What does it say that I am a full-time, professional musician, and my first blog entry regards (what I consider) great works of fiction I've read over the past nine months? Literary fiend that I am, here are some of those books - in no particular order - about which I feel strongly enough to recommend. I'll get to music eventually, I promise...
"What is the What" by Dave Eggers - life-changing; you must read this book
"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy - the most beautiful poetry-cum-prose to heartbreaking end I've ever read
"What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver - darker, more abstract, and better than I thought
"The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon - prosaic virtuosity
"A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole - bombastysterical!
"The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss - inventive, intricate, intimate
"A Death in the Family" by James Agee - hauntingly nostalgic
"Seven Types of Ambiguity" by Elliot Perlman - enormous, but worth sticking with
"Deception" by Philip Roth - is this fiction the characters have created for themselves based on fact?
