I just read a great article on Slate about YA literature and discovered that 28% of those who buy these books are people between the ages of 30 and 44. I’m not in the least surprised because this is precisely the age bracket when most people stop developing intellectually.
In a related development, it seems I have lost all capacity to read books in the entertainment category. I decided to take a break from serious reading and picked up two “strictly for fun” books. I’m now struggling with the first one of them, called Defending Jacob, a huge best seller. I, however, find it exasperating in its complete shallowness. Nothing makes sense, the characters are all robotic and stupid.
There is one more “strictly to pass time” book I bought, and that’s my last hope of getting some mindless, stupefied fun this summer.
Clarissa's Blog 
Try: http://www.lecturalia.com/autor/61/henning-mankell
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Or maybe this… http://es.scribd.com/doc/223090938/The-Son-by-Jo-Nesbo-Chapter-One
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I think you might like this as reading for fun, maybe you can find it in Spanish translation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scent_of_Rain_in_the_Balkans
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Some books I heard about:
Abraham Cahan – The Rise of David Levinsky
Cahan’s most popular novel was The Rise of David Levinsky, which was semi-autobiographical as it mirrored Cahan’s own experiences of immigration, described the Americanization process for a Jewish immigrant and demonstrated the Jewish-socialist cultural establishments in New York.
ALSO “The imported bridegroom, and other stories of the New York ghetto”
— I read the title story and recommend it. Think you’ll enjoy. Easy to read and funny.
http://archive.org/stream/importedbridegroom00caharich/importedbridegroom00caharich_djvu.txt
Philip Roth – The Plot Against America
It is an alternative history in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh. The novel follows the fortunes of the Roth family during the Lindbergh presidency, as antisemitism becomes more accepted in American life and Jewish-American families like the Roths are persecuted on various levels.
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The novel by Philip Roth is very good. I highly recommend.
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I loved (read Russian translation, which is on the web, I am sure)
“Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman” by Stefan Zweig
(Love this author in general)
Life at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has long captivated readers, drawn by accounts of the intrigues and pageantry that came to such a sudden and unexpected end. Stefan Zweig’s Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman is a dramatic account of the guillotine’s most famous victim, from the time when as a fourteen-year-old she took Versailles by storm, to her frustrations with her aloof husband, her passionate love affair with the Swedish Count von Fersen, and ultimately to the chaos of the French Revolution and the savagery of the Terror. An impassioned narrative, Zweig’s biography focuses on the human emotions of the participants and victims of the French Revolution, making it both an engrossingly compelling read and a sweeping and informative history.
“Certainly no one can arise unmoved from the reading of this powerful work.” — The New Republic
“Excellent biography.” — The New York Times
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Read this one, too. But it was the thing by Zweig I probably liked the least. I had this long Zweig era when I read everything by him.
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Also, something both my mother and me loved is
Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
(I haven’t read anything else of hers, but it’s unimportant. Reads like an interesting novel).
“So Big” – Edna Ferber A novel with 2 coming of age stories: of a woman and then of her son. Got prizes too.
“The Homecoming of Samuel Lake” – Jenny Wingfield — Entertainment book.
Betty Smith “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” — Entertainment, but I loved this coming of age female novel.
Irene Nemirovsky “All Our Worldly Goods” — she is worth trying. You may have loved her style and insights.
“The Touch” by Colleen McCullough (“The Thorn Birds” is her best best, but I suppose you read it? This novel seems the best out of her other works that I looked at. Pure entertainment.).
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You haven’t read Agatha Christie??? You so totally should. She’s the best. Very feminist stuff.
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I second the enthusiasm for Agatha Christie! My favorite novel that I’ve read by her is Murder on the Orient Express. I highly recommend it! 🙂
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In general, I prefer the Miss Marple novels overall to the Poirot or other series or stand alones.
What I like about them is they depend less on clues (like traditional mysteries) and more on character – roughly she figures out who has the character or a murderer before figuring out how and exactly why.
I’m not sure if I completely get the feminist angle, except in a negative way. She never discounts womens’ capacity for being as evil as men (though her female evildoers’ motives tend to differ from the mens’).
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I like the Poirot series the most.
“I’m not sure if I completely get the feminist angle, except in a negative way.”
– The older, frumpy female character is always revealed as being more intelligent, devious, successful and popular with men. 🙂
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Here is one of reviews of Nemirovsky’s book.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/372669108?book_show_action=true&page=1
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Clarissa, I’d love it if you did book recommendations more often. Maybe a regularish blog feature where commenters can exchange recommendations too?
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What a great idea! Let me start the series right now. Thank you for the suggestions.
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This post reminds me of quoderat of Technology as Nature, who, ironically, I found out about through your blog. You and quoderat should so some sort of Punch and Judy type comedy routine in which you debate the relative merits of highbrow and lowbrow culture…
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Real art is extremely entertaining but the difference between it and trash is that it offers something more than just entertainment. It engages the intellect instead of just numbing it. Numbing is good as long as it isn’t all one does.
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