Patty Marx

Patty Marx, a former staff writer for Saturday Night Live, has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Vogue, among other magazines.

The Great Shakespeare Forgery by Bernard Grebanier (out of print). The true story of a teenage boy in 17th-century England who so desperately wants to earn the love of his father, a collector of Shakespeare memorabilia, that he forges a series of Shakespeare documents, hoodwinking many of the Shakespeare scholars of the time. A heartbreaking story about a father and son.

Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (Modern Library, $19). This droll farce about a woman who is so perfectly beautiful that she causes hordes of Oxford undergraduates to vow they will hurl themselves suicidally into the Thames pokes fun at the conventions of love and romance. Warning: Can be excessively arch. If you’re someone who minds being addressed as “Sensitive reader,” stay away.

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The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien (Dalkey Archive Press, $13). This slim book (my favorite kind of book) is filled with off-the-wall philosophical/comical discourses about atomic physics, existence, and bicycles.

Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer (North Point Press, $13). A rambling, pensive book about the author’s writer’s block while trying to write a book about his hero, D.H. Lawrence. In the process of not writing about Lawrence, Dyer travels around the world, providing insights and funny aperçus along the way about life, and even a few about D.H. Lawrence.

Remembrance of Things Past

The American Heritage Dictionary