Help me fill up my reading Wish List

Squidd

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I've got a new bookcase and an upcoming birthday, and it seems like those two things could work well together. The thing is, right at the moment I don't have very many books that I am actively wanting. So I need you folks to tell me about the books that I want but don't know it yet.

Favored writers include Pratchett, Bester, and my Three Donalds: Barthelme, Harington, and Westlake. Top books are Catch-22, John Varley's The Golden Globe (haven't liked his others as much), and That Grail Song, Sam, One More Time by George V. Packard, which is probably too obscure to help but I love it too much to leave it out.

Best thing I've read recently was Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid Chronicles, now I'm stuck waiting until April for the next one. Oh, Philip Palmer's Version 43 was also great. In general, I like books that take an unusual approach to things, especially books that don't fit neatly in one genre.

So tell me what I want, because I want to want things.
 
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alleycat

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Well, you've got the opposite problem from me. I have way too many books for the bookcases I have (and I have several bookcases).

One suggestion, if your local library has a book sale, go and browse. It's amazing what you can often find for a dollar or two at a book sale (if you get there early, before the resellers arrive).
 

Chris P

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I agree with Alleycat, and take a chance on something. One of the biggest surprises for me was Franz Werfel's 40 Days of Musa Dagh, which I got at a flea market for 10 cents and loved (see how I worked in a suggestion there?).

I like Kurt Vonnegut, and I started out with Cat's Cradle and Dead Eye Dick. I also enjoyed Bluebeard and Player Piano. His books of essays (Palm Sunday, for example) didn't impress me much and his later books such as Timequake were more opinion than story, and Breakfast of Champions left me meh.

Maybe not quite what you're after, but Dave Eggers is a favorite of mine, especially A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What.
 

Squidd

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My books just barely fit on the cases I had, and that was with vertical stacks on a majority of shelves. So when one of them didn't survive my move last month, I replaced it with two, and now I have some room to play with.

I've found good things at library sales before, but not often. (Roderick Macleish's First Book of Eppe may be the best value I've ever gotten out of fifty cents.) Right now, though, I have an outside chance of getting people to buy me things. I just don't know what to ask for.

I've read almost everything Vonnegut. (Never been able to get through Player Piano, for some reason.) Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle are my favorites.
 

RobJ

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If you haven't already read Barthelme's Forty Stories and Sixty Stories, they'd be well worth getting.

There are some hugely popular best-sellers out there you might want to consider, for example the Twilight and Harry Potter books, and a handful from Dan Brown. But I'm going to suggest something else entirely.

Consider:

Blindness (Jose Saramago)
The Box Man (Kobo Abe)
The Elephant (Slawomir Mrozek)
Rape (Joyce Carol Oates)
Get Shorty (Elmore Leonard)
Die Trying (Lee Child)
Journey Into Space (Toby Litt)
How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie)
 

Kitty Pryde

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If you haven't yet, you absolutely must read Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. REQUIRED READING DO NOT ARGUE WITH KITTEH. Brilliant sci-fi fantasy romance mystery comedies with a literary sensibility.

Also:

Nine Hundred Grandmothers
by RA Lafferty
The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar
Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Going Bovine by Libba Bray
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Pym by Mat Johnson
St Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves by Karen Russell
 

Squidd

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Some of those have been added to my list! Thank you both.

Rob, I assure you that I am well-stocked when it comes to my Donalds. I'm missing a lot of Westlake, sure, but the man had more pseudonyms than most writers have books.

Kitty, have you read the Nursery Crime books? Because I read the first of those, and it... annoyed me. I don't recall specifically why at this point, but it's caused me to avoid Fforde. If you tell me the Thursday Next books are incomparably better, I'll certainly put them on the list. BUT PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM NOT ARGUING
 

Kitty Pryde

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LOL! Ok, the Nursery Crimes books are a spin-off of sorts from the Thursday Next series, and they might make more sense if you read the book that spawned them (The Well of Lost Plots). Thursday is a lot different in that it's not straight mystery, it works in just about any genre. And, although it's funny, it's not as silly (it's set amongst the organization that fights crime related to fiction and crime that occurs within fiction, not just in nursery-rhyme land). I'd still give the first one a try! :)
 

Murreydobe

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That Grail Song, Sam, One More Time by George V. Packard, which is probably too obscure to help but I love it too much to leave it out.
.

I'm new, and couldn't help but comment on Grail Song. George Packard was my 12th grade English teacher, I was also in his extracurricular creative writing class. I can remember him bringing the galleys in for Grail Song to show us prior to the book being published.

I recently "found" George, he's living on a small island off the coast of southern Ireland. He has a recently published book, Rescue, which is a true story. I believe it's only available on Kindle, tho..I'm about to purchase it.
 

Squidd

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Thanks, Murrey. That sort of thing is why I mentioned it anyway. I wrote about Grail Song on my LiveJournal (those were the days when I still used LiveJournal) after finding it in my college library, apparently untouched for thirty years. Six years later, my post got a comment from Packard's old girlfriend.

Never know where you'll find a connection.
 

Murreydobe

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Thanks, Murrey. That sort of thing is why I mentioned it anyway. I wrote about Grail Song on my LiveJournal (those were the days when I still used LiveJournal) after finding it in my college library, apparently untouched for thirty years. Six years later, my post got a comment from Packard's old girlfriend.

Never know where you'll find a connection.

The way I found George again after all these years was kind of amazing, too. I was reading a 20 year old book about a young girl traveling around Ireland (The book is called Sea Legs). She gets to this tiny little island called Sherkin Island. The next thing I know she's writing about this American author who lives there, and it dawns on me she's talking about my old teacher, George Packard. How's that for a coincidence!

A high school classmate and I did a little more detective work, and found that George did still live there, 20 years after that book was published. We re-established contact with him, and hopefully will be visiting him on Sherkin Island sometime in the future.

So yes, you never know where you'll find a connection.

George is a great guy, kind of a Hemingway-esque character.
 
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