The Body Artist - Don DeLillo

The stories she told herself did not seem her exactly. She was in them so heedlessly they seemed to come from a deeper source, whatever that might mean, a thing that was overtaking her. Where did they come from? They did not come from the newspaper. She hadn't read a paper in some time. She looked at a paper in town, at the general store, front page only, and it seemed to be another framework altogether, a slick hysteria of picture and ink, the world so fleetingly easy to love and hate, so reliable and forgettable in its recipes and wars and typographical errors.

A beautifully written short novel. This book is complex in only its 124 pages. It took me some time to get established in what was going on, but I enjoyed the writing and mystery from the beginning. DeLillo is one of those writers who could write prescription drug warning labels and I would read them.

The book invokes thoughts of love and death in a surreal manner. Mysterious interactions with a character that is difficult to determine if he really exists in the material world. This is one of the more intriguing and ingenious books I have. It takes the reader into another realm to look back at one's life and life in general. Plan on reading this short book slowly without feeling rushed to understand what's going on in the first part. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The Headmaster's Dilemma - Louis Auchincloss

And so Michael liked to think about it. He had been headmaster for three years now, appointed as a result of the successful efforts of younger members of the board to convince the others that a leader was needed to make some adaptations to the exigencies of change in educational thinking. And he had already achieved some of these: girls had just been admitted; the limits of courses widened.

The author is a prolific writer who received the National Medal of Arts in 2005. He has published over 60 books. Maybe I picked one of his worst as I can't recommend this book. The story is predicable and full of cliches. The characters are shallow and not differentiated from each other. The dialogue detracts from the characters rather than developing them as unique individuals. Apparently, Auchincloss mostly writes about society's upper class. In this book, the headmaster and his wife are a younger generation being challenged by older conservatives. They are not convincing as written. Don't waste your time with this book.