Suggestions please

there are waaay too many threads here on exactly this topic, but i understand for a member new to the site that it could be a little confusing navigating. i will link you to several of those threads a little later tonight, including chuck's recommend page.

there, you will find, are so many choices
oh, and welcome to the cult

i gotta go for the time being, so i'll hit back later
-kabol

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the contortionist's handbook - clevenger

beat the reaper - bazell (im reading this currently, so far its GREAT)

the raw shark texts - hall (doesnt read like chuck, but it was a great book nonetheless)

you shall know our velocity - eggars (again, not chuck but good)

the road - mccarthy (masterpiece. just peal the little oprah's book club sticker off the cover)

okay, there are some glitches and i cant retrieve posts from the new members forum. i guess that section of the site is being worked with at the moment..

i can offer you this thread, to the bookclub forum: http://chuckpalahniuk.net/forum/1000029

here's another author to read: http://chuckpalahniuk.net/features/shorts/suffer-the-fool
his writing is brutal, infective. plus he currently has three books out, and the forth releases this year! definitely give kiss me, judas a try. a great book, and the hard cover is cheap, like twelve bucks new at amazon. and it has a great first line: “I must be dead for there is nothing but blue snow and the furious silence of a gunshot.” (you'll flip when you read the opening pages of his third novel; fucking brilliant!)

another writer, a list:

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okay, so youve blown through chuck's library and youre slightly depressed. like, what now? well, the cult has a few for your list and this is a list of the ones i have heard about and read in my time here:

bret easton ellis' american psycho and less than zero
jesus' son by denis johnson--chuck read a reported three-hundred times before writing lullaby in six weeks
house of leaves, or simply HoL
david benioff wrote a dangerous and amazing first novel titled 25th hour (fantastic movie, too)
cormac mccarthy has two masterpieces: blood meridian and the road. both novels are beyond exceptional
susanna moore wrote in the cut and bret ellis called the ending the most surprising he's read (sorry, that's not verbatim; memory fades and i drink)
chuck called the contortionists' handbook (by craig clevenger) the best book he'd read in easily five years. (we call it the handbook)
the gargoyle by new badass andrew davison
for whom the bell tolls and sun also rises by hemingway
great gatsby by fitzgerald--chuck reads this once a year
faulkner's sanctuary and sound and the fury and as i lay dying--all three are fucking-a
beloved by toni morrison
will christopher baer's phineas poe trilogy
the stories of breece d'j pancake
dear mr president by gabe hudson (i havent read this in forever and plan to this weekend after a few others i need to get out of the way)
always outnumbered always outgunned by wlater mosley
tim obrien's the things they carried and if i die in a combat zone
richard matheson wrote i am legend back in the fifties, and it is still a relevant novel and was even a book club selection here a year or so back that, if i remember correctly, author kristopher young even partook in
salinger's catcher in the rye and franny and zooey
steve erickson, particularly tours of the black clock, days between stations and (my personal favorite) arc d'x
click by kristopher young (fantastic, surreal book. a great writer. and a cultist)
steve aylett's toxicology
angel dust apocalypse by jeremy robert johnson (chuck calls him a dazzling writer. he's also a cultist)
sylvia plath's the bell jar
crash by jg ballard
the extinction of rhinos in mexico by stephen blackburn
flannery oconnor's wise blood
bright lights big city by jay mcinerney
the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy by douglas adams
mark richard's ice at the bottom of the world and charity
i very much enjoyed mary robison's tell me: 30 stories (robison and denis johnson are two of amy hempel's favorite writers)
shoot the kids by kenzaburo oe
john wray's right hand of sleep
the book of revelation by rupert thompson (clevenger made us read this one for his writing intensive
james cain, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
and, cant forget Big jim thomspon. try pop 1280 and see if you can handle noir of that caliber
william gibson's neuromancer is a must read, noir scifi action fantasy thriller. (also, i very much enjoyed his play the miracle worker--cliche, i know..)
into the wild by jon krakauer (my woman's favorite book, and one of chucks--my woman and i both hated the movie, though) (*edit* we have recently seen it again, sober this time, and she went to tears. good movie, powerful, recommended.)
thom jones' pugilist at rest
stephen graham jones' demon theory (he has several, but sadly ive only read dt because i'm slow and an asshat, though i did get ledfeather in the mail (one of the reads i want to finish by this weekend) and have bleed into me ordered through my local barnes store)
lord of the fucking flies, william golding
fahrenheit 451 by ray bradbury
exquisite corpse by poppy badass poppy z bright
the big sleep by chandler
when the emperor was divine is a slim novel by julie otsuka. it made quite a bit of noise here a few years ago
night by elie wiesel
drown by junot diaz--havent read the new one. i have it, but i'm slow
geek love by katherine dunn
gao xingjian's one man's bible (an amazing book, can change your life. and i WISH he was a cultist)
uncle tom's cabin by stowe
and the slave narratives
amy hempel's full collection is anthologized in a single paperback edition (she is chuck's god when it comes to writing and he even dedicates pygmy to her. and here are a few of her short stories:
http://www.pifmagazine.com/SID/413/
http://www.nerve.com/fiction/hempel/offertory/
http://moreview.com/content/dynamic/view_text.php?text_id=508

i still havent read clowngirl by monica drake or raw shark text by steven hall (because, again, i'm an asshat), but both authors have spent time here and many a-cultists have raved about both of those books
there are too many to name. i havent even gotten into vonnegut or pkdick yet, and i wont or i'll be here all night.

