Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

This book is epic, on the scale of something like Moby Dick or War and Peace or Ulysses. Various sub-plots, which involve the Ennet Drug Recovery House and the Enfield Tennis Academy (whose founder, James O. Incandenza, but known to his family as Himself, committed suicide by sticking his head in a microwave oven, after completing an entertainment known as Infinite Jest so compelling that it causes viewers to stop thinking about anything else while they view it), proliferate throughout the book. The version of the near future presented in the book is fun to entangle, bit by bit, so I'll avoid saying too much about the plot. I think it is fair to say that the novel presses on the conjunction of entertainment, pleasure, and communication, and examines how we connect with those around us. It's a bit of a challenge to get all the way through, but it repays the effort put into it.

The Shining by Stephen King

This book is every bit as creepy as the Stanley Kubrick film version, although the differences (which are subtle at first) completely change the character of Jack and the nature of the story's ending. Although the book is long, and the creepiness builds much more slowly than it does in the film, at the end you can hardly stand to put it down--and I don't think I could have read it while I was entirely alone in the house. In fact, I'd recommend summer as an ideal season to read this book. The supernatural is much more pronounced, and much more in control in the book than the movie, but the book still manages to think harder about the questions of addiction and anger that fuel Jack Torrence's descent, and about family more generally--in the movie I never could quite understand how Wendy, whiny and useless though she is, could put up with such a creep of a husband--but the book shows both Jack and Wendy to be much more sympathetic, realistic, and nuanced characters. All in all, read this book--but only during the day!