Originally Posted by Baby Lee (Post 11500527)

Meant for that to be part of the notion of 'scandalous!!' <-- hence the exclamation marks.

Reminiscent of reading the dirty jokes in the Playboys or the Penthouse letters you and your buddies hid up in the tree house when you were a kid.

Not to say it's all lascivious, just libertine and hedonistic.

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins (Post 11500489)

Survivor--follows the last surviving member of a death cult (a la The Order of the Solar Temple and Jonestown).

Choke--protagonist is a sex addict that pays for his mother's nursing home by choking on food at prestigious restaurants and developing a parasitic relationship with those who save him.

Fight Club. I'm sure you're familiar with it. The book is better than the film, save the ending, which is superior in celluloid.

Invisible Monsters: former fashion model is disfigured by a gunshot wound to the face. And that's the most normal thing that happens.

Damned. 13 year old girl allegedly dies of a marijuana overdose, is sent to Hell, and is shoehorned into a Breakfast Club-esque clique while paying off her penance for her sins--working as a telemarketer.

Originally Posted by NewChief (Post 11500395)

All the Pretty Horses is nice and not too insane.

Blood Meridian if you want to dive into the deep end.

The Road, imo, really isn't indicative of the rest of his work.

Originally Posted by Baby Lee (Post 11500425)

AtPH is probably his best, but I REALLY liked Blood Meridian. Difference being, I read AtPH hardcover, . . . and listened to Blood Meridian on tape while on long trips, so I consumed it passively, in 3-4 hour chunks, a week or two at a time.

So I can't speak to NC's 'off the deep end' remark, except it really is a descent into a hellscape. Basically deeper and deeper doo-doo in the lawless old west. Think if Apocalypse Now was set in the Mexico territories.

But it stuck with me and I enjoyed it a lot.

And I agree, The Road is a much more sparse, spare, dire work.

If I were starting new, I'd warm up with Elmore Leonard shorts, then move to AtPH, then BM, then The Road from Cormac.

BEP's recommendation of McCourt will seem like a fellow traveller to McCarthy, McMurtry and Leonard, though he has a vastly different, autobiographical, story to tell.

Originally Posted by BucEyedPea (Post 11500497)

You are. I understand what you're saying.

So Gertrude Stein or Shakespeare isn't up your alley.

It's like reading Shakespeare. I was being tongue-n'cheek with the Jane Austen rec though. Chick books.

Originally Posted by TimBone (Post 11500560)

Exactly! I was assisting an old army buddy with his Intro to Literature class, and reading all the old literature had me wanting to tear my eyes out. Just not for me.

Originally Posted by TimBone (Post 11500560)

Exactly! I was assisting an old army buddy with his Intro to Literature class, and reading all the old literature had me wanting to tear my eyes out. Just not for me.

Originally Posted by Baby Lee (Post 11500608)

If you want to ease your way into 'classic' literature, Dickens is your surefire route. Ripping great plots, tons of social commentary, and it's told in a manner for the short attention span [relatively, for the time] of the newspaper reader, as many were published in installments in British papers.

More substantial than today's 'trashy paperbacks' less dense than hardcore old-fogey lit.

A Tale of Two Cities
David Copperfield
Bleak House
Our Mutual Friend

You can't go wrong with any of them.

Originally Posted by Baby Lee (Post 11500665)

Gregory Maguire's Wicked series is a decent quartet as well. Retelling Baum's Wizard of Oz through alternative eyes and sensibilities.

Competent and clever enough to be considered literature, breezy enough for summer reading.

https://sffbookreview.files.wordpres...cked-years.jpg

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins (Post 11500489)

Survivor--follows the last surviving member of a death cult (a la The Order of the Solar Temple and Jonestown).

Choke--protagonist is a sex addict that pays for his mother's nursing home by choking on food at prestigious restaurants and developing a parasitic relationship with those who save him.

Fight Club. I'm sure you're familiar with it. The book is better than the film, save the ending, which is superior in celluloid.

Invisible Monsters: former fashion model is disfigured by a gunshot wound to the face. And that's the most normal thing that happens.

Damned. 13 year old girl allegedly dies of a marijuana overdose, is sent to Hell, and is shoehorned into a Breakfast Club-esque clique while paying off her penance for her sins--working as a telemarketer.

Originally Posted by TimBone (Post 11500551)

Veerry nice. Thanks, man. I'll probably staet one of these in the next couple of days.

Originally Posted by ChiliConCarnage (Post 11598323)

I finished David Baldacci's The Innocent last week. Really good

A friend told me I had to read Ready Player One so I downloaded it while on my trip without reading any reviews/synopsis. It seems to be aimed at teens which I didn't realize but is ok. I'm not real far in but so far it seems like a Willy Wonka ripoff moved to a new locale.