u/ol_saw_gills

One day the door stopped working. One sensor is green, one is solid red and will blink if you block the lasers path. The fact that one is green leads me to believe they're lined up, is one of the sensors just dead?

Following my previous posts, these are the novels I read from the 2020s. Inspired by someone who shared they were trying to read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel, this project of mine began with the intention of reading every National Book Award winner since 1950. I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of American literature from the second half of the 20th century to today. Since I had already read a good number of the winners, it slowly turned into reading any American novel of my choosing that I had not read from each year between 1950-2025 (I finished early 2026), with preference given to the most well regarded unread-by-me text or whatever seemed the most interesting. Some of these impressions are a bit lazy but I am a lazy person.

I want to emphasize that I was not trying to find writers that I liked, even if I make value judgments or express my enjoyment or disapproval of their books in my reviews. The goal of this was project was to expand my understanding of American literature after the 1950s. I find value in most everything I read, even if I'm not reaping the most immediate kind of enjoyment. All of these authors make some sort of sense within their milieu (none of them fell out of a coconut tree) and that is what I am attempting to grasp. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

My timeline got kind of fucked up since I somehow skipped the novel I read for the year 2013. I’ll just start off with a review of that one below.

The Good Lord Bird – James McBride (2013): While not the most cutting edge narrative with flashy literary techniques, I still enjoyed this thoroughly. One of the funniest books I read for the project, Lord Bird follows John Brown’s militant abolitionist campaign in bloody Kansas leading up to the raid at Harpers Ferry. Brown is incredibly interesting to me and I loved learning so much about him over the course of the novel. McBride presents him as a man who could not have cared less about his personal safety or comfort and as one who had difficulty understanding those to whom such things do matter (spoiler: basically everybody but him, including the narrator who does his best to disinvolve himself from Brown’s militia, only to wind up playing a significant role).

Detransition, Baby – Torrey Peters (2021): Love this book! Smart, fun, and sad melodrama. The novel explores the shapes families can take outside of the traditional nuclear form, among other themes. It maintains a conversational tone that is recognizably millennial. I wouldn’t, however, call the book too light, there are a lot ideas to explore here. Very interested to read Peters’ latest book, Stag Dance.

The Immortal King Rao – Vauhini Vara (2022): I’m a bit biased on this one and I know I can’t be a good judge. Science fiction just isn’t my thing. I do like some movies that belong to that genre, but I’ve never had a good experience reading it. One detail really bothered me, however: when the tech oligarch’s misdeeds are made public, he suffers actual consequences, which seemed too outlandish and immersion breaking to me.

Blackouts – Justin Torres (2023): Anything but a conventional narrative, Blackouts approach left me feeling a bit disoriented. Dipping into and out of what little it has in way of plot, the “novel’s” form mirrors the heavily censored documents that punctuate the story. It’s often unclear what’s happening, or if what’s happening is really happening at all. I didn’t get a ton of enjoyment out of reading this, but I think it’s a worthy text. Will definitely interest those who like experimental works.

James – Percival Everett (2024): I had higher expectations than this novel could fill. Beyond the idea that the titular character was an intelligent human being and not the simple minded person Twain portrays, at no point did I feel like Everett presents a challenge to his audience (and that idea really isn’t too difficult to accept). The premise would work better in a short story or in the hands of a different novelist, in my opinion. The writing itself was forgettable to me. Everett’s critique of Huckleberry Finn is certainly valid, but I don’t feel that it lives up to its source material as a literary experience, and perhaps it wasn’t supposed to.

North Sun – Ethan Rutherford (2025): I hate for this to be the way I end these reviews, but this was also a big disappointment to me. It was just so boring. The monotonous prose completely failed to build any tension, a rather essential component of a story tinged with horror. I am a huge dickhead (fan of Moby Dick), which is why I picked this as the novel to read from 2025, and while I did not expect it to be as monumental a text as Melville’s, I did expect Rutherford to capture some part of its cosmic mystery and philosophical weight. Mostly, however, I just waited for it to be over. The end :(

Following my previous posts, these are the novels I read from the 2010s. Inspired by someone who shared they were trying to read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel, this project of mine began with the intention of reading every National Book Award winner since 1950. I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of American literature from the second half of the 20th century to today. Since I had already read a good number of the winners, it slowly turned into reading any American novel of my choosing that I had not read from each year between 1950-2025 (I finished early 2026), with preference given to the most well regarded unread-by-me text or whatever seemed the most interesting. Some of these impressions are a bit lazy but I am a lazy person.

