December

Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino

November

October

• Amazon Link
• Author's Website

The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, by Marie Howe

Hurrying through errands, attending a dying mother, helping her own child down the playground slide, the speaker in these poems wonders what is the difference between the self and the soul? The secular and the sacred? Where is the kingdom of heaven?  And how does one live in Ordinary Time—during those periods that are not apparently miraculous? These are astonishing poems by a poet known as “a truth-teller of the first order.
[from the author's website]

September

• Amazon Link

The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje

Haunting and harrowing, as beautiful as it is disturbing, The English Patient tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery as World War II ends. The exhausted nurse, Hana; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burn victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning. In lyrical prose informed by a poetic consciousness, Michael Ondaatje weaves these characters together, pulls them tight, then unravels the threads with unsettling acumen.

A book that binds readers of great literature, The English Patient garnered the Booker Prize for author Ondaatje. The poet and novelist has also written, In the Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid; two collections of poems, The Cinnamon Peeler and There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do; and a memoir, Running in the Family. 
[from Amazon.com]

August

• Amazon Link
• Author's Website

Being Written, by William Conescu

Daniel Fischer has a secret. He knows he's a character in a book that's being written. He's the only one who knows, the only one who's aware of the author's presence—but what good does it do Daniel? He's just a minor character. The author seems much more interested in other people's lives. Now Daniel is determined to win a bigger part, and he'll do whatever it takes to get the author's attention and make this story his own.

Suspenseful, subversive, and hilarious, Being Written is an audaciously inventive literary turn that gleefully calls into question who we trust, what we believe, and how the stories of our lives are created.[from the author's website]

July

• Amazon Link

I and Claudie, by Dillon Anderson (1949)

In the late 1940s Texas and the rest of America was a land of opportunity, and the lead characters in the book I and Claudie certainly made the best of it. You might even call Clint Hightower and his partner Claudie “con artists,” but that might be too strong a term for such likeable characters. I and Claudie, the 1949 novel by then Houston lawyer Dillon Anderson, is a series of amusing stories about the adventures of Clint and Claudie across Texas. Clint fancies himself the brains of the operation, scheming ways for the pair to make money creatively by selling turtles at the Dallas fair, saving a rich man’s boat from a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, or providing musical entertainment at a West Texas tourist ranch. Of course, Clint’s plans have Claudie doing most of the work, including singing bass when the situation calls for a musical solution. The blurb on the back cover summarizes the book best: “As engaging a pair of rascals as ever traveled the highway of American humor, the two become partners in the early 1940s after a bit of unpleasantness in New Orleans makes it advisable to absent themselves from the city and try their luck in Texas. There they take their fling at dude ranching, join the campaign tour of Horace Q. Ball for Governor, and manage to entangle themselves in a crap game, a hurricane, a treasure hunt, and a revival meeting.” Indeed, this book is entertaining, but it also offers an authentic snapshot of an earlier era in Texas—a time when chicanery was still a noble calling.