In Roth, we have a great American writer, and also a polarizing one. As one of the judges for the Man Booker International prize in 2011, Carmen Callil withdrew from the panel over the decision to award Roth the prize. Most of the debate surrounding his work involves questions about his greatness and his place in history, but it is also a debate over what some read as misogyny and self-loathing. Or is that insight into the human condition? There’s no shortage of fascinating and critical discussion fodder.

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Roxane's top 10:

1. “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” by Ayana Mathis
2. “How Should a Person Be” by Sheila Heti
3. “Battleborn” by Claire Vaye Watkins
4. “Beautiful Ruins” by Jess Walter
5. “I Am a Magical Teenage Princess” by Luke Geddes
6. “NW” by Zadie Smith
7. “The Round House” by Louise Erdrich
8. “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn
9. “Forgotten Country” by Catherine Chung
10. “How to Get Into the Twin Palms” by Karolina Waclawiak

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I have to say: Harris’ thinking seems not much better than John Sununu suggesting Colin Powell endorsed Obama because they're both black; it’s a strange notion that political support should demand so little. And it's a problematic argument, that the decisions of black intellectuals and voters about whom we support and how, are always grounded in race. This implies that we consider race before we consider anything else. This implies that we think with the color of our skin and the cultures from which we rise and above all else, so desperate must we be for scraps from the political table.

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Saul turns up at David Estes' house to show him the video of Brody. Estes tries to grapple with this new complication. They decide to put a full surveillance team on Brody, to try and smoke out his handler. Saul suggests running the operation off campus, with outsiders and, of course, Carrie. Estes approves but is sending Saul “a guy” to run the operation. Estes can't believe Carrie "called it” — but of course we can. Time to exhale a sigh of relief as he states the obvious, a skill Estes has honed quite nicely since we’ve gotten to know him.

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In the Beirut airport, Saul is taken to a back room, his diplomatic papers providing him no immunity from a search of his briefcase. They ask if he’s Jewish, a loaded question. Saul tells them he’s “American.” The soldiers rifle through his bag and locate the computer chip. The official pockets it, and I can’t help worrying that Saul’s proof Carrie isn’t crazy has just fallen into enemy hands — especially when he warns Saul, to “never come back to Lebanon.” But wave of relief! On the plane, Saul removes a chip hidden in the locking mechanism of his briefcase. Spies—they are so clever.

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The title of this episode is called “Beirut Is Back,” but it could have just as easily be called, “Carrie Is Back” because we see her on top of her game, lucid, sharp and ready to get the job done. We’re in Beirut as the morning call to prayer sounds throughout the city. In a mosque, women pray, and among them, Fatima Ali, Carrie’s CIA asset, who is the first wife of Hezbolla district commander Abbas Ali. Outside of the mosque, Carrie is there to greet Fatima who wants to know if the $5 million reward for Abu Nazir is still on offer — there are bills to pay, you know. She also has other requests: passage to the United States, which is always an interesting prospect, this idea of the United States as a promised land, even in this day and age. Carrie assures her safety, so Ali gives up the goods: Nazir is meeting her husband the next day in Beirut. The CIA can kill them both, Ali says blithely. Marriage is complicated.

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The second season opens with Carrie convalescing at home, under the care of her shrink sister Maggie, living with her father, and teaching ESL classes to Middle Eastern students to keep busy. She is desperately trying to suppress the pangs of yearning for her former life — the one she loved even though it drove her mad, even though she was betrayed. But she is still recovering from her breakdown, vulnerable: It won’t take much to lure her back in. And indeed she will be tempted.

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Sohn and Tropper have also played interesting roles in debates over gender and fiction -- and whether fiction on similar topics by male and female writers receives a different reception from critics. "Would I like to be taken at least as seriously as a Jonathan Tropper or a Nick Hornby? Absolutely," said Jennifer Weiner to the Huffington Post, in the interview that sparked "Franzenfreude."

Sohn, meanwhile, wrote one of the more talked-about essays of the summer -- "The 40 Year Reversion" on the Awl -- about a group of New York friends with marriages and kids who have slipped back into their 20-something ways of drinking, drugging and hooking up with other people.

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Watkins was raised in the desert, spent most of her life there, and grew up hearing the stories about the people and places that sprung up out of the dry earth. Then she went to school to learn how to write those stories, to bring them out of the desert landscape.