I want to emphasize that I was not trying to find writers that I liked, even if I make value judgments or express my enjoyment or disapproval of their books in my reviews. The goal of this was project was to expand my understanding of American literature after the 1950s. I find value in most everything I read, even if I'm not reaping the most immediate kind of enjoyment. All of these authors make some sort of sense within their milieu (none of them fell out of a coconut tree) and that is what I am attempting to grasp. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Great House – Nicole Krauss (2010): I really really enjoyed the writing in this one. Maybe I’m wildly off but I could really hear Kafka in her voice. Interesting story too. Unfortunately, after looking into Krauss a little more and listening to an interview, I have discovered she is a vocal Zionist. She called all the Palestinian children Israel has murdered “collateral damage.” Which really sucks. I was looking forward to reading her other novels but now I definitely won’t.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk – Ben Fountain (2011): This is the second novel I’ve read about the US’s wars in the Middle East post 9/11. The first was Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Overall I thought Fountain’s writing was fun. He offers a critique of nationalism and my country’s blind fetish for “supporting the troops” while very much not supporting them, something that has only become more relevant, sadly. Some aspects of the novel were a little too easy, and shall we say, uncomplicated, but this was a solid effort.

The Flamethrowers – Rachel Kushner (2012): This instantly turned me into a Kushner fan, I’ve since read almost all of her writing. The novel deftly jumps back and forth in time and location, tracing the connections between a labor movement in Italy and a motorcycle speed trial in Nevada. I’ve always loved stories that trace history like that (John Henry Days is another example from this list). You can very much feel Delillo’s influence throughout. Hopefully she puts out a new one soon.

Let Me Be Frank With You – Richard Ford (2013): This was bad. Let Me Be Frank is a minor novel in Ford’s body of work and was perhaps not the greatest place to start, but what I found here did not make me want to try any others. His first person narrator is an aging baby boomer with a Larry David-esque inner monologue on social issues like racism and real estate value. None of it is interesting, in fact none of it is anything but the most tired rehearsal of popular satire on these subjects.

Delicious Foods – James Hannaham (2014): God, this was a sad one. The end, however, was genuinely surprising and shows Hannaham’s commitment to psychological complexity. It’s the story of an addict who’s tricked into a life debt peonage (I know there’s a more correct term for this type of situation but it’s not coming to me right now) and her son’s attempt to locate her. I was fully invested from the get go. The novel transcends the basic helpless victim narrative, endowing its characters with the intelligence and resilience to navigate the set of circumstances they find themselves in.

The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead (2015): I didn’t like this as much as John Henry Days. It’s not a bad novel but its central conceit, that the underground railroad was literally an underground railroad, didn’t do much for me. The atmosphere was terrifying, it gave me honest to god anxiety.

Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders (2016): Saunder’s cast of dead people and his vision of the afterlife is really fun and inventive. The approach he takes telling this story left me a little ambivalent, but I think that was more of a personal preference thing. Reading a ton of short snippets is not really my idea of a good time. It felt like a simple accretion of detail without much interpretation. The subject matter doesn’t really interest me, but I did actually wind up identifying with Lincoln.

The Mars Room – Rachel Kushner (2017): After The Flamethrowers, I had to read her next one. That was a great decision, because I loved it even more. The world of the novel feels fully realized and it’s pretty horrifying. Kushner’s thinking on freedom interests me, as well as the way she parallels ecological destruction with misogyny and the penal system. Her books are full of interesting choices and will engage anyone who thinks critically about capitalism and the world it has shaped.

Lost Children Archive – Valeria Luisella (2018): Another one that puts the present in conversation with history and draws out their connections. A road novel that’s actually about two different but related journeys, Lost Children Archive finds connections between the Apache’s struggle against the government of the United States in the late 19^(th) century and the current militarization of our southern Border. As the title suggests, the novel focuses on the DHS’ practice of separating children from their families in concentration camps before they are deported. While Luisella’s writing sounds distinctly grad-schooly, I didn’t mind too much. You should read it.

Real Life – Brandon Taylor (2019): I didn’t care for this novel. In fact, I didn’t finish it. Taylor isn’t a good writer, his dialogue is bad and he doesn’t adequately develop the ideas at play here. The flashbacks to gratuitous, violent trauma didn’t sweeten the deal. Real Life’s positive reception genuinely confuses me and make me wonder if I totally missed something about it. It reads like mediocre YA lit.

