The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster

No idea what to say about it. Baffling but brilliant. The complexity of both the prose and the stories, the strands of narrative and ideas that grow and branch out in all directions, makes it like a living organism. But "what's going on?" is the main impression I'm left with. Like a David Lynch film, it's as frustrating as it is compelling. Who's the narrator? Is it the same person in all three stories. Seems to be. How much of each story physically happened? Maybe it was all metaphor, maybe it's a book about a man alone in a room and that's all. Will re-read.

Oracle Night - Paul Auster

Another damn good one. My first encounter with Auster apart from a graphic novel (City of Glass, I think). This reminded me very much of Murakami: a similar writing style and the same kind of weird, not-quite-coherently related events, and an odd supernatural premise lurking beneath a very human sort of story. I read it in three or four sessions - very rare for me. Looking forward to coming back to this author.

The Last Werewolf - Glen Duncan

"Sometimes the entire weight of her self-loathing was compressed into the angle at which she held a cigarette." Beautiful. The prose is like this throughout and the story is good and strong and fast-moving. The werewolf and vampire (yep, vampires too as an added bonus) lore is interesting and gets just the right amount of narrative attention, and there's a lot of philosophical jibber-jabber for smart-arses like me to get our teeth into. This is this guy's seventh book. I think I'm onto a winner.

'Salem's Lot - Stephen King

Just simply bloody brilliant. Beyond the characters, plot and effortless prose you expect from King, it has a bunch of passages scattered throughout that are simply beautiful, poetic works of art, and which approach social commentary (on one level 'Salem's Lot is very much about the Vietnam war) without threatening to push the vampires and the action into the background. This is a book to study and re-read, as an example of how to do novel-writing and of what it can be at its best.