‘Amateur Barbarians’ (Books)

With the bills piling up and the specter of layoffs at work, graduate school has never been more appealing. Chuck all the grown-up decisions and compromises and burrow into distant, interior landscapes too remote for questions about gas prices and 401K plans. Answer just the questions you choose to hear, without having to commute.

Maybe, though, the grad student spending the better part of his day in the coffee shop is fantasizing about stealing off with the harried suburbanite’s minivan, watching the latest procedural crime drama on TV, packing the kids’ lunches and setting the alarm to do it all again the same way the next day.

This is the “Freaky Friday” premise of Robert Cohen’s new novel, “Amateur Barbarians.” Instead of parental and teenage angst, Cohen gives two middle-aged men glimpses of the lives they each had long avoided.

‘The State: The Complete Series’ (DVD)

When a sketch comedy show pops up on DVD a good 16 years after it first aired, there’s bound to be concern over how well the material has aged. But cult sensation “The State” has some advantages other sketch shows do not.

On its own terms, it’s aged pretty well. Like “The Kids in the Hall” before it and “Mr. Show” slightly later on, “The State” played on the respective comedic and storytelling strengths of its cast instead of any need to riff on current events.

It was subversively funny then, and it still mostly works now in spite of how much growing up televised comedy has done in the interim.

But unless you’re already intimately familiar with the show, that’s only half the story. “The State” also is a hotbed of talent done good, including the threesome behind “Stella” (Michael Ian Black, David Wain, Michael Showalter), much of the “Reno 911!” brain trust (Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant, Kerri Kenney) and a few other names and faces fans of cult comedy likely know (Ken Marino, Joe Lo Truglio, Kevin Allison). Watching all these people work together so early in their careers is a total treat. That their work remains funny all this time later merely is a really nice bonus.

Our Lady Peace (CD)

Our Lady Peace maintains its status as one of Canada’s strongest bands with the release of its seventh studio disc, “Burn, Burn.”

The Toronto four-piece made a splash south of the border in the 1990s with their first two efforts — ’94’s “Naveed” and ’97’s “Clumsy” — but have since fallen into relative obscurity in the States.

That may not change too much with “Burn Burn,” but the band’s first disc since 2005’s “Healthy in Paranoid Times” is a nice return to the soaring rock it made its name on.

Lead singer Raine Maida sounds more mature than ever — mostly forsaking his once eye-popping falsetto — and brings a poetic touch to his tales of everyday struggle and hope, and guitarist Steve Mazur offers plenty of fine lead work throughout.

They kick off with the single “All You Did Was Save My Life,” a straightforward radio rocker with a soaring chorus, before sliding into the hope-filled “Dreamland.”

Often praised for their energetic live show, OLP keeps the anthemic tracks flowing with “The End Is Where We Begin,” “Escape Artist,” “Refuge” and the blistering “White Flags.”