The Lonely City - Olivia Laing

A book that explores loneliness as an experience in NYC, one of the most densely populated places in the world.  She explores her theme through personal recollections, but also (more interesting) through an examination of the life and works of several NYC artists, from both the 60s and the 90s - Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Joseph Darger, Klaus Nomi.  Laing spends most of her time on Warhol and Wojnarowicz, who represent two distinct periods in the NYC art scene. 
An interesting read, though perhaps not for the reasons intended.
Some threads:
1)  All of these artists had difficult, traumatic early lives.  There work seems to be an attempt both to express their experience and overcome, or at least cope with, the effects these traumatic experiences had on their lives.  20th century art as coming out of deep trauma, social alienation.  Why now?  Is it because in the 20th C society (at least in the U.S.) has become so narrow, so limited in what it demands to belong?  Is it because, tradition having been devalued, we are left only with our own lives to work with, and the most traumatized is simply the most interesting?

2)  Warhol as an early discoverer of how technology serves both to engage you and yet at the same time create a distancing, a separateness, as part of the medium itself.  Think of how much technology now buffers our engagement with what passes for real.  It both connects and alienates at the same time.

3)  Through Wojnarowicz, Laing explores the sexual scene in NYC in the 90s, pre-AIDS, the fetish scene but mostly the gay scene.  She spends some time discussing the whole derelict docklands cruising scene.  Interesting that so many of the artists that came out of NYC at that time were gay, or explored the whole fetish idea in their art and concerts staging.  The 60s counterculture brought a kind of revolution to american society - blew up the suburban, nuclear family, work oriented, church on Sunday, Father Knows Best mythology (where did this myth come from?).  The 90s NYC gay art scene also seems to have had some kind of revolutionary effect on american society, but I am not sure how I would characterize that.  Pushing of boundaries?  Perhaps, the marginalized and "different" demanding to be seen, heard and accepted in society?  Through this, a further broadening of the idea of social norms?  If this is so, this revolution has definitely not completed its cycle yet.  In fact, we are in a major push-back stage right now, especially in the US.   Interesting ideas to explore more...

Facing the Hunter - David Adams Richards

Part memoir, part examination of the reality and issues around hunting.  He hits on his usual themes - the reality of a somewhat inarticulate rural underclass, the unreality of the views of urban, politically correct "intellectuals" who are so distanced from this reality - and also the historical reality of Canada until recently.  There are also some wonderful passages about moving through the woods and experiencing wild spaces, and the kinds of skills and awareness you need to be fully there.
As good as any of his fiction, with that same distinct voice, though toned down some.
An important part of his oeuvre.

An Event in Autumn - Henning Mankell

A short Wallander mystery.  One of the last I think.  Good, but for me, not one of his best.

The Black Book - Ian Rankin

A very early Rebus novel, but already with all the main characters and Rebus ticks.

The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin

A detective story focused on Detective Fox from Complaints.  More intellectual than the Rebus books, but just as good.  Underlying theme - behind every fortune, and every successful politician lies a crime, or at least a lie.

Before the Frost - Henning Mankell

A Wallander mystery.  Wallander and his daughter Linda both figure as detectives in this book.
A good spin out of a mystery, based on religious cults.

NIghts Below Station Street - David Adams Richards

Richards always looks at what passes as the underside of society - the marginal, the poor, the inarticulate, the forgotten.  Not much happens in the story itself, but the voice the story is told in is everything.  It is third person, but the language is the voice of the marginalized characters that are the heroes of the story - Joe Walsh and his wife.  I recognize the voice as that of some of my older relatives from Quebec, but with an edge that comes from a desperation and chaos that they did not know. 
As usual, the educated and socially pretentious get skewered....

One Step Behind - Henning Mankell

The best Mankell book I have read so far.  A Wallander mystery.  Wonderful use of settings.  Characters intriguing.  Interesting exploration of the psychotic mind.

Dogs at the Perimeter - Madeleine Thien

This novel is set in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period.  A very interior novel, with the main character undergoing almost a form of madness after her experiences during the regime's emptying of Phnom Pen.  It seems this is Thien's theme, regime traumas of the east Asia?  Her writing reminds me of Ondaatje - the same weaving back and forth between a traumatic past and a stable present, and an inability to find a place of peace between the two.

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

Well-written, clever, but I am surprised this book banned and Bulgakov was never published in  Russia during communist times.  I really don't see any back story or hints of criticism of the regime.  About the only thing you could say is that is in not really a glorification of the working class and the (imaginary) worker society of communist Russia.  Bulgakov seems more in the tradition of Russian short story writers like Gogol.

Un covo di vipere - Andrea Camilleri

Un altro buon mistero nel dialetto siciliano.