2006 books

90) John Steinbeck, Burning Bright, 1950
A three-act story written to be accessible as either a play or a novel in its own right, describing the plight of a childless man whose wife resolves their problem in a dubious way. A straightforward enough morality story, but most interesting is the way Steinbeck changes their backgrounds and occupations between acts, first being circus performers, then farmers, then sailors... all in a nine month timespan. Certainly a minor work from Steinbeck, but sadly one whose unconvincing and hurried ending simply does not stack up.

2006 books

91) Andrew Kaufman, All My Friends Are Superheroes, 2005
Tom is the only normal person he knows: everyone else has one superpower which defines their lives, such as his wife, the Perfectionist, to whom he becomes invisible on their wedding night thanks to Hypno, her hypnotist ex-lover. She thinks Tom has abandoned her, but six months later on a flight from Toronto to Vancouver he has to figure out how he can finally make her see him again. This book is a very neat idea that with poor editing could have sprawled all over the place, but instead it's tightly put together, just the right length for the kind of literate surrealist fantasy that it is. Not laugh-out-loud funny though the off-beat humour works in an intelligent Being John Malkovich kind of way, and I'd recommend this to any number of people who admire books that aren't self-consciously smug about their own cleverness.

2006 books

92) Patrick Süskind, On Love and Death, 2005
A long anecdotal essay on Süskind's two favourite topics and the modes of thought that link them. It's not so much a formulated argument but more of an exploration, touching on Plato, Eros and the European romanticism of Goethe and Baudelaire, and by the end it seems entirely right that Süskind has more respect for the myth of Orpheus than he does for the sanctioned fictions surrounding Jesus Christ. But it's rambling and inconclusive, and I was looking forward to something more substantial than what Süskind has to offer here.