As cliche as it sounds, Catcher in the Rye is still my favorite book. I enjoyed Fight Club a lot as well.

Pretentious fat guy sucks jam out of donuts and gets in wacky misadventures.

Post nuclear hippy novel where literate tigers snack on the populous and everything's made out of watermelon sugar.

Horselover Fats writes a novel about Horselover Fats. Pink lasers shoot out from the Dog Star. The world folds in on itself in a giant self-reference.

God's corpse is found floating in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Militant athiests hatch a plot to sink it to hide the evidence.

My four favorite novels.

fancyjamtime wrote:Pretentious fat guy sucks jam out of donuts and gets in wacky misadventures.

Post nuclear hippy novel where literate tigers snack on the populous and everything's made out of watermelon sugar.

Horselover Fats writes a novel about Horselover Fats. Pink lasers shoot out from the Dog Star. The world folds in on itself in a giant self-reference.

God's corpse is found floating in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Militant athiests hatch a plot to sink it to hide the evidence.

My four favorite novels.

the first i am guessing is confederacy of dunces. can you please give titles for the following 3?

Another cliche one for me, as well. 1984.

I don't think I need to describe the plot but...

I first found this book in an abandoned shopping cart which had all the items necessary to be a bum cart (old newspapers, a few cans, a screwdriver, cardboard, plastic bags, etc), although my town had gassed them all years before. I took it home and read it.

Haydon wrote:

fancyjamtime wrote:Pretentious fat guy sucks jam out of donuts and gets in wacky misadventures.

Post nuclear hippy novel where literate tigers snack on the populous and everything's made out of watermelon sugar.

Horselover Fats writes a novel about Horselover Fats. Pink lasers shoot out from the Dog Star. The world folds in on itself in a giant self-reference.

God's corpse is found floating in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Militant athiests hatch a plot to sink it to hide the evidence.

My four favorite novels.

the first i am guessing is confederacy of dunces. can you please give titles for the following 3?

"In Watermelon Sugar" - Richard Brautigan
"VALIS" - Philip K Dick
"Towing Jehovah" - James Morrow

Anything by any of these guys are great but these are my favorites. Need to put some JG Ballard in there in hindsight...

"Another Country" by James Baldwin.
Deals with racism in a way that nothing else I have ever read has done. You see ways that the characters' race affects what they do and the outcomes they can hope for in a way that's actually quite subtle and at the same time really revealing. Plus, it's written beautifully and the story is immense.

honeyisfunny wrote:"Another Country" by James Baldwin.
Deals with racism in a way that nothing else I have ever read has done. You see ways that the characters' race affects what they do and the outcomes they can hope for in a way that's actually quite subtle and at the same time really revealing. Plus, it's written beautifully and the story is immense.

Yes. A great book. The final pages are incredibly moving, from what I remember.

Since everyone's choosing novels, I will also.

Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. I think it's a deeply humane book, is all. Very funny, very warm, a great and ridiculous story, and written with an energy and sophistication that didn't crop up again in the English novel until Joyce came along. I think of it often.

I've always been pretty smitten with Jon Gardner's Grendel. It's been a long time since I read it, but I remember feeling that it was pretty amazing.

I have a collection of Ernie Pyle's writings that I read usually once a year.

Tom Robbin's Jitterbug Perfume is also pretty swell.

The Code is Almighty wrote:I've always been pretty smitten with Jon Gardner's Grendel. It's been a long time since I read it, but I remember feeling that it was pretty amazing.

I re-read that one from time to time as well. Just completely sweeps you up.

East of Eden or the Count of Monte Cristo

followed very closely by In Cold Blood

honorable mention to Murakami's Windup Bird Chronicles

desert island books, immense, spell binding, one moment of genius after the other