I am a wildlife surveyor trying to make the transition to forestry tech work. I have a little experience, having done some stocking surveys and a drought survey on FS and BLM contracts. I've talked with a few contractors about getting started on doing stand exams as well. I'm going out this week with a friend to get a little on the ground training but I also would like it if I could find some guides out there or other resources with relevant information. I've found some stuff from the FS but it's mostly about how to use their awful proprietary FS veg program, which I am kinda familiar with, unfortunately. Thanks

Following my previous posts, these are the novels I read from the 2000s. Inspired by someone who shared they were trying to read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel. This project of mine began with the intention of reading every National Book Award winner since 1950. I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of American literature from the second half of the 20th century to today. Since I had already read a good number of the winners, it slowly turned into reading any American novel of my choosing that I had not read from each year between 1950-2025 (I finished early 2026), with preference given to the most well regarded unread-by-me text or whatever seemed the most interesting. Some of these impressions are a bit lazy but I am a lazy person.

I want to emphasize that I was not trying to find writers that I liked, even if I make value judgments or express my enjoyment or disapproval of their books in my reviews. The goal of this was project was to expand my understanding of American literature after the 1950s. I find value in most everything I read, even if I'm not reaping the most immediate kind of enjoyment. All of these authors make some sort of sense within their milieu (none of them fell out of a coconut tree) and that is what I am attempting to grasp. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The Quick and the Dead – Joy Williams (2000): Although I’m quite sympathetic to her politics, this novel did not make a big impression on me. I feel that Williams bit off too much thematically and the book would have done better with a somewhat narrowed scope. The prose is alright and overall it’s a fun read.

John Henry Days – Colson Whitehead (2001): I enjoyed this novel’s reflections on the historical development of the working class in the US. A strange, somewhat banal premise (freelance journalists converge on a tiny Appalachian town to report on the unveiling of a new postal stamp celebrating the legend of John Henry) that only a skilled writer could develop into something interesting. I don’t know if the narrator’s lifestyle and trade are familiar to Whitehead but it sure felt like it. There’s a lot of thinking on history, race, politics, and folklore packed in and he handles the interesting structure well. Would recommend.

Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides (2002): Who doesn’t like a coming of age story? Overall a somewhat old-fashioned kind of novel, but basically a success formally speaking. Does any other mainstream depiction of intersex people exist (not including anything hateful or otherwise retrogressive)? Not to my knowledge. I’d be interested to read responses to this novel from intersex people, or to read a novel by an intersex person that handles intersexuality as a central topic.

The Known World – Edward Jones (2003): This is a very strong novel but such a grim, grim look at humanity. Not many writers would choose to center a novel on a freed black man who chooses to own slaves. Usually I am annoyed when people say things like this, but I truly think it takes a lot of courage to acknowledge that side of human beings at length without taking one of the easy ways out. It’s dark. I really want to read Jones’s short story collections and I wish he would write some more novels.

Gilead – Marilynne Robinson (2004): Robinson is a deep soul. She also handles the first person perspective in this novel extremely well. I never had any doubts about the authenticity of that voice. Her narrator and his reflections are full of nuance. You get the feeling the real theme of the novel is thinking and its limits by the way she embodies an intelligent perspective while tacitly acknowledging its flaws. For personal reasons I am instinctively hostile to Christianity but I respect writers who manage to deal with the subject from a place of humility.

Europe Central – William Vollmann (2005): I had been wanting to read Vollmann for a while. Ultimately, this novel struck me as an accomplishment, but it did not live up to my expectations. Aside from the issue of the WWII novel not really being my thing, I wanted more from the writing itself. Plainspokenness is certainly a valid artistic choice that many writers have used to good effect, but here it just feels too flat to me. More recently, I read Argall which I liked a little bit more.

After This – Alice McDermott (2006): It was ok. A novel of the cultural shift in America after WWII. I’m a little bored of it, but this novel didn’t bore me. It’s hard for me to look back on this time period (when I was very much not alive) and see anything but seeds being sown for how unbelievably fucked up things have gotten. Obviously, big problems existed then too but our contemporary moment feels uniquely awful, which is probably the way every moment feels in history for anyone paying attention.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz (2007): This was a fun one, a good popcorn novel as they say. Not to dismiss it as a bearer of significant meaning. It just understands that fiction should be entertaining in some way. Certainly taught me a lot about Dominican history.

All Souls – Deborah Harkness (2008): To be completely honest with you, I don’t remember much about this one. It did not grab me. I’ll pass on.

Tinker – Paul Harding (2009): New England twee. I’ve abstained from referring to anything on this list as a “book club book,” but this is definitely one of them (it’s derogatory). A nice little novel with pretty sentences about a cute setting and deeper truths.

