5 Books Everybody Should Read
today i bought Alex Garlands new one, a book by Burgess that wasn't A Clockwork Orange (something about an egg, i forget) and a book called You're Being Lied To: Things They Don't Tell You In Your History Books (or something like that).
[QUOTE=alex cassun]today i bought Alex Garlands new one, a book by Burgess that wasn't A Clockwork Orange (something about an egg, i forget) and a book called You're Being Lied To: Things They Don't Tell You In Your History Books (or something like that).[/QUOTE]
Wrong thread, chief.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
[img]http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=4280[/img]
.JPG "mugwump's picture")
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - HST
Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
On the Road - Kerouac
Naked Lunch - WSB
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
there's more, but five is good for now.
What?
[QUOTE=All We Have Is Now Pt.1]Wrong thread, chief.[/QUOTE]
not at all, pocahontas.
[QUOTE=mugwump]Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - HST
Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
On the Road - Kerouac
Naked Lunch - WSB
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
there's more, but five is good for now.[/QUOTE]
Fear and Loathing... one of my favorite movies. mebbe I should get the book, cuz I LOVE the movie, you can see that by mah signatire.
[QUOTE=alex cassun]not at all, pocahontas.[/QUOTE]
it's not the "look what I just bought" thread, sacajawea
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/Lazlosdead/completeLazloSig.jpg[/IMG]
[QUOTE=Death to the Demoness EJ]You stinkin' traitors... Where's Chuck???[/QUOTE]
erm.. I thought we had established that all of chucks books would have been in the list and we were coming up with something else..
why are so many people picking naked lunch?
'Palimset' by Gore Vidal
'No Lifeguard on Duty' by janice Dickinson
'Lipstick Traces' by Greil marcus
'Barrel Fever' by David Sedaris
'Princess of Hollywood' by Pleasant Gehman
[QUOTE=Lazlosdead]it's not the "look what I just bought" thread, sacajawea[/QUOTE]
no shit, kickapoo. but goddamnitifimmagonnalettheguidelinestellmewhattodoimarebelanddontyoufergit!
[QUOTE=kl0pper]why are so many people picking naked lunch?[/QUOTE]
Hey, my hands are up cause I didn't.
And wouldn't.
I'm a real nice guy, loyal to his family and friends, like to help old people and I play well with children, but there is a very dark side to the moon. A predilection for the psychopathic, I have a history of violence I would like to herald always as ancient history. But some guys just wont listen, just wont let go.
[list=1]
[*]Lolita -- Vladimir Nabokov
[*]The Great Gatsby -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
[*]Catcher in the Rye -- J.D. Salinger
[*]One Hundred Years of Solitude -- Gabriel García Márquez
[*]Brideshead Revisited -- Evelyn Waugh
[/list]
[QUOTE=kl0pper]why are so many people picking naked lunch?[/QUOTE]
maybe because so many people like it.
my top 5:
less than zero - bret easton ellis
catcher in the rye - jd salinger
the fountainhead - ayn rand
the long walk - stephen king
kiss me, judas - will christopher baer
[QUOTE=tetsuo]maybe because so many people like it.[/QUOTE]
well thats not a real good reason to make everyone read it, is it?
Fight Club by Palahniuk
The Catcher in the Rye
Franny and Zooey
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction
Nine Stories
by J.D. Salinger
Fight Club and the books by Salinger have really changed me as an individual more than any other book. In a way, they have thought me how to be happy, especially Salinger's "Raise High..."
By the way, there is a thread dedicated to Salinger in the Book Club forum. There you might find a useful link.
[list=]The Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Trial by Franz Kafka
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by H. P. Lovecraft
[/list]
I know everyone is putting up Top Five, but I am gonna go with my Top Ten Must Reads in no particular order. Also, I'm not going to include any Palahniuk, because it is safe to assume we have all read his works and know how good they are.
Here goes ...
Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett
Ulysses - James Joyce
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Life After God - Douglas Coupland
Light In August - William Faulkner
A Good Man Is Hard To Find - Flannery O'Conner
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
The Magician's Nephew - C.S. Lewis
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemmingway
The Rape Of The Lock - Alexander Pope
Junky by William Burroughs
Sons of Heaven by Terrence Cheng
Childhood's End by Arthur Clarke
Farhenheit 451
The Alchemis by Paulo Coehlo
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
This should be required reading for anyone still breathing.
The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer
The story of O and The Return to the Chateau by Pauline Reage. This was probably the most disturbing thing I have ever read, up until Guts anyway.
One Hundred Times to China by Lloyd Kropp
This book is out of print and may be hard to find. It's like To Kill a Mockingbird meets 1984. At least that's how I remember it being.
