I NEED SOMETHING TO READ

any suggestions. my favorites are flannery o'conner, kerouac, poe and salinger. what's left? any suggestions?

I've been reading lots of Terry Pratchett lately. So if you're into sort of wierd fantasy type stuff, I'd recommend any of his discworld series. Currently though I'm reading Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World (new edition) by Noam Chomsky. His style is a bit fucked and you need to ignore some of his preaching... but other than that it's an interesting read.

unrealated but you must read Confederacy Of Dunces. More fun that Sedaris. (sp?)

conferacy of dunces is a great book, any other suggestions?

Fluke or any other Christopher Moore book
My favorite is Blood Suckking Fiends, other people say Lamb is his best, Fluke is the new one

Have you gotten far into Truman Capote? He makes good bitchy summer reading... Answered Prayers is my favorite.

NEIL GAIMAN...read...read...read...

i'll say this once...

RAYMOND CARVER.

Stephen Ki*************
*gets shot in the process of typing*

(the above statement was posted for comic relief only, do however feel free to bash the author for his lack of un-lameness)

Take a look at any of these on amazon - see if they sound like something you would enjoy:

Mario Vargas Llosa, "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter"
Thomas Pynchon, "Vineland"
Paul Auster, "Mr Vertigo"
Patrick Suskind, "Perfume"
Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum"
Frank Herbert & Bill Ransom, "The Jesus Incident" / "The Lazerus Effect" / "The Ascension Factor"
Roald Dahl, "Tales of the Unexpected"
John Wyndham, "The Chysalids"

These are some of my faves.

Anything by Pynchon is awesome, but Vineland is a more relaxing read than most of his novels.

If you like Eco, then "The Name of the Rose" is also really great, but I have been having trouble getting into his later novel "The Island of the Day Before".

Everything that I have read from Llosa is great, and you will most probably enjoy him if you have read and liked any of the more popular South American writers - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, etc, the Llosa will appeal.

"Perfume: haunted me for monthes after reading it - it was beautiful in its dense characterization of the main character.

The Frank Herbert/Bill Ransom "Pandora Series" are amazing and were totally missed in the popular media thanks to Dune-mania. These books are much less sci-fi than Dune but still retain all of the great characteristics of Herbert's style.

Roald Dahl, known best for his children's books in the US had a television hit in England with his short horror stories - Tales of the Unexpected. These stories piss all over anything the twilight Zone cranked out and rival (and in my opinion surpass) the best Ray Bradbury has to offer.

John Wyndham is an English writer who was most famous for the sci-fi epic, "Day of the Triffids". The Chrysalids is my favorite Wyndham book. Another author who writes in the sci-fi genre without resorting to cliche and whose books tend not to be found amongst the morass of sci-fi books in most bookstores these days.

That is all I can think of for now. The reviews on amazon say it all better than I ever could.

*looks over at bookshelf, sees almost nothing but sci-fi staring back at him*

Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash is hysterical. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land should be required reading for anyone. To combine a coupld of the above suggestions, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman collaborated on an end-of-the-world saga called "Good Omens" that's fun to read.

Then again, our reading tastes differ a great deal, so you'd probably best ask someone else.

Steven Brust writes some excelent fantasy stories. they read something like james bond, with magic.

Have you tried Dante, Erasmus of Rotterdamn, Machiavelli, etc? Go way back to the way back and you find a lot of good literature. Don Quixote is a kick. Il Principe is enlightening, to say the least. I'd reccomend Ayn Rand, but that's hitor miss for most people.

Oh, and look up Mary Gentle. she wrote a book called Grunts. It's a good high fantasy, and it's twisted like nothing else i've read.

I like recommending some of the lesser known books. From your list I'd tend to say, for summer reading, try Jonathan Ames' "The Extra Man," a funny, elegantly written novel about a young man's misadventures in New York. There are also two collections of Ames' essays that are hilarious in a neurotic, hyper-introspective way. And he wrote a very dark, literary short novel called "I Pass Like Night."

A more serious, richly put together novel that I associate with summer is "Eucalyptus," by the Australian writer Murray Bail. It's kind of an adult fairy tale. By adult I don't mean explicit sex, but a good love story, maturely and expertly told.

david sedaris--me talk pretty one day. fucking awesome, no matter what type of lit you like.

Agreed. Anything by Sedaris is a good read. It's entertaining without being to cerebral.

Someone named Wintermute ISN'T recommending Gibson? For shame!

Guns, Drugs and Monsters by Steve Niles. kick ass book.

I just dicovered Tom Robbins, kind of a pervert but a great writer...

RE: Pynchion - I liked Vineland OK, but Mason & Dixon is like trying to decipher some weird fucking code. I don't understand a bit of it.

dude, how many times do i have to tell you? im NOT getting you a gift subscription to Hustler.

This is a good four hour chunk of reading right here. You know, if you don't want to face the asshole cashier at the used book store again this week.

If you like Kerouac: Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Richard Brautigan. Kurt Vonnegut is always good. And latin romanticism is nice too: Jorge Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, et al.

Based on that list I'd have to second to previously mentioned authors:

Perfume - Patrick Suskind
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? - Raymond Carver

I'll add my own recommendations based on those choices

the Metamorphosis and other stories - Franz Kafka (to go in the Poe vein)
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy (to go in the Flannery O'Connor vein)

But these are specific examples based on the limited list you provided. As for seconding more previous recommendations: Jorge Luis Borges (Complete Short Stories), William Burroughs (Exterminator!, Wild Boys), and Richard Brautigan (Trout Fishing in American, In Watermelon Sugar, the Abortion) are all amazing.

I'd also recommend a dash of Yukio Mishima (Confessions of a Mask, Temple of the Golden Pavilion) and JG Ballard (High Rise, Concrete Island, Crash)

That should do you.