Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

 

Surprised to have never read this. A racial parable as whodunit. Amazing.

History of the Rain by Niall Williams

 

More prose gorgeousness. Reminds me of THE TIN DRUM in its playful, pointed family-history-as-myth-and-larger-history style.

Two-thirds of the way through, it's still a fantastic book - but Williams prose style is laborious with narrative - the language is so rich, the back-story and motifs are so intricate and historical - so it's a bit of an ordeal too.

Definitely echoes (and references) A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, too.

Finally finished and was sad to do so, even with it taking me two long weeks (at least) to finish it. Williams' sure hand and funny, sad mind are a marvel. The story of a family told via the invalid daughter who uses the father's extensive literary library to move along the tale.

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me by Richard Farina

 

Fantastic lost classic of the 1960s. Farina takes on the end of the Beats era and the coming of the hippies. 

To say it's ahead of its time is to understate the matter completely. Farina's prose is ur-Pynchonian. The inappropriateness of the sexual posturing is beside the point. Complete versimilitude of the unhinged, drug-addled young ambitious tormented mind.

Still plodding through this. By the middle some of the gorgeous language surprise of the beginning has begun to wane - the plot itself is a little limp and undergrad hi-jinks ish.

This Is Happiness by Niall Williams

 

Crazy beautiful prose. Has to be read slowly, almost word by word. 

Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick

 

More PKD. He writes sci-fi, but is really interesting in how he addresses human relationships and psychological health under that genre.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

 

Great - but prefer its companion book below.

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

 

A beautiful book - "companion" to LIFE AFTER LIFE, apparently, if not exactly a sequl. Must read LIFE then.

WWII bomber pilot Teddy moves back and forth in time as he dies in a nursing home.

Atkinson's kindness toward her characters is shockingly effective - there is a deep richness of the cast because of this empathy.

3 By Irving by John Irving

 

Re-reading SETTING FREE THE BEARS after a million years: I may have read it in high school? None of it rings a bell. Pretty absorbing if overstuffed with physical landscape/sky/weather descriptions. But many of the picaresque Irving qualities are already in place. He published it when he was 26, after a couple years of writing. So good on him! The other two early novels included here are shorter, I'll try to read them again too.

The Stories of Jane Gardam

 

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

 

Another winner. Postwar 1920s London, a night-club empress and her six children navigate a world of crime and wealth, a sub-plot of several young women making their way to the big city, and a detective investigating the night club corruption scene and disappearing women.

Wouldn't have thought it was my cup of tea, but Atkinson is just a delicious storyteller, un putdownable.

DEath at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

 

First of Atkinson's mysteries I've read, first 100 pages well written as always but I'm mystified at the three strands interconnection so far.

"A Jackson Brodie Book" - for the recurring detective at the center of the case.

The Love You Make: An Insider's Story of the Beatles by Peter Brown and Steven Gaines

 

Meh. No huge insights afte last year's deep dive. Obsession with Brian Epstein which does not move me. The music is the very last thing considered here.

I remember it as being an "important book at the time" as Peter Brown was an insider and first to share widely about the Beatles. But it comes off as tacky now - with all of his "revealed for the first time here" and "said to me, Peter Brown, the author" posturing.

And again, the lack of insight about the music is appalling. Though the Beatles inventing the rock music industry (among everything else they invented) and the business/industry side takes up an oversized space here.

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

 

Marvellously imagined retelling of the story of Agammemnon and Clytemenstra, from the viewpoint of Cassandra's slave.

Thoroughly modern voice and attitude, with no "classicalisms" used to make it seem like Ancient Greece.

A Long Way from Verona by Jane Gardam

 

A 12 year-old girl knows she is different and somewhat exceptional and wants to be a writer. Amazing as usual.

The Hollow Land by Jane Gardam

 

Charming "children's book" that is much more sophisticated than that term implies. A London "town" family has a summer/vacation house in the Lake District, under the Cumbrian fells. They begin a long-lasting relationship with a "country" family. Beautiful landscape after beautiful landscape: abandoned silver mines, fields of icicles, menancing sheep and sympathetic gypsies. Another stunner from Gardam, who never wrote a bad or lesser book.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

 

Novel where one story (the birth and life of the narrator (in mid-20th-century) takes places in the chapters and her relatives' back-story appears in the lengthy footnotes (which are often as long, or longer than the chapters.)

Another winner from Atkinson. I'm totally impressed by her - and had read nothing before the short stories last month.

The backstory in footnotes seems tedious at first, and confusing, but soon takes over in momentum, as the narrator's mother's generation and grandmother's generation are pulverized by the World Wars.

Unhappiness could be relied upon in a way that happiness never could. [86]

Ancestral Vices by Tom Sharpe

 

The usual hi-jinks, but at a slower (longer) pace. Malevolent evil old English lord hires a strident ally of the working class, a college professor, to write a tell-all history of the lord's equally evil relatives and ancestors. So far there's been a "suckling pig" entree at dinner that was created out of a normal size pig that was cut into three pieces, two of which were sewn back together to create the shorter meal. Funny but effortful.

I did like it in the end but the pace was slow. The accidental death of a dwarf in front of a tractor, and his slow-witted buxom wife, complicate the professor's story when he boards with them. The usual clueless police appear.

Sharpe really does remind me of Joe Orton. I find Sharpe addictive and but not always that keen.

Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins

 

Sorta remember reading this when it came out. Unimpressed so far. Too many half-funny jokes dampen the effect of some good sentences.

Normal Rules Don't Apply: Stories by Kate Atkinson

 

Loving this so far. My first Atkinson experience. Funny and twist-y.

Really like the threaded characters who appear in several stories, Franklin and Connie, whose doomed relationship starts with Franklin winning a bundle off via talking horse at a racetrack, and ends with her framing him for murder.

"Spellbound" - the fairy tale that arrives roaringly back in the present day

Less successful was the Toy-Story lite tale, "Existential Marginalization."

 

I am braving my paternal grandmother's favorite author out of utter boredom, having indeed now possibly come to the very last door of literature.

That said, enjoying it so far - 15 year old French schoolgirl full of feeling and audacity. Much unlike my Nana.

Update: only got 30 pages into "Claudine at School" and quit.