A Visit From The Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

Somewhere between a collection of linked short stories and a proper novel, this book details what time does to us (the goon squad). All of the characters are connected in some way, but it doesn't really matter that they are. Each chapter is it's own story, and each one ranges from satire to tragedy, from third to second person, and even a journal in PowerPoint form. It all holds together, a look at loss and aging and how we don't always get to be the person we want to be, we always end up becoming the person we are.

Distrust That Particular Flavor - William Gibson

It's a small surprise that this is his first collection of non-fiction, considering that he, albeit briefly, had the mantle of Chief Prognosticator, back when we thought the future would be delivered to us through VR googles and sensory pads. He explains his discomfort at non-fiction in the introduction, claiming that he wants to spend time writing fiction. Fair enough, and those most of the pieces in this collection slim, there are some excellent insights on Japan, eBay, and Borges. The best part is the author's comments afterwards, placing the piece in some kind of context. The piece on Singapore for Wired caused the magazine to be banned there for a number of years, a fact that I only knew through the comments. My favourite one is about Tokyo, also for Wired, which the author dismisses in the comments (saying that he feels guilty of using most of the good material he gathered on the magazine's dime for his novel Pattern Recognition) but to me conjures about Japan in a way that only those who have been there can fully understand.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

What strikes a modern reader of this collection of adventures of the great detective is how many remain unresolved. In The Five Orange Pips, the suspects disappear in a ship sinking. In The Adventure of the Copper Breeches, the resolution is tied up neatly, without much intervention from Holmes. Unlike modern detective tales that are strewn with corpses, most of these cases don't have a body, but instead verge into the merely interesting or slightly perplexing. Still, it's a good read, and has the classic line: "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke

In this book, the American Southwest is a broken wasteland, where rejects, killers and people with too much history hide out, hoping the past doesn't catch up. Sheriff Holland is a good man trying to make sense of the world around him as the bodies pile up when a former weapons maker for the CIA is kidnapped by former Mexican soldiers who worked for the US government. The man ends up in the care of a mass murderer who prefers to use a Tommy gun to mow his victims down. Part McCarthy, part Faulkner, the violence is punctuated by breathtaking descriptions of the landscape.

The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt

The Sisters Brothers move through a blood-soaked American West Coast, one shaded by McCarthy, a land where lives are cheap and death is quick. They were hired to kill a man, for reasons unknown, something that doesn't sit well with the younger brother and narrator, Eli, who wants us victims to be at least guilty of something. His older brother, Charlie, doesn't care as long as the money is good. This tenuous grasp of morality is one of Eli's saving graces, as his is bleak sense of humour and his desire to find true love.

Eli's voice is note-perfect and the language is wonderful, reminiscent of True Grit. The story moves, and the casualness of the violence makes it all the more shocking.