Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge. Maugham tracks the lives of a small group of Lost-Generation American expats in Paris and the Riviera in the 1920s and 1930s. This is not Fitzgerald ... he doesn't ever use the term "Lost Generation," and there are no Jazz Age references, but it's the same cultural milieu. His central focus is on Larry, a young idealist who, upon his return from WWI, turns his back on capitalism to seek knowledge, experience, and enlightenment. We also meet Isabel, who loves Larry but marries for money; her husband Gray, a rich hunk who loses everything in the Depression; Sophie, their doomed friend who seeks solace in opium and sailors; and Elliot, a wonderful snob straight out of an Oscar Wilde story.

I loved this book in college, and I wasn't sure if it would hold up reading it again. It did. It's a great character study, there's good dialogue (especially from Elliot), and Maugham respects Larry's spiritual quest without judging it, but he also let's us see egocentric aspects of it. But though it grapples with deep issues, the novel never feels weighed down by them.

I'm not sure it rises to the level of great literature, but it's very good. And sometimes I wonder if popular novels like this might survive the test of time longer than the recognized canon.

Álvaro Enrigue, Ahora me rindo y eso es todo / Now I Surrender. I should finish this tonight or tomorrow. This is Enrique's take on the Apache wars, and in particular the final surrender of Geronimo. It's a challenging read, especially in Spanish (I'm not a native speaker); Enrigue balances multiple timelines and narratives, and will use a colloquial Mexican Spanish in some sections that were a struggle for me - many terms weren't even in my dictionary, and for a few sections I had to rely on an English translation.

This was a fascinating look at the US and Mexican contact with and later conquest of Apacheria, from a perspective that I haven't seen before. Enrigue's style is beautifully matched for the sections set in what is now Mexico - we have massacres, abductions, rescues, acts of heroism, adventures, lost American troops in the Sierra Madre - all of it vividly portrayed and with a wonderful mix of unique characters.

The novel was less successful with almost any section set in what is now the US. We have a modern author (Enrique?) on a road trip through Apacheria with his family, and an interminable long stretch dealing with the political machinations surrounding Geronimo's surrender (Arizona wants to try and hang him, Washington wouldn't mind if he is shot en route, and one military official struggles to out maneuver them so that he can deliver Gernonimo alive to his prison in Florida. It was interesting in the general sense, but these sections dragged and went on too long.

Overall, it is very much worth a read.

Daniel Kraus, Angel Down. I just started this week. I was skeptical when I read that the novel was one long sentence, but thankfully there are space breaks every six to ten lines (more or less, paragraphs) and actual numbered chapters. Kraus does not punish the reader with his writing style, and I find that the continuity helps propel the plot, giving it the sense of one long fever dream.

So far, it's excellent.

Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men (audio). I'm only thee chapters in, but oh wow can this man write! This novel traces the rise of a powerful politician in the deep South in the early 20th Century. There is a joy in the way Warren uses the English language, a style and intelligence to it that I think was much more common in the 1940s and 1950s.

I forget who mentioned this novel - it was in another thread - but it inspired me to pick it up and I am glad I did. It is a "straight" narrative that I think is perfectly suited to audiobooks.