I've read a lot of very dark novels this year. So it was refreshing to encounter two in a row that are light and airy. Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist is about poetry, meter, rhyme, reading poetry, writing poetry & life. This short book is a running monologue of a middle aged, unemployed poet. He makes observations about poetry &, since it's Baker, random things around him & thoughts about life. It's fun, even if you know nothing about poetry, like me. The NYT called Sylvia Brownrigg's Morality Tale "divinely deadpan" & for once a jacket blurb is right on. A troubled woman marries & discovers life is not as expected with two step children & a husband who spirals down into divorce wars & money problems. She works in a stationery store & sort of falls in love with a kind, jolly, Zen-ish envelope salesman. They have lunches, get found out, trouble ensues, she sort of stops loving the man, & demands changes in her marriage. You'll smile.
