(1) I've been on a big reading binge this year,
but the one book that really sticks in my mind is
*Waiting* by Ha Jin, which won the National Book Award this
year. I read it and immediately went back and read it
again. He just does wonderful things with the language.
Honorable mention: *The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the
Sea* by Yukio Mishima and *Jasmine* by Bharati
Mukherjee.
(2) I generally like modern stuff, but the one book I
read recently and just *hated* was *Kangaroo Notebook*
by Kobo Abe. It was so surreal as to be almost
pointless. Plus, and this is really nitpicky, but everytime
the translator saw the word "daikon", he rendered it
"'radish sprouts'", with the quotation marks. And since
the main character's leg spontaneously sprouts daikon
(and is thus a major plot device), it gets really
annoying to see sentences like, "Sometimes, when I am
hungry, I enjoy eating 'radish sprouts.'"
3.)
*Kreutzer Sonata* by Leo Tolstoy and *Left-Brained Finance
for Right-Brained People*. My sister's got me reading
*Ex Libris* by Anne Fadiman, and that's good so far
too.
--V.