fluxuation

I copied and pasted this straight out of my facebook, because apparently all my real life friends are illiterate. I only got like 5 suggestions, 3 of which did not comply with my 'no shopoholic' rule. Sp please give me reading ideas, so that I can add reading to this:



I have a proposition! Recommend me books for the summer, and I'll let you read the books I've posted below. If I catch you reading them without trading a recommendation, however, I'll steal your eyes.

Any books will do. Fiction, non-fiction; books about people, events, and people participating in events. Happy books, sad books, books that make me think, books that help me not think, difficult books, and easy books. The only things I will not accept are books with the following words appearing in the title:

# Shop-oholic
# girls love diamonds, tee hee
# how to find a husband
# Oprah's book club
etc. Crappy chick-lit. As a side note, there was this one chick-lit type book I read last summer called She and it wasn't bad. Also, the nanny diaries = cute. But no shopping!

Here's the list I've started already:


* Harry Potter 7 (july 21st!!!!)

* White Teeth - Zadie Smith I've since read this, and it's AMAZING.

* On the Road Again - Kerouac

* The Sacred Balance - David Suzuki!

* the Handmaid's Tale - Maregeret Atwood rocks

* Number9dream - the same guy who wrote the Cloud Atlas

* Galapagos - Vonnegut

* Breakfast of Champions - also Vonnegut? I forget... I've been meaning to read it for a while though

* The Idiot - Dostoevsky

* Only Revolutions - Danielewski. I've actually had this for a while, but it's intense. It's basically a novel-length poem that you have to flip upsidedown every 8 pages. Tough work, but looks good. I've finished this too. I thought it was really pretentious. But oh well.



And here's a list of books I'd recommend to anyone looking for something to read in your lawnchair while sipping lemonade this summer:


* Harry Potter 1-7 (seriously. They're so good!)

* the Cloud Atlas - it's a boomerang-esque novel that swoops from the South Pacific and the 1800s to Hawaii in the post-apocalyptic future; nesting stories inside of stories like an omnipotent matriochki doll. So good.

* The Poisonwood Bible - Congo, 1960s, missionaries.

* The Sex Lives of Cannibals and Getting Stoned With Savages - travel writing about lazy people moving to the South Pacific. Hilarity ensues.

* Oryx and Crake - another dire-warning-about-the-future book... like I'm in ES or something...

* Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - don't let the size intimidate you, because it's really good. It's sort of like Harry Potter for grownups, and grown-ups who like historical fiction, and without the Harry Potter.

* the Gunslinger, vol. 1-7 - Stephen King is a genius. Anyone who disagrees can go to hell. These books are amazing.

* Racists - white kid + black kid + diabolical experiment to determine which race is smarter = book that shows how awful anthropologists in the 19th century were.

* House of Leaves - a book inside a book inside a book! For the reader who likes to feel efficient.

* David Eggers, his entire collection - especially You Shall Know Our Velocity! and What is the What? The man is a genius. Actually, if you're feeling youth-oriented, read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Ditto if you were in your 20s in the 90s. I assume he's portraying it accurately, because I was under the age of 10 for most of it.

* Until I Find You - for some reason, critics didn't like this book, which is by John Irving. It just goes to show that I am always right, and everyone who disagrees with me is always wrong. It's math. You can't disprove math.



I'll stop now, because that's a lot of books and I'm sure people stopped reading this a while ago. But any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

xo.