Someone asked me today what books I could recommend, because she's in a book club. I was at a loss. I do some sort of complicated semiconscious semiotic analysis in the bookstore if I haven't read a review or if I don't know the author, but mostly I'm sticking to fairly known quantities: the respectfully reviewed or the long-dead. I couldn't even tell her what I'd read recently. Books on autism? Eleanor Glyn (the one that featured a Russian princess teaching a young Englishman "life lessons" while reclining on tiger skins or picking gentians on Lake Lucerne)? A biography of Alva Myrdal?