Another List for the List of Lists

Some books the writer has read, not in part but in whole, this summer:

Joshua Farris, Then We Came to the End. At first, the first-person plural was hard to get used to. A bit annoying. But as you read on the perspective opens up to you, befitting life in an office. You are not "one of us" at first. But if you stay with it, you become one of us. We becomes like a more intimate third-person, capable of separating individual pieces of itself from the group as need demands.
Martin Amis, Time's Arrow. A book I recommend everyone read. Never before have I seen the depths of depravity turned so completely upside-down (backwards, that is) as to render the Holocaust as "the fires of creation." From a writer's perspective, the dual narrative is admirable and a great accomplishment; but I am left wondering: how could one make a third-person narrative move completely backward without relying on the narrator "speaking for"? (I am seriously considering studying Time's Arrow for the Comps.)
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin. I have not read a Nabokov novel that I have not enjoyed immensely. Beyond admirable in Pnin is how Nabokov can get away with long, long stretches of exposition that do not bore. The details are lucid and vibrant and alive. And frankly, I don't care that I have to keep a notecard handy: so many strange and unfamiliar words, bizarre novelties they are, that I have to write down so I can look them up later. Of course, Timofey Pnin himself could be your grandpa or mine, despite (or perhaps as a consequence of) his stumbling along through small-town-college America. Artificial teeth, stubbornness, polite gruffness, gruff politeness...
Steve Almond, My Life in Heavy Metal. Henry Miller is the only other writer I can think of who so carefully believes in sex on the page. I paid close attention to the title story, in particular Almond's use of sensory verbs, the accumulation of small details, and release...of information. I can't help it: I think of this story and it's gushing Mexican mermaid, and it's so perfect that everything I read or write becomes a minor sexual pun. Almond's obsession runs through the book: the gushing lifeguard; the grimy Polish girl; two Greek women fistfighting in the street; pierced, youthful, Chinese Ling; and, of course, the Republican operative.
Tom Franklin, Poachers. This collection shows how at ease Franklin is with voice and dialect and colloquialisms. But, such is Alabama. Voices throughout the collection call to mind the variance of voice in Barry Hannah's stories (Bats out of Hell, Airships). Many of Franklin's characters succeed beautifully at failure, fail beautifully at success. But their redeeming moments are powerful. The fuel storage tank inspector, in the story "Dinosaurs," when he drives off with the gigantic stuffed rhinoceros...the moment just stays with you. The title-novella creates such suspense that all the unanswered questions don't seem to matter any by the end.

I am rubbing my hands together in anticipation. I am reading Martin Amis' Yellow Dog, roughly two-thirds of the way to the end. Coming soon in the mail: Nabokov's Glory; and Martin Amis' Einstein's Monsters.