Following my previous posts, these are the novels I read from the 1990s. Inspired by someone who shared they were trying to read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel. This project of mine began with the intention of reading every National Book Award winner since 1950. I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of American literature from the second half of the 20th century to today. Since I had already read a good number of the winners, it slowly turned into reading any American novel of my choosing that I had not read from each year between 1950-2025 (I finished early 2026), with preference given to the most well regarded unread-by-me text or whatever seemed the most interesting. Some of these impressions are a bit lazy but I am a lazy person.

I want to emphasize that I was not trying to find writers that I liked, even if I make value judgments or express my enjoyment or disapproval of their books in my reviews. The goal of this was project was to expand my understanding of American literature after the 1950s. I find value in most everything I read, even if I'm not reaping the most immediate kind of enjoyment. All of these authors make some sort of sense within their milieu (none of them fell out of a coconut tree) and that is what I am attempting to grasp. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Middle Passage – Charles Johnson (1990): Dialogue must be the crux of historical fiction. Often I find that, in these novels, characters’ speech and thought sound too contemporary. There’s usually a tell. This is a version of a problem that all writers face. How do you write in a way that doesn’t uniformly sound like writing? Or, put differently, writing is written by writers but writers don’t exclusively write about writers (except for those that do), so they cannot exclusively write like writers, unless the meaning of the writing is that it was written by a writer. So much dialogue suffers from an incongruity with the characters that are purportedly speaking it. When this happens, reading can be like watching a ventriloquist act performed by someone who can’t keep their mouth closed. My problem with Johnson’s novel lies therein. If a certain kind of authenticity is his goal in Middle Passage, and I think it is, he does not succeed and I found that very distracting. That said, Johnson writes the novel from an interesting perspective, and its humor balances out the heavy subject matter.

Jernigan – David Gates (1991): This one left me a little ambivalent. There are real strengths here, especially the first person narration that feels completely real and embodied. However, the perspective he portrays is really frustrating. Jernigan’s relationship with literature is at the center. He’s long since ceased engaging with writing in any meaningful way and the last vestiges of his own intellectual life are the many literary references that populate his thoughts, but these only serve to distance himself from his sad and fucked up existence and render it into something tolerable. Perhaps this is Gates criticizing the referential aspect of much of 20^(th) century writing. Perhaps not. This novel clearly draws from Bellow’s Herzog, which is a superior work.

The Living – Annie Dillard (1992): Just a fantastic book. How I love a well researched novel that leverages the immense learning behind it into something effortless and natural and interesting. There’s such an immensity of skill here. Honestly this could have been much longer and I would have eaten it up.

The Shipping News – Annie Proulx (1993): Proulx’s writing didn’t land for me. It felt boring, flat, and unengaging.

In the Lake of the Woods – Tim O’Brien (1994): Enjoyed the multiple perspectives and alternate timelines O’Brien uses here. Basically a novel about political deception and its inevitable results: distrust and more deception and ultimately a severed relationship with reality. If only it had relevance for the current moment. Luckily, America has totally come to terms with its past and we never need to discuss it again.

All Souls’ Rising – Madison Smartt Bell (1995): The first novel in a trilogy on the Haitian Revolution. Bell is not a great writer, but he’s not exactly bad either and I don’t resent the time I spent with him. His prose is serviceable. Interesting subject matter of course, the novel’s treatment of which keeps a safe distance from any sentimentality.

Martin Dressler – Steven Millhauser (1996): Millhauser’s approach is compelling, I thought. He seems less interested in psychological realism than in a story that follows a kind of dream logic. The titular character’s focus is his business vision, pursued at the expense of those who, for him, fulfill a role inside it. The hotel he runs serves as the central metaphor of the book. The rooms don’t exist to shelter specific individuals and don’t belong to anyone but Martin. When someone doesn’t fulfill the role he chooses for them, he simply finds a different person, switching them out like visitors coming and going from a hotel.

The Hundred Brothers – Donald Antrim (1997): This was fun. A book along my journey I did not absorb much from. I’m not sure who Antrim’s taking after here. Not to be that guy, but this isn’t really a novel, it’s something else we don’t have a generic name for.

The Healing – Gayl Jones (1998): What a strange experience! Would love to know how she came up with this story, it’s so unique in its plot. Jones’ writing is rich and textured and unspooling in a way that reminds me of Faulkner if he didn’t use big words like “suspiration” to do all the heavy lifting (just kidding, I love you Faulkner). That is to say, this is a stream of consciousness narrative done with skill.

