Four books that will make you grateful you are alive now

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Melissa Albert highlighted four books that will make you glad you are alive now (and not in the past or the future). One entry on the list:

The Tenth of December, by George Saunders

A handful of stories in Saunders’ latest brilliant collection take place in an unspecified corporate future, where convicts are farmed out as test subjects to prescription drug companies, and middle-class bliss is incomplete without a “Semplica Girl” hanging over your front lawn—a tethered girl from a third-world country, transformed into a decorative element for the American rich. The collection’s penultimate tale, “My Chivalric Fiasco,” offers an ideal Saundersy blend of science fiction and botched heroism, following a medieval theme park employee who, after ingesting a drug that makes its users fancy themselves chivalrous knights, attempts to rescue a fellow park employee and sexual assault victim who doesn’t want to be saved.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue