I'm just wondering if anyone's got any great books that they'd recommend... I just recently read We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson (an excellent book) and I'm reading Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury right now... I have a lot of "dead time" lately, and I've been reading (Lord of The Rings, etc) and I just want some suggestions for good books to read.

cryptonimicon by neil stephenson.

Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker

Dandelion Wine is a great book. No Ceiling but Heaven, by Mykal Banta, if you can find it (your library may have a copy). The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. (Droopy, have you read this?) The Mirror of Her Dreams, by Stephen Donaldson In Watermelon Sugar, by Richard Brautigan (I think it's still in print -- check your library, if not.) The Wisdom of the Heart, by Henry Miller

the Brautigan book is. They print it along with 2 other stories, so you get three Brautigan books in one. My favorite thing about Brautigan are his book covers. Sam has a lot of the original pressings and the covers are so damn cool.

Hmmm...my copy of In Watermelon Sugar has a b&w photo of a straight-haired girl with what looks like David Crosby standing behind her. Must not be an original pressing.

well i say original, but im sure there were several pressings. Since his stories were short, they have started putting them together in one book. thats brautigan in that photo on yours. here are some other images of him, some which are book covers. this is the current edition of Watermelon Sugar, with the two other stories this is what i have and what mark has, he had that photo of him reading it up on the main page for the longest time. this is one I don't have that i want. This is the cover of "The Abortion", which is a sweet sweet dear story. This is probably my favorite.

i think i have the paperback of the abortion with that picture on it. harlan ellison: the beast that shouted love at the heart of the world strange wine love ain't nothing but sex misspelled paingod (and other delusions) deathbird stories the (other) glass teat

oh, and shatterday. the man who was heavily into revenge is a great story.

Read Tad Williams' "Otherland" series before anything else. It's the Lord of the RIngs in VR.

"My Idea of Fun" "The Quantity Theory of Insanity"...Both by Will Self "The Wasp Factory" by Iain Banks (nasty piece of work. very unsettling) I don't recommend reading either of these authors if you are easily upset. Self is hilarious, but very ascerbic. His views on pyschotherapy are right on the mark...If you hate psychotherapy. Banks is one of the darkest authors I've ever read. This stuff is not for people who are really into the lighter side of literature. Be prepared.

currently: the red tent, anita diamant getting over it, anna maxted and kissing in manhattan, david schickler occassionally still picking up: all families are psychotic, douglas coupland

i like banks' sci fi more. i wasn't compelled to continue reading the wasp factory like i was with his space operas. maybe i didn't read far enough into it. donald barthelme - the dead father

Honestly, I never read his Sci Fi. I think it was an interview with him where he said that he wrote Sci-Fi out of frustration because he couldn't get his "serious" works published. I may be wrong about that, but I could swear it was banks. I don't think he ever surpassed "Wasp Factory". It is still one of those fascinating repulsive things that come back to visit me when I least expect it. It had a big impact on me. You need to go back and try it again. The revelations about Frank are really chilling.

Funny, I just found the interview I was thinking about, and it is exactly the opposite of what I thought. He wrote Wasp Factory in frustration of being unable to easily publish his Sci-Fi work. He seems to be split 50-50, sci-fi and mainstream (although I would NEVER consider Wasp Factory mainstream) http://sfweb.dang.se/a/zines/banks.pdf

i loved the wasp factory, too. it was totally disturbing, but beautiful.

What is it about?

Wow. Thank you all! Spider-I read "Going After Cacciato" for my english class, and I didn't really love Tim O'Brien's writing...but I'll look into it anyway. Call it a hunch, but I guess Brautigan is a favourite here. now if i only had the money to buy all of these...

I started "Going After Cacciato" but didn't get very far (I can't remember why, either). "The Things They Carried" is very different -- for one thing, it's autobiographical, and he gets into the philosophy behind writing about things you've experienced, and writing about war.....it's just a different kind of book entirely. I had to interview a Vietnam vet for a paper I wrote in college, and I gave him this book after the interview. He wrote me and said the book made him think about a lot of new issues and he was grateful to me for giving it to him, if that tells you anything. Seriously, check it out from your library and give it a try.

Here is an excerpt from "How to Tell a True War Story" from the book, as a taste.

"Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least: Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through." That's a snippet from the back of the Wasp Factory. It's not one of those books that you can really describe without making it sound ridiculous. You just have to read it. The reference to the Wasp Factory is the most disturbing and interesting part of the book, in my opinion. It's like this big organic pinball machine created out of tortured wasps, among other things. The ending is totally mind blowing. Actually, Spider, it might give you nightmares. I don't know. You might love it, though.

I'm always up for reading nightmare-inducing, mind-blowing things....I'll look for it.

i might try reading that o'brien book. though the excerpt doesn't sound like my dad at all. who was a vietnam vet. though i'm sure he thought war was hell. the wasp factory sounds drop dead boring.

The King of Cellblock 8. It's a story about a man's struggle with his manhood at a very trying time in his life. An A+ read. LS

Anyone read anything by John Barth? I read Lost in The Funhouse and that was quite enjoyable. (not just the short story, but the collection of several stories packaged under that name)

i've read 'sot-weed factor' and 'the floating opera'. i would suggest the second one, which i think was his first novel. it's shorter and funnier than the novels he's famous for. i like barth in small doses - for me, he can be self-indulgent and just write too much. then again, if you gots lotsa dead time...

I read Dean Koontz a lot. I read one book of his, and found that it wasn't the horror story that attracted me to the book. "False Memory". Amazing. So many things the "evil" psychiatrist does in this book, happened to me. The use of hypnosis to implant false memories or beliefs was so accurate. It astounded me. Of course, as I was reading it, I was thinking "That bitch could have done that to me". The unexplainable suicidal impulses, the false memories of rapes that never happened, the "satanic cult" visions. None of it was true, or real, but planted. It was weird to see in a book someone writing what happened to me in that crappy hospital in Cerritos. It was a completely different story, but the way it was done was the same. Amazing. Good mind fucking thriller.