern love story with impossible terms. A man that can time-travel time and a woman who waits.  Their intense relationship is gripping from the beginning and the bubble of their unusual lifestyle and the impracticality of their love is never trite, but rather stripped down to all that is honest and sweet. One of my favorite novels.

$9 at Amazon.

Glimmer

I recently finished Glimmer by Warren Berger, which is about how design can change the world, business, society, and even your career and life. Design thinking is a hot topic lately, and this book is full of innovative design examples and explores how designers think. It will also surely expand your definition of design, and help you more creatively approach different situations for greater success.

Glimmer also follows celebrated designer Bruce Mau throughout the book, and I’ve decided I’m going to be him when I grow up.

$19 at Amazon.

White Teeth

White Teeth became one of my favorite books the second time around. It was then that I appreciated the beautiful wit and imagery living in Zadie Smith’s language. God knows what I was thinking the first time around.

The story covers a cadre of characters that are all peculiarly connected in a story that spans race, class, sex, politics… name a hot-button and Smith has pressed it. But pressed it in such a way as if you were walking down the street and you overheard these amusing families and smiled to yourself. And in those brief moments, you want everything for them.

Via Amazon, $10.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

This was a bestseller in France originally and is now a bestseller here as well. It’s not the type of book that you sit on the edge of your seat with, but rather that you pick up and savor slowly.

Renee is a cultured concierge who mulls over great philosophers and acts like she doesn’t, while Paloma is a bourgeois teenager who has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. The two characters are living in the same building, but never interact until mid-way through the book when an event pulls them together. And when that happens, of course, you do start to sit on the edge of your seat, ever so slightly.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, $9.