Bookshelf 4

Of course I started this, only to never update. But here are some notable reads from the last few months:

The Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
-- Actually rather disappointing, given the heaps of positive word-of-mouth reviews I had received from friends. Seemed to be the same story with different characters. "A Temporary Matter" and "The Interpreter of Maladies" are the strongest stories in the collection.

Romola - George Eliot
-- Loved it, even though my favorite teaching fellow from college thought Romola was Eliot's weakest novel. True, the heroine was too heavenly, too pure, too Dickensian. But Eliot's description of social turmoil in late-15th-century Florence, the sense of catching a city in flux, is some of her strongest writing.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
-- Admittedly, I picked up the book because of its puzzling title. But the simple, straightforward story cleansed my literary palate, so to speak. A quick reading that just left me happy and satisfied.

Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
-- My first Peter Carey novel, but certainly not my last. The love story of two flawed, isolated and touchingly naive people steers clear of sentimentality in depicting an idealistic but futile labor of love.

The Floating Opera - John Barth
-- The most structurally perfect novella I have read in a long, long time. Barth has never been a favorite (I had to read Giles Goat-Boy for a junior seminar on the postmodern novel), but this novel is undoubtedly a canonical work for adolescents. Joseph Heller meets William Faulkner, and much better than that combination sounds.

Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric: The Love Letters
-- Recommended by a close, close friend. Savored.

Too Big To Fail - Andrew Ross Sorkin
-- Requires a basic knowledge of economics and investment vehicles, but presents a very readable, just-gossipy-enough account of the financial meltdown. Fast-paced and personal, it eschews all of the technical explanations in favor of detailing the behind-the-scenes deals struck by the NY Fed, the Treasury and the major Wall Street players.

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanesi - Geoff Dyer
-- Unfortunately, I enjoy Dyer's non-fiction works so much that his pseudo-memoir was actually a bit of a letdown. First-time readers of Dyer will probably enjoy the restless, driving tone of the novel, but I prefer But Beautiful or The Ongoing Moment (which is a wonderful natural pair with Camera Lucida by Barthes).

City of Thieves - David Benioff
-- In my very humble opinion, Benioff is one of the best of the 30-something and 40-something novelists. A friend of mine often bemoans the ascent of the "navel-gazing" genre, and Benioff's pared-back narrative is a sharp contrast and a welcome relief. Benioff & Jonathan Lethem: two of my all-time favorites.

Ravelstein - Saul Bellow
-- Funny and reflective, but ultimately a bit too much of the loose, baggy monster around this fictionalized biography. Bellow loses a bit of his usual verve and poise in the last 50 pages or so, but the descriptions, observations, wit and mannerisms are classic Bellowian. Look out for the Lanvin blazer.

And my current reads:

The First Tycoon - T.J. Stiles
-- Biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt. I'm on a bit of a tycoon biography kick; in the last year, I've read Nasaw's biography of Carnegie, a history of Honda, and a history of the Hershey/Mars wars.

The Presidential Papers - Norman Mailer
-- Loosely conceived as a series of essays directed at a potential president, written by a man who reveled in the low and the loud, relished being the lowest and the loudest, but couldn't stop talking about his college years at Harvard. Complex much, Mr. Mailer?