oh, yeah. the reason for this longass list is this: before i read a chuck book, i read star wars novels and alien versus predator, a few batman graphic novels. after i read a few more chuck books, i got into clancy and grisham and other similar writers. by the time i finished all of chuck's books, i could no longer go back to reading clancy and grisham and such. i found my way to this website, before it was way huge, and read an interview on chuck. he mentioned a few books. he was always mentioning books and writers. so i started noting those writers, and the books they talked about in interviews. i noticed hempel through chuck, and through her i noticed robison and mark richard. through this site, i noticed clevenger, which led me to baer to cain to thompson to faulkner's sanctuary and the elements of style and steven graham jones. i personally dont want to know much about the authors i read. i know too much about chuck. i love his generosity and he seems like a fantastic character, someone you'd want to spend considerable time around, but i've developed hearing his for-real voice while reading his books now and that's a bit distracting. for a while there, i thought it was that his newer stuff just wasnt as good as his older stuff like survivor and im, but rant was fucking good; it's just, i think i'm hearing him speak, or the way a character smiles looks like his smile. so, normally i dont want to know much about an author whose work i adore; however, the best way to find new authors is through the authors you love via interviews. reading them online, watching them on tv, or npr. the names they drop, booktitles. there is always a through through that lookingglass. recommendations are different for everyone. i cant rightly suggest cormac mccarthy's the road to a woman who loves marry higgins clark. the chances are, she wouldnt enjoy it. but to a chuck fan, i could say the contortionists' handbook will be the best book he/she reads this year. so listen and read interviews, and dont be afraid to venture to an author's website and look for book recommendations by other fans

oh, and welcome to the cult. this place has the strong potential to change you, maybe even for the better
-kabol

ps. here's chuck's recommendation page, highlighting his favorites:
http://astore.amazon.com/officchuckpalaha?node=29&page=1

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Hey, thank you for all the help and the book titles and authors.I get a little stressed when i run out of things to read and this list/ methods of finding new books should keep me busy for a long time. lol. Thanks a bunch.
-Green

You should check Charles Bukowski out. Start with "Post Office". His funny as fuck

on a whim i read Silence Of The Lambs the other day because it was lying in a pile of free books, and i was damn impressed. normally suspense-type novels don't grab me, but the author has a talent for it. worth it even if you've seen the movie a hundred times already.

Get Moby-Dick.
Don't read it yet. Just keep it on your shelf for a couple years till you've gone through some more of that list and then, some time in, say, 2011, pick it up when you're feeling really frisky.

cant believe i didnt mention this author. i fucking loved pulp, too. very memorable, the man was a badass.

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i remember the time i spent with harris: i'd read silence of the lambs a few years prior--in parts. new to reading back then. anyway. when the third movie was about to hit the theaters, i decided i wanted to read the trilogy, in order and from scratch before i view the movie, and i took a train to see my mom--from little rock, ar to tacoma, wa., yeah, i had the time.. so i finished them, and then gungho, went to the movie a week later. though the books were great, that fucking movie blew like a fart.
-kabol

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This is a recent article in a British paper - takes a bit of digging to find the author/genre you might like. But there's 1000 books listed, and some good articles lying around too. Might help a little.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/1000novels

and: The Definitive List
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

and fight club made the list!!

i'm printing this list tonight, marking off what ive read and reevaluating what it is i need to be on the lookout for

thanks, thess !!
-kabol

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Great book, but I prefer Ham on Rye by Bukowski.

I read Ham on Rye every time I quit a job. Or get fired.

^first thing I read was Ham on Rye after getting laid off at Which Wich?.

read Geek Love!!!

Knockemstiff- Donald Ray Pollock. It's a one day read but great.

i like you.

The Road:

"no lists of things to be done. the day providential to itself. the hour. there is no later. this is later. all things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. their birth in grief and ashes. so, he whispered to the sleeping boy. i have you.

the one thing i can tell you is you won't survive for yourself. i know because i would never have come this far. a person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. breathe it into being an coax it along with words of love. offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body.

this is my child, he said. i wash dead man's brains out of his hair. that is my job. then he wrapped him in the blanket and carried him to the fire.

you wanted to know what bad guys look like. now you know. it may happen agian. my job is to take care of you. i was appointed to do that by god. i will kill anyone who touches you. do you understand?
yes
he sat there cowled in the blanket. after a while he looked up. are we still the good guys? he said.
yes. we're still the good guys.
and we always will be.
yes. we always will be.
okay."

Thanks for the link! I think I'll spend some time on it later.

I usually look through the recommendations to see if anything sparks my interest.

Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan is one of the funniest books I have ever read. If you like Chuck you will enjoy this book as well. It's been passed around through my friends and we all got a kick out of it.

If you haven't yet read A Clockwork Orange I might have to hit you.

Also, I'd definitely recommend some Chuck Klosterman. Not quite as transgressive and dangerous, but hilarious indeed.

And if you like being depressed read some John Green.

Of anything you could read, read Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr. This will mess with your mind. I couldn't sleep reading some of the crazy ish that dude imagined up!