what we talk about when we talk about love by raymond carver - collection of powerful, deeply sad and bleak minimalist stories about working class life, alcoholism, troubled relationship. he was so influential he kind of made me approach him with weariness as his parade of imitators have made the sparse style seem too much of an affectation, yet carver (with lish's edits) writing is so strong that you are totally absorbed and stunned. there's no catharsis here but lots of honesty.
levels of the game by john mcphee - a narrative account of a single tennis match between arthur ashe and clarke graebner, woven in with mini-biographies and profiles of the two players that have a lot to say about class and race and community in mid twentieth century america. the writing is like that of a great sports player, it makes the immense skill involved look so effortless, so graceful, so simple. yet to so artfully balance the elements is just masterful.
haroun and the sea of stories by salman rushdie - rushdie's children's fantasy book is the most fun i've had with a book all year. it's relentlessly inventive, deeply charming and funny, rapid paced yet with attention to character, and delivers its messages about the role of storytelling clearly yet also cleverly. it's interesting to place this in the context of rushdie's political history, but to emphasize this is to detract from his mastery of combining super well crafted pulply storytelling with a literary novelist's attention to the power of good prose. crying out for an animated film adaptation to display its bonkers world and bring it to a new audience but it's a book that anyone can read and enjoy.
others that i loved but don't have the energy to write about here: cakes and ale and the razor's edge by w. somerset maugham, about love by chekhov, bartelby the scrivenger by melville, dubliners by joyce, blindness by saramogo, the old man and the sea by hemmingway, runaway by alice munro and the wes anderson collection by zoller seitz
