Book report, part 2

Of the 640 books on my Goodreads lists for the past six years, well more than half would be classified as contemporary literary fiction. How does one sort through and choose from the thousands and thousands of such titles published in the past decade? I rely on new books by proven authors, recommendations from reviewers I trust, like Katherine Powers (our literary genes agree 95% of the time, with the exception being baseball books), and media buzz from major publishers (such titles rarely end up satisfying). I fully admit I don't keep up with "hot, new voices" in the indie press, having tried to listen many times but ending up deafened by artifice.

My list of writers whose every book I've read and whose next I eagerly await (this implies they are still living) is a short one. (I'm undoubtedly too picky.) They are: Louise Erdrich, Penelope Lively, Colum McCann, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, Howard Norman, Edna O'Brien, and Elizabeth Strout.

The four best books I've read this year are:

Helen Dunmore's The Lie (published in 2014)
Louise Erdrich's LaRose (2016)
Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger (1987)
Elizabeth Strout's Anything is Possible (2017)

Notice anything about these lists? A preponderance of women, and no American men.

Not that there aren't good American male authors. On my lists are Nicholson Baker, Russell Banks, Michael Cunningham, Richard Ford, William Kennedy, and Stewart O'Nan, but their best books are behind them (IMHO).  The one American I'd put on any contemporary list of the best is Kent Haruf, but he's been dead nearly three years now (hard to believe).

Maybe it's because I've been Jonathan-ized (Lethem, Safran Foer, and above all Franzen), suffering inoculations of self-congratulatory irony, authorial intrusions, and feeble grasp of great themes, and raising permanent antibodies against same. Show-offs also abound (no names here), as if fiction needed to compete with Netflix originals and reality TV. Relax, boys, literature is not impressed with pyrotechnics. One small, quiet book by Howard Norman is worth any number of fat, indulgent,"thrilling, frenzied, dazzling" doorstops.

Next: Re-reading and the classics