"... haunting... audacious... ingenious... brilliant... intricate... masterly... restless... fascinating new... magnificently funny, sucker-punch-tragic... assured... sinister and charming... stunning... fierce and unsettling... powerful..."

Modifiers that appear before the word "novel" in the NYT "100 Notable Books of 2017."

I've only read one of the novels — the "magnificently funny, sucker-punch-tragic" one.

There's a headache-inducing flashing illustration at the link, so if your brain function is anything like mine, be prepared to scroll immediately downward if you click through. Or here's an Amazon link to the book. (Please think of doing your shopping through The Althouse Amazon Portal.)

I haven't read any of the non-fiction, though I do have Hillary Clinton's "What Happened" in my Kindle and I've done some searches and blogged some snippets. If I had to pick one to read, it would be "KRAZY/George Herriman, a Life in Black and White" (only $4.99 in Kindle).

"It’s unprecedented language from me, but it’s unprecedented to have the president of the United States attack the victims of a natural disaster."

"I’ve never seen that before, so those were the only words I had to express my feelings on that. When have we ever seen that?... That was not an impulsive tweet. Those were the only words I had left, and I’m a guy who puts words together for a living. They’re all I had available to me to express my reaction to his attack on the people of Puerto Rico."

"Hamilton" playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda gives an explanation for why he tweeted "You're going straight to hell, @realDonaldTrump. No long lines for you. Someone will say, 'Right this way, sir.' They'll clear a path."

Is Miranda religious? I tend to think that if you really believe there's a hell and some people are going there you would not purport to speak for God and say who's going there. You would not risk offending God. Miranda's "You're going straight to hell" is particularly high-handed, even purporting to know the bureaucracy of Hell, that there are long lines for some and an express lane for others. That makes it comedy, and it's a kind of comedy made possible, I think, by the belief that there is no hell, and that's why we've got to give the evildoers hell in the here and now.

Speaking of comedy and hell, I was just reading David Grossman's "A Horse Walks into a Bar," which is a novel set in a stand-up comedy show. At one point, the comedian, the main character, says:

"Have you heard the one about the guys who die and get to the induction center in the sky, and they sort them into heaven or... hell? No, seriously, isn’t that the greatest fear—that in the end it’ll turn out the rabbis were right? That hell is a for-real place?... Listen, guys, I’m talking all-inclusive hell, the whole shebang, with fire, and devils with horns, and those little rakes, the pitchforks, and the wheel of torture and boiling tar and all those gadgets Satan gets to use…I haven’t slept a wink just thinking about it these past few months, I swear, and at night it’s the worst, the thoughts just eat me up and I totally get what you’re thinking now: Son of a bitch, why did I have to go and eat those shrimp on that trip to Paris? And the pitas from Abu Gosh on Passover? And why didn’t we all vote for Torah Judaism?” He lowers his voice and booms: “Too late, scumbags—to the tar!”

"Imagine there’s a country somewhere in the world where the legal system works like this..."

"... the judge sits there, bangs his gavel, and declares: ‘The defendant will now rise!'... 'The court finds you guilty of armed robbery, and hereby sentences you to thyroid cancer.’ Or, let’s say, a panel of three judges finds you guilty of rape and sentences you to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Or they say this: ‘The court is informed that the prosecution has entered a plea bargain with the defense, and so instead of that German dude, Alzheimer, the defendant will only undergo a stroke. And for tampering with evidence he’ll get an irritable bowel.'"

From "A Horse Walks into a Bar: A novel," by David Grossman.

Yes, I read another novel! I've read 2 novels this month, very strange for me. I usually read nonfiction books. I read the other novel for reasons described in this post, and I guess it must have stimulated a taste for fiction.