Having just finished “Diary of a Teenage Girl” which in (partially) graphic novel format describes the adolescence of an American girl in the mid-70s, I’m looking forward to reading this book, which is the life of an Iranian girl at the time of the Islamic Revolution of the late 70s.

Douglas Coupland is one of my favorite novelists. This was a beautifully melancholy story about the effects of a Columbine-type incident on victims and survivors over a period of 20 years.

Conason is doing (more than) his part to expose the stories the conservative-controlled mass media is ignoring. Taken together with Eric Alterman’s “What Liberal Media?”, it’s obvious how deep into the clutches of its monopolistic masters the 4th estate has sunk.

This book is great fun, and does a wonderful job evoking a familiar, yet slightly different Enlightenment era England. Clarke’s imagination of a long English history of magic is fascinating and keeps me wondering, “did this really happen?”, “was there really a Raven King?”

The most amazing thing about Marjane Satrapi’s continuation of her memoir of growing up in Iran in the age of the Islamic Revolution, is how absolutely recognizable her life is. Despite being under the thumbs of the mullahs - pictured as soul-destroying ogres in our biased media - young people rebel, go to school, fall in and out of love, buy cars, go dancing, and participate in all the same rites of growing up as we do here in the West.

Daniel Handler is the man behind the Lemony Snicket mask. This novel, however, described as “your basic self-reflexive parody incest opera mystery” is definitely not for kids. The first half of the book, written as the book for an opera had me overcome with hysterical laughter. Part 2, printed in a different color ink to distinguish it even further from the first half, is more of a standard mystery and somewhat subdued and I’m bogging down a little bit.

Bizarre is the only word to describe this novel by Penn Jilette (the bigger half of the Penn & Teller comedy/magic duo.) It’s the story of Dickie, a real wammerjammer sock monkey, owned by a NYPD diver, who, with his newfound gay hairdresser friend, is risking his whole career and possibly his life, to find the person who killed his ex-girlfriend. This novel has so many pop-culture and song references, that it often feels as if the narrative should be set to music.

Eichenwald, a New York Times reporter, tells the not-as-familiar-as-I-thought story of the (rise and) fall of Enron. Using the form of a novel, the story barrels along, laying bare the motives and failings of not just this one company, but the entire culture of greed, of which it was the most prominent member.

Lakoff, in a collection of some of his speeches, puts forward his theory of “framing”, the linguistic device used to devastating effect by the Republican Party. By dictating how issues are addressed, the Republicans have left the Democrats struggling and sputtering in any attempt to dictate the terms of debate. Lakoff’s goal is to give the Dems the intellectual framework to use the Republicans’ tools against them.

The amount of history, philosophy and technology packed into this story is mind-boggling! It makes me wonder if Stephenson has himself developed some sort of time machine. I started reading this book last Christmas, but after our flood in January, the book got packed into a box somewhere. I just picked up the softcover and I’ve found that the story’s details were so vivid, that I was able to pick up where I left off, without the dreaded re-reading of 160 pages.