Where have the good books gone?

Extreme disappointment. And what I mean by my previous statement is extreme disappointment. I've developed a new hobby where I buy lots of books online and then wait eagerly for the packages to start coming, giddy like a kid at Christmas. Geek Love by Kathrine Dunn turned out to be o.k. The story is about the Binewskis, a carnival couple who with the help of drugs ( amphetamines, arsenic, radioisotopes ) breed their own exhibit of 'human oddities'. It was kind of like reading a fairy tale, really. Not one of my favorites but with occasional highlights. What the book is basically about is the extremity to which some people are willing to go to break the mould and stand out.
"There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentrities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity. These are frequently artists and performers, adventurers and wide-life devotees.
Then there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. they suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull".
The book has 348 pages and this is what I thought was the highlight. Other than that, not much to it really.
Than there was Jesus's son by Denis Johnson. I had such high hopes for this one. The disappointment. 'Deflation' in this case is exactly the right word. All it is is a collection of short stories that do not coincide with one another, with no specific theme or subject. If they did have a theme, I obviously did not get it because I couldn't even concentrate on what was going on. That's how bored I was. I am now waiting for Johnson's Tree of Smoke to be delivered. I really do hope it's better.
Where have all the good books gone? I need some Kundera.