Shotgun reading list.

the celestine prophecy ruined my life my freshman year in college.
everyone on my freshman dorm hall told me that i was stealing their spiritual energy.
so i started hanging out with cooler people.
so i guess it worked out in my favor.

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i am torn between The Wretched Stone - Chris Van Allsburg (children's author)
and
the book that i can't stop talking about nowadays :::
Tales of the Unexpected - Roald Dahl (not a children's book)

Living High and Letting Die - Peter Unger

deadeye dick by vonnegut

The Razor's Edge, W. Somerset Maugham

hahahah we mustve gone to the same college and stayed in the same dorm.

my answer is 1984 by Orwell

Cosmopolitan
Vogue
Star
and Allure

the bird artist by howard norman. a book full of characters so well written that i was sad when i finished it, as though i were losing old friends.

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller it's a great metaphor for life in general.

I would say most anything (especially Slaughterhouse 5) by Kurt Vonnegut as a fallow up to reading Catch 22.

can't stop at just one, so suck it up and deal...
The perks of being a wallflower- Stephen Chbosky
Naked- David Sedaris

both of these writers make me remember why i want to write, and get paid for it.

p.s. flux has excellent taste in literature

"The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge"/
"A Seperate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan"
by Carlos Castaneda

This is tough. Really tough.

Some people have already mentioned some really good ones. I'd probably go for a generally overlooked book.. as others would pick more popular ones.. so I'd have to say,,

Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathaniel West

runner up - Ulysses - James Joyce

Well, this is DravenRaine's husband. I don't post here, but I had to post in this thread.

First of all, I agree, 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a damn good book.

Now, my 3:

Blindness by Jose Saramago
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony and Other Stories - Franz Kafka

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled ramblings from my wife.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Brilliant.

Walden - Henry David Thoreau.

LAMB by Christopher Moore
Do yourself a favor and go read chapter one Now!

The lyrics to MSP's The Holy Bible. You won't be living much longer reading those!

Actual book:

The Prophet - Kahil Gibran

The book I want everyone to read - and I do mean EVERYONE - is actually a trilogy:

"Memory of Fire" by Eduardo Galeano - a poetic and blistering history of the americas:

"Genesis"
"Faces and Masks"
"Century of the Wind"

and 3 runners-up:

"Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie
"Underworld" by Don DeLillo
"The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Notes from Underground by the mighty DOS!

It begins: I am an angry man, I am an ugly man, I believe there is something wrong with my liver.

AND IT GOES DOWNHILL FROM THERE!

Runners up: Country by Nick Tosches
A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley
Prime of Misss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

ummm id say charles bukowski but it is so impossible to pick just one

probably one of his books of poetry rather than prose, though

Dune-Frank Herbert

Ooohhh... brilliant, yes... funny, yes... but sooooo heartbreaking. Do you really want[i/] everybody to be filled with hopelessness and angst?

Do you mean Larry Niven? He didn't write Snow Crash.

I can't pick one. A few at random, I could easily come up with more on reflection.

Fiction (general/creepy):
Iain Banks -- The Wasp Factory
John Fowles -- The Collector

Fiction (mystery/suspense):
Peter Hoeg -- Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow (or Smilla's Sense of Snow)

Non-Fiction (general):
Robert Pirsig -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Non-Fiction (humour/satire):
Joe Queenan -- Balsamic Dreams (if you're over 30)
Frederick Crews -- Postmodern Pooh (if you are interested in the academic humanities)

How non-fiction was it? It's one of my favorites, though even I have to admit if there really is a guy like Phradeus, in real life he's probably a massive shit.