What I've been reading

1. "Chronic City". I am a big fan of J. Lethem and I really enjoyed this book, though there is no plot to speak of, and good editing to make it 10% shorter would make it 24% better. "Motherless Brooklyn" remains my favorite Lethem novel, but I'd recommend CC for sure.

2. "Ilustrado". This is good, people. Ambitious, funny, out of control, absorbing. Some of the themes end up a bit cartoonish, but this is a great debut novel, up there with "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" and "The Ecstatic".

3."The Lacuna". It starts so slowly that I almost quit, but patience is rewarded. The parts set in Mexico City are transcendent.

4. "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet". I adored the first part of the book and the unlikely hero DeZoet. The middle, DeZoet free, part dragged for me, too cartoony and lurid. Then Mitchell kind of pulls it together toward the end. What can I say, it's no "Cloud Atlas", but then again what is?

5. "Witz". After 15 minutes I physically deposited this POS into the garbage.