Reading Just for Fun!

Should there be another way? Well....naturally, we read to educate ourselves and I've often found that fiction does that even better than non. How, you might ask. I suppose it's because through fiction that we learn how to accept, understand, and even embrace, all peoples, cultures, and classes. This is why I normally steep myself in the literary kind of fiction that pushes me beyond my comfort zone - especially when it comes to fiction for book discussions.

That being said, there comes a time when we all need to lighten up a little bit and I've been feeling that way lately. Murder mysteries are one way of doing that and I can highly recommend Hallie Ephron's Never Tell a Lie if you're looking for one of those thrillers that begin so sweetly that you don't see it coming until it builds inexorably to a terrible (and one hopes, faulty) conclusion. It may sound a bit like a cliche but the formula works and the New England setting is perfect for a haunting or a disappearance. I still have New England in the blood afterall.

Dave and Lily appear to have the ideal life with a thriving business in the cozy little town where they've just purchased and are remodeling an old Victorian multi-storied home with plenty of room for the requisite pets and the baby due any day now. Decluttering and feathering their nest, they hold a big garage sale which is attended by a woman, also ready to give birth any day, who knew both Dave and Lily from high school. While they scarcely recognize or remember her, she seems to have an uncomfortably huge amount of knowledge about them and the hairs begin to rise on the back of your neck in anticipation of what's to come.

24 hours later the mystery woman is missing, Dave is pulled from the baby shower by the local police farce - oops - Freudian slip but that's what we used to call them in Gt. Barrington - and hawled down to the town hall for questioning as pieces of circumstantial evidence pile up around him. Will Lily cave or fight? I already see this as a movie. More on Hallie Ephron at http://www.hallieephron.com/

Have you ever read Valerie Martin? Her latest novel, The Confessions of Edward Day has been getting some good press as a literary mystery which inevitably doesn't end up really being much of a mystery but a darn good read anyway, even if the characters are not exactly bound to be your best friends. They're theatre people so what can I say? If you are fascinated with theatre - as I am - and if you're willing to give the characters the benefit of the doubt because they are, after all, actors, then you'll have fun with this book starring a cadre of young people who have all come to NYCity, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as my dad used to say, hoping to trip the light fantastic.

Madeline and Edward are attracted to eachother right from the start but she's a fickle lass and also seems to find the myterious Guy Margate equally entrancing. Where did he come from anyway? No one invited him to the party! As it turns out though, fate brought Guy to Long Island that summer night. When Edward fell through an old pier and into the night waters and the undertow of Long Island Sound, it was Guy who heard the calls for help and came to the rescue. Little did Edward know that Guy would become a rather sinister, unshakeable ball and chain around his leg, insinuating himself into every aspect of Edward's life from that point forward.

What ensues is a study of people who make their living by pretending. The reader is never quite sure who's real, what's true, what's part of the game or part of the show. Assumptions are turned on their head and you're in a world where things are always off balance. There's love, loss, betrayal, and friendships that span decades, all played out against a backdrop of off-off Broadway productions, summer stock, acting classes with all the greats, their individual foibles on display rather than hidden behind the scenes.

Next up? Nicholas Kristof's Half the Sky; Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, written with his wife Ms. Wu Dunn, won't be an easy read but it's a necessity. Not only do I hope to meet the authors when Maryellen and I travel to the Public Library Association Conference next Spring where they're the opening day speakers, but I truly believe we owe it to people who have suffered beyond our wildest imaginings to at least bear witness by listening to their stories. There but for a trick of FATE go we!