Synopsis:
Five Toronto college students are pulled into an alternate world where they discover their true destinies at the outset of a war that could affect all worlds, including their own.
Review:
Yep, another hard-to-synopsize epic fantasy book. The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay employs one of the standard fantasy templates–ordinary people drawn into an extraordinary [...]

Popularity: 48% [?]

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Synopsis:
A headstrong Upper West Side yearns to escape her family’s Jewish Bronx origins and become a Broadway star.
Review:
This is the third or fourth time I’ve read Marjorie Morningstar, and every time I find myself absolutely riveted for the first two-thirds, then bored and indifferent for the final third, only to be knocked out by the [...]

Popularity: 40% [?]

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Synopsis:
Bereft and aimless, an ex-meth head signs up to test a new drug promising to cure anxiety of all kinds.
Review:
I picked up Sunless because it promised a Chuck Pahlaniuk-esque satirical romp through all the woes of our modern age, dressed up in off-kilter post-apocalyptic trappings and with an addictive prose style.
Instead, I suffered through a [...]

Popularity: 37% [?]

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Synopsis:
A dissection of hook-up culture on college campuses and in high schools, including anecdotal accounts.
Review:
More hand-wringing than Last Night in Paradise, less high-minded than Unprotected, Unhooked is more likely than either to provoke fear and consternation in the hearts of parents of teenagers across America–particularly if they’ve read I Am Charlotte Simmons and their daughter [...]

Popularity: 28% [?]

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Synopsis:
A look at sexual mores in the age of AIDS.
Review:
I like a good polemic as much as the next person, particularly when it involves people having lots of sex, mostly because I always feel like that’s nice work if you can get it. Last Night in Paradise isn’t hard-hitting investigative journalism as much as [...]

Popularity: 41% [?]

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Synopsis:
While stranded on campus over Thanksgiving break, 5 mismatched students use a Ouija board to inadvertently conjure a demon from the dawn of time.
Popularity: 23% [?]

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Popularity: 23% [?]

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Synopsis:
A young man on the verge of university is blinded in a freak accident.
Review:
Henry Green’s later books Loving, Living, and Party Going were referenced quite a bit in Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, but I chose to start with Blindness because it was listed in the infamous 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. [...]

Popularity: 29% [?]

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Synopsis:
A survey of the state of affairs in campus counseling, presenting the argument that sexual activity is being left out of the equation with disastrous results.
Review:
The full title, Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in her Profession Endangers Every Student, offers a very good sense of the writer’s agenda, and she provides a [...]

Popularity: 28% [?]

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Synopsis:
A troubled, introspective young woman in college in the early 60s falls out of favor with her sorority sisters and into a troubled relationship with a black PhD candidate in philosophy.
Review:
Very typical Oates–claustrophobic first-person narrative from the POV of a woman with serious issues. The story is laced with philosophical arguments that are way [...]

Popularity: 25% [?]

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