See also part 1 and part 2.

Butterfly Stories, by William T. Vollmann:
The only Vollmann book I’ve read, so far. Disjointed and kind of dark, it’s written in the voice of someone with severe emotional trauma in his background. Sad, and not subtle, but it works.

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie:
I temporarily forgot that I read this book earlier this year, but just seeing the title again was enough to launch a bunch of psychedelic imagery rattling around my head. I wasn’t always sure exactly what was going on, but in a good way. Unlike the protagonists of the book, my identity has never been at stake (except when I was a teenager, when everybody goes through that). On the “to read” list for a while, again, to see what the fuss was about.

Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth:
I read of famous, older books this year, I guess. I’m no prude, but I felt a little uncomfortable reading this book on the train every morning. Two people at work asked me if this was, “the book about jerking off.” Yeah, it was a classy place. What can I say about the book that hasn’t been said already?

The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson:
Book Three of the Baroque Cycle. It was a good book, and ended the series nicely. After a thousand pages, I was ready to sign up for whatever book Stephenson plans on selling next.

The Blunder Book, by M Hirsh Goldberg:
Picked this one up at a Friends of the Library sale. It’s a compilation of some of the greatest mistakes in history, and not as interesting as I thought it would be. Pick up The Experts Speak instead, if you can find it.

Issac Newton, by James Gleick:
After reading the Baroque Cycle, I thought it would be fun to read up on the actual Issac Newton, and this book was mercifully short. Consequently, it didn’t tell me very much.

This year’s Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award goes to… Iain Hollingshead:

Iain Hollingshead was this year’s winner, for a passage in his first novel Twentysomething (Duckworth). It was announced at a lavish ceremony in St James’s Square, London. Actress, rock star and author Courtney Love stylishly presented the award.

Note that they didn’t use the word, “classy.” If you never thought you’d live long enough to see Courtney Love hand out a literary award (sort of), you were (sort of) wrong.

As many others have said, writing sex scenes can be difficult. Unlike watching a sunset or eating a fine meal, it’s not an activity that one can usually stop and take notes in the midst of without drastically altering the mood. This may have something to do with the proliferation of cameras in the bedroom.
Other  writers that made the Bad Sex shortlist were Will Self, Thomas Pynchon, and David Mitchell, illustrating that even some of the best writers can muff their sex-scenes (though the Pynchon passage is probably intentionally funny).

Here’s an excerpt of the winning entry:

Oh Jack, she was moaning now, her curves pushed up against me, her crotch taut against my bulging trousers, her hands gripping fistfuls of my hair. She reaches for my belt. I groan too, in expectation. And then I’m inside her, and everything is pure white as we’re lost in a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles.

I’m sure the rest of the book is fine, but that’s not hot. Then again, it’s out of context.

See part one.

Hollywood Babylon, by Kenneth Anger:
I ended up reading this book because, at the time, I kept running across references to it and wanted to see what it was all about. It manages to be gossipy and indignant at the same time; Hollywood was a brand new thing, and the people who became its stars were like children without adequate supervision, being held accountable for their actions not by people who cared about their interests, but by parasites in the tabloid press, and now enjoy this chapter about Fatty Arbuckle. The book feels outdated now, not because many of the celebrities involved have passed into obscurity, but because the book can’t compare with the crack-addled antics of the current crop of famous whack-jobs.

In the National Interest, by Marvin Kalb and Ted Koppel:
Read our 100-Penny Review of this book.

A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole:
“You just read that?” Yes, as I pointed out in Part 1 of this little retrospective, I’m only listing books that I read for the first time this year (with one exception, and this isn’t it). Officially listed as a comic novel, I found this one a bit of a slog. A good book, but it’s not really as funny to me as it is to others. A broke fat guy with mother issues — I read to escape, okay? Comedy is sadism, but just about everybody in this book deserves a punch in the mouth. Knowing that Toole killed himself didn’t help to imbue the book with much hilarity, either.

The Confusion, by Neal Stephenson:
Book Two in the Baroque Cycle. It was fun to read, not just in a plot-and-characters sense, but the actual writing was fun to read.

Spock Must Die! by James Blish:
Dedicating yourself to reviewing books purchased for only a dollar (hence the “100-Penny Review”) means taking risks; like reading a disintegrating copy of a Young Adult franchise-universe book that just happens to be written by a master of science fiction. Rejected as a review book because I misplaced it and therefore can not give it the in depth treatment it deserves. An interesting thing to note is that the book, though deception is a major theme in it, has no plot twists. I spent the entire book over-thinking everything, and was actually shocked when things turned out the way they seemed to be on course to turn out.