This week, Booking Through Thursday asks:
"What’s the most serious book you’ve read recently? (I figure it’s easier than asking your most serious book ever, because, well, it’s recent!)I thought this would be slam-dunk easy, since I just last week finished reading Bernard Malamud's The Fixer, the grim tale of a Russian Jew falsely accused of the ritual murder of a Christian boy. Imperial-era prison, anti-Semitism, feudal justice system, and pogroms, not to mention poverty, adultery, child abuse, murder, and general violence -- it doesn't get any more serious. This one was so serious that it won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. But then I looked over my list of books that I've read in the last few months, and there are some contenders (linked to reviews): All Quiet on the Western Front (war) The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care (imminent crisis) Native America, Discovered and Conquered (ugly history) The Beggar (existential angst) Black Boy (American Hunger) (ugly history and existential angst) And I can't forget: The Letter from Death I need to go find my happy place. .