Cool...let me know when u start one and I'll read it again!

Ellison was famously blocked after the success of Invisible Man and spent most of his years struggling with a second novel. (He lost a huge amount of work in a 1967 fire.) Here's Wikipedia on the posthumous publication of his work:
I read Juneteenth when it was published, found hard to get into, then was caught up in brilliant passages, then felt ultimately frustrated. I've never looked at the longer version, but there's an excellent essay on it here: http://criticalflame.org/fiction/0510_evans.htm. Evans's suggestion that "the great challenge of the book" is "to constantly remind oneself that the novel is unfinished, and to accept that its absorbing scenes and characters never reach full development or conclusion. As a result it [is in] equal parts exciting and deeply frustrating" sums up my feelings about Juneteenth. But I don't regret having read it.

How about Three Days Before the Shooting...? Amazon reviews make it sound fairly promising, better than Juneteenth. Of course, I don't know a single person in real life who's read it. 1136 pages seems ridiculous for an unfinished novel. But as someone who truly loved Invisible Man I don't think I'll be able to resist at least attempting it.

Any psychology or philosophy buffs have any recc's for books that center around cognitive dissonance and/or the uncanny?

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) might fit your bill.

I absolutely love the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Some books are better than others, but I like them wall. But yeah you have to be interested in the world he creates because there are sooooo many characters in the book. If you like following a few main characters then it's not a series for you. But when it comes to creating a world with its own people, history, rules, etc nothing I haven't read anything like it...

The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea (which was mentioned) are his best works imo. Definitely some my favorite books that I have read.

I thought For Whom the Bell Tolls was good, but not on the level of the other the ones above. A Farewell to Arms was decent.

Quite a few of the stories are also terrific.

Spicy pickles are "decent." A Farewell To Arms is better than decent.

Although, tbh, I was disappointed when no one lost his arms.

<Insert clap gif>?

Anything by Oliver Sacks?

You're thinking of the book by Venus de Milo.

A student once asked what happened to the Venus' arms, and I told her, "bad fingernail-biting habit."

She almost believed me.

Finished Cold Deck by H. Lee Barnes. Blackjack dealer that survived the MGM fire in '80, Fast forward 20 years when he gets fired from another dealing job and ends up part of a cheating scam. Very well written,

It was his first novel. Library had his first works called When We Walked Above The Clouds. A non fiction account of his days as a Green Beret on the ground in Viet Nam.

In trying to ascertain the identity of Evan Dara...

The Lost Scrapbook (1995)
The Easy Chain (2008)
Flee (2013)

And….

Before Sunrise (1995)
Before Sunset (2004)
Before Midnight (2013)

Besides the 4 year difference in ‘04-‘08, perhaps he was upset about Bush’s reelection or something, a perfect match in releases. No way this is a coincidence. We’ll find out in 2022.

You're probably right. The categorizations were meant to be how felt about each one relative towards each other. To rephrase:

I enjoyed Sun Also Rises and Old Man and the Sea much more For Whom the Bell Tolls, which I enjoyed more than A Farewell to Arms.

Sun Also Rises and Old Man and the Sea are among my favorite literature.

I don't think I've ever had a spicy pickle.

you are missing out.

+1 to spicy pickles tho I got em above decent

I thought the death scene in For whom the bells tolls was poignant.

Me too. Shoulda lost some arms, tho.

Finished 13 Jump Street, wonderful campy trash, sort of The Postman Always Rings Twice on steroids freed of literary concerns.

Started Sideswipe by Charles Willeford.

Finished up my "tour of the world" with two short story collections. Flying Fox From the Freedom Tree and Other Stories was pretty disappointing. Title story was pretty decent. The rest ranged from below average to awful.

Finished up with Alice Munro's Open Secrets, which was definitely my favorite of the 12 books. It's the best short story collection I have read outside of Interpreter of Maladies.

Month	Country	Author	Book	My Grade
January	China	Mo Yan	Red Sorghum	D-
February	Nigeria	Chinua Achebe	Things Fall Apart	C-
March	Bangladesh	Taslima Nasrin	Lajja	C
April	Czech Republic	Milan Kundera	The Unbearable Lightness of Being	B+
May	Chile	Roberto Bolano	The Savage Detectives	F
June	Vietnam	Bao Ninh	The Sorrow of War	A-
July	Japan	Haruki Murakami	Sputnik Sweetheart	B+
August	Peru	Mario Vargas Llosa	The War at the End of the World	B+
September	Somalia	Nuruddin Farah	From a Crooked Rib	B
October	Colombia	Gabriel Garcia Marquez	100 Years of Solitude	B+
November	Samoa/New Zealand	Albert Wendt	Flying Fox From the Freedom Tree and Other Stories	D+
December	Canada	Alice Munro	Open Secrets	A

I'm glad I exposed myself to various literature from around the world this year, even if a few too many were disappointing (Ugh, Savage Detectives still gives my nightmares).

Don't really have a reading plan for 2014, but we'll see what happens.

Finished The Wise Man's Fear last night. I thought it was just as good as The Name of the Wind. The stuff with Felurian kind of dragged out but I understand why PR wrote so much.

I have at least +20 books(several series) on my list and can't make up my mind which to start.

I'm pretty sure it will be either The Riftwar Saga or Malazan Book of the Fallen.

I was just reading some of the stories in her last book tonight. Although I admire some more than others, there's not a single Munro collection that disappoints.