What I'm Reading Now,

I prefer to read one book at a time. But that's the ideal -- the reality is that often I am reading several books at once. Usually this is because I have to read a certain book for book group or some other obligation, or because a book is boring me at that moment but I may be willing to come back to it later. So I'm going to start posting from time to time a list of the books I'm reading and the books I want to read next.
What I'm reading now:

• Shock Wave by James O. Born. A fast-paced Florida crime novel. Born will appear at the St. Petersburg Times Festival of Reading on Oct. 29.
• Couples by John Updike. This books reeks of 1960s overpriviledged suburban malaise -- a major theme is adultery as self-actualizing quest. The Amazon reviews are diverse and fascinating -- read 'em here. I don't like the characters, but it's hard not to wonder what these awful people will do next. A few friends who are older than I am say that was just the nature of the era. The philandering couples in this book would be about 75 today.
  
• The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage by Paul Elie. This is a fairly dense biography of four American Catholic authors writing at about the same time: Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton and Walker Percy. Elie's style is languid and thematic, well-suited for his exploration of the writers' ideas and intellectual milieu.

What I want to read next:

• "A Good Man is Hard to Find," by Flannery O'Connor. I picked this short story collection for my book group because I knew I might not read it otherwise, and it would probably be really good.
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon. This novel won the Pulitzer a few years back. Subject matter includes the Holocaust, comic books and Harry Houdini. I have high hopes for this one.
• "Oblivion" by David Foster Wallace. I love David Foster Wallace on a very visceral, non-logical level. Having said that, I found his short story collection "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" to be very sad -- the characters were horrible, and I felt like Wallace was mocking them. I don't think is really typical of him -- his book Infinite Jest is one of the kindest novels I can this of. So I have some trepidation about reading his most recent work, Oblivion. You can find a couple of (mixed) reviews of Oblivion here, here, and here.