Summer Reading List

[DarkLight]

I'm compiling a Summer Reading List, and I'd like some opinions. Now, I'm looking for weird, uniquie stuff I haven't heard of. I already know Faulkner and Dickens are great reads. They're already on my list. Do not mention people I probably heard of please. I want weird, mindblowinfg sh*t that's still deep. Okay. Thanks.

[dempsey]

I'll always recommend The Fall by Camus.

[Will Lavender]

Do not mention people I probably heard of please.

How do we know what you've heard of?

Try Ben Marcus's The Age of Wire and String.

[ORION]

Read Obedience by Will Lavender and Lottery by Patricia Wood...

[Will Lavender]

Read Obedience by Will Lavender and Lottery by Patricia Wood...

Seconded. :D

[Danger Jane]

Anything by Virginia Woolf :D


(I think it's mindblowing :tongue)

[ORION]

The razors edge by somerset Maugham

[Harper K]

Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts is nuts.

As is Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Seconding the recommendation of Virginia Woolf! The Waves will mess with your head, but it's an amazing read.

[Madison]

Here are some classic AP Lit must-reads: (I've a million more if you want them...my lit classes kept me reading...)

The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood

The Stranger Camus

The Sun Also Rises Hemmingway

Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock TS Eliot (short but brilliant poem)

Cold Mountain Charles Frazier

Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams

The Metamorphosis Kafka

Portrait of a Lady Henry James

Cry, the Beloved Country Alan Paton

Night Elie Weisel

The Crucible Arthur Miller

Lord of the Flies William Golding

1984 George Orwell

I'll stop there. Sorry if you've heard of any of those already, but sometimes you can't get any better than the classics. IMO, you haven't lived until you've read all of these.

[EriRae]

The Pacific Between by Ramond K. Wong
You Belong to Me by Kimberly Nee (if you like romance)

others you may recognize, but that doesn't mean they're any less wonderful:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Mysteries of Pittsburgh,and Wonderboys by Michael Chabon
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimon.
Pretty much anything by Neil Gaimon.

[Paichka]

Here are some classic AP Lit must-reads: (I've a million more if you want them...my lit classes kept me reading...)

The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood

The Stranger Camus

The Sun Also Rises Hemmingway

Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock TS Eliot (short but brilliant poem)

Cold Mountain Charles Frazier

Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams

The Metamorphosis Kafka

Portrait of a Lady Henry James

Cry, the Beloved Country Alan Paton

Night Elie Weisel

The Crucible Arthur Miller

Lord of the Flies William Golding

1984 George Orwell



Ooooh I hated Portrait of a Lady. Henry James' writing always struck me as pedantic, misogynistic and dull. I mean, in Washington Square he had one sentence that went on two pages. Of course, that might be part of the recommendation -- you should read Henry James just so you know why some people hate him. :)

For more Margaret Atwood awesomeness, try Oryx and Crake or The Robber Bride. Both are brilliant.

If we're talking classics, I'm partial to things that are deeply entrenched in the popular consciousness -- like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles and whatnot. As famous as Sherlock Holmes is, you ought to read at least one story he's in. HP Lovecraft's stories, HG Wells, Jules Verne...especially if you're a big fantasy or sci fi nut, those really ought to be required reading.

China Mieville's Perdido Street Station blew my mind. I also liked Samedi the Deafness, because it was so frikkin' off the wall (it's not great literature, by any means, but it is certifiably insane).

Let me do a survey of my shelves and I'll come back to this. :)

[Dale Emery]

Anything by Paul Auster.

Never Let Me Go (and probably anything else) by Kazuo Ishiguro.

[Phaeal]

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand.
All of Jane Austen, Jane Austen.
Middlemarch, George Eliot.

That's my summer re-reading, anyhow. Plus whatever tasty new stuff I grab at the library.

Oh, and that new translation of War and Peace, by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. In fact, I think I'll go order that one up now.

