Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samantha Schweblin

 

Saw this review in the WPost (probably). Strange, eerie, pathologically deep examinations of characters and plotlines that sometimes feels like they're straight outa Stephen King fiction. 

Wasn't digging it, but just read and liked her long story ("The Woman from Atlántida") about two young sisters "rescuing" an alcoholic reclusive poet living in the beach resort town they're visiting.

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt

 Good but the usual Greenblatt treatment - take a subject about whom almost nothing is factually known, and build out the social/intellectual/historical era around the black hole of the character's existence, and posit how he must have participated.

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford

 

I remember as a child reading a young person's biography of Beethoven - or at least reading the first chapters, where a six year old Ludwig races home through the village streets humming the melody of a composition he's going to give to his mother at her nameday celebration.

This biography is good if stuffed with cultural history of Bonn and Vienna, the other German states and Europe at the end of the 18th century. Lots going on. Meanwhile, Beehoven, preternatually gifted, sullen, isolated, productive, does exactly what he needs to do.

From a junior Mozart/Hayden imitator, he creates incredible music that builds on their example, and then towers over it.

The Angel of Rome and Other Stories by Jess Walter

 

Good if minor stuff. Seems like he's imitating Richard Russo sometimes though, but without Russo's snarky undertones.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

 

I'm late to this party, but find the novel clarifyingly beautiful...

... if long and somewhat tediously overwritten. I watched the 2007 BBC series with Ruth Wilson instead. Quite good!

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima

 

Finally got around to this. Found it tedious and overstuffed with internal psychologizing.