Recomendations

Everybody around here has been reading Beat the Reaper. That's what I'm reading right now.

Oh and Welcome Back to the Cult!

They always come back...

Out of Touch -- Brandon Tietz
The Never Enders -- Michael Sonbert

Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball
"Tracing the nuances of a short-lived life, this involving and sympathetically written novel maintains a tone of finely judged tension between laughter and tears. Jonathon Bender had something to tell the world, but the world wouldn’t listen. However, he left behind him unsent letters addressed to relatives, friends, neighbors, coaches, teachers, classmates, professors, roommates, psychiatrists, employers, his younger self, former girlfriends, his ex-wife, a TV station, and God, among many others. This unsent correspondence forms the narrative of a remarkable life."
Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
"In this striking novel-in-stories, a series of strange apocalypses have hit America. Entire neighborhoods drown in mud, glass rains from the sky, birds speak gibberish, and parents of young children disappear. Millions starve while others grow coats of mold. But a few are able to survive and find a light in the aftermath, illuminating what we’ve become. In “The Disappeared,” a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. A boy swells to fill his parents’ ransacked attic in “The Ruined Child.” Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler’s full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William H. Gass, yet imbued with Butler's own vision of the apocalyptic and bizarre."
The Ask by Sam Lipsyte (due out this week, I think)
"From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Lipsyte's pitch-black comedy takes aim at marriage, work, parenting, abject failure (the author's signature soapbox) and a host of subjects you haven't figured out how to feel bad about yet. This latest slice of mucked-up life follows Milo Burke, a washed-up painter living in Astoria, Queens, with his wife and three-year-old son, as he's jerked in and out of employment at a mediocre university where Milo and his equally jaded cohorts solicit funding from the Asks, or those who financially support the art program..."

Thanks for the recomendations - I think I'll go for Beat the reaper, seeing as how it's the only one I can find a synopsis for.

Probably should of mentioned this earlier, but if you can leave an overview (synopsis, what you liked about, and so on) that'd be great.

I'm only a couple chapters into it right now. But I just like how it's written.

If you really want to ask questions about it - hopefully Mirka can step in right now.

Rust and Bone by Craig Davidson. This book has been recommended by Bret Easton Ellis, Clive Barker, Thom Jones, Peter Straub and Chuck Palahniuk! It's a collection of short stories about redemption, a repo man, pugilists, sex addicts, fighting dogs, a magician and a whale trainer who gets his leg bitten off by a killer whale.

Ditto on Rust and Bone. Good call.

aaarrghhh! i hate this damn place! my fucking carts/wish lists in amazon and abe are behemoths!

YES!

Sick, welcome back and do yourself a big favor and read 'Reaper' right away. It sounds like exactly what you're looking for.

Also, 'Kockroach' by Tyler Knox. That books is craaaaaazy.

see!? stop it! please!

Same here. I swear, I need to take a month or two off from writing so I can get some reading done.

doing that currently.. well, mostly

since i joined the cult my reading has expanded in so many ways: i read a whole bunch more. like heaps and heaps more. i'm basically reading at least a book a week, sometimes more; i'm readin things i probably wouldn't have read without the praise and passion people here have. it's brilliant.

You're a writer, you must read 'Kockroach' because there really isn't any book to compare it to. Maybe Geek Love, and that's just because both defy all genre and expectation. And both are brilliant.

'Reaper' is amazing. It's is jaw dropping good writing and it transforms crime fiction. Plus it's hilarious and did I mention that the writing is exceptional?

'Await Your Reply' by Dan Chaon will knock you on your ass. It's very spare writing because the story is so demanding I think. There's so much ground to cover. That book almost ruined Xmas last year because I started reading it and I had no interest in anything but sneaking in another page or chapter.

Kockroach is a great recommendation. It starts off as a reverse "The Metamorphosis" and becomes a Man-sect version of "Casino" in a way. David Lynch does "Goodfellas," that sort of thing. I really dug it.

i remember reading three and four books a week. i'd just started writing, after ingesting chuck's first essay. i was motivated, and really behind.. every few months, meerk would hit my pm:

Have you read Jesus' Son?
well, yeah; a month or so back.

