We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
(2) Sea Level
Amy Tan doesn't mess around with five-dollar words and is uninterested in burying us beneath her intellect. She lets the heavy symbolic stuff hum under the surface while sticking to the basic story of a girl who's good at chess and has a mom who means well but drives her crazy. Tan is funny, too, and while this isn't a hilarious story, she finds all kinds of ways to make us chuckle at her characters' occasional foolishness. That means "Rules of the Game" is a breeze to read, even for someone as busy as Waverly.