Selena Keller, Ph.D., dreads a tenure-track job, so she answers an Internet ad about careers in the CIA. Will she make it all the way through the training process? Being fluent in Sanskrit helps, but she's a disaster behind the wheel ("Like many New Yorkers, I'd never really learned how to drive") and she needs "three shots of vodka just to board a 747," much less jump out of one. It's as though Bridget Jones were this week's guest star on Alias.
This isn't, however, a slapstick comedy. Rather, it's a fascinating look inside the Agency. There's so much detail about the screening process, right down to the kind of chair that Selena sits on when she takes her polygraph test, that it sometimes reads like nonfiction, although it's a novel. It's also a primer on how spies think: If you can't trust anyone, how do you survive? How do you protect your "asset," the person you are trying to seduce into treason? As Selena tries to learn all this, she finds herself in a kooky romance with her cotrainee Stan, "a pale, fat man with small eyes and very spiky thick red hair."
Loose Lips is funny and smart, a perfect read for the plane or beach. It will tease your brain but not overly tax it. Combing through the various knots of betrayal will hold your attention till the end and make you wish for a sequel. (Random House, $21.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Valuable asset
By Walter Isaacson
Critic's Choice
He was never President, but Benjamin Franklin may have had more influence on our national character than any other Founding Father. That's what Isaacson persuasively argues in this sparkling new biography. Franklin emerges as less a politician than a civic-minded entrepreneur who promoted hard work and thrift, the values on which the American middle class was built.
With a straightforward style, Isaacson, the former managing editor of Time and chairman of CNN (TIME, CNN and PEOPLE are all owned by AOL Time Warner), delves into Franklin's public triumphs, such as his pivotal role in the Constitution, as well as his private setbacks: His only son to survive infancy was illegitimate and a British loyalist, and Franklin spent the last 10 years of his wife's life across the Atlantic from her. (Simon & Schuster, $30)
BOTTOM LINE: Perfect portrait
By Khaled Hosseini
Like Gone with the Wind, this extraordinary first novel locates the personal struggles of everyday people in the terrible sweep of history. A happy child growing up in Afghanistan, Amir overcomes parental indifference and a shocking betrayal, then narrowly escapes during the Soviet invasion of the '80s to become a successful novelist in America—until a specter from the past forces him back to his homeland, now under Taliban rule. Hosseini makes us understand why Amir has no choice but to risk his life. We recognize how much he has lost—the joy of running after kites on streets that now exist only in his memories—and it makes the tragedy of Afghanistan even more profound. (Riverhead, $24.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Grand historical fiction
By Maile Meloy
The Santerres, a family of Catholic Californians, rack up enough misdeeds over half a century to go straight to hell without passing purgatory. But in her first novel Meloy redeems the brood with her deft touch and elegant portrayal of a family's spiritual and emotional crises. The lapses snowball over generations, from a wife's extramarital kiss during the Korean War to kinky underage sex in the 1970s and worse. It's dysfunction verging on soap opera, but Meloy reins it in with astutely drawn characters who pool their faith in love and family. (Scribner, $24)
BOTTOM LINE: Colorful family saga
•Rob Reiner A book called The Complete Idiot's Guide to NASA by Thomas D. Jones and Michael Benson. It's all about how NASA works. The next movie I am doing is going to involve some space travel.
•Jessica Simpson I was reading James Patterson's Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas on the plane and I was literally sobbing. [My husband] Nick [Lachey] was trying to comfort me. It was amazing.
•Mimi Rogers Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Beautifully written, incredibly poetic. It's this amazing [novel] about what seems to be a horrible terrorist incident and the transformative effect music and art can have on everyone.
•Luke Wilson A book about [The Wild Bunch director] Sam Peckinpah called Peckinpah: Portrait in Montage by Garner Simmons. I'm a fan of his movies.
•Albert Brooks Hillary Clinton's book Living History. I think I already know the story, but I'm going to read it anyway.
•Christian Slater My wife gave me a book called The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida. It's a guide book and a self-help, sex-ed book. It's helped me a great deal.
•Soledad O'Brien I'm just finishing Augusten Burroughs's Dry. It's about his drug-and-alcohol rehab.
- Contributors:
- Annette Gallagher Weisman,
- Scott Nybakken,
- Ron Givens,
- Andrea L. Sachs.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
