which book would you use?

Depends on the person. His books are so different, there's one to hook anybody.

I'd say Survivor too, simply for the reason that that's the one I read first, and it did a great job of wanting me to read more. Which I did.

disregarding my favorites list, i would probably go with diary. it has a softness to it, but its also punchy enough to get them into his style. i agree with mirkah in that it definitely depends on the person.. if theyre ready for choke, then theyre ready for choke..but if not, id probably use diary first.

i introduced a bunch of highschool kids w/ choke, then moved them to invisible monsters, then survivor

some people might be alittle frightened off by the sex themes in choke.

[i]Your[/i] friends, maybe.

With me the first book by Chuck I introduced to my friends was Choke and they loved it...also I got my Senior English teacher to read Invisible Monsters.

i really think it depends on the person.

i've given away i don't know how many copies of his books, and it's tough to say which one i've given away most.

most recently, i got a copy of choke for one friend, and invisible monsters for another. choke, i picked because it's his funniest, and since this friend and i have a running joke of "turn around jesus, and show us your ass!", the subject matter seemed apropriate. invisible monsters, i picked because it was my favorite untill diary (yes, i know i'm *seriously* in the minority on both of these, but i'm okay with that), and the person i'm giving it to shares a lot of my more uncommon thoughts and opinions.

i gave my brother survivor because of the whole sibling rivalry thing, and another friend got invisible monsters because they identify as transgendered.

it's all about who's going to get it.

well...I read Fight Club not too long after it came out and got a ton of people going on that one....but there were no other options at the time. I got quite a few people hooked with Survivor as well. I don't really have anyone else to hook at this point...so those 2 pretty much did the trick for me.

I first picked up Invisible Monsters after a recomendation by a friend of mine to pick up some of Chuck's books--- When I told him that I got IM he said "yeah, that's his worst one. About a supermodel. Really Gay", needless to say IM is probably my favorite of his along with Survivor. And I recomended Survivor to my friend which he loved, I lent him my copy of CHOKE to follow-up on but he hated it. So yes, it all does depend on the person; If sex-addicted scam artists tickle you get Choke, If frozen dead babies give you a tingling sensation in your loins then go with Lullaby, etc.

My boyfriend/whatever youwannacallhim/guy was eager to begin reading Chuck. So I, without pausing, told him to try Invisible Monsters first. Naturally, because he secretly hates me he started with Fight Club (after already having seen the movie first) and flipped out because he thought it moved too slow (dumbass, I know). Anyway, he's had I.M. for a few months now (from the library, nice hefty fee)... and he refuses to finish it, says it doesn't get him off. Whatever. Nothing gets him off. Anyway, lol, Invisible Monsters definitely.
-Anesthetized

Well lets talk abt most of us... who got introduced to Chuck thru FC. So that is the best way to introduce Chuck. If the person loved the movie "ONLY" then you intro the person to Chuck... coz none of us would like to hear someone else trashing Chuck. I would maybe spray the guy's balls with Freon... lol kidding.

I'd also say Survivor...depending on the person, but Fight Club, even though most people have seen the movie, would be the one I recommend most. For me....Invisible Monsters was the first one I read that really hooked me into Chuck's world...but that's just me. I think it was the whole "worst mistake you could make" scenario that sold me.

I started with Survivor and its definitly my favorite, for most people I would probably give them Choke, because people my age would like all the sex and comedy so much, but I had introduced my best friend with Invisble monsters and my dad with survivor, because that was the only one I read at the time. Most people I know thing that Survivor is his best.

i just gave my grandma lullaby to read.
it beats the hell out of mary higgins clark...

i would give people either invisible monsters or fight club to get into it. thats how i got started, i saw the movie fight club when it came out, then began the search to find the author and book, and jsut became hoooked and then went out and bought and read all the books to date.

i'd just use the fight club movie.

if they like what it has to say then you'll know where to lead them.

I've pretty much tried to get different people into chuck's works with different works. I lent Diary to my art teacher, simply because she's an art teacher [and can proudly say that she's hooked on the way he writes now]. I lent Lullaby to my mom just because she thinks shes some sort of decent of a Wiccan priestess or something and she thinks she can cast spells [these dillusions that she has, i'd like to add, did NOT rub off on me]. I lent Fight Club to a friend of mine whom i got hooked on the movie first because he said, and i quote, "it makes you think." I lent Choke to my ex because he, like me, is an extreme sex fiend and thought that the Jesus thing was funny. I havent lent the others out, although if i find somebody who is fascinated with learning about religion and stuff like that, i will most definitely recommend Survivor to them.
Invisible Monsters...that is for the truely intelligent. I dont know how many people i know could handle its brilliance, so im keeping it safely untill i find someone worthy enough to make that their first chuck experience.

It depends on the person, but my general choices are Survivor and Choke. I've been trying to urge my friend to read Survivor for more than two years, and I got his girlfriend to read Choke. She loved it, and she ended up getting him to read it. But he didn't like it, and now he won't read Survivor, which I'm still pretty confident he'd enjoy.

I started with Fight Club (of course), and I'm proud to brag of the fact that I was the first of my friends to discover Palahniuk's other works, which have blazed through my friends and coworkers and classmates alike, all because of my scheming. Now almost everyone I talk to has read most of Chuck's books.

I've bought several copies of his first 4 books, because I keep loaning them out and they never come back, but because I like him so much, and I know that the people who are keeping them are keeping them because they like them, I don't mind buying multiple copies, when I can.

[QUOTE]disregarding my favorites list, i would probably go with diary. it has a softness to it, but its also punchy enough to get them into his style.[/QUOTE]

Holy shit, that's [I]exactly[/I] what I was going to say.
It's true, too. Diary is soft enough to be harder than anything they've read, and if they continue reading(why wouldn't they?) then they'll just move up from there.
If I didn't read Fight Club before Invisible Monsters, I probably would have been scared of it half way through. It's better to work your way up, especially if you've never read anything with that style of writing.

Fight Club is still Chuck's best novel in my very humble opinion, but Choke would be best to get someone's attention if they prefer fun to philosophy. Invisible Monsters is amazingly nifty too, but a bit too 'weird' for those only used to reading Harlequin books.

Survivor does seem boring after two pages. If you ask me, it's because it [i]is[/i] boring after two pages.

Just started reading Diary, and it seems very good so far. I'll do an in-depth review in... well, this shouldn't take longer than seven hours. Tomorrow.

Less than five hours. Go me.

Diary was good, very good. The plot/situations reminded me a lot of Choke, but the atmosphere was completely different. Not something I'd recommend to a Chuck newbie-- though that depends solely on the kind of person reading it.

I first read Lullaby and recommended it to a friend. She has had said copy of book for two months. She said she loves it. I am thinking that lending it out might have actually meant giving it away. I would recommend people to read Choke because it kind of sums up the way Chuck writes, with the philosophy spliced into the sexuality and generally weird situations, such as the colonial theme park and everything that happens there. People seem to be pretty receptive when I try to tell them about Chuck, but they can't be the kind of people who are only willing to read something like a romance novel or something like that. You have to have an open mind to read Chuck's works.

I would use Invisible Monsters. It's also the first book by Chuck that I read.

i read fight club first, and it's the one i made my mom read first (i also made her read choke and invisible monsters), but i would use one of the last three if i did it now:
choke,lullaby,diary

well i think its kind of silly to expect someone to like a book that you would suggest to everyone. find out the persons interests, find out what kind of movies they like, and their hobbies, like art, or music, or any other stuff. personalize it.