(Note: some of these are borderline non-fiction, or non-fiction disguised as fiction, or non-fiction written by authors who also write fiction, and so on; for simplicity I've lumped them together in this section. Bolded books are even more highly recommended than the rest. Also, just to maintain a modicum of inconsistency, a few of the books are actually dis-recommended.)
I kept expecting it to get better. What kept me going was the excellent writing and the ascerbic wit (sometimes exceedingly dry and subtle) underlying the entire narrative. (And the nested stories.) The book came to me used; I’m not sure I would have sought it out new.
Simply a phenomenal writer, Dino Buzzati has a weirdly
twisted imagination that takes you places you don't really expect to go.
Better yet, he sometimes takes you to places you don't really want to
go and makes the experience interesting. Of these four books, A Love
Affair is the only novel; the rest are collections of short stories.
In some ways, A Love Affair is less adventurous than the other
books, but it is still quite good. Catastrophe deals with, as you
might guess from the title, catastrophes, but they're catastrophes of
quite unexpected natures. Walls of buildings collapse, beloved pets go
berserk, bizarre monsters lurk. There is also The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily, a children's book by Buzzati.
Another random picking that turned out well.
Read a paper I wrote many moons ago that's based on If on a winter's night….
Decent. A fiery start winds down as the book draws on
and the plot thickens. The thickening is irregular, like lumpy gravy,
but the story is relatively fast-paced and exciting.
Having
read Bret Ellis' Glamorama first, the thing that immediately
struck me upon reading Americana was how much it reminded me
of Glamorama. But it should really be the other way around.
my least favorite DeLillo book,
and not a place to start if you haven’t read other DeLillo. Still
enjoyable, though.
there
are few occasions when I expect to find myself reading a book about
(or at least involving) football. This is one of them.
Picked off the shelf mostly at random Running Dog got me hooked on DeLillo.
an interesting, low-key murder mystery of a slightly
unusual sort. Set in Brazil. A curious resolution.
well above and beyond average. A rather unexpected
kind of suspense/mystery book. Atypically good. But not atypically enough
to become a must-read.
epic, sweeping, fantastic
sentences that you would never expect to
read and combinations of words that you would never, ever expect to
see. Exquisitely fast and fun; brash.
short stories, some of them intriguing,
others, not so much. I liked the first half (give or take) much more
than the tail-end of the book.
Some of the elements Palahniuk uses are kind of repetitive,
but they're also wildly absurd so that even when they start to get monotonous,
they don't really get monotonous. Lullaby is my favorite
(so far) and Survivor is my least favorite, but they're all basically
enjoyable books, as long as you enjoy reading books constructed out of
strange and twisted plots.
I found the narration not too gimmicky
(nor too distracting), but others might disagree. Read the first three
pages (or so) and you should more or less be able to figure out which
camp you belong to.
Awful! Maybe there's an inherent tolerance to how many times you can read a book by Tom Robbins without his style beginning to grate on you… and then again, maybe Jitterbug Perfume is simply horrible. I'm guessing it's the latter, and I certainly wouldn't recommend starting out with Tom Robbins by reading JP.
disappointing, given the spectacular
Confederacy of Dunces experience. To be able to put things into context,
however, you should know that Toole wrote Neon Bible at the age of sixteen.
For this, NB is extraordinary. It’s a short, quick read, and mildly
entertaining at that. Not something to seek out at the far corners of
the globe, but a nice read in the dentist’s waiting room.
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A very limited selection of NON FICTION reads
a collection of essays (essentially) written by different
authors, it’s only reasonable that some of these pieces are more
interesting than others. At times academic and dry, there are still
numerous nuggets of wisdom in this green-covered book.
principles by which we might be expected to survive;
read it and think. Some heavier economics, but with elegant explanations.
extremely readable. One person’s attempt
to piece together a sustainable relationship between humans and the
earth. Earnest.
immensely entertaining autobiographical short
stories. Very worthwhile.
While taken from experiences in the late 1980s
and very early 90s, this book remains highly relevant to the state of
highly unequal education in the US. Kozol isn’t a fantastic writer,
but he has devastating insight and an eye for poignance.
an impulsively anti-authoritarian take on property and
the lines that draw it. Traces a fascinating history with entertaining
and sometimes troublesome vignettes. Rambling and illuminating.
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