In America – Susan Sontag (1999): My first exposure to Sontag was a very funny interview she gave with some big network TV program in which she rejects the premise of almost every single question asked. I love that for her. As far as this project goes, In America echos most with The Angle of Repose by Stegner. In this novel, a celebrated Polish actress adjusts to life in a new culture, on a new continent. On a sentence by sentence level, Sontag’s writing is pretty good and I found the plot interesting, including the time spent at the Utopian community. I’m not sure I have much else to say about this novel. It did not make me run out to buy the rest of her books.

Following my previous post, these are the novels I read from the 1980s. Inspired to post this by someone else here who shared they were trying to read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel. This project of mine began with the intention of reading every National Book Award winner since 1950. I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of American literature from the second half of the 20th century to today. Since I had already read a good number of the winners, it slowly turned into reading any American novel of my choosing that I had not read from each year between 1950-2025 (I finished early 2026), with preference given to the most well regarded unread-by-me text or whatever seemed the most interesting. Some of these impressions are a bit lazy but I am a lazy person.

I want to emphasize that I was not trying to find writers that I liked, even if I make value judgments or express my enjoyment or disapproval of their books in my reviews. The goal of this was project was to expand my understanding of American literature after the 1950s. Of course I have a subjective experience of everything I read (meaning I have likes and dislikes that are purely based on personal preference) and I find value in most everything I read, even if I'm not reaping the most immediate kind of enjoyment. All of these authors make some sort of sense within their milieu (none of them fell out of a coconut tree) and that is what I am attempting to grasp. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Housekeeping – Marilynne Robinson (1980): Oh my god, this was a revelation! Absolutely stunning writing on display. Loved the use of first person perspective here. Deeply inward, searching characters looking back on the strangeness of life will always grab me. I think I enjoyed the language too much to do very much understanding, it was one of those books that is an experience before anything else. Still, I think Robinson communicates loss and grief and the places they bring you through her melancholy voice in a way that’s hard to miss. I will definitely reread this one to dig in a little bit more.

Zuckerman Unbound – Philip Roth (1981): He’s funny, I’ll give him that. Overall a pretty light and breezy read. Roth just isn’t really for me. “Self important” and “uninterested in other people” are phrases that come to mind (I’m sure some will vehemently disagree with me), but on a sentence by sentence level, it works. I’ll just say that it’s no mistake that he makes himself the main character.

The Color Purple – Alice Walker (1982): Takes you to some very dark places but doesn’t leave you there. Some pleasantly unexpected choices were made in terms of plot and, obviously, form. I didn’t think I’d ever read another epistolary novel after that weird period in my life where I was really into the 18^(th) century for whatever strange reason. I did not think it would do anybody any good here but I was wrong. I wish some movie directors would have read this one and taken notes before making those movies about the unrelenting and irredeemable misery of being gay. Sometimes it fucking sucks, but then you can later make pants and have an OK life!

Ironweed – William Kennedy (1983): Jaw smashingly good. A fun filled romp through Great Depression era Albany. For real though, this is a very good novel reminiscent of The Man with the Golden Arm, the first I read for this project. It is also Steinbeckian in its execution and subject matter, of course (how could it not be), but overall more lyrical and with a layer of surreality. Perhaps a little too insistent on the tragedy of its characters.

Love Medicine – Louise Erdich (1984): This is the second novel I’ve finished from this author, the first being Tracks. I always appreciate disjointed family chronicles (maybe too restrictive a framing on my part for what could also be described as a collection of short stories) told from multiple perspectives. Erdich is a good writer and while the magical realism (not my favorite technique) she dabbles in later in her career put me off of wanting to finish what I started, this is a very strong first novel from her with a lot going on.

World’s Fair – E.L. Doctorow (1985): This struck me as a little dull, both in execution and outline. There are also way too many semi-autobiographical novels about growing up in NYC, and about the city generally speaking (I realize that’s a silly complaint). I don’t remember much about it, unfortunately.

A Summons to Memphis – Peter Taylor (1986): Taylor’s voice sounds polished, self conscious, and wealthy, well nigh aristocratic. While not my favorite textures, they suite this novel well because it is about someone that comes from a once highly placed but downwarldy-mobile family that faces its decline ungracefully and ridiculously. The first person narrator sounds fluent in a clearly moneyed and archaic way of speaking, mirroring his sisters’s sad anachronisms. Basically a story of fallen glory and stunted growth. Once I came across a review of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks that simply read, “reversion to the mean is a bitch.” That works here, too.

The Rules of Attraction – Bret Easton Ellis (1987): I either hated or loved this one, but somewhat tepidly in either case. Ellis is a good writer in a certain way and extremely tiresome in every other way. He doesn’t go beyond the satirical, which is one of the lowest forms of narrative. By inhabiting what it wants to criticize, I don’t think it can (or sometimes just doesn’t want to) overcome it. But nevertheless there are successful satires and I suppose this is one of them.

