Re-reading books is often tricky. Sometimes you love something, only to go back to say, huh? Why did I love that? Let's just say that's happened a lot to us recently, so much so that we are afraid to re-read. ("But why are all your books taking up all this shelf space?", says the wife. "Either re-read them or throw them out!" So we re-read them.)

Which brings us to Paul Auster. He rose to (relative) fame in the 1980s, with a number of critical darlings. Most prominent of them was "The New York Trilogy", which has been called "the quintessential post-modern work of fiction". So the bar is high. He's been short-listed on a bunch of Nobel literature candidate lists, but his recent work has not exactly been applauded. A prominent review of his latest novel started with "What Happened to Paul Auster?"

So, instead of reading that (and to appease the wife), we decided to re-read, both "Trilogy" and another of his early works, "Mister Vertigo". And you know what? Still damn good, "Vertigo" even more than "Trilogy".

We shouldn't have been afraid here. Oh, and Auster's work are always peppered with Jewish characters. Figure that's worth mentioning.