Those are my recommendations that haven't been mentioned yet. At least I don't think they were mentioned.
Not really in any order.
1. Animal Liberation - Peter Singer
2. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
3. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
5. Victory Over Japan - Ellen Gilchrist
[URL=http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y4/tragicfolly/Picture1039.jpg]There is still love in the MidWest.[/URL]
[B]You God damn better believe.[/B]
[QUOTE=Jeebus]The Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges[/QUOTE]
whats this?
[QUOTE=kl0pper]whats this?[/QUOTE]
It's a shorty story by Borges written in 1962.
A famous quote of JLB is in it, if you recognize it goes like this: "[i]When the end draws near, there no longer remain any remembered images; only words remain. It is not strange that time should have confused the words that once represented me with those that were symbols of the fate of he who accompanied me for so many centuries. I have been Homer; shortly, I shall be On One, like Ulysses; shortly, I shall be all men; I shall be dead[/i]."
Anne Frank's diary
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Fight Club - Chuck
American Psyco - Bret Easton Ellis
Interview With The Vampire - Anner Rice
[url]http://www.reterioja.com/usuarios/javierh.reterioja[/url]
[img]http://www.reterioja.com/usuarios/javierh.reterioja/x/egologo.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=Jeebus]It's a shorty story by Borges written in 1962.
A famous quote of JLB is in it, if you recognize it goes like this: "[i]When the end draws near, there no longer remain any remembered images; only words remain. It is not strange that time should have confused the words that once represented me with those that were symbols of the fate of he who accompanied me for so many centuries. I have been Homer; shortly, I shall be On One, like Ulysses; shortly, I shall be all men; I shall be dead[/i]."[/QUOTE]
dont have that one
ill check it out
[QUOTE=jot]Anne Frank's diary
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Fight Club - Chuck
American Psyco - Bret Easton Ellis
Interview With The Vampire - Anner Rice[/QUOTE]
What did you find in Interview with the Vampire? I mean it's a really cool book, very beautiful and erotic and all, but is it really that insightful, that thoughtprovoking that everyone should read it?
In no order:
1. As I Lay Dying - Faulkner
2. I Am Legend - Matheson
3. Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
4. Trainspotting - Welsh
5. Breakfast of Champions - Vonnegut
Extra Credit:
- Reasons To Live - Hempel
- At the Gates of the Animal Kingdon - Hempel (if you can even find the thing; I recently scored big by snatching it up from some dinky online bookseller for around $6.00!!)
- Jesus' Son - Johnson
- Father and Son - Larry Brown
- The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - JT Leroy
- The Dice Man - Rhinehart
- Invisible Monsters (Chuck)
- 1984 (George Orwell)
- Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
- Alessandro Baricco's novels, especially "Ocean Sea", "Silk" and the monologue "Novecento" --> the film "The Legend of 1900" by Giuseppe Tornatore is based on this novel, even if I'm afraid the book hasn't been published in English 
- The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
[IMG]http://img79.exs.cx/img79/595/avatarinosposa1.jpg[/IMG]
[I][B][FONT=Verdana][COLOR=Pink] "It's mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack; not rationality"[/COLOR][/FONT][/B][/I]
[QUOTE=rjw104]I'll try and list some that haven't been mentioned...
The Things They Carried- Tim O'Brien
Big Sur- Kerouac
Women- Bukowski
Contortionist Handbook- Craig Clevenger
and both of Will Christopher Baer's books are fucking amazing[/QUOTE]
Good call....The Things They Carried is fucking brilliant. the best war book i have ever read....quite possibly.
my five books:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest by Ken Kesey
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan
Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
"There are problems in these times,
But, woo!, none of them are mine!"
[QUOTE=Barnisinko]- At the Gates of the Animal Kingdon - Hempel (if you can even find the thing; I recently scored big by snatching it up from some dinky online bookseller for around $6.00!!)[/QUOTE]
How the hell did you do that?
I can't find it anywhere.
[QUOTE=skank]Good call....The Things They Carried is fucking brilliant. the best war book i have ever read....quite possibly.
my five books:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest by Ken Kesey
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan
Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley[/QUOTE]
Tim O'Brien, the dude that wrote The Things They carried came to my school (Wheeling Jesuit) I heard him and he is just brilliant. I haven't read it yet but I got it from a friend that read it for class. I heard it was a must read. Another great book is Microserfs.
Let's see ...
- Invisible Monsters (sure, it's unoriginal, but I can't remember a book that hooked me like IM)
- The Cider House Rules by John Irving (movie was okay, but book was hauntingly good)
- The Tesseract by Alex Garland
- Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield (ancient Sparta brought to life)
- Syrup by Maxx Barry (should be required reading in Marketing classes; brilliant satire)
- All Famlies are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland (my favorite Coupland novel)
Whoops, that's six. Oh well.
