"The River Why" by David James Duncan Way over the top of the list. "Setting Free the Bears" by John Irving On the road in pre-Nazi Austria. "The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien Why you should always keep an eye on your Bike.

On The Road by Jack Kerouac The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway Idoru by William Gibson

Confederacy of Dunces -Jonathan Kennedy O'Toole Startide Rising -David Brin Cosmic Trigger Trilogy - Robert Anton Wilson Oh, hell I can't stop at three: The rest of the Uplift series by Brin, also Earth by Brin. Hocus Pocus -Vonnegut Geek Love - Katherine Dunn Ulysses - James Joyce The Mists of Avalon -Marion Zimmer Bradley Ubik - Phillip K. Dick too many to even remember...

Shit I just now looked at the other posts here. Now I know I have kindred spirits at sorabji.com.

Geek love is great. If yah really dig Vonnegut, then you can't eat just one (but I too have a favorite....it's Slapstick....hiho). I have never been able to slog through Ulysses, I have never been able to get past the first 1/4th of the Sound and the Fury. I'm a literary lightweight.

The 2nd chapter's the best, if that gets you motivated. My favorites, if I may contribute: Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (esp. "Ghosts") The Knife-Thrower by Stephen Millhauser Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne The Wisdom of the Heart by Henry Miller The Carrier of Ladders by W.S. Merwin (poetry) No Ceiling but Heaven by Mykal Banta A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce A Light in August by William Faulkner The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl Anything by Primo Levi (esp. The Periodic Table) (I read too much)

...and my brother loved "A Canticle for Leibowitz" so much that he designed his band's first record album to look like the cover (you know, the hooded monk). I should tell him he's not alone in his sentiment.

geek love is a good read. dunn sold the novel rights to harry anderson, the guy from night court, like a week before gus van sant called her up and asked her if she wanted to make a movie. I wonder if anderson will sit on it forever or what. maybe he's waiting for her next book, cut man (about boxers, prostitutes and murderers) to come out. last time I talked to her, long ago (this long ago -- it was at a nirvana show), she said she was still working on it and that these things take a long time. she's a great conversationalist. if I work on my web page when I get back to the states, the first thing that's going up will be the transcript of a long talk I once had with her about cloning, cults, stephen king (she once gave a lecture in the portland library about how it is ok to like him), our junior high school and the kennedy assassination. she's also a total babe.

"novel rights." duh, MOVIE rights. started proulx's "the shipping news" last night. have already laughed out loud several times.

Semillama, I am MOST impressed! Hocus Pocus is one of my fave's too. I keep hoping for a movie version, but I suspect, the portrayal of the Japanese would cause widespread protest. You gotta love sarcasm. The only person I can see in the lead of this movie would be Christopher Walken. What do you think? I have read almost all of Vonnegut's books, with the exception of Galapagos. I have started it half a dozen times but for the life of me cannot get into it. Has anyone else been sucessful? As for two other books, I'd have to say, Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," and Julia Sweeney's "God Said Ha!" Books I completely could not stand, were Stephen Crane's "The Red Bagde of Courage," and Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." Oh, one more for my faves... "If I Ran the Zoo," by Dr. Seuss.

Walken for sure.

was force-fed "red badge of courage" in junior high. have never forgotten the communion-evoking simile "the sun hung like a wafer in the sky." thought it was the most contrived literary device I'd ever read.

"that's why god gave you two"

the philosophy of andy warhol big sur by kerouac damien by herman hesse bluebeard by vonnegut catch 22 another roadside attraction by tom robbins in watermelon sugar by brautigan Poetry(should come first but people are reluctant to read it) Ring of bone by Lew Welch Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire certain Frank O'Hara poems

ahhh another Brautigan fan!!!!!!!! YEAH!!! I just read , The Abortion Romance and I am currently reading trout fishing in america. Check out Tokyo Montana Express also. Sexus by Henry Miller Under the Roofs Of paris By Henry Miller Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre (play)Waiting for Godot-Samuel Beckett

AAAHHH!!! I looooovvvee "In Watermelon Sugar"! It is one of the neatest books I've ever read! It's so magical and fascinating and it transports me to another spiritual plane every time I pick it up. Is it a parable? Is it supposed to make sense? Who knows?! I love it. My favorite chapter is when the narrator talks to the old man who lights the lanterns. I've never met or spoken to anyone else who's read it. Tell us more about your thoughts!

damien by herman hesse bluebeard by vonnegut catch 22 another roadside attraction by tom robbins in watermelon sugar by brautigan Ring of bone by Lew Welch the mention of these books takes me back to the late 1980s, when I worshipped my literature teachers. mr. tunnell, the kind of wonderfully priggish man who deep in his heart really believed that all american teenagers should fully understand the gerund, was a hesse fanatic. I was a purist and believed that translated novels were worthless but spent time with the black-and-white covered siddhartha and beneath the wheel instead of their bee-colored cliff notes counterparts anyway. I remember preferring beneath the wheel to his less plot-driven post-psychotherapy work (siddhartha, narcissus and goldmund, etc.). and that was back when I felt I needed to excel in every class even though I thought the study of literature was a complete waste of time, so I was keenly sympathetic to the beneath the wheel scholar protagonist. mr. tunnell was the one who, the day before we started work on lord of the flies, didn't show up for class and left us to our own devices, to see if we would stick each others' heads on stakes.