Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney

One of my all time favorites. Re-read, for a book club, snd all I can say is that I respect it more now than ever. Tour de force second person narration, fantastic voice- astonishing every time.

How It Ended: New and Collected Stories, by Jay McInerney

Superb collection of short stories from one of my favorite writers. Revisiting much of the same ground (NYC, Tennessee) as his novels, and in some cases revisiting familiar characters like Russell and Corrinne from Brightness Falls, and of course, inevitably, Alison Poole from Story of My Life (who was also used as a character in Ellis's American Psycho), McInerney brings his stories and characters to life, thwarted as some of them may be. Some find some wisdom, 9/11 has happened, there are wars and protests and middle age and past middle age- new territory for a writer who wrote so incandescently about being young in New York, before some buildings blew up and everything got different. Favorite stories: My Public Service, How It Ended, Getting In Touch With Lonnie, I Love You, Honey, Penelope on the Pond (the Allison Poole/Rielle Hunter/John Edward's mistress character), and The Last Bachelor.

Favorites

Babbit, by Sinclair Lewis
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides
Ballet Shoes, by Noel Streatfield
Raise High The Roof Beam Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, by Raymond Carver
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger
Last Night at the Lobster, by Stewart O’Nan
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, by Eric Hodgins
My Antonia, by Willa Cather
An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
American Psycho, by Brett Easton Ellis
Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis
Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
Mariette in Ecstasy, by Ron Hansen