Love triangles, revenge, mental illness, morality, Cornell — Sara Gruen’s novel Water for Elephants simply has it all. I’m not quite sure what originally attracted me to this book for I am not, by any means, a fan of the circus. In fact, I’m actually very much averse to the circus, to be frank; too many freaks with haphazard body parts and Bradbury-like machinery twisting one’s mind. However, once I decided to set aside my negative biases and flipped open the first page, I was hooked.

Being a university student in upstate New York can be an emotional experience, triggering binge drinking and even nervous breakdowns.

This is not a personal confession, but a truth confirmed by Charles Baxter’s newest novel, The Soul Thief. The protagonist, Nathaniel Mason, spends his first few months as a graduate student in Buffalo making new acquaintances, struggling with romantic relationships and attempting to make sense of his own identity. Baxter’s descriptive prose perfectly evokes the ambiguities of daily life and the complexity of individual personalities.

With chapter titles from “Grillin’ Like a Villain” to “How Sweet It Ends,” George Duran’s unique cookbook sets out to take comfort food to a new, decidedly unexpected level. While the recipes may not make for the most appetizing sounding dishes (potato chip Spanish tortillas?), the book is, overall, well written and interesting.

Duran explains right off the bat his penchant for fried foods, and even goes so far as to list some of his favorites: fried pickles, fried strawberries, fried olives, etc. As Duran himself writes, “You can fry all of these things. The question is, should you?” In my opinion, you should not, so the enormous amount of fried food in the cookbook was a bit off-putting. Once past the initial grease, however, there are delicious recipes to be found.

While I really do love “chick lit,” I strongly believe that it has two distinct categories: the good and the really, really bad. Unfortunately, the newest novel from Lauren Weisberger ’99, Chasing Harry Winston, falls in the latter category. Yes, Weisberger is a Cornell alumna, so I feel terrible about trashing her work. But let that go to show just how unfortunate the book is, because I am going to trash it anyway.

Combine science fiction with romance and you have Stephanie Meyer’s first adult fiction novel. The Host concentrates on what it means to be human in the wake of a foreign invasion.

We’ve all heard the alien conspirators, the paranoid people who believe that the Earth is under attack and people are being abducted. This novel shows what would happen if those conspiracy nuts were right all along. Not just another extraterrestrial science fiction conundrum, we see the story through the eyes of one of these aliens, forcing a perhaps unwanted sympathy. By constructing this point of view, Meyer turns the violence and animalistic nature of humans into a dualistic package.

Combine science fiction with romance and you have Stephanie Meyer’s first adult fiction novel. The Host focuses on what it means to be human in the wake of a foreign invasion.

We’ve all heard the cries of the conspiracy theorists who believe that the Earth is under attack and people are being abducted. This novel explores what would happen if those conspiracy nuts were right all along. This isn’t just another extraterrestrial sci-fi conundrum — we see the story through the eyes of one of the aliens, forcing a perhaps unwanted sympathy. By constructing such a point of view, Meyer turns the violence and animalistic nature of humans into a dualistic package.