Sometimes you just want to escape. You don't want to read what the kids are reading. You don't want to read what you SHOULD be reading. You just want a vessel to escape in.
I highly recommend Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Gruen has created two settings in her novel that completely envelope the reader--a nursing home and a 1930s circus. She switches between the two as the circus arrives in town, sparking the narrator, Jacob Jankowski, to remember his days with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. As the reader soon learns, the show is hardly spectacular behind the scenes.
I'm not a huge fan of the circus. I went when I was a kid. Loved it. But, now that I'm older and oh-so-much-wiser, I can see the circus for what it is--large animals in tiny crates, traveling on cramped trains and trucks, only to be poked and prodded into showing off for a crowd of cheering humans. I think Jacob would have shared my views.
Be warned--there's a twist in the novel. I didn't think a novel with a prologue could throw me a curveball, but it did. I couldn't put this one down. I loved it from page one and was totally enthralled in the picture that Gruen painted of a Depression-era circus. Great, great read!
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