Downtown Owl - Chuck Klosterman (2008)

I don't know what possessed me to pick up Downtown Owl for my most recent trip downstate. Though I haven't read Klosterman's nonfiction extensively - the cover of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs makes my skin crawl, even though I rather liked the limited selections I've read. And I instinctively cringe from tales of small town life. So often they end up "heartwarming," or else they try so hard not to be "heartwarming" that they turn positively apocalyptic. Also, I suppose my inner narcissist takes offense at the presentation of narrowness of experience as a near-virtue - does living in Europe as a teenager make me a bad person? And my inner introvert is terrified by the thought of knowing the same 800 people for 70 years.

Regardless, I did pick it up, and I'm glad I did. The story is set in 1983-1984 in very-small-town Owl, North Dakota (Klosterman grew up in ND in a town of 500-some residents). It consists of a description of ordinary life there through the eyes of three rather different residents: Mitch, the relentlessly normal 16-year-old high school quarterback; Julia, recently transplanted from Milwaukee to teach public school social studies; and Horace, 73-year-old widower and member of the local coffee klatch.

Naturally, it's full of other colorful characters, like the reluctant former football star working on his brother's buffalo farm, and the football coach/English teacher with the twin bad habits of giving male students embarrassing nicknames and getting female students pregnant.

The main theme on the minds of all the main characters is common knowledge - the fact that, in a small town, there's so much that "everyone" knows, so much that everyone has "always" known. But what do they know, really? What's the truth? And what does all that common ground really mean for the community? The three central characters look at these questions from the perspective of the kid who doesn't fit in, the newcomer, and the lifer, respectively. As the school principal said, "This is what being alive feels like."

The World According to Bertie - Alexander McCall Smith (2007)

Hilarious for reasons he probably didn't mean.

"Anyway," she said, "I've learned my lesson. From now on I shall look for a very different sort of man."

"One to whom you can talk?" Dominica regretted saying this the moment she spoke, but Antonia appeared not to have taken offense.

"You know that I'm writing a novel about the early Scottish saints," she said. "Well, I shall look for a man who is the modern equivalent of the hero of my book."

Dominica picked up her glass of green ginger wine and glanced at Antonia over the rim. "Are we being practical?" she asked. "Are there any saints out there?"

Antonia met her gaze. "I'm sure there are. It's only a question of finding them."

"And, it will have to be an unmarried saint."

Antonia nodded. "Naturally."

"But where exactly will you find a contemporary saint?" said Dominica. "It's hard enough to meet any half-decent man these days, let alone somebody saintly."

Antonia thought for a moment. Then she said, "Saintly men presumably go to church. I shall find one at St. Giles, perhaps. Or at the Episcopal cathedral over at Palmerston Place. I find episcopalian men rather interesting, don't you?"

Dominica stared at her neighbor. She wondered if she was perhaps not quite feeling herself, if she needed to see somebody. First, there had been the ridiculous affair with Marcus. And now there was this absurd notion that she would meet a man in church. It really was ridiculous, she thought, quite unrealistic. Risible, really.

-The World According to Bertie, Chapter 72