About a Boy, by Nick Hornby. I can't figure out what went wrong with Nick in his previous book, Fever Pitch. With About a Boy, he's back in full "High Fidelity" form, with a funny and romantic look at life and love through the eyes of a 12 year old boy and a 36 year old man. 4 out of 5.
posted by Tom Leslie at 10:16 AM | link

Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett. Ok, so Pratchett is hardly a heavyweight, but the immense, rather embarrasing success of his Discworld series is due to one simple factor: all of his books are funny, and he never seems to run out of material. Interesting Times picks up the long-running story of Rincewind, the worst wizard ever, and drags it through a caricature of the far east infected with the revolutionary tract "What I did on my Holidays". 3 out of 5.
posted by Tom Leslie at 10:14 AM | link

Moab Is My Washpot, by Stephen Fry. An autobiography of his first 30 years, Moab is at times annoyingly self-indulgent and otherwise brilliant. In case the reader had any doubts, Fry convincingly demonstrates the qualities of a well-educated man of words, with a heavy dose of self-destruction and pathos, but enough self-awareness to take the piss out of himself and his flaws. Interesting, amusing, thought-provoking and hard to put down. 4 out of 5.
posted by Tom Leslie at 10:11 AM | link