Lights on a Ground of Darkness Ted Kooser, 2009

Last autumn's paperback edition was a welcome return to print for this memoir of Midwestern family, published previously only in a limited-edition hardcover.

Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy, 1999

Published in 1895, this was Hardy's last novel, partly because the reaction to the book was so scathing. It's the story of Jude Fawley, stonemason and would-be scholar, and his many, many, MANY travails, including star-crossed love, frustrated ambition, and the deaths of children. One recent commentator on BN's Web site called this one of the most depressing novels ever written, and it's hard to argue with that, especially in light of this quote from Thomas Hardy himself: He said pessimism "is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed."

2010: Odyssey Two Arthur C. Clarke, 1982

This 1982 novel, a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyessey, postulated a mission to the planet Jupiter, a second contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, and people living on the Moon. Sorry, but the real-life year of 2010 just doesn't seem as exciting, what with the space program having been cut so severely just recently. Yet another example of sci-fi books and movies promising things we don't get to have!

Wonder Boys Michael Chabon, 2009

Grady Tripp has tenure as an English professor -- and he has problems, too: His wife has left him, he's having an affair with the chancellor of the university, and she just happens to be married to his boss, the chair of the English department. Then things get even MORE complicated...

The Accidental Tourist Anne Tyler, 1985

Macon Leary is weary and leery of love. Yet even as he becomes estranged from his wife, he meets an unusual woman, Muriel, with a zest for life. But is it a case of too much zest for this staid travel writer?

Julip Jim Harrison, 1994

If I get to this one, I'll be focusing on the middle of the book's three novellas, the one called "The Seven-Ounce Man," which is another of the author's installments concerning Brown Dog, the incorrigible Upper Michigan native who flouts the law and the rules of romance at every opportunity -- and somehow gets away with it.