Blindness by Jose Saramago

Set in any city at any time, Blindness is a story about what happens when everyone loses their vision together. Well, everyone but one brave and courageous woman. As the government struggles to deal with this massive impairment, all hell breaks loose - think Lord of the Flies meets The Road. Through all of this nightmare, the woman (none of the characters have names because what good is a name when you can't see the individual?) must bear the brunt of watching society decay into something far worse than anyone imagined.

The one time in my life where I didn't follow my cardinal rule (always read the book BEFORE you see the movie) and man, did that screw me up! This book is an extremely dark allegory for all the awful things that mankind is capable of. While you're reading the book, all of this washes over you and hits home. The film was far too literal for my taste and mildly exploitative. There are many graphic scenes of violence, rape and death that work better in the imagination then seeing it splashed for gruesome effect on the big screen.

Overall, a powerful and deeply moving book. You will be disturbed by the end.

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Ape House by Sara Gruen

In Gruen's debut novel Water for Elephants , readers fell in love with the titular elephant Rosie. In her second novel Ape House , a similar fondness occurs with the aforementioned apes. The cast of bonobos live happily in their Language Lab under the watchful eye of scientist Isabel Duncan. They are able to use sign language to communicate and enjoy playing around with visitors and the other scientists. Everything is going great until the lab gets bombed and the apes mysteriously disappear. Once the dust settles, Duncan is horrified to find out that the bonobos have been sold to a television producer who has casted them in their own 24 hour reality tv show. Joining forces with a newspaper reporter, an exotic dancer, animal activists and other research assistants, Duncan takes on the fight of her life to rescue her bonobos and give them the proper kind of life they deserve.

Tomorrow by Graham Swift

Swift won the Booker Prize for Last Orders back in 2004(?)...but I don't think he'll go 2 for 2 with Tomorrow , a quick read about a family with a dark secret. Paula Hook lies awake on the eve before her and her husband Mike divulge a long kept secret to their twin teenagers. The story centers around the history behind this secret and the rationale behind it. Truthfully, I was kind of annoyed for most of the book. The build up goes on and on for many pages with, like, no pay off whatsoever. The ideas in my mind were juicier than the real "truth" that was going to be told to her children. Though the prose is extremely well-written, I still kept saying to myself, "jesus, get to the point already"

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

This book falls into the category where you just WISH they'd make a movie out of it even though it probably would be lousy because the scenes wouldn't match up exactly with what's in your head. At any rate, Secret History is a lengthy thriller about a group of friends who attend a small college in Vermont and wind up murdering someone within their circle (I promise I'm not ruining anything, you find out who dies on the very first page). All of them are incredibly intelligent and highly interested in Classics. One night, they partake in a crazy Dionysian ritual and things just go downhill from there...Let's just say that people with big mouths are silenced in more ways than one. Though there was an awful lot of "academic" talk spread throughout the novel (think classics and ancient Greek philosophy), Tartt still manages to create a taut and suspenseful read. Some readers might object to the rampant drug and alcohol use, but it actually helps to captur...

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