Comfort Me with Apples by Ruth Reichl

This is the second memoir written by Reichl and I thought this one was much more personal than Tender at the Bone.  In 1978,  Reichl was a young married woman sharing a house with her artist husband and a bunch of other struggling young professionals in Berkley.  She had decided to leave her career as a chef to embark on a career as a restaurant critic.  Despite a number of hilarious failed attempts in the beginning, she eventually makes the connections necessary to be taken seriously.  There are affairs along the way, trips to Paris and lots and lots of food (some recipes included).  As delightful and humorous as her professional journey was, her personal life was unraveling with some moments of great sadness.  Still her writing is worthy of an editor at Gourmet and always optimistic at the heart.

A Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Ove is a grumpy, unhappy man.  The families that share his row house neighborhood in Sweden are idiots.  Nobody can do anything useful and they are incapable of following the simplest rule.  There is no good reason to continue living in such an unacceptable world.  Except he's not very good at the killing oneself thing. One neighbor after another interrupts his plan in the most amusing ways. He is the one they rely on do everything after all.  And the more of a curmudgeon he becomes the more entertaining he becomes to his neighbors. It is laugh out loud funny but I confess I had tears in my eyes at the end.  If only the world really worked this way.

The 100-Year-Old Man who climbed out the window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

Allan Karlsson climbs out of his room at the nursing home to avoid his 100th birthday party, buys a ticket at the bus station, accidentally steals a suitcase full of money and mayhem ensues.  Of course this adventure is nothing compared to the life he has lived up to this point.  His expertise in explosives has led him to encounters with just about every important political figure of the 20th century from Franco to Truman and beyond.  The tale would be silly, well it is silly, if Allan wasn't such a likeable character.  And as unlikely as it all is, you could only wish that a life whose guiding philosophy of "things are what they are, and whatever will be will be" would lead to so much life.  The story jumps back and forth in time from Allan's life adventure to his current misadventure in a John Irving meets Forrest Gump sort of style.  A grand absurd romp.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

If you watch the Big Bang Theory, the voice of brilliant but slightly Asperger-ish Sheldon Cooper will be the one you hear in your head as you join Ph.D geneticist Don Tillman in his Wife Project. Hoping to make the project highly efficient, he designs a questionnaire to eliminate all unlikely candidates - smokers, the unorganized, those who can't decide what flavor ice cream to choose.  Along the way he encounters Rosie Jarman (unsuitable says the questionnaire) who engages Don in the Father Project to find her biological father.  When thing start to fall apart, Don decides that he needs to design the Rosie Project to make it all right.  Some of Don's awkwardness is funny and some is so very familiar.

Winner of the National Book Award by Jincy Willett

Twin sisters, one an uptight librarian and the other the town floozie, both fall under the spell of the same man.  One hates him.  One loves him.  He marries one to get to the other.  One writes a book to tell that tale of the sisters and their romantic disaster and the other narrates the real story - with large helpings of sarcasm and wry wit.  Whatever you think about the sisters as the story unfolds, you have to admire the "blood is thicker than water" ending.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

If I could tell my family story like this I would consider the demanding life of an author.  This is the story of Ruby and three generations of her family.  It begins at the moment of her conception, a rather unpleasant experience for her mother Bunty whose frivolous name, Ruby fears, portends the hilarious and tragic lives that follow.  Much of Ruby's story happens in The Rooms Above the pet store her parents own in the town of York, England.  Every other chapter takes us back to the lives of Bunty,  Bunty's mother Nell and various brothers, sisters, cousins and one conniving Frenchman.  It is a very English telling with a twist at the end that makes you wonder if you should have been paying better attention.  I am not surprised that it was the Whitbread book of the year in 1995.

An Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

The Queen discovers a "mobile library" parked right outside the palace door.  Enchanted by its existence, she selects a book.  Much to her surprise, Her Majesty enjoys reading.  She becomes an avid reader, a passionate reader, an all consuming reader - often under the guidance of a former kitchen boy who seems to favor gay authors.  But once she is hooked, she becomes somewhat bothered by all those boring official duties that cut into her reading time.  Dignitaries seated near her are often called upon to talk about what they are reading and often can't remember having read anything at all.  It is a small novella large on satire and wit.  Quite a jolly read.

Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich

These books about Stephanie Plum, hopelessly inept bounty hunter, are just brain candy/beach read/airplane books but they never cease to make me laugh out loud. I doubt that the order of this series matters as long as potty mouth Grandma is still alive, a night at the funeral home is still the entertainment of choice, and Stephanie's attraction to dark and dangerous Ranger and sexy cop Morrelli remains unresolved.

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

This tongue-in-cheek tale in epistolary style takes place on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. The hero of this island community is Nevin Nollop, the creator of the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and it is this sentence that adorns the statue in his honor. Their isolation and dedication to Nollop's love of language have kept the inhabitants a few many decades behind the rest of the world with no plans to change. That is until the tile letter "z" falls off the statue. The leaders of the community believe that this is a sign from Nollop himself and it becomes a crime to use any word which contains the missing letter. There are further challenges as letters continue to fall and are banned from the very book you are reading. Language will be lost entirely UNLESS someone can come up with another sentence using thirty-two letters or less that uses all the letters of the alphabet. There is a certain absurdist metaphor about how fools come to power to be enjoyed but the better lark is seeing if you can you spot the winning sentence before it is reveled.