My "Staff Recommendations."

My manager Maureen needed to fill the display at the bookstore, so she asked me to pick out some books that I wanted to put on sale and recommend to customers. I went for one I'm currently reading, one classic I've already read ... and one book Maureen told me to recommend, based upon a review she found in a magazine, because she thought that it would sell. (Reading the review she showed me, I wrote a paraphrased recommendation and bought a copy of the book myself because it did sound good. So I only recommended something I didn't read, not didn't own.)



OK, I'm in the middle of reading this right now, and I like it so much that I've already ordered it in hardcover. It's got excellent characters and great writing, though it's still taking its time finding its plot within its characters and their secrets. It's won a Pulitzer Prize.

Oh, and because my friend Vic told me that I only read books that feature gay people or books that are about to be made into movies, I feel as though I should tell you that HBO's making "Empire Falls" into a miniseries starring Ed Harris, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Helen Hunt. (Yes, Lupo, Helen Hunt. Consider yourself warned.)



"The Great Gatsby" was my favorite assigned book in high school, and I read it my junior year. It's not boring. In fact, it's like this giant trashy soap opera involving obsessives, liars, drunks and murder.

Following Vic's criteria, it's also been made into a movie and a miniseries. And whether it features gay characters is up to the reader to decide. Though the narrator has lovers, though, he spends an awful lot of time paying attention to Gatsby.



I don't know anything about this book, but the review I read of it compared the writer to Nick Hornby and made it sound good enough to buy. And it sounded really funny and really British.

It doesn't fit any of Vic's criteria. And, fittingly, I've not yet read it.