cafard

Another book set in the first decade of the century is Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

J.F. Powers's Morte d'Urban nearly meets that description.

Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana is about a way of life long gone, but it is well worth reading.

wrote an excellent memoir, A Skeptic Among Scholars.

The former a devastating short novel

Very slow going, but rewarding, a mind at work.

I think very well of Alvin Kernan's In Plato's Cave.

Journeys of the Mind by Peter Brown, a memoir of his life, chiefly as a historian of late antiquity. It is very long, the sole reason that I won't be giving it as a Christmas present.

Most interesting, but slow going because my German is rusty.

a memoir, a portrait of the artist as a young twerp

It seemed to me that it could have been maybe 15% shorter

Rachel Bespaloff's "On the Iliad"