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The turtle lost some charm for me, but the parts of 'Grapes of Wrath' where I think Steinbeck loses it a bit is there editorial asides to the 'great men of the West.' He's much worse about it in 'East of Eden,' generally better about it in the shorter books. The only work of length I can...

I prefer to cut pedant pills up with a razor until they're a fine powder, then sniff them through a straw. You get MUCH more pedantic that way, but a side-effect is alienation of friends, family and even total strangers on internet forums. ;) True. More apt probably to say that someone...

I'm not sure what you're saying is preposterous. A reader who loves Kerouac and wants suggestions on furhter reading might very well be interested in the writers who followed in his footsteps. And too often a writer is read/taught as if he stepped from a vacuum. Philip Roth is a writer who is...

'Catcher in the Rye.' I'm convinced that without censors, it would have simply failed to keep enough interest for repeated printings and J.D. Salinger would have had to try an honest trade instead of trying to pass himself off as a writer. The slams against Dan Brown are understandable...

I've read Vonnegut pretty well through, though I gave up on 'Timequake.' The shorts collected in 'Bagombo Snuff Box' show, much as Pynchon's 'Slow Learner' or the pre-Sartoris Faulkner novels do, that some authors take a while to catch their stride. 'Slaughterhouse 5' gets taught to...

Orwell was entering self-imposed poverty when he wrote those 'nonfiction' books, and he admits he took considerable liberties with condensing facts and events, and if memory serves even building composite characters. But that's just what makes it exactly the thing that Wolfe and Thompson and...

I probably didn't make my case very clearly. What I'm saying is that Dickens (or Hardy or Thackeray) are best appreciated in the context of authors like Bessant, who was fabulously popular with novels like 'Beyond the Dreams of Avarice.' This was, in the late 19th Century, the equivalent of a...

Hard to narrow it down to 10! But I think I've found a way to cheat the ten limitation: 1) P.J. O'Rourke: 'Modnen Manners' 'Republican Party Reptile' 'All the Trouble in the World' 'Parliament of Whores' 'Holidays in Hell' 'Give War a Chance' 1.4) Steve Martin: 'The Pleasure of...

One thing that makes it tricky to compare contemporary writers with Victorians who still get read is we don't see the equivalent of 'best-sellers' from the day of Dickens, Thackeray, and Hardy. Ever read Sir Walter Bessant? Hardly anyone ever has, though he was WILDLY more successful in his...

In Defense of the Old Bugger I too enjoyed 'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' especially as a companion read for HST's 'Hell's Angels.' But 'Bonfire,' 'A Man in Full' and 'I Am Charlotte Simmons' are not even the same type of book. He was doing 'New Journalism' in those early books. Starting...

Literary Heresy J.D. Salinger. I was trapped on a bus from Kansas City to Dallas with two options: the copy of 'Catcher in the Rye' I brought along, or the copy of 'Speed' someone brought to put in the bus' VHS player. Clever movie choice, but I'd seen the film and it's not exactly one I'd...

In many respects, Jim Uhls fixed a lot of problems when he wrote the screenplay for 'Fight Club.' It's a strong first novel, and I recommend reading it, but the movie handled some things better. I do wish the film had included the perfume incident, but the logic of the collagen trust and some...

I enjoyed 'On the Road.' Steinbeck's 'Travels with Charley' makes an interesting comparitive read. Depending on what you dig about Kerouac, I'd recommend: Terry Southern, especially 'The Magic Christian.' Also 'Candy,' (Southern's send-up of Voltaire). I haven't gotten to 'Flash and...

I guess this is a qualified suggestion, as I doubt my suggestions are listed under the genre: 'The Pleasure of My Company' by Steve Martin. Also 'Shopgirl' by same. 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.' The first two mentioned are short romantic comedies of sorts; the latter is...

Hard to pick just one... 'Earth in the Balance' by Al Gore 'The Fifth Profession' by David Morrell 'The Bourne Identity' by Robert Ludlum 'The Pelican Brief' by John Grisham 'Hannibal' by Thomas Harris One might gather from this list that I don't care for cloak & dagger stuff or...

I read 'Trainspotting' and found it a bit of a struggle. I don't dislike dialect writing, or for that matter, the wildly shifting POV and multiple first-person narrators. I love 'As I Lay Dying,' for instance. To me, it fell under the category of an 'important' book, a hard, honest look...

Where would I begin? I'm new here, but other forums I've participated in have led me to writers I'd probably have not known of. The Cult, where I initially went just for the writers workshop angle, hasled me to: 'The Contortionist's Handbook' by Craig Clevenger 'How to Lose Friends and...

Terry Southern, especially 'The Magic Christian.' Made into an awful movie adaptation with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr. 'Magic Christian' is a seminal work in transgressive fiction, yet I'm surprised how many people who love Edward Abbey, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk, Kurt Vonnegut, etc...

Hmmm. Those are two VERY broad fields. Some books that made an impact on me and the way I think that might fall under the philosophy category: 'Anarchy, State and Utopia,' by Robert Nozick 'In Defense of Anarchism,' by Robert Paul Wolff 'Human Action,' 'Socialism' and 'The Theory of...

To market my web site, I made up bookmarks. What better way to intrigue bookish people? But the library, they fan books coming in and put bookmarks and photos in a frame at the front as a kind of lost and found. So I have to sneak into the library, find Lobsterish books and sneak the...