rules of civility

Looking for an entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable book? I suggest you pick up Amor Towles' Rules of Civility. I finished it in two days even at my slower than slow current reading pace. When I reached the epilogue I wanted to shout at the pages "wait, wait, wait!" "I'm not done with you!" "Don't end it so fast, buddy, tell me more!"

With characters driven by money, love and lust, and champagne, the story evokes F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton. Set in New York City at the end of the depression, Rules of Civility follows Katey Kontent through jazz clubs and the 21 Club, from the Lower East Side to the Hamptons as she meets a host of characters - elegantly dressed upper crusters, fast-talking working girls, playboys with pocketfuls of cash, aspiring artists, and snotty debutantes - who change and shape the direction of her life. Unlike Fitzgerald's boring, insipid Daisy Buchanan or Wharton's tragic, scheming Lily Bart, Towles' Katey Kontent is a witty, well-read young woman, a fast-talker herself, who I couldn't help but adore.