books: Summer Reading

Looking for books that fit your life? We have some suggestions.

Some Books to Read if You’re Living at Home for the Summer:

1. “All Families Are Psychotic” by Douglas Coupland (Bloomsberry Publications, $24.95). The Dummond family — whose members resemble the Brady Bunch with a bad heroin habit — are forced to deal with each other through violence and self-loathing.

2. “Ordinary People” by Judith Guest (Penguin USA, $11). The coming-of-age story of Conrad Jarrett as he and his family deal with the death of his older brother.

3. “Century’s Son” by Robert Boswell (Knopf, $24). An exploration of the silence that permeates a family whose teen-age son committed suicide.

4. “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar Straus & Giroux, $26). This winner of the National Book Award takes a gripping psychological approach to an average Midwestern family and the secrets that formed their lives.

Some Books to Read While in Therapy:

1. “She’s Come Undone” by Wally Lamb (Pocket Books, $7.99). Dolores Price grows up in the ’60s undergoing every kind of emotional abuse possible from her dysfunctional family.

2. “Angelhead: A Memoir” by Greg Bottoms (Three Rivers Press, $12). Greg Bottoms, an author from Virginia, describes his brother’s battle with schizophrenia.

3. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey (New American Library, $6.99). Set in an asylum, this American classic champions the will and spirit of the individual.

4. “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis (Vintage Books, $14). A biting satire on the ’80s materialistic decade as told by a psychopathic killer.

Some Books for the Juvenile Delinquent:

1. “The Executioner’s Song” by Norman Mailer (Vintage Books, $17). Based on the true story of Gary Gilmore, who became the first person in the U.S. executed after the death penalty was reinstituted in 1977.

2. “The Basic Eight” by Daniel Handler (Griffin Trade Paperback, $13.95). Flannery Culp, a high school senior, defends herself against accusations of murder and ringleading a satanic cult from her prison cell.

3. “Jailbird” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Delta, $12.95). Follows the story of Walter F. Starbuck as he ascends to the White House and subsequently descends into prison as one of the least popular people involved in the Watergate scandal.

4. “The Speed Queen” by Stuart O’Nan (Grove Press, $13). Marjorie Standiford confesses all as she sits on death row awaiting her execution for the murder of 12 people.

Books for “Six Feet Under” Fans:

1. “How the Dead Live” by Will Self (Grove Press, $13). The afterlife, as seen by the dead 65-year-old Lily Bloom.

2. “A Prayer for the Dying” by Stuart O’Nan (Picador USA, $13). A diphtheria outbreak in Friendship, Wis., forces a man to choose between his duties to the town and his family.

3. “Dead Babies” by Martin Amis (Vintage Books, $13). A bleak view of the future where immorality and sexual addiction lay claim to everyone.

4. “A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest J. Gaines (Vintage Books, $12.95). A young black man is punished for a murder he did not commit in the 1940s. S

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