Breathing Lessons – Anne Tyler (1988): I feel I was bamboozled somehow into reading this. Distinctly Hallmark-y, and you know what, it was actually made into a Hallmark movie! Maybe I’m shortchanging it, but there must be better novels from 1988.

The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan (1989): Enjoyed it, but I’m not full of things to say about this novel. I’m just going to sound like an asshole if I try to discuss how it fits into Asian American literature generally because this is maybe the fifth book I’ve read by an Asian American author and the other four were written by Karen Tei Yamashita (who is pretty cool). History is interesting, diaspora is interesting, the condition of being a second generation immigrant is “interesting” (heavy scare quotes), which means this book is interesting, as well as sad and funny.

Following my previous post, these are the novels I read from the 1970s. Inspired to post this by someone else here who shared they were trying to read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel. This project of mine began with the intention of reading every National Book Award winner since 1950. I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of American literature from the second half of the 20th century to today. Since I had already read a good number of the winners, it slowly turned into reading any American novel of my choosing that I had not read from each year between 1950-2025 (I finished early 2026), with preference given to the most well regarded unread-by-me text or whatever seemed the most interesting. Some of these impressions are a bit lazy but I am a lazy person.

I want to emphasize that I was not trying to find writers that I liked, even if I make value judgments or express my enjoyment or disapproval of their books in my reviews. The goal of this was project was to expand my understanding of American literature after the 1950s. Of course I have a subjective experience of everything I read (meaning I have likes and dislikes that are purely based on personal preference) and I find value in most everything I read, even if I'm not reaping the most immediate kind of enjoyment. All of these authors make some sort of sense within their milieu (none of them fell out of a coconut tree) and that is what I am attempting to grasp. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Losing Battles – Eudora Welty (1970): This just didn’t work for me. More or less a painful slog, not sure what people see in this author’s writing. It just felt dead. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, but I don’t like novels that insist on either their character’s zaniness or the nonplussed reaction to it. It is not a quality I appreciate. Whooooooaaaaaaaaa this person is way over the top in a provincial kind of way. Who cares? I recognize this is just a personal reaction, but clownishness is just grating to me.

Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner (1971): Nicely layered text that deals with an interesting contradiction: on the one hand, Stegner asks whether or not we can ever see a place without our past and our beliefs clouding our vision, while on the other hand, he genuinely tries to celebrate place (namely, the West) as an aspect of human experience. This tension isn’t unique to Stegner but it’s the best executed attempt I’ve read. Genuinely a good writer, it takes one to examine a contradiction without dismissing it or finding a way around it. Loved the various framing devices the novel employs.

Chimera – John Barth (1972): Loathed it. I do not like anything happening here.

Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon (1973): (note: due to masochism, this is the only novel I reread for the project) What am I supposed to say about this novel? Overall I do not like it. There are some passages where Pynchon shines, but overall it feels like drudgery. Difficult novels are always attractive to me but this one did not bring me any joy. I don’t care for the child molestation, amongst other aspects. Even if it’s not as bad as in V, you can sense the Beat influence in the characters (aren’t they just a little bit gonzo . . . or zany . . .). Mason and Dixon is still the only Pynchon novel I like.

If Beale Street Could Talk – James Baldwin (1974): Baldwin is not only a great political thinker, but also a wonderful prose stylist. I’m not sure this is as good as Go Tell It On the Mountain, but it is still worthwhile. Beale Street dabbles in some of the religious themes his earlier novel deals with at length. It’s a book about love, of course, gentle love and fierce love.

JR – William Gaddis (1975): The third Gaddis I’ve read (after The Recognitions and Carpenter’s Gothic). While I recognize the talent, his writing has never really sparked me. There’s definitely plenty here and each time you open it you feel like you’re stepping into a fast moving river, it’s difficult to keep your feet. If I had infinite time on this earth I would reread it, but I don’t and I won’t. There’s an interesting play on the word “note” here. Musical notes, bank notes, written notes. I never put anything together regarding that, but perhaps there’s something there.

Flight to Canada – Ishmael Reed (1976): Of course this was a lot of fun and really good, coming from the guy who wrote Mumbo Jumbo. This is the kind of postmodernism I really like, as opposed to Barth’s hollow and forced style. Usually, I have a hard time with writing that is so relentlessly satirical and ironic but a) it’s quite short and b) it’s rewarding when you dig a little bit through the outermost encrusted layer to appreciate what he’s communicating with it. A more thorough understanding of the context and references, which I lack, would go a long way.