[IMG]http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/fan/cw/allstars/ahoffBronze.gif[/IMG]
[QUOTE=PGoutis01]How the hell did you do that?
I can't find it anywhere.[/QUOTE]
Here's how I lucked upon At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom:
I was googling for it, found a site called abebooks.com, they said they knew of a store that had it for $6.00. I could buy it right away, or I could run a search of all the other booksellers in their database. I decided to try and get the book for $6.00, proceeded through checkout, and that was it.
I recieved nothing by way of even acknowledging I had made the purchase, and pretty much had written it off, when, three weeks later, I receved a package. I thought it was Penny Dreadful, which i had ordered from Amazon. Imagine my surprise when I saw At the Gates...
Pure luck. I went to abebooks.com, even tried to duplicate my google search, but could not find another on sale for such a reasonable price.
ps: I just checked my email, and the day I receved the book in the mail, a confirmation of purchase and shipping for it was sent by bookbrothers.net. Weird.
Well, I did your search and the only thing that came up was a copy for $200.
Too bad for me, but good for you.
[QUOTE=D.F. Kratzer]Tim O'Brien, the dude that wrote The Things They carried came to my school (Wheeling Jesuit) I heard him and he is just brilliant. I haven't read it yet but I got it from a friend that read it for class. I heard it was a must read. Another great book is Microserfs.[/QUOTE]
That`s cool. I would like to hear him speak.
I had to read The Things They Carried for the English Comp class i took last year. we were supposed to read it over the semester and i finished it the first week because every time i finished a story, i wanted to go onto the next one. If anyone on hear hasn`t read it, go find a copy right now.
"There are problems in these times,
But, woo!, none of them are mine!"
Tortila Flats-Steinbeck
Fear and Loathing-HST
The great Gatsby-Mr. Fitzgerald
The Brothers Karamazov-Dostevskey(SP)
The death of Ivan Illych-Tolstoy
Survivor-CP
Too inebriated to spell accurately
katharine dunn-geek love
fantastic story fleshed out amazingly well, she made the impossible to love characters more lovable more human in 2 chapters than most authors ever can even dream of
brett easton ellis-american psycho
ellis's anal retentive obsession with details is brilliantly used to add another level of derangement to patrick bateman that no other writer could do
1 book by hubert selby junior (anything sept last exit to brooklyn)
his writing style is incredibly blunt, he finds a light in some of the darkest places and manipulates that light and slowly destroys it.
anthony burgess- a clockwork orange
classic, all around good book, if you can read this your on your way to being able to read anything
hunter s thompson- fear and loathing in las vegas
gonzo journalism at its finest, hillarious, and just all around surreal.
i have too many favorites, but here are some of them in random order:
the great gatsby - f. scott fitzgerald
vernon god little - dbc pierre
the lord of the rings - tolkien
the perks of being a wallflower - stephen chbosky
on the road - jack kerouac
Classics:
William Faulker _The Sound and the Fury_
William Faulkner _As I Lay Dying_
Franz Kafka _Der Prozess_ (_The Trail_, read the Breon Mitchell translation)
Nathanael West _Miss Lonelyhearts_
Miguel de Cervantes _Don Quijote_ (Burton Raffel translation)
Future classics (hopefully):
John Gardner _Mickelsson’s Ghosts_ (absurdly OOP; Amazon has 154 used copies)
Italo Calvino _If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler_
Anne Carson _Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse_
Edward Abbey _The Fool’s Progress: An Honest Novel_
Max Frisch _Stiller_ (_I’m Not Stiller_ translated by Michael Bullock)
Short stories:
Amy Hempel _Reasons to Live_
Raymond Carver _Cathedral_
T. Coraghessan Boyle _Without a Hero_ (or any other *early* collection)
Ann Beattie _Distortions_
Flannery O’Conner _A Good Man is Hard To Find_
Non-fiction:
Harold Bloom _Genius_ (in which you should take notes and then you will have enough reading (authors to look into) for quite some time.
