Adventure + Enlightenment = Great Buddha Gym for All Mens and Womens

A terrific travel memoirella. Sallie Tisdale makes her way through the tourist traps and complicated travelocity of India to explore the places where The Buddha lived, taught, and died. Smart, funny, and -- gotta say it -- enlightening.

Too short for book club selection, but perfect for a flight from Chicago to NY, if you can't go to India today.

The Chronicle of Secret Riven = another lyrical journey for Hunger Games fans

Sequels suck. Almost always. This one, happily, does not.

Last year, I was swept away by the lush, imaginative MAPMAKER'S WAR, so I was anxiously awaiting Book 2. It delivers, neatly avoiding that sucking sequel dynamic. Anxiously awaiting Book 3!

Highly recommended for anyone who loved the Hunger Games books.

TEMPLE GROVE: Scott Elliotts compelling prose vividly captures the essence of its wilderness setting

If you loved The Wilding: A Novelby Benjamin Percy, you might be into Temple Grove: A Novelby Scott Elliott, the story of an intense wilderness struggle between a logger with a troubled past and an environmentalist being pursued by the FBI as an ecoterrorist.

Densely written literary fiction that takes patience but is well worth reading. The descriptions are in depth, but the characters and story keep it moving, I promise.

I went from "Do I really want to read this book?" to "I cannot leave this book."

APATHY AND OTHER SMALL VICTORIES by Paul Neilan is only good if you enjoy things like laughter

The only thing Shane cares about is leaving. Usually on a Greyhound bus, right before his life falls apart again. Just like he planned. But this time it's complicated: there's a sadistic corporate climber who thinks she's his girlfriend, a rent-subsidized affair with his landlord's wife, and the bizarrely appealing deaf assistant to Shane's cosmically unstable dentist. When one of the women is murdered, and Shane is the only suspect who doesn't care enough to act like he didn't do it, the question becomes just how he'll clear the good name he never had and doesn't particularly want: his own.

#2MinRevu Transcendent SEAL WOMAN by Solveig Eggerz creates rich emotional history

Highly recommending Seal Woman, a beautifully written novel of love, loss and self-discovery in the shadow of the Holocaust.

Jerusha was proofreading the manuscript for the publisher and said, "Mom, you have to read this book so we can discuss it!" An invitation I could not resist.

Book clubs: There is much to love and discuss in this powerful story (including a surprising storytelling choice toward the end over which Jerusha and I strongly disagreed.)