Just finished Nathan Englander's For The Relief of Unbearable Urges. Some fine observations and nice observational comedy. Each story was immediately substantial and engrossing. So I was disappointed by the fact that each story finished very weakly, if at all. Another quibble: many stories were marred by the Jewish equivalent of paddywhackery. I'm glad I read Englander backwards. The stories in his subsequent collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank were more assured, more complete and more universally observant, so the progress is clear. I will want to read his next collection.

Speaking of short stories: I only recently discovered Electric Literature and its Recommended Reading magazine. One story is chosen each week by 'today's best authors or editors'. There are new stories, stories from independent presses, author recommendations and stories from the archives of literary journals.

In this age of distraction, we’re uncovering writing that’s worth slowing down and spending some time with. And in doing so, we’re giving great writers, literary magazines, and independent presses the recognition (and readership) they deserve.

Aimee Bender's The Doctor And The Rabbi was a recent selection. Wonderful. I will be reading more from her.

Coincidentally, this week's Recommended Read popped in to my inbox alongside this week's Miranda July We Think Alone emails. The theme: "An email you sent that had a link in it." Etgar Keret's contribution was a mail to a friend with a link to his story Todd, published in March as an Electric Literature Recommended Read.

Currently reading The Fear Index, another cracker from Robert Harris, who barely puts a foot wrong. This one is much faster paced than some of his earlier work, not quite the soft boil, rather it gets going from the start and is thoroughly engrossing and hugely entertaining. He presents complicated ideas in a way you can easily understand them, I finally know what a hedge fund is!
Excellent thriller.

However, I find myself rushing to finish it, partly because I have to know the resolution, but mainly because Stephen King's sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep just downloaded onto my Kindle!

Finished Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather which I absolutely adored. Wonderful stories told with deceptive plainness; a rare skill. Fine characters and beautiful landscape. This is real escapism.

Dashed off An Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett during an evening and a sleepless night. What a fine, little story, like Cather, so honest and down to earth and so enjoyable. We don't find knowledge in novels, we confirm what we didn't know we already knew. or something like that. It was very inspiring, anyway, a sort of literary self-help book. A genius stroke by Bennett to have her Maj as the main character.

Read The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for book club. It is good to cleanse the literary palette with a piece of classic 19th century prose, like a story sorbet. It's one of those truly original ideas; the id versus the superego, the yin and yang of the personality, the socially acceptable facade that hides our blackest desires- every man's battle with the hairy handed beast- it's about masturbation, right? Just checking you read all the way down!

Just finished the new Neil Gaiman novel The Ocean at the end of the Lane. I thought that it was about something much deeper and more unsettling than the apparent story, something about dark and fleetingly remembered hurts endured by children at the hands of adults. I thought that the contrast between those parts of the book that deal with magic and the "real" world was done well and I particularly liked the image of the awful nanny become all devouring fabric/tent in the surreal other world.

I have read some reviews that think this should have been a short story but I think it is a novel. I also thought parts of it very moving. If magic and Neil Gaiman are your thing do give this a go. It is a selection on the Not the Booker Prize and in my opinion is second only to Life after Life by Kate Atkinson.