Have you read the arc of Hell's Half Acre I sent you.
yes, i read it that night and finished it the following night.

even to this day:
You have to get The Gargoyle.
oh, i'm on the mothafucka.

though i am slower nowadays, i did get to it a few weeks later. there are so many phenom reads out there, it is hard to keep up. now i read two novels a month. i am getting slow. now i have a stack i aim to get through before i get back to the current short story i wanna finish. i remember a time i had to push over entire bookshelves in order to write a single story. something baer furiously instilled in us [during his workshop intensive] was to read read and then fucking read. usually followed with some abaft commentary of contempt on cormac mccarthy being the poor man's faulkner hahaha i owe that dude a lot, to put it mildly. anyrate, the cult is badass for many reasons. for the most part, for me it has been the constant recommendations of great reading material. in a world consumed by patterson and nicholas sparks and grisham, there's really no other reliable place to turn.

Oh man, the 'Hells Half' ARC is some story. And you sent me the HC of 'Contortionist' because you prefer paperbacks. Good times.

I missed that Baer doesn't like McCarthy. You KNOW I love Chris, and goddamn, we share the same goddamn bible (Franny and Zooey), but he said that about McCarthy!? No!

hahahaha. is the ARC of HHA the "suicide note"?

no, no.. hell no and im sorry. i know i butchered the paraphrase there.. he loves mccarthy's work and the fact that in some literary circles mccarthy was conveyed as the poor man's faulkner offended him intellectually.

and my memory sucks haha i wondered what ever happened to my contort hard cover

odd endnote: craig sent me a letter--long before the intensives started--and i have no idea where i stashed it.

didnt you send me two arcs ? and the first one made it back to you some six months later via the post office scratching off the to-address of the first. you so wondered about that first parcel, as did i hahah

Oh, thank you. I could hardly wrap my mind around Chris hating McCarthy.

That HC got signed and sent to dear Mr. Brown.

Find that letter!

No.

nice, meerk. full circles i love

matt,
no; suicide note was never the actual title, just something his first publisher crowned [the first draft of] before dropping him. his rewrite was the same title as the first, and that was the arc that went out through macadam cage. no different than the one found in stores.

ahhh, thanks. i know it was never called "suicide note" i was just refering to that version of the book. and to whether that's what you guys got to read.

have either of you read it; wish to?

naw, brother matthew, there was never a "suicide note" as i understood it as a novel. that was just a word the publisher associated with the first draft of hell's half acre. baer got dropped and a few years later was picked up by clevenger's publisher, macadam/cage. they re-released his first two novels and published his third. if it was never actually titled "suicide note", i have no memory of it.

ps- i read the arc to the book published. the other draft was just the first draft. it didnt make it to book form, arc or otherwise. just a submission draft.

I just placed an amazon order.

Among the items I bought was Kockroach and Await Your Reply. I really was interested in Await Your Reply. But you've been talking up Kockroach even more - so I knew I had to get it (especially when I got a brand new one for $.01 or $4 including shipping).

I am such a bargain shopper!

yeah yeah. hahahaha, i guess i'm not making myself clear here. i know it was never titled "suicide note". i knew that it was just two words the publisher or agent used to descrivbe the first draft because it was so horribly dark etc. he said something along the lines of: this is like a 400 page suicide note. am i right? anyway, i was just curious as to whether anyone, besides the obvious publisher/agent/clevenger, got to read that version.

not to my knowledge

Alright, then:
*Beat the Reaper
*Kockroach (funny thing is, I almost bought this from my university book store back in October. But I only had thirty bucks, so it was down to either that or the Lovecraft anthology that I'd gone looking for in the first place)
*Kiss me Judas/Penny Dreadful/Hell's Half Acre

Might also look into Rust and Bone

Thanks for all the recommendations Culties - keep 'em coming

you might find this thread helpful

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/forum/1000009/suggestions-please

i spent forever on that one post

Thanks - just saved your whole damn (and insightful) post as a word doc. And now I'll have to add Contortionist's Handbook to the list.

I'm jealous. I never did order anything from Amazon. And I automatically dismiss all the books I see listed as $0.1. Or even anything less than $1.0. Have you gotten anything ordered at a similar price?

