I recently finished The Waterfront by Philip Lopate. This can be added with Rats to the list of books that I've read that seem to be about one thing but end up being more about the history of New York City. This is not an inherently bad thing, actually. I had never read Lopate before, a well-known essayist, and while his style was occasionally cloying, it was a somewhat dense, yet ultimately fulfilling read.
While flying home for Christmas, I plowed through Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett. It's basically the story of a long and difficult friendship between the author and another writer, Lucy Grealy, the author of Autobiography of a Face (which I'm reading now, actually). It's a friendship that seems to sustain each of them through difficult times, but also is a source of stress and angst as well. Grealy was clearly a challenging person with whom to be friends. It's a portrait of female friendship, but a pretty dysfunctional friendship in my opinion. It's so all-encompassing, it can't quite be healthy. Therefore, the book had a sort of can't-look-away quality to it, because it was hard to imagine anything other than a less-than-perfect end to their friendship, one that could easily be described as co-dependent.
That said, it's a quick, powerful read, and is incredibly interesting for an entirely separate reason, namely that it really paints a picture of what it's like to be a twentysomething aspiring writer, as both Grealy and Patchett were during the first half of the narrative. I recommend the book to anyone interested in friendship--it may not be the most authoritative or heartwarming tome, but it is never boring.