Two equally great, but very different books

"The Secret History" by Donna Tartt and "The invention of solitude" by Paul Auster

Both of these share the top spot of my "most beautiful books to date" list, but in terms of style, genre and practically everything else they're very different.

"The secret history" is, roughly, a crime/mystery novel from an American university, its main characters a group of Ancient Greek students who get sucked into an entangled web of lies, drugs, homicide and ancient rituals. Two components make this the ultimate page-turner -
One: The extraordinary vivid description of characters. The author describes each character both psychologically and in terms of appearance (clothes, facial features, body language, quirks) in such detail that you can almost see them before your inner eye, like in a film. Gradually you begin to feel like you know them.
Two: The infinite amount of little details in the plot that leads to the explanation of other events, a skill only surpassed by that of Agatha Christie. The book keeps you constantly on your toes and, in a way, drags you along more or less against your will (at one point while reading it I was in a hurry and told myself I only had time to read one more page... then it was another page, then the rest of the chapter, then just another paragraph, and another....) When I had read the whole thing I was almost sad that it was over and that I didn't have that book to look forward to the next day.

"The invention of solitude" is also a page-turner in a way, though as a reader you don't get impatient to find out what's going to happen; there's no suspense as such. What stands out in this book however is the ability to move the reader; it's a very personal, vulnerable piece of work:
It's divided into two parts, the first called "Portrait of an invisible man" and the second called "The book of memory", both of which are autobiographical but the first more obviously so. Auster describes the circumstances of his father's death and also, inevitably, his father's life. The story also involves details about his father's childhood and the unusual events connected to his grandfather's death. "The book of memory" is written as a combination of a poetic piece of fiction and an essay, with references to everything from the Bible to Pinocchio. It's a little more "unstructured" than the first part of the book, but to me that's what makes it more poetic, and ultimately more personal. The perspective is no longer from a son's point of view but that of a father. He contemplates on the father/son relationships as they are described in literature, and shares memories from his own life, refering to himself as "A."
Out of the two parts, I find the latter the most moving; it's so vulnerable and honest and astonishingly beautiful. Especially at the very end where it's more or less dissolved into a poem; the last paragraph reads:

He finds a fresh sheet of paper. He lays it out on the table before him and writes these words with his pen.
It was. It will never be again. Remember.

Needless to say I highly recommend both of these books.