Oscar Levant _A Smattering of Ignorance_ _Memoirs of an Amnesiac_ _The Unimportance of being Oscar_
Klaus Kinski _Ich Brauche Liebe_ (Kinski Uncut is the English title)
Among others...
j(ay)
something by s.e. hinton (the first books i read that weren't by king, rice, koontz, or grisham. hinton isn't brilliant or thought provoking, but if it wasn't for this book i probably wouldn't be writting this post. and yes i know this is more or less aimed at teenagers.)
naked lunch-william s. burroughs (the first time i read it i wasn't even sure what it was about)
harry potter and etc.-j.k. rowling (yes i enjoy these, and i'm not ashamed to read childrens books. mostly just because i get sick of people bashing rowling and then admitting that they haven't even read one of her books. don't knock it til you try it)
house of leaves-mark z. danielewski (yes it's complicated, but it's worth it)
cool gardens-serj tankien (i hate poetry but this book was amusing)
one of george carlins books (because they're fucking funny)
and yes that's more than five , but fuck it, some other people posted like 20 so there
Okay these are mine, I'm a 21 year old female to put the list into context, and I read American Studies and creative writing at university:
Nana-Emile Zola --Better than Madame Bovary, which is about something completely different I know but it's an undeservedly ignored work while Madame Bovary is highly over-rated, in my opinion.
Ethan Frome-Edith Wharton --Why did I only find out about this book last year? It's heartbreaking.
Asylum- Patrick McGrath --Only contemporary English writer I can bear to read.
A Density of Souls- Christopher Rice --It's been accused of being too 'easy' but hell it's really fantastic.
Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte --Oh, to have never read it before! Do you know what I mean?
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Hannibal - Thomas Harris (I liked the memory palace stuff. Some say the book is campy.)
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
The Prince - N.M.
Kiss Me, Judas - WCB
Originally Posted by Barnisinko
- At the Gates of the Animal Kingdon - Hempel (if you can even find the thing; I recently scored big by snatching it up from some dinky online bookseller for around $6.00!!)
[QUOTE=PGoutis01]How the hell did you do that?
I can't find it anywhere.[/QUOTE]
yeah, no kids. I spent $73 on mine.
I'm a real nice guy, loyal to his family and friends, like to help old people and I play well with children, but there is a very dark side to the moon. A predilection for the psychopathic, I have a history of violence I would like to herald always as ancient history. But some guys just wont listen, just wont let go.
[QUOTE=Vendetta]
Ethan Frome-Edith Wharton --Why did I only find out about this book last year? It's heartbreaking.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, yes. No kidding. I found this book this year. Maybe four months ago. No one mentioned it to me. Just one of those random choices at the bookstore during a random visit. Just a random choice of a book I'd not yet read. Just a great choice !
I'm a real nice guy, loyal to his family and friends, like to help old people and I play well with children, but there is a very dark side to the moon. A predilection for the psychopathic, I have a history of violence I would like to herald always as ancient history. But some guys just wont listen, just wont let go.
[QUOTE=Peon of Grand Ambitions]Hannibal - Thomas Harris (I liked the memory palace stuff. Some say the book is campy.)[/QUOTE]
I dug Hannibal quite a bit too, although it's a bit of a stretch. I really hope he doesn't do any more. Just leave things as they lie.
Ishmael - Daniel Quinn
Only Forward - Michael Marshall Smith
Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
Divine Comedy - Dante
Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
I think that I've contributed to this before, but let's see how much my attitude has changed about my favorites:
1. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
2. Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
3. 1984 - George Orwell
4. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
5. Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut
[I]The Power of One[/I] - Bryce Courtenay
[I]Dune[/I] - Frank Herbert
[I]The Faded Sun Trilogy[/I] - C. J. Cherryh
[I]Smoke and Mirrors[/I] - Neil Gaiman
[I]It's a Magical World[/I] - Bill Watterson
bill watterson. NICE.
The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger! Tiger!) - Alfred Bester
American Gods, Good Omens - Neil Gaiman
The Dosadi Experiment, The Whipping Star - Frank Herbert
Vurt, Pollen - Jeff Noon
Anything written by Philip K. Dick (Ubik, Valis, The Divine Invasion, Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,Confessions of a Crap Artist, Etc.)
Non-Fiction/Fiction (depends on opinion)
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind - Chuck Barris
I read this when I was in high school, and couldn't wait to see the movie regardless that it was being directed by George Clooney. Movie was still great.
I'll stop here.
survivor - chuck
last exit to brooklyn - Selby Jr
Invisible Monsters - chuck
The heart is decietful above all things - leroy
the butter battle - dr. suess haha (its the cold war in a nutshell in a dr. suess metaphor kinda way)
but i havent read a great many books.... so who am i to judge?
Chock - Palahniuk
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Almost Transparent Blue - Ryu Murakami
I Am Legnend - Richard Matheson
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
You stinkin' traitors... Where's Chuck???
1.- The Fight Club. -Chuck-
2.- The Demon Haunted world -Sagan-
3.- The Devil's Dictionary -Bierce-
4.- The Naked Lunch -Burroughs-
5.- Watchmen -Moore, Gibbons-