How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman

This book requires patience: it's written in a Scots dialect and in a stream-of-consciousness style that takes you inside the head of Sammy, an ex-con on a string of terrible luck. He wakes up after a bender to find that he's now blind and has been arrested, and then, after his release faces the disappearance of his girlfriend, the police, who question him about his participation in a crime they won't reveal, and the horrors of the welfare state and its bureaucracy as he tries to register his disability. This is definitely a book you have to adjust your way of thinking to understand--its lyricism is tied to its unfamiliar (and at times coarse) dialect, the action (such as there is) can be obscured by the stream-of-consciousness style, and Sammy is not the most appealing protagonist at first glance. But after getting to know Sammy, his resilience in the face of adversity shines through. Winner of the 1994 Booker Prize.

Regeneration by Pat Barker

This book presents life behind the lines at a hospital during World War I. In particular, it focuses on the friendship between Doctor Rivers and Siegfried Sassoon, who has published a letter insisting that the war is no longer morally justified. It really helped me understand what was happening (and the background behind) the third book in the trilogy. Next time I will try to read things in order!

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

I definitely appreciated the achievements of this book much more this time around than I ever have before. I'm not quite sure what clicked (whether the epic ambitions / ultimate parody of the journey the Bundrens take, Darl's prescient ability to know what's going on, poor Vardaman's inability to process his mother's death, Cora's self-righteous assumptions, or Anse's sly laziness), but I could see how this novel works better than ever.

Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler

This book collects five stories and two essays by Octavia Butler. The stories are challenging, because they're often set in different societies (the title story focuses on an outpost of humans who have developed a parasitic relationship with a host species) or in a different version of our society (two focus on disease--a psychological disorder that happens to children whose parents took a miracle drug for cancer, and a world where people are losing their ability to hear and read)--and it often takes almost the entire story to figure out what's happening. I really enjoyed these stories, which all focus on what constitutes a family, what does it mean to love another being, how do we communicate with one another, and how do we cope with disease. All in all, a brilliant collection.

The Lamplighter by Maria Susanna Cummins

This book tells the story of Gerty Flint, who overcomes a poor and deprived childhood to find happiness. The story is pretty good--of course there's a bit of gothicism in the family romance (missing family members) who reappear by the end, and a good measure of religious sentiment (but not so bad as The Wide, Wide World), and a fair amount of sentimentalism. There are a few points where Gerty seems almost modern--she wants to stand up for herself and earn her own way, at one point, and at another, she lets another girl be saved from the fire instead of herself, but she never quite breaks out in a fully satisfying way. Still, I'm interested in the intricate plot, and the character development (which at times seems a bit flat or uneven). Much more enjoyable than I thought it might be.