[Haggis]

The Sot-Weed Factor, by John Barth.

[mikeland]

I'll second Auster, Murakami and Ishiguro.

I particularly liked Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami.

Also, Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

[CaroGirl]

I third Atwood (esp. Oryx and Crake) and Ishiguro. I loved Never Let Me Go.
Try The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence, and keep in mind she wrote when she was only in her 30s.

[Garpy]

Since we're well on our way to $200 a barrel...LAST LIGHT by Alex Scarrow.

[JamieFord]

Add a few graphic novels to the mix:

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross
Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
Blankets by Craig Thompson

The list could go on forever...

[nonamesleft47]

Here you go:

Harry Crews--all of them, specifically Feast of Snakes and The Knockout Artist, very weird, very good

Larry Brown--specifically Father and Son and his book of short stories. He is especially good if you liked Faulkner
Will Christopher Baer--Start with Kiss Me Judas
Craig Clevenger--Contortionist Handbook

Oh, and a third for Murakami.

[Madison]

Ooooh I hated Portrait of a Lady. Henry James' writing always struck me as pedantic, misogynistic and dull. I mean, in Washington Square he had one sentence that went on two pages. Of course, that might be part of the recommendation -- you should read Henry James just so you know why some people hate him. :)


Yeah, it was a chore to get through. His descriptions of characters' thoughts and motivations go on for pages and pages. But it's a really good book - I cried at the end. Beautifully written and worth it. (Although writing a ten page thesis on it for my class sort of ruined it for me...)

[David I]

The Sot-Weed Factor, by John Barth.

Yes. And every writer needs to read Barth's Lost in the Funhouse. (A short story in the collection by the same name.)

Other than that, since I don't know what you're familiar with nor how your tastes run, here's a scattershot list:

How about some Jonathan Carroll, such as Outside the Dog Museum or The Marriage of Sticks?

Walter Tevis? The Hustler, Queen's Gambit, The Man Who Fell to Earth.

Ann Patchett's Bel Canto--a tour de force in handling POV and an engrossing story besides.

Jeremy Leven, Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kessler, J.S.P.S..

John Gardner, Grendel.

Graham Joyce, The Tooth Fairy.

Mario Vargas Llosa, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.

Philip Caputo, Horn of Africa.

Emmanuel Carrere, The Mustache.

Have a nice summer!

[David I]

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand.


Or better yet, The Fountainhead but not Atlas Shrugged. (Sorry, Phael.)

If you're reading Rand, though, I think her best book by far is Anthem, which also has the virtue of being written in first-person plural. Don't run across first-person plural that much...

[Phaeal]

Or better yet, The Fountainhead but not Atlas Shrugged. (Sorry, Phael.)

If you're reading Rand, though, I think her best book by far is Anthem, which also has the virtue of being written in first-person plural. Don't run across first-person plural that much...

But Atlas Shrugged has train wrecks and plane crashes and hot sex in abandoned tunnels and handsome copper heirs and dashing pirates and smelting furnace breakouts and dirty politics and sound wave weapons and a hidden utopia and the utter descent of the world into apocalyptic chaos! Plus a handsome copper heir, did I mention him? Also the longest speech ever made by any fictional character! And Francisco d'Anconia, my darling!

The great thing about Anthem's 1st person plural POV is that it's not a stunt but the inevitable choice, given the philosophical underpinnings of the novel.

[DarkLight]

Thanks Guys. I'll check out the ones I haven't read. I was surprised Ayn Rand was mentioned though. I've read Anthem and while I found the emphasis on individualism and the form (yes, 1st person plural) both original and exciting, there were some other themes I thought, well, proved that Rand was a tad on the insane side. My personal opinion. Plus, an extremely intellectual friend of mind has infrmed me that Atlas Shrugged has some major man hating going on. I mean, don't get me wrong, as a woman I believe in equal rights but current feminism has started to have a big emphasis on man hating ignorance. So, it was nice to read adifferent perspective in Anthem but I've had enough of Ayn Rand. Her philosophy has too many holes. You can see the inconsistencies in Anthem.