Players – Don Delillo (1977): I’ve read a good bit of Delillo before but not in the past decade or so, except for Ratner’s Star which I must have picked up more recently. Overall I think he’s compelling and when his writing strikes me as hackneyed I think it’s due to the fact that many have imitated (or drawn from, to be more generous) his voice and the themes he returns to, so that he can sound like just another writer concerned with the centrality of images in the postmodern era (and what not). One of the best writers I discovered through this reading project of mine, Rachel Kushner, shows his influence, which makes sense since he is one of her mentors. With all of that said and all due respect given, this isn’t his strongest work and I don’t find the subject matter (the disillusionment and sex lives of yuppies) compelling.

The World According to Garp – John Irving (1978): A good popcorn novel. For some reason it charmed me. Did we need this man’s perspective on all that this book gestures at, gender politics wise? Absolutely not. Was it a waste of paper? No, I don’t think it was. There are things about it that I look back on with some fondness. The titular character’s one successful literary excursion, a strange and dreamlike short story, followed by the many aborted attempts to write anything else that works. The scene involving a suddenly clenched jaw. The perhaps well intentioned, if not always totally up to date, portrayal of a trans woman (it really isn’t very good but I do appreciate that he wrote the character with love in his heart). All I’m saying is it could have been worse.

Sleepless Nights – Elizabeth Hardwick (1979): This one was painful from start to finish. The prose was well nigh unreadable to me. Do not recommend.

He's one of those writers whose most famous work is synonymous with his name. But does anyone here think Melville has better books? Has anyone read or heard of anyone making this point? Could be one of his other novels/novellas, a short story, or a poem. I personally think MB is his best (very uncontroversial opinion) but I am really interested in hearing arguments to the contrary. I'm currently trying to read all of his writing (except for Clarel, probably not going to make it through that) and I don't think anything I've read comes all that close to beating it, as much as I love Bartleby and Pierre and Benito and Battle Pieces. Thanks

Following my previous post, these are the novels I read from the 1960s. Inspired to post this by someone else here who shared they were trying to read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel. This project of mine began with the intention of reading every National Book Award winner since 1950. I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of American literature from the second half of the 20th century to today. Since I had already read a good number of the winners, it slowly turned into reading any American novel of my choosing that I had not read from each year between 1950-2025 (I finished early 2026), with preference given to the most well regarded unread-by-me text or whatever seemed the most interesting. Some of these impressions are a bit lazy but I am a lazy person.

The Waters of Kronos – Conrad Richter (1960): Lyrical, I guess. Good premise for a novel. Not the strongest execution. I’m underrating it probably but it just didn’t make a dent in my psyche.

The Moviegoer – Walker Percy (1961): Interesting but not genre-defining take on the southern gothic. It has the surreal and dark tone. In my opinion the writing was a bit clunky and misshapen. Exciting for me because I realized part way through that it inspired Remainder, a novel I love. For whatever reason literature dealing with repetition as a theme always interests me.

Morte d’Urban – JF Powers (1962): A writer with a little more style and strong first person skills writing the tried-and-true plot of depressed Catholic priests sent off to backwater parishes. There’s little spirituality here or really much in the way of action, which is what makes it work. Pettiness, DIY carpentry, and low level workplace conflict fill out the text. The narrator is thoughtful and well-intentioned but human and tends to approach religion as a job full of minor to middling inconvenience.

The Centaur – John Updike (1963): I do not like Updike and I did not like this novel. Totally fails at paralleling the mythic with the everyday. The writing is just bad and I do not understand how this man had any reputation.

Herzog – Saul Bellow (1964): I preferred Augie March but I still found this worthwhile. Another first person narrative, the novel follows the twinning of personal and intimate problems with GREAT WESTERN IDEAS AND PHILOSOPHY. Jernigan (farther down this list) takes directly from this novel and asks, what if Herzog was an even bigger scumbag and alcoholic?

Stoner – John William (1965): strong entry in the my-bitch-wife plot. Deeply resentful narrative, an airing of grievances. Depicts the many trials facing the bookish and slightly passive white man who just wants a loving marriage and for GREAT BOOKS to be given their due respect. Seriously, the villains are his sexually dysfunctional wife and an incompetent disabled man who takes another incompetent disabled man under his wing. When the normally passive protagonist stands up for WHAT IS RIGHT, the disabled character accuses him of ableism. Why do people love this book?

The Fixer – Bernard Malamud (1966): It was fine. Competent writing. Like a Safdie movie, things keep getting worse and worse and worse for the central character, except it isn’t any fun because this Jew lives in 19^(th) century Russia.

