Book reviews: Intersex, Beach Love, and Comedy

The Last Summer (of You and Me) by Ann Brashares

This is one of those quick, easy beach reads. This is Brashares first novel after the Traveling Pants series. She writes the story of two sisters, Alice and Riley, and their childhood friend Paul. The three of them grew up spending summers together on Fire Island, and this is Paul's first summer there in 3 years. Needless to say there is love, tragedy and reconciliation involved without much mental challenge.




This Is A Book by Demetri Martin

Demetri Martin's comedy central special is hilarious. His book is moderately so. I actually heard about it on Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me where they interview him and talk about his book, in which Martin has written the world's longest palindrome. He also writes some funny comics and other such stories. It wasn't as funny as I had hoped, but I did chuckle a few times.





Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides


I picked up this book from my mom's bookshelf about a year ago. She had never read it and I had no idea what it was about. In the midst of our move I decided I needed to read some books I had so I could get ride of them. Hence I ended up reading this one. The story is about Cal/Callie, a hermaphrodite (or interest as the books refers to it) of Greek heritage. Written as a memoir, Cal writes about his transformation from being raised as a female to choosing to live as a male and interweaves his Greek ancestry. There are some definite risqué parts but it is an interesting story and is a really compelling read.