Recommend me a new book

[Veils_of_Cerpintaxt]

I'm all out of reading material, and I have to go to the bookstore tomorrow anyway to drop my girlfriend off at her work while her car is being fixed.

 

[Reanna]

um... Read any book by Chuck Palahniuk.... or....i dont know.. what kind of books do you like?

 

[Veils_of_Cerpintaxt]

Chuck is a great author, I'm into anything that isn't romance.

 

[Reanna]

well, if you like sci-fi/fantasy you can try the Epic Series "Sword of Truth" by Terry Goodkind
"Lost Souls" by Poppy Z. Brite
"Drawing Blood" by Poppy Z. Brite
"Exquisite Corpse" by Poppy Z. Brite
"Compulsion" by Keith Ablow
I could list a few others, but i think they would be considered sci-fi/fantasy/romance because there is lots and lots of sex in them.

 

[ChromeLife]

I second Poppy...

George RR Martin "A Game of Thrones"

 

[Veils_of_Cerpintaxt]

Sweet, some ideas now.

 

[IanDork107]

Get Middlesex by Jeffry Eugenides. I'm reading it now, about 300 pages into the 500-something page book and I can easily say it's the best thing I've read this year. The way it's written you just can't put it down, plus it's got one of the most unlikely heros/main characters/narrators ever: a hermaphrodite named Calliope/Cal. It's very zany, but somehow totally believable.

 

[IanDork107]

I also highly recommend The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. If you're at all into books about Indian people, get this one. Get it even if you aren't. It's something that could easily become an important piece of literature.

 

[Veils_of_Cerpintaxt]

Get Middlesex by Jeffry Eugenides. I'm reading it now, about 300 pages into the 500-something page book and I can easily say it's the best thing I've read this year. The way it's written you just can't put it down, plus it's got one of the most unlikely heros/main characters/narrators ever: a hermaphrodite named Calliope/Cal. It's very zany, but somehow totally believable.

We have a winner

 

[xfer]

you should read "The Passion of New Eve" by Angela Carter.

chuck palahniuk is okay. his plots and ideas are great, but sadly his actual writing stinks. they kind of even out to make a decent reading experience, though.

(if you're going to read Palahniuk, I would read "Survivor")

 

[Veils_of_Cerpintaxt]

Survivior was a great book, what is The Passion of New Eve about?

 

[IanDork107]

I kinda dislike Palahniuk for the opposite reason as xfer. His writing style is, at first, fresh and fun to read, but if you make it through two of his books, by the time you try to read another you're just so goddamned tired of him. He want's way too desperately to be deep and hip, of which he's neither.

 

[avi]

I recently found out Palahniuk is gay, and not that it really matters, but suddenly Fight Club made a lot more sense when seen in that light.

 

[FalseTodd]

Phillip K. Dick - "Ubik"

 

[minxnim]

a book called 'my name is red' is AMAZING.

also, hunter s thompson's book on the hell's angels is a fun read

 

[xfer]

I don't disagree about the weariness thing, Ian--I've only read three Palahniuk books ("Fight Club" not among them, although I thought the movie was great), and I'm not too interested in reading more. Kind of like a slihtly-but-only-slightly-more original Tom Robbins. What I meant was the actual mechanics of his writing stink--his dialogue is sometimes wooden, and his descriptions sometimes make you wince because they're so forced and cliched.

"Passion of the New Eve" is about a crime-ridden, fucked-up future; the main character, a man named Evelyn (to British folk, that name's male, I guess), gets kidnapped by this group of radical femi-nationalists and brought into their underground lair and transformed surgically into a woman. Eventually he escapes and then spends the rest of the book getting abused as only women can by the post-apocalyptic-y denizens of the former USA.

Reading that description, it doesn't sound very good, but it is.

 

[FalseTodd]

I kinda dislike Palahniuk for the opposite reason as xfer. His writing style is, at first, fresh and fun to read, but if you make it through two of his books, by the time you try to read another you're just so goddamned tired of him. He want's way too desperately to be deep and hip, of which he's neither.

I feel this way about Salman Rushdie. I really enjoyed Shame, really liked Midnight's Children, and I thought Satanic Verses was very good, but his narrative voice gets very tiring...I own Fury and I don't predict getting to it very soon...

 

[xfer]

I think Sam's assessment of Salman Rushdie is not inaccurate. But Rushdie, nevertheless, is 10000000x better than Palahniuk. I just can't really get into his voice.

 

[goatschool]

hunter thompson's "great shark hunt" is one of my favorite books, i would have recommended that if it weren't too late.

 

[goatschool]

also barry hannah anything, more good bite-sized waiting-for-girlfriend-reading, which, seeing as you have a girlfriend, is bound to happen at some point in your near future.