The offline book club I belong to is moderated and very, very serious. We only read very, very serious books and we have very, very serious conversations. It's all quite exhausting frankly.
So, I'd like to nominate what is supposed to be a funny, smart read (and only as serious as you want it to be):
One Day by David Nicholls.
From Inkmesh:
Subjects: Contemporary Fiction, Literature, Fiction & Literature
Description:
The episodic story takes place during a single day each year for two decades in the lives of Dex and Em. Dexter, the louche public school boy, and Emma, the brainy Yorkshire lass, meet the day they graduate from university in 1988 and run circles around one another for the next 20 years. Dex becomes a TV presenter whose life of sex, booze, and drugs spins out of control, while Em dully slogs her way through awful jobs before becoming the author of young adult books. They each take other lovers and spouses, but they cannot really live without each other. Nicholls is a glib, clever writer, and while the formulaic feel and maudlin ending aren't ideal for a book, they'll play in the multiplex.
“Big, absorbing, smart, fantastically readable . . . brilliant on the details of the last couple of decades of British cultural and political life . . . the perfect beach read for people who are normally repelled by the very idea of beach reads.”
—Nick Hornby, from his blog
(I do love me some Nick Hornby.)
Available at a bunch of places, and the UK, too!
Rebecca