The Eighth Day – Thornton Wilder (1967): You know a guy named Thornton was not about to do any cutting edge writing. Sentimental, trite, and a bit contrived. Without being a loathsome experience, Wilder lacks something to say and literary techniques newer than 1900. Too awww shucks for me.

Steps - Jerzy Kosiński (1968): a truly interesting novel that I shortchanged and need to reread. Experimental form and quite short. I have failed this novel and you by not having more to say about it.

Them – Joyce Carol Oates (1969): Grim. Somewhat Brechtian approach to the novel’s unrelenting depiction of misogynistic violence. Them is on a mission that starts on the first page and then never abandons. The writing itself was somewhat featureless and not particularly memorable.

Inspired to post this by someone else here who shared they were trying to read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel. This project of mine began with the intention of reading every National Book Award winner since 1950. I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of this period. Since I had already read a good number of the winners, it slowly turned into reading any American novel of my choosing that I had not read from each year between 1950-2025 (I finished early 2026), with preference given to the most well regarded unread-by-me text. Below I'll paste my short impressions of each one from the 1950s. If there's interest in seeing more of them I'll post one for each decade. I was extremely ready to branch out in my reading after completing this list, a break I am still enjoying (and have since developed other less formal reading projects), but I am intending to start at 1949 at some point and work my way backwards. Thanks for looking. Please excuse any typos or opinions you think are stupid.

The Man With the Golden Arm - Nelson Algren (1950): Good storytelling and if I were one of those people who likes saying that certain novels elevate setting or place to the status of a character, I would definitely be saying it about this one. Nothing too earth shattering. Doomed, tragic, flawed, and betrayed protagonist. I think you could draw a pretty straight line between this novel and one lower down on the list, Ironweed. Interested in reading more of Algren’s writing.

The Holy Sinner – Thomas Mann (1951): Never a good sign when bending of the rules (or flagrant cheating) appear so early on in any endeavor, but Mann was living in California when he wrote this so I think maybe it qualifies as American. I love Mann. No one would tell you this is his best work and it is quite different from the rest of his writing. Arguably his most experimental or even postmodern novel, it plays with genre, myth, and language extensively. I think it was shortlisted for the National Book Award.

The Catherine Wheel – Jean Stafford (1952): I loved The Mountain Lion and while this was decidedly not as strong, it still had all of the same elements which made her earlier novel great. Strange, acerbic characters, sudden violent tragedy, and psychoanalytic influence seen in her focus on children, both actual and treated as a stage that characters don’t necessarily complete. One of the more interesting writers from the 40s-50s.

The Adventures of Augie March- Saul Bellow (1953): Deft execution of a first person narrative with a memorable and consistent voice throughout, mostly avoiding the many pitfalls of that perspective (except maybe the one avoided with most difficulty: narrator sounds too “author-like”). Kind of an American picaresque/road novel. Enough sex to keep it interesting. Bellow’s not beating the misogyny charges.

The Dollmaker – Harriette Arnow (1954): belated but compelling naturalism and a truly social novel. I would love to read a real review of this book that focuses on its treatment of race/class/gender because there is a lot going on here. A little this-happens-then-this-then-this, which you could describe as not the best writing (and you would be right) but it gets the job done, even if you could excise just about any part without leaving too noticeable a scar.

Ten North Friedrick – John O’Hara (1955): WASP the novel. Traces the decline of great American men and the disappointing subsequent generation with their jazz music and (implied) miscegenation. A Leyendecker advertisement in literary form. Solid B- grade writing (not an insult), not as strong as his idol Fitzgerald, but I guess that’s a given. Features the most unintentionally funny sex scene of anything on this list.

The Field of Vision – Wright Morris (1956): one of the worst novels I read for this project. I have an understanding of what Morris was going for but it just felt so bizarrely pointless. Luckily it was short.

The Wapshot Chronicles – John Cheever (1957): There are some strong moments here but overall I don’t feel that it coheres or produces anything beyond its collection of episodes. Probably too zany for my taste. Don’t care for the lighter side of irony I guess. I find it difficult to say much else about it. Cheever has his fans but I am not one of them.

The Ginger Man – JP Donleavy (1958): Awful, didn’t finish. I do not care for the worst-guy-in-the-world novel. He isn’t interesting to me. Stream of consciousness technique isn’t at its best here either. No thanks.

The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson (1959): I wish it had held my hand a little less as it developed, but sufficiently spooky I suppose. Didn’t live up to the expectation I developed before going in. The characters were just a little bit . . . stupid. You can make a stupid character do anything.