[Prawn]

All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
Shutter Island, Denis Lehane

Both of these books taught me a lot about how novels could be written.

[Paichka]

You know, I didn't notice the man-hating going on in Atlas Shrugged. I actually thought her male-female relationships were MUCH more reasonable in that book than in The Fountainhead. Rape treated as...like...heteronormative? *shudder* But I enjoyed both books very much.

For the poster who suggested graphic novels -- w00t! I completely spaced on those! Maus is hands-down one of my favorite stories of all time. I also looooooved Sandman. Some of the stories in that set of graphic novels were absolutely haunting.

I loved Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. It's a little on the apologetic side, but it goes into a very readable theory about why the West grew up to colonize and dominate the New World. Obviously it had to do with guns, germs, and the aforementioned steel.

[Blondchen]

Non-fiction, but I think all writers/poets/musicians/artists should read Kate Redfield's TOUCHED WITH FIRE, which draws some fascinating correlations between manic depressive illness and the works of some of the western world's greatest artists, writers and composers.

Whenever I need a good old plop-my-ass-in-an-easychair-and-read-til-my-eyes-pop-outta-my-head book, I reach for John Buchan's THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS (what can I say? I'm a sucker for a great WWI spy novel) or Daphne DuMaurier's JAMAICA INN.

I never claimed to be high-brow. ;)

[jessicaorr]

If you like Anthem and 1984, you'll love We (http://www.amazon.com/We-Yevgeny-Zamyatin/dp/0380633132) by Zamyatin. It's a great dystopia. I fourth (I think we're up to fourths anyway) Atwood. Handmaid's Tale and Cat's Eye were my favorites. I thought Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series was both fun and mind blowing.

I should ask, what kind of "mind blowing" are you looking for? There are books with religious undertones- anything by Paulo Coelho (http://www.santjordi-asociados.com/titles.htm) for instance. Then there's Life of Pi. It has a pantheistic twist.

Oh, oh and what about nonfiction? I know this is the novel forum but I can't resist. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn springs to mind. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot is another one. It elicits such a sense of smallness in me each time I read it. Always good to know your place after all. There are just so many- Ever Since Darwin (Gould), My Story as Told by Water (Duncan), Hyperspace (Kaku), Sand County Almanac (Leopold), Ethics for the New Millennium (H.H. Dalai Lama), Walk in the Woods (Bryson)... I'll stop now.

Happy Reading :D

ETA: I second the recommendation of Guns Germs and Steel. Great book. Collapse was also interesting. And in the same vein- The World Without Us. OK, seriously. I'm going to stop now.

[Phaeal]

Atlas Shrugged man-hating? I'd say it's man-worshipping. Funny how no one reads the same thing the same way.

Nonfiction is good, too. I love reading biology and epidemiology. Two favorites that could use rereading, or first reading:

Wonderful Life, Steven Jay Gould
The Coming Plague, Laurie Garrett

A biography I'm very much enjoying now is:

Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall, by Eve LaPlante.

You thought you knew the Puritans? How about Sewall, who not only publically repented sending 20 people to their deaths as witches but who also wrote controversial treatises arguing for the equality of Native Americans, women and slaves. Gotta love digging beneath the stereotypes.

[ACEnders]

All the King's Men by Robert Pen Warren

Native Son by Richard A. Wright

They were two of my AP Lit books...I think I may go back and reread them! Great books!

[CBumpkin]

I just finished reading The Novelist (http://www.amazon.com/Novelist-Angela-Hunt/dp/084994483X), by Angela Hunt.

Great perspective in this novel within a novel. The protagonist is a best-seller author of a popular action hero series and teaches a novel writing course at the local community college. One of her students criticizes her books and challenges her to write something more personal... and she does. The results will take you on a wild rollercoaster ride and have you examining your own life in a new way.