Dubliners
James Joyce
Pretty nice. I had read “Ulysses” before and not really gotten much out of it; these were much more enjoyable for me. They didn’t make me fall in love with Joyce or anything, but there were lots of good ones in here: “Araby,” “Clay,” and “Grace” were probably my favorites. Joyce has a good way of capturing people’s natural inclination to build up elaborate ideas in their mind that don’t correspond very well to reality, but mostly depicts this in a gentle, if sad, fashion. The style of this book is mildly expressionist in a way that reminds me of Rilke’s “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.”