
What’s the most serious book you’ve read recently?
This is kind of a tough one for me because all the "serious" books that I read, while they have serious themes and stories, actually have a lot of humor in them. The two books that come to mind are Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical RENT by Anthony Rapp and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Without You focuses on Anthony's life and how he deals with his mother's cancer, diagnosis to death. Persepolis is about Marjane's life in wartown Iran where people were dying or disappearing was just an everyday occurance.
But, while both these memoirs are about very serious things, they both have enough sarcasm, wit, and humor to make them just a bit funny too. That helps because when you get done reading them, you can think "wow what a moving book!" rather than "wow, I could use some Prozac now..." I guess that I just need my serious with a good dose of humor!