Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories by Thomas McGuane

The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis

Tess of the D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Re-reading, as I now have a daughter dating a guy named Alex.  Whole new, horrifying layer to the narrative.

Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison

The Compleet Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans & Ronald Searle

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

Okay so far but no GOON SQUAD.

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

didn't finish it.  couldn't care enough.

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa

You're closer to reality in a whorehouse than in a convent.

In this country a person who doesn't fuck himself up fucks up other people.

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

... because of his association with Edward Said, who of course before he died wrote an essay on late style-- the notion that an awareness of one's life, and therefore one's artistic contribution coming to an end affects an artist's style, whether by imbuing it with a sense of resolution and serenity or with intransigence, difficulty, contradiction.

Crane: an artist is nothing but a powerful memory that can move itself at will through certain experiences sideways.

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

Part two in his trilogy.  I took a LOT of time off between reading the first monumental installment, THE PASSAGE.  And it was nice returning to the time of the Virals.

A Drop of Patience by William Melvin Kelley

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

candles turned turtle ("turned upside down?")

A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelley

"he's serious as a man sitting naked in a barrel of razor blades"

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Terrific dense 1989 novel from my favorites author of 1979.  Didn't catch this one first time around, but it's miles ahead of GARP.

The ALL-CAPS voice of Owen Meany, while at first worrisome because, you know, all caps, is a singular achievement.  Indelible character drawn mainly through his voice. Owen is also a prime mover in the passive life of his best friend Johnny Wheelwright, who quietly narrates the novel.

Weaknesses: the "present-tense" narration of the narrator's current spiritual life as an expatriate in Canada drags and drags on.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

GREAT graphic novel.  Like the show OCR too, but it seems to be just the sheen of the novel without the grit. Going to see it March 10.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

The genre says it all: Domestic Fiction.

Everything about it is neat: the cunning mirror-image plot, the finely-drawn characters, fine without ever spilling over into memorable.  a little too neat for my taste.

Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

Working my way back through Johnson's work after his lamentable early death, I realize I'm fonder of the later stuff than the earlier.  This is earlier, the much-fawned-over druggie tales.  The imagery doesn't seems as stunning to me as it seems genre-driven: the surreal-poetry-image, the disconnected narratives, the violence everywhere calmly announced.

I think TREE OF SMOKE is his masterpiece, a real novel, deep.

The World According to Garp by John Irving

Difficult to re-read this now and not know now what I didn't know then.  The cultural moment of Garp -- Irving's sudden celebrity, the big movie they made out of it with big stars (must watch it again) -- overshadows the book.

The whole second half I had largely forgotten.  But the first half is vivid.  There is something about Irving's phrasing that is always memorable even if his characters seem more one-dimensional than real.  The voice is something, though.