I haven't bought a new, full priced hardcover book in awhile, but I think I may make the move. The excerpts I've read of Sara Gran's noir novel Dope, were great. Yes, they seem to have been written by Raymond Chandler himself, but the language is all her own. I haven't read enough to make a realistic opinion, but I've read enough to know I want to read it immediately.

I'm almost finished with Lethem's Fortress of Solitude and will write more on it once I'm done. Though it's a great book, indicative of a time, a place and a culture, it doesn't have the same weight as Motherless Brooklyn. The prose reads the same way and the reader can still feel and smell the city streets Lethem describes, but the purpose of the book shifts. Through the first half I thought it was going one place and ended up going another. This may have been Lethem's purpose, I don't know. And at times the narrator doesn't let the reader in to certain aspects of the main character's life that I thought were significant. i.e. How he felt about his mother abandoning him, how he felt toward his artist father, etc.

But more on this in a few days when I've gathered my thoughts.

Now reading:
Jonathan Lethem Fortress of Solitude

On deck:
Kazuo Ishiguro Never Let Me Go
Gina Ochsner People I Wanted to Be