September BookWorms poll

***updated: I have added one more book and reset the poll due to technical difficulities. Please consider the new book and recast your vote.

---

Here is a list of the book which have been recommended for our September selection:

In Porter's second dip into the chick lit pool (after The Frog Prince), Seattle single mom Jackie Laurens begins wondering how important happiness is: divorced with two kids and a thriving decorating business, she assumes she's happy, but can't help feeling like something's missing. When her married friend, Anne, arranges for the two of them to indulge in a Hawaiian getaway in honor of Jackie's 40th birthday, Jackie agrees. Anne backs out at the last second, but Jackie decides to suffer through the vacation solo. Hawaii is gorgeous, but the hotel pool deck groans under the weight of middle-aged men whose coarse chutzpah is only overshadowed by their flabby bellies. Just before she resigns herself to the depressing prospects, she meets Kai, a sexy, tan and much younger surfing instructor. Life doesn't get better, only more complicated as Jackie tries to balance the sultry, sweaty joys of Hawaii and Kai with the obligations of motherhood. Porter's romance roots show in the gratuitous sex scenes and in how easily tears flow from Jackie's eyes, but this book fits the bill as a calorie-free accompaniment for a poolside daiquiri.

"Mine is a story of craving; an unreliable account of lusts and troubles that began, somehow, in 1956 on the day our free television was delivered." So begins the story of Dolores Price, the unconventional heroine of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone. Dolores is a class-A emotional basket case, and why shouldn't she be? She's suffered almost every abuse and familial travesty that exists: Her father is a violent, philandering liar; her mother has the mental and emotional consistency of Jell-O; and the men in her life are probably the gender's most loathsome creatures. But Dolores is no quitter; she battles her woes with a sense of self-indulgence and gluttony rivaled only by Henry VIII. Hers is a dysfunctional Wonder Years, where growing up in the golden era was anything but ideal. While most kids her age were dealing with the monumental importance of the latest Beatles single and how college turned an older sibling into a long-haired hippie, Dolores was grappling with such issues as divorce, rape, and mental illness. Whether you're disgusted by her antics or moved by her pathetic ploys, you'll be drawn into Dolores's warped, hilarious, Mallomar-munching world.


There's "no such thing as a town smaller than Between," Joshilyn Jackson writes about the setting of her new Southern novel. It's not awfully far from Athens, Ga.; it's surrounded by pines and threatened by kudzu. Its major attraction is a museum devoted to porcelain dolls and butterfly farming: "a must-stop spot for the kind of people who liked to pack up a camper and go see freakishly large balls of tinfoil."
Between is also the home of the Fretts and the Crabtrees, who are like the Montagues and the Capulets, only more eccentric. The Fretts are "meticulous to the point of mental illness," Jackson writes. If they ever cuss, they use only cuss-words that appear in the Bible. They have money; they create order. The Crabtrees, meanwhile, live in squalor and chaos, sloping in and out of common-law unions and borderline felonies. The primal Crabtree landscape is a helter-skelter vision of "rusted-out bodies of cars and partial cars, heaps of old lawn mowers, fridges, gas stoves, and chunks of various engines." Crabtree men don't ask for dessert; they holler, "Baby Jesus, but I [expletive] need some pie."

A faithful summary of Between, Georgia would have to go on for pages to honor its enormous cast of quirky characters and its breathlessly intricate plot. But what you need to know is that the narrator, a spirited young woman named Nonny, was born a Crabtree and raised as a Frett. Her adoptive mother and aunts, in their tidy print dresses and orthopedic shoes, are naturally at odds with her Crabtree grandmother and a slew of redneck Crabtree cousins. But an attack by a vicious Crabtree dog brings the families together and sets the action going.

There's also Nonny's husband, Jonno, physically irresistible and ethically deficient, from whom she'll be divorced as soon as they can stop having "goodbye sex" and get to their court date in Athens. Jonno plays in a rock band called X. Machina -- as in deus ex machina, an ancient Greek plot-resolving device that comes in handy when this book reaches full gallop.

Jackson, whose first novel was gods in Alabama, has a gift for juggling a zillion movable parts. Adept at the kind of farce that requires characters to hide from each other in the bushes, she's also good at poignancy and at darker scenes of mayhem. There's so much back-story that it takes the reader a while to get oriented, but once you've got it straight, Jackson produces an astringently humorous performance.

Though Between hasn't the emotional depth that occasionally enriched gods in Alabama, it's equally dotted with Southern "characters." A favorite: the airhead virago Amber DeClue. Please let Scarlett Johansson play her if there's a movie so she can deliver the line: "I have to go iron my hair."

(is this the correct book - I couldn't find one called Finding Peyton Place???) With her mother deceased and her older sister suffering similar symptoms, successful 30-something novelist Annie Barnes turns detective—Erin Brokovich-style—when she reluctantly returns to her "stifling, stagnant, and cruel" New Hampshire hometown of Middle River in Delinsky's diverting latest (after The Summer I Dared). A company town dominated by Northbrook Paper Mill, owned by the powerful Meades, Middle River's real claim to fame, according to Annie and other townspeople, is that it was the model for the once notorious bestseller Peyton Place by Grace Metalious. Annie's neighbors are equally sure that she's returned to dig up their dirt, and, like Metalious, write about it. Though Annie is less concerned with gossip than possible mercury poisoning, Metalious speaks to her from beyond the grave, egging her on in her investigation. The plucky heroine also begins a flirty e-mail conversation with a Deep Throat who calls himself "TrueBlue" and hints at Northbrook Mill's dark doings. And against all odds, handsome Meade scion James seems to be an ally in her environmental crusade. Readers with an appetite for light fare will find all the right ingredients—romance, mystery, suspense, sisterly rivalry and a thoroughly happy ending.