People are always saying "I don't read books." Too often, the problem is reading too many of the wrong books, thus turning a potentially great experience into something they'd rather avoid. This is where _DictionaryGirl_ and PointBlank come in and let you borrow something awesome. Let's go to town and make some recommendations, shall we?


Most of the time, I try to give these columns some sort of theme. You know, “books to read during the 7th inning stretch” or “books that my mother told me I must never open.” Well, due to laziness, brain freeze, or some combination of the two, I’m fresh out of themes here, people. Maybe next week. For this Suicide Bookshelf, I’m just going to give you a trio of books that I’ve liked for a long time. These are a few of the books that I’ve read at least twice. Hopefully, you’ll be inspired to pick one or two of them up for the first or twenty-first time.


A Feast of Snakes, Harry Crews

A Feast of Snakes could only be written by Harry Crews. Filled with the most loathsome group of characters not currently in the White House; centered around a story that involves dog-fighting, high school football, and liquor running; and laced with more violence than your average video game, Crews manages to pull it all together in a story that isn’t only hard to put down, but one that also makes the reader care about the characters beyond wanting to find out what happens to them next. The main character, Joe Lon Mackey, is a washed up former high school football star who lives an empty life running whiskey for his father while trying not to go mad with regret. The action takes place in the small town of Mystic, Georgia during its annual “Rattlesnake Roundup.”

A Feast of Snakes reads like a Flannery O’Connor crossed with Bukowski, and if that description doesn’t interest you, then I don’t know what will. Crews writes from a place that is obviously dark and angry, but a place that also manages to be funny as hell. His own life is the stuff of southern gothic fiction: raised in utter poverty by itinerant farmers in Georgia and Florida, he wound up fighting in Korea and went to college on the GI Bill. Fortunately, Crews also told that story in the amazingly poignant autobiography, Childhood: The Biography of a Place , which is featured in the Classic Crews Collection, certainly a must-buy for anyone who likes southern gothic fiction.


Riddley Walker , Russell Hoban

After someone mentioned it in the comments to a previous column, I needed to pick up this book again. I’m really glad that I did, since I had almost forgotten just how good and original it is. Set in England after a nuclear war, Riddley Walker is a sort of Mad Max meets A Clockwork Orange; a post-apocalyptic story written in an entirely invented dialect.

Of course, it’s the sort of writing that’s hard to put in a block quote (In fact, I'm pretty sure that my Microsoft Word is about to explode), and say, “hey, isn’t that great!?” Believe me, though, the awkwardness of the style fades after only a short time, and what you’re left with is the beauty and uniqueness of the story. The world, destroyed in 1997, is going through a second Iron Age, with only a few hints of the past. On his 12th birthday, Riddley Walker must slay a wild boar. Soon after, he replaces his father as the local prophet, interpreting the Punch and Judy puppet shows that travel the country, telling the allegorical story of the “1 Big 1.” After making a discovery at an excavation, Riddley is forced on the run with man’s mortal enemy—a pack of wild dogs.

This is the sort of book that you will immediately force your friends to read. A one-of-a-kind novel.


The War of the End of the World, Mario Vargas Llosa

In The War of the End of the World,Vargas Llosa tells the story of Canudos, Brazil, the site of one of the bloodiest and strangest rebellions in world history. It all started with Antonio Conselheiro (Anthony the Counselor), a preacher who traveled throughout Bahia Brazil during the late 19th Century. After many run-ins with the government and official church, Conselheiro set up, with his many followers, the town of Canudos. Quickly, the town grew to 30,000 inhabitants, mostly recently freed slaves, indigenous people, and the poorest of Brazil’s farmers, who had recently suffered through a drought which killed up to 300,000. The newly formed Brazilian republic sent several small expeditions to crush the community, but each was repulsed by the citizens of Canudos. In 1897, at the insistence of the British government, a final assault was carried out on the citizens of Canudos, the entire town was wiped out, and is almost totally forgotten today.

Vargas Llosa tells the story in a quietly restrained style, letting the events speak for themselves. We follow the men and women of Canudos, as well as the soldiers who are sent to destroy them. Even though the outcome is preordained, the reader is still drawn into the lives of these characters that are, more than living through history, becoming the stuff of history itself. Although conscious of the weight of the story he’s telling, Llosa is never overwhelmed by it, and the writing strikes a perfect blend between the factual and the fictional. Beautiful and heartbreaking.


So, there it is: misanthropy in the Deep South, a doomed quasi-rebellion in Brazil, and the beginnings of story telling in a Britain devastated by nuclear war. I guess you could find a theme in there somewhere, but I’m not sure I’m up to it.