Potok's follow-up to THE CHOSEN is not nearly as strong, though interesting from the standpoint of the develop of Judaism after the Holocaust

The fastest thousand-page read I've ever taken on. Mailer takes the omniscient narrative approach to the Gary Gilmore case with fantastic results.

This is a relatively new "American" translation of the novel, which I last read in high school. It was very good this time around as well; the new translation is quite accessible.

Six short stories on varied topics but all in colonial settings. Camus says farewell to imperialism. Brilliant stuff.

Kind of an updated rehash of THE ROOM, this was Selby's final novel -- a whimper and not a bang.

Starts slow but ends magnificently.

Not as good as Grossman's first two novels. The concept holds a lot of promise but never really comes to fruition.

A sort of proto-STRANGER culled from his notebooks. Better to read THE STRANGER.

A good novel that would have been great it Wouk had left out the first hundred pages and the last hundred pages. 300 pages good; 500 pages not so good.

I picked this up mainly to read David Grossman's novella YANI ON THE MOUNTAIN, but I found some of the other novellas better, particularly Appelfeld's and Shabtai's. Some good stuff.

McLean is, in my opinion, Scotland's great contemporary writer, but you wouldn't know it from this book. Plodding and slow.

Lives up to its title. A bit uneven here and there (something Eggers readily admits), but lots of out-loud laughs as well as some great stylistic flourishes.

Another very erudite volume from JPS incorporating centuries of commentary with a great translation.

An epic sweep over 100 years of Colombian/South American history through the eyes of one family. You'll want to use a reader's guide, as nearly all the characters share three or four names at most.

A brilliant piece of writing. I strongly urge people to read the original edition of this book (without the exclamation point in the title) and *then* read the 48-page addition that is now inserted after p. 250 in the later paperback edition.

A great first novel by a sadly marginalized writer.

Chabon's debut novel falls short, but he obviously had more up his sleeve.

An interesting hybrid of narrative and drama, by way of a sequel to SANCTUARY.

These short stories by Abish are more accessible than his early work, though not without the experimental edge.

A strange little novel: Hitler is found deep in the Brazilian jungle and given a drumhead court martial for his crimes. He speaks in his own defense in the final chapter -- quite unnerving.