**My original Reccomended Reading entry...books I liked then, like now, and think you might like!**
7.30.2002 // Reccomended Reading I
Posted at 12:00 AM
This is pretty straightforward--Just a top-of-my-head, plain list of books I like. Obviously I can't post them all in one entry, or one night, or one week...etc. They are in no particular order, and the author disavows any association with the various and sundry shady characters who authored these books...etc etc etc. If your laundry eats you instead of your socks, don't blame me. Goodnight. Read.
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five
Breakfast of Champions
Timequake
Welcome to the Monkey House
Cat's Cradle
Galapagos
and many others...
Hunter S. Thompson
Hell's Angels
The Proud Highway
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
and many others...
Yasunari Kawabata
The Thousand Cranes
House of the Sleeping Beauties
Mark Z. Danielewski
House of Leaves
Starhawk
The Fifth Sacred Thing
The Twelve Wild Swans
Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale
Sylvia Plath
Collected Poems *Pulitzer-winning
The Complete Journals of...
The Bell Jar
John Drury
Creating Poetry *One of the only useful books I've ever read on poetry...except, of course, the poetry itself...
Leilah Wendell
Our Name is Melancholy: The Complete Books of Azrael
Encounters With Death
Eros in Exile
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
and anything else of his that you can get your hands on!
T.S. Eliot
Selected Poems
and every last scrap of his poetry! Be warned that Eliot is a poet who doesn't give a shit what you do and don't understand. However, anything you can glean from his works is more than worthwhile.
Emily Dickinson
Complete Poems
and any books of her letters. Also, check out the bio of her, "My Wars Are Laid Away In Books"--the author is not in my memory at the moment.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Second Spring ...and anything else...etc
Vincent ties with Dickinson as my favorite poet ever. Her sonnets are masterful--you scarcely recognize their form because the words flow so naturally. Try to get a hold of "Savage Beauty" by Nancy Milford(?), a superbly written, thoroughly-researched biography of this exceptional woman.
Sark
Succulent Wild Woman
The Bodacious Book of Succulence
Eat Mangoes Naked
Tranformation Soup
...any and all writings...her artwork, her friendliness, her creativity, her sound advice--Sark is truly a spectacular soul! Reading her work is like a celebration of life.
That's all I can stay awake for tonight...expect more lists soon, because belive me, I've barely started into the literature I love.
Books: I consume you, you consume me, but in the end, which is a product of the other?
Yes, I actually made up that drivel. And now I'm going to bed.
1:22AM
--Maiken