The heroine of Ted's Favorite Skirt is a hoops-shooting, Madame Bovary-reading American kid trying to figure it all out. As we follow Billie in and out of love, limning with her the edges of despair and hope, Warsh leads us deep into the "hum of human machinery", a territory where all but essentials are weeded out. Part bildungsroman, part commentary on American life in the 80s, Ted's Favorite Skirt is a trenchant, lovely wonder. --Laird Hunt , author of The Impossibly

"The Stranger" is a wonderful little book, filled with deceptively simple language and actions. It's understated, very subtle, and except for the outright atheist vs. church stuff at the end, you've really got to work for it. You can pick it up, read it in a night, put it down, and refuse to be affected...but if you listen, the meaning is in there, deep and dark, not didactic, more like a whisper.

The apparent indifference Mersault carries strikes one as inhuman: shrugging off his mother's death, swearing off the church, agreeing to marry in a heartbeat, and, most poignantly, accepting his fate - a death sentence. But the things Mersault is trying to say through the gaps between what's actually on the page is simple: it's all arbitrary, we're fools on a ball spinning around a star, and contentment is the simplest thing to feel amidst chaos.

Although the murder and the trial, and definitely the funeral, are fantastic moral-bending existentialist scenes, what sticks with you in the dark of night, is as simple as the prose and also as endlessly complex: we're here, we'll never understand each other, we see what's most convenient to see, and we all die in the end anyway, whether or not our tenure here can be marked as "good" or "bad" or "moral". Not the most uplifting read in the world, but literature is a cruel mistress sometimes.

A book about the "Absurd" hero... A man who can only enjoy the moment, with no thought of the future or the past, who does only what feels good at the moment... who is not ruled by the monotonous machinery of the world, who refuses to set routines... and yet becomes entangled in the impersonal machinery of society.

By the way, this book is about as un-autobiographical as is possible for a book to be. Yes, Camus grew up in Algiers and loved to swim, but he was primarily a thinker; he was utterly incapable of turning off his mind and thinking everything through. He philosophy was completely opposed to the Meursault's view of life. Yet, like me, he found in Meursault a certain honesty, of living consistently, without faking emotions and conventions. But it was ultimately against Meursault's attitude that Camus fought in his books and essays.

It is a philosophical novel, and no doubt people will be turned off by anything that challenges them, but definitely give this book a chance. It has more to say than all but a handful of books five times the length of this one. I read it almost ten years ago for school, and have read it a half dozen times since, as well as every other novel Camus wrote... those for my own enjoyment. Put aside that King book for a week and read one of the greatest books ever written.

This is one of my favorite books. I first read it in high school and fell in love with it. Mersault (the main character) finds himself guilty of murdering an Arab. The book soon reveals it is his lack of involvement in society that stands trial. I strongly recomend this books for those that are interested in existentialism.

I had to Beowulf for school OVER THE SUMMER, so I wasn't interested in the first place, but it isn't exactly enjoyable either. It is hard to follow because sentences are broken up onto different lines, historical digressions interrupt the main plot, and the characters are difficult to relate to. There is also no feeling, so it is hard to sympathize for Beowulf and his companions. This poem was meant to be told in a middle ages court, not read on a pool deck by a 16 year old in the middle of the summer. Perhaps if I was being elaborately told the epic as well I would have liked it.

Despite being a very lenghty peom Beowulf appealed to me. It was an epic of Anglo-Saxon peroid which focuses on a single main character, Beowulf, who overcomes evil, Grendel. I would recommend it only to those who are into reading epic peoms.

His friends leave him behind in the end when he is king. he is mortified that he is left behind because everyone is afriad of the dragon