About the last three months or so...
Anthem by Ayn Rand
I read this because Rush wrote a song about it. Ha! This is the first Ayn Rand book I've read. She's way too polarizing for some people. As I saw it, it's a Dystopia about a society where there is no longer any personal freedom or identity. It is heavy handed at times, particularly towards the end, but I thought that it was fine and had its moments.
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin.
Speaking of being heavy handed. This novel does so in terms of religious imagery (mainly Old Testament) to the point that it sounds like a sermon at times. I didn't enjoy it as much as the other Baldwin novel I read, but it deals with a young man coming of age in Harlem in an interesting way, and I liked Baldwin's language so I can appreciate what he was going for.
Confessions by Kanae Minato.
This starts with a teacher confronting her students about the fact that she knows that some of her students murdered her daughter, but she doesn't reveal who. So the rest of the novel jumps point of view until we get to the bottom of the mystery. Disturbing.
A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
The general premise of this novel is that a man is hired by a rich and powerful man to find a mysterious sheep with a black star in its back. That leads him to bunch of strange events, traveling to rural Japan, seeking a lost friend, among other things. This is an earlier Murakami novel that helped him breakthrough and it has some of his staples, magical realism, enigmatic women, a man seeking out truth, and so forth, but I think he develops these themes better in later works.
Almost Transparent Blue by Ryū Murakami.
Another novel by this author which I read years ago, In the Miso Soup is more horror than this one which is more of a surrealist work. I could sort of appreciate the weirdness of it, but it was largely one drug infused moment or sex scene after another and I thought it was too much.
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin.
I knew the story and have the seen the first movie adaptation, but had never read the book. Really effective and it's surprisingly short. I guess the ending is bleak depending on whether or not you're a man or woman, lol.
The Terror by Dan Simmons.
This was a well research and written book about the ill fated Sir John Franklin's lost expedition. But is IS HARD to read since it's largely about men stranded and suffering in the G-d forsaken Arctic. Think malnutrition, disease, betrayal, cannibalism, and on top of that, some Yeti like creature is on the loose butchering men. Definitely one of the most intense and dark books I've read in a long time.
