Bookworm

The thing about life is that one day you’ll be dead (Knopf)David Shields wrote this book to relieve his terrible fear of death. He compares this fear with his ninety-something-year-old father's vigor and confidence. Although the book is full of facts about aging and death, it has the odd effect of making you feel thrilled to be alive.

Girl Factory (Tin House)In Jim Krusoe's strange and funny new novel, six women are being preserved in acidophilus in the basement of a frozen yogurt shop. The innocent hero's attempts to save these kidnapped beauties are disastrous.

His Illegal Self (Knopf)The excitement of Peter Carey's new novel is rendered through a specific stylistic choice: He integrates two wildly different voices into the sentences, creating a vibrant stereo-effect. The result is amazing--the novel's action seems to be taking place about six inches from your face.

Coeur de Lion (Mal-o-mar); The Cow (Fence Books) This astonishing young poet—still in her twenties—is surely destined to be one of the crucial voices of her generation.

Colm Tóibín candidly describes the inspirations for the stories in his first collection. Sometimes a landscape is enough to trigger a story, sometimes an anecdote or a bit of family lore.

The Gathering (Grove) In Anne Enright's Booker Prize-winning novel about a family wake, the narrator remembers, lies, invents and imagines with equal ardor.

The Jewish Messiah (Penguin) Unsettling, profane and goofy, Arnon Grunberg’s novel takes politically incorrect risks with contemporary Jewish culture.

Riding toward Everywhere (Ecco)William Vollmann decided to spend as much time as possible viewing the stars from the flatbed of a moving train. He’s a “fauxbo” not a hobo, and he movingly describes his need to find freedom by hopping a train–without any destination in mind.

Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir (Simon & Schuster)David Rieff accompanied his mother, Susan Sontag, through the medical ordeals that led to her death. We explore the death of this great writer, a woman who resisted consolation and maintained—to her last days—an enormous appetite for life.

People of the Book (Viking)The art of detection unravels the secrets of the Sarajevo Haggadah. What does the miraculous survival of this medieval codex tell us about the survival of both culture and history?