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Even after she arrives in California, Elsa, now Laura, seems to be in constant search of waiting arms to step into. That constancy of that desire is the emotional core that drives this novel. The prose is crisp and at times, the way Straub describes Hollywood is reminiscent of Joan Didion. Straub has clearly done her research and captures mid-century Hollywood in ways that reveal a great deal of care and attention to detail.

"Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures" is not without its flaws. The title is quite literal and the novel spans Laura née Elsa’s entire life. At times, the pacing feels off, particularly toward the end of the book and some of the plot twists are too convenient, and too easily reached. The trajectory of the starlet discovered by the older producer, who has a resurgent career after fading from the public eye is one we’ve seen before.

While I truly enjoyed the novel, the details rendered so intimately, the sense of time and place Straub captures effortlessly, and the ease of the narration, I wanted more complexity, particularly in understanding the sacrifices Lamont had to make to be a wife, mother, and actress in an industry that demands a great deal from women. I wanted to see more of an exploration of this erasure of the self and how it affected Laura. I wanted a clearer sense of this threat of fracture that is implied throughout the novel but not exploited as much as it could be. I understood Laura Lamont’s outer life but wanted to know more, ultimately, about Laura Lamont’s inner life in pictures.

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Lehrer’s self-plagiarism sparked a heated conversation. He was so bright, so talented, so creative. How could a man with a mind like his self-plagiarize? Was he self-destructive? Was he succumbing to the pressure? Pundits came up with any number of answers to try and make sense of what was, at the time, a misstep -- but certainly one from which a good journalist can recover. There are, after all, worse things than a writer recycling content he has written.

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I go to the movies all the time. I see everything. I love sitting in the theater, the air reeking of popcorn and sugar. I love the endless reel of trailers and the way the theater darkens before the movie starts. Even when a movie is bad, it is so, so good. Most of us go to the movies with some regularity, and that's why the massacre, for that is what it is, in Aurora, Colo., might resonate with us more than other tragedies. It could have been us, sitting in the darkened theater, waiting for "The Dark Knight" to rise. It could have been us thinking this was some kind of elaborate premiere stunt, when a man threw a smoke bomb into the theater. It could have been us screaming and choking on smoke and trying to breathe through the stench of blood and gunpowder as we realized that this was not a movie, not at all, and that at any moment, a bullet could tear through the tender flesh of our bodies. These kinds of massacres are an uncomfortable reminder that it could always be us, no matter where we are, no matter who we are.

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On Jan. 28, 1986, we watched the Challenger lift off in science class and it was a really big deal to have our traditional class activities set aside. Our science teacher was particularly excited because Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from New Hampshire, was one of the seven astronauts onboard. The mysteries of outer space felt a little more within his reach that day.

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Outside the courthouse, however, there was a different kind of spectacle. A crowd had gathered. News crews and well-groomed newscasters stood at the ready beneath bright, shining Friday Night Lights. The proceedings had the air of a football game, a carnival, a celebration of … well, something. If the courtroom was quiet and respectful as the verdict was read, outside it was bedlam. An outsize cheer went up; the crowd roared. The Washington Post described it as an unmistakable sound: "It was the cheer you hear at a football game when a team scores the winning touchdown."

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Franzen’s A Great American Writer and all but I don’t give a much of a damn about his opinions on anything (see: Edith Wharton obvi). Or I do. Is it really surprising that Franzen doesn’t care for Facebook or Twitter? His overall comportment does not suggest an affinity for the levity of social networking. I can’t really say I love Facebook, myself. It has become increasingly hard to make sense of the interface and I keep getting invited to parties and readings in Bali and Temecula and I don’t live in those places, so the experience is, at best, fragmented. At the same time, I don’t need to proselytize my dislike unless I’m on Twitter. Who cares? My opinion doesn’t matter nor does Franzen’s, though he is Very Fancy, so in the calculus of mattering, his irrelevant opinion is less irrelevant than mine. Math.

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It is rather difficult to have a reasonable, rational conversation about matters of (in)equity, whether we’re discussing race, gender or sexuality. These issues are the kind where we are so deeply entrenched in our positions we can’t or won’t consider other viewpoints. When someone like Jennifer Weiner points out an inequity in, say, the media coverage of male and female writers, there’s always going to be (and rightly s0) an alternative perspective, but then there’s also going to be someone who will say, “Such is not the case with me, so you must be wrong.” Sometimes, it would be nice to be able to say, “There is a problem that demands attention,” without being shouted down, condescended to, derided or ignored.

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