On "Perfectly Fine" Books

Since I read so much, you might wonder why I don't more often post recommendations of specific books I have just read. The answer is that I only want to recommend books that I am really excited about, and are especially well written, or perhaps intriguing for some other reason. The truth is that although I read reviews before I select books, I still read a lot of books that -- in my humble opinion -- are either not particularly good, or -- more often -- are fine but not exceptional. After all, by definition, outstanding books can only be so against the background of all the "OK" or "perfectly fine" books. Also, of course deciding which books are outstanding is at least partially subjective; some of the examples I list below have been well reviewed. I fully admit that my opinions are only my own, and are perhaps sometimes idiosyncratic. And I often enjoy and learn from these "less than outstanding" books; I am not sorry that I have read them. Today's post is a recognition of books that -- for me -- fall into the "absolutely fine, even quite good, but nothing to post a glowing blog entry about" category. Some such books that I have read in the past few weeks are Louise Erdrich's "Shadow Tag"; Ursula Hegi's "The Worst Thing I Have Done"; Jonathan Tropper's "This Is Where I Leave You"; Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's "One Amazing Thing"; and Marisha Chamberlain's "The Rose Variations." Now you know why I haven't posted about any of these.