And as for recommendations, The World According To Garp will be worth the purchase. It also reads like something a Cultie would enjoy. What's Eating Gilbert Grape is a different style, but I love it.

ive purchased many ah-books via the one-cent lot. i mean, why would i wanna spend fourteen bux on a book that's been around forever so i can read it once.. ? but, it doesnt always work out that way-

i had to order new aphra behn's oroonoko the other week because it was nine dollars with free shipping and the cheapest very used copy was five-fifty plus three-ninety-nine shipping. (ordered it and lowboy for myself, and the timetraveler's wife for my wife.)

but, yeah; on the regular, if i wanna read a hemingway or a faulkner and i can find it for one cent [plus three-ninety-nine shipping], that's a great route to take. it's a great way to find library editions when all you want is to read the text and not collect a book.

but it also has to do with volume: if you read a lot, you can potentially spend a lot. jan through december of oh-four, if i'd purchased only retail all of my books in just that time, my expense would have been in excess of forty-five hundred. but i tallied out at just a grand total instead. a lot of four dollar books at the hastings and amazon. only the most contemporary authors--and only those i followed--did i purchase retail.

..

I've gotten really nice copies of books for a penny (plus shipping and handling). You just have to pay attention to what they say about the quality and the seller's rating. Most of the times for that price - it will have a remainder mark. But sometimes it'll be a perfect book. And you are in awe of the price you paid.

I've had bad luck too though. Recently I ordered a copy of Ransom by Jay McInerney for like $2 plus shipping. It was rated "Like New" and the book was in terrible condition. I wouldn't have rated it good. In the description it said it might have been read once and it was a collector's copy. I emailed the guy - he said he must have hit the wrong button. I think he was just counting on somebody not complaining. He gave me my money back. And I ordered another copy from somebody else that was what I would consider "Good." So overall happy in the end.

Thanks for the tip! I just ordered my copy for the same price.

As for recommendations, um, I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone on here pump Neal Cassady's The First Third or Candy (A Novel of Love & Addiction) by Luke Davies. So, I'll go with those.

yeah, i've backed Candy a million times over. i've read it twice and truely recommend it to anyone. it was a beautiful, sad story about, you guessed it, Love and Addiction. i think it was the most down-to-earth and honest insight into the mind of an addict since Burroughs' Junkie. but i'm also backing him cause he's aussie.

great book, enjoy. now i' off to post candy in the sad books thread.

I can give a thumbs-up for the reaper also, although I wouldn't call it surreal, nor transgressive genre. It's more like a crime story with a slight sarcastic edge to it. It's very enjoyable though, if you read it as a crime story.

Oh man, RU gonna love me. Check out one of my posts which seems to have been tailor-made for you:

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/forum/1000029/while-youre-waiting-for-your-cop...

"I shouted the perfect words to scare him off. It was just the delivery (and only the delivery) that made me sound like a twelve-year-old girl with pee running down her leg.
I felt dirty and stupid."

this book better be fucking genius, for the plugs it's getting!

too, please, never, ever say "RU" again. please.

mirka wrote:

Oh man, the 'Hells Half' ARC is some story. And you sent me the HC of 'Contortionist' because you prefer paperbacks. Good times.

I missed that Baer doesn't like McCarthy. You KNOW I love Chris, and goddamn, we share the same goddamn bible (Franny and Zooey), but he said that about McCarthy!? No!

I was just thinking about Paperbackswap and how you sent me The Contortionist's Handbook. Was it the very same hardback?

I STILL haven't gotten my hands on HHA. I'm sure I could if I didn't refuse to spend more than $.75 ($2.50 with shipping) on a book... but I refuse! Its been on my PBS wishlist for ages, but it never gets posted.

"Apathy and Other Small Victories" - Paul Neilan

Anyone know anything about this collection or author?

Yup, another nice one!

"except for little Ivan, shivering in the corner, it didn't feel like a dungeon at all..."

The story is plotted around the death of a deaf woman (yes, I spelled that correctly). But it's more about 'slackers' and people who hate their jobs than about actual crimes.
Def. worth a peak..

I just purchased it. Actually after "Dermaphoria" and Amazon gave me a helluva deal, throwing in "Kiss Me, Judas" & "Apathy and Other Small Victories" for less than $30 U.S.

One of those goddam offers they knew I couldn't refuse.

Dermaphoria + KMJ = frothing at the mouth goodness.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
Post Office by Charles Bukowski.
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis.
Last Exit to Brookyln by Hubert Selby Jr.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite.