Houston....and American literature

Saturday, 4 November: The drive from the hotel to Durango airport was literally breathtaking, as you take in the views of the Rocky mountains. We then flew from Durango to Houston via Denver. The flight to Denver was stunning because we flew over the snow capped peaks of the Rockies. Incredible scenery. Philip Glass on the i-pod made it atmospheric, and a richer experience.

Sunday, 5 November: Staying at the Hilton, Post Oak Boulevard, Houston. 8am breakfast meeting with client and two colleagues. We worked till 11am and then everyone went and did their own thing.

I headed off to the Galleria mall, and bought Nicholas a jigsaw (a map of the USA). Then headed to the Barnes & Noble bookstore for some quality browsing, and to Starbucks for a hit.

I bought "Dr No", by Ian Fleming, as I have already finished the two books I brought with me - "Strangeland" by Tracey Emin, and "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck. Enjoyed them both. My main criteria for a book these days are that they are short and have a nice cover.

The Steinbeck book was good, but not that good. I am always slightly underwhelmed by so called classic American novels. I don't quite get the 'wow' factor. I have the same feeling about "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is good, but is it really as good as people make out? I have read it twice with some years in between, and it still didn't do it for me the second time. What am I missing? Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5", was a let down too, and yet reckoned to be a classic.

Another one was "Mao II" by Don De Lillo, which I could not make head nor tail of, but was getting rave reviews. Some other De Lillo books look interesting (like "Libra", which is about Lee Harvey Oswald) so I may give him a try again.

I have tried Saul Bellow and Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer and Thomas Pynchon, but I generally cannot get past a few pages. Written in another era for another readership, and have not stood the test of time for me. I don't even know where to begin with John Updike or William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway or Henry James. They just leave me cold for some reason.

There are writers I should like and I think I might like, like Jonathan Frantzen or Dave Eggers or Ethan Canin or Siri Hustvedt or Jack Kerouac or Donna Tartt or Philip Roth or Nicholson Baker or Elizabeth McCracken. But if that is the case, haven't I bothered with them already, or managed to finish anything of theirs?

And I really wanted to like "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving, but could not get past 30 or so pages. And I really wanted to like "The Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper, because I did really like the film, but, again 30 or so pages and it wasn't doing it for me. Even good old Bret Easton Ellis - I could not get past 10 pages of "The Informers", and I abandoned "Glamorama" and "Lunar Park" through sheer boredom.

If anyone is still reading, these are my favourite American books: -

• "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" - Mark Twain
• "The Right Stuff" - Tom Wolfe
• "American Psycho" - Bret Easton Ellis
• "A Catcher in the Rye" - J D Salinger
• "A Confederacy of Dunces" - John Kennedy Toole
• "Catch-22" - Joseph Heller
• "Junky" - William S. Burroughs
• "A Patchwork Planet" - Anne Tyler
• "The Complete Prose" - Woody Allen
• "The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary" - Ambrose Bierce
• "Kitchen Confidential" - Anthony Bourdain
• "The Only Bush I Trust is My Own" - Periel Aschenbrand
• "The Blank Slate" - Stephen Pinker
• "Non Fiction"- Chuck Palahniuk
• "Moon Palace", "In the Country of Last Things", "The Music of Chance", "The Red Notebook", and "True Tales of American Life" - Paul Auster
• "Glengarry Glen Ross", "Speed The Plow", and "Oleanna" - David Mamet
• "Death of a Salesman" and "A View from the Bridge" - Arthur Miller
• "More, Now, Again", "Prozac Nation", "Bitch", and "The Bitch Rules" - Elizabeth Wurtzel
• "All the Trouble in the World", "Age and Guile", and "Give War a Chance" - P J O'Rourke
• "Microserfs", and "Girlfriend in a Coma" - Douglas Coupland (all right he is Canadian)
• "Bully for Brontosaurus", and "Eight Little Piggies" - Stephen Jay Gould
• "The Bell Jar", "Collected Poems", and "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams" - Sylvia Plath
• "The Godfather" - Mario Puzo