If you want to go for nonfiction, there's Among Friends, M.F.K. Fisher's memoir about growing up as a non-Quaker in Quaker Whittier, Calif. It can be seen as somewhat unflattering to Quakers, although her main point is what it's like to live outside of a closed society.

(thinks about making a joke about the Whittier Quake of 1987)

I'm reading World War Z and am very impressed. Like the best zombie movies, it's a socio-political commentary about the world now, rather than a slasher shriekfest. Some of the stories get repetitive, but it is rather brilliant.

Hey, Moby Dick has Quakers.

(thinks about making a joke about the Whittier Quake of 1987)

Oh god. The very reason I now live on the right coast. shudderpun intended

I finally got my copy of Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? Man, I knew this book was going to be good but I wasn't prepared for how good. I'm only on page fifteen and I've already laughed and cried and laughed again. I hope I can save some for Wednesday's plane ride.

Thanks for the rec, Aimee. Just picked up the first two books in that Soccer mom series, along with Under the Rose by Diana Peterfreund (the second book in a series about a girl in an Ivy League secret society - the first one was addictive as all get out) and Can you Keep a Secret by Sophie Kinsella. It was a very girly day, but I'm all right with that.

I'm also working my way through the Galactic Milieu Trilogy by Julian May for at least the tenth time. Has anybody else read these books? I think they are absolutely amazing.

The Galactic Milieu Trilogy is definitely a guilty pleasure for me. I liked the Pleiocene Exile too, but I love the GM. Psychic Kennedys in Space!

Hi, caught up now. And have added several books to my Amazon wish list as a result!!!

I gave up, for now, on finding "Quaker fiction." There doesn't seem to be much out there, and the few I found were all historical fiction (which I love, but it isn't what I wanted). I had decided on The Peaceable Kingdom by Jan de Hartog, but when I went to order it from half.com, I discovered its 896 pages long. The book club would murder me. So I ordered it anyway, and I'll read it, but I chose The Dirty Girls Social Club by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. I read it last month and enjoyed it very much. I think they'll like it.

All I've ever read by Nabokov is Lolita. Apparently, I need to check out some others.

Also, never read Moby Dick. I missed a lot of the classics, unless they were assigned in school, because as a kid, I didn't live near a library, and therefore read literally whatever I could beg borrow and steal from friends and family. Not many classics were included.

Raq--I thought World War Z was excellent. Ended up writing a big post about it on my LJ, about how it was and wasn't like a lot of other apocalyptic fiction, here: [link]

The author must have been a Buffy fan. It's light, it's fluffy, it's fast reading.

I haven't read that one, but I've read her other series -- The Givenchy Code, The Manolo Matrix, The Prada Paradox -- which I liked a lot.