Reading List

This list isn't really comprehensive (I'm not gonna bother including Lego City Adventures: Help is on the Way, a childhood classic), but it's meant rather to help me keep track of my current reading habits and the shit I'd like to read in the future.

TO READ

• I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
• Don Quitoxe by Miguel de Cervantes.
• Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
• 1984 by George Orwell
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara
• The Torah by YHWH
• The Quran by Allah
• The Bible(KJV) by The LORD, your God
• Color of Water by James McBride
• Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.
• Cloud of Sparrows by Takashi Matsuoka
• Art of War by Sun Tzu
• To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
• Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
• Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino
• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
• Battle Royal by Koushun Takami
• The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
• Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
• Confessions by Augustine
• Book of Drought by Rob Carney
• The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
• A Bloody and Barbarous God by Petra Mundik
• Famous People by Justin Kuritzkes
• Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
• Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
• The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
• Dangerous Visions by Harlan Ellison
• The Nag Hammadi Scriptures by Marvin Meyer (I bought this back when I was on my Gnostism kick and never finished it)
• The Secret Revelation of John by Karen L. King
• Butcher's Crossing by John Edward Williams
• No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
• Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers by Thich Nhat Hanh
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• A Gypsy Good Time by Gustav Hasford
• My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue by Samuel Chamberlain
• Paradise Regained by John Milton
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
• The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima
• The Life of Jesus by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Rip Tide by Kat Falls
• Berserk by Kentaro Miura
• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
• Spider Kiss by Harlan Ellison
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Odyssey by Homer
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Siddharta by Herrmann Hesse
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• Dispatches by Michael Herr

My high school english classes weren't all that productive.

HAVE READ (In no particular order)

• The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by Harlan Ellison
My favorite collection of short stories, and honestly, probably my favorite book. I got this ancient and stained copy for Christmas one year, and I brought it to school everyday and read it during class. It's a very special book to me.
• Alone Against Tomorrow by Harlan Ellison
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
It's not McCarthy's best book. In fact, it's probably one of his worst. Even so, this book absolutely breaks my heart. The world it portrays is so dense with hopelessness and despair it edges on unbearable, and it likely would be, were it not for the relationship between the son and the father, each other's world entire. Beautiful fucking book.
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• The Passage by Justin Cronin
• The Twelve by Justin Cronin
Just like the first book, The Passage, the former half of this book fucks incredibly hard. It's mostly just a simple journey of survivors trying to find safety at the end of the world, but it's so fucking compelling regardless. And then it hits the second half, and the whole thing just tumbles out of the guy's hands. It's been a long time since I last read that book, but holy shit, did the ending piss me off. Really, it came down to so much buildup from the first book being completely fumbled and disregarded, leaving the ending feeling very limp and unsatisfying.
• The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin
Dogshit. Fuck you. No, it wasn't that bad. Maybe the fact that it had been years between me reading the second book and this one took a lot of the oompf out of it, but fuck man, it just left me feeling empty, like there ended up being zero point to it all. I dunno, the worldbuilding's cool, I guess.
• Discovering Scarfolk by Richard Littler
The problem with comedy in prose is that you can't account for timing at all, nor the imagination of the reader, so that leaves very few avenues of viable comedy, mainly, irony. And holy shit, this book hits that very nail again and again and again. Very kafkaesque, and one of the few books to actually make me laugh out loud.
• The Redemption of an African Warlord by Joshua Blahyi
The autobiography of Joshua Blahyi, better known as General Butt Naked. Actually fucking insane. Great look into the guy's head. I really outta give it a re-read, because my God, I don't know how people like that manage to slip into our reality. Maybe he's an archon or something. Great book, give him your money.
• Dark Life by Kat Falls
In the style of a classic western, but takes place in a post-ecological disaster world at the bottom of the ocean. Childhood classic. I've read it like six times.
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
It's a book I liked a lot as a kid, and slowly grew to hate as I grew older. It became apparent to me that the appeal was the fantasy it portrayed of a special boy who "shows them all," with his super special prodigy brain. I dunno, I guess I just stopped seeing myself in the protagonist and the whole book fell apart for me.
• The Enemy by Charlie Higson
My favorite book series growing up. In a world where all the adults have turned into child-eating zombies, the kids of the Earth have no one left to protect them. A very yucky, violent book, where very young children are killed and/or devoured. I haven't read it much in my adulthood beyond the first three books in the series, the second one easily being the best and the third easily being the worst. I loved it as a kid because It provided the ultimate survival fantasy for someone at that age. No more fucking grownups to tell me to clean my room or do my homework, cuz now they're all fucking zombies! And I get to bash their fucking heads in! Fuck you, Mom! (Just kidding, love you Mom.) I dunno if it'd be very entertaining for someone over the age of fifteen, but if you dig the premise, I'd say go for it.
• The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford
A great little book that hits like a truck. My favorite movie, Full Metal Jacket, was based on it. Reading through, you can see they really whitewashed the story when they brought it to the screen. Major characters in the film who are portrayed as dumb, but proud and loyal troopers are raping, drooling assholes treating Vietnam like a playground in the book. The movie also has a hard time portraying military leadership as anything other than overworked, when the book as no problem showing them as malicious, egomaniacal shitheads. The movie does it's best to honor soldiers and their service, and the book calls anyone who serves more than their first tour lifers, who most of the grunts seem to despise. I assume this is in large part due the author having actually served in the Vietnam war, where Kubrick never had to. Probably one of my favorite books of all time.
• The Phantom Blooper by Gustav Hasford
Sequel to The Short Timers. Not as good as the first book, but definitely entertaining. It opens up with the main character from the first book coming to a head with a local assemblage of marines calling themselves, "The Black Confederacy," led by their dread commander, Black John Wayne. Yes, it's pretty dumb, but it is a damn good book, even when the author is earnestly comparing North Vietnam to the American Confederacy (at least I think it's earnest. The first book was supposed to be a fictionalized autobiography, so it's hard to tell how much the main character is supposed to remain a self-insert). The author was suppose to write a third book and complete it as a trilogy, but he passed away before he could finish it. He did manage to write a noir detective novel called A Gypsy Good Time before he died, which also stars a Vietnam war veteran. Write what you know, I guess.
• Vic and Blood by Harlan Ellison
A collection of all the stories staring Vic and Blood by Harlan Ellison, barring the screenplay. Great stories, especially Eggsucker. It's what got me into Ellison's stuff in the first place, and probably why I ended up on this long path of pretentious high literature bullshit. The cover's even got his face on it! And how can you say no to that charming old devil?
• Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison
Again by Harlan Ellison. Some of the greatest works of speculative fiction and generally considered his best work period. Read it. Even if you don't like SF, read it.
• Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Steampunk alternate history bullshit I got for free in middle school. Based on that description, I should hate this book with a passion, but it's actually pretty good. If you're in the mood for young adult slop, check it out.
• Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
Classic Japanese lit. If you're into samurai shit or Japanese history at all, get this book. It's as long as the Bible, and it's a great read all the way through.
• All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
• The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
My favorite McCarthy novel. Just fucking spectacular. Makes me want to die in Mexico.
• Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
• The Gunslinger by Stephen King
• The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King
• The Wastelands by Stephen King
• Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
• Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
• American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Great book. One of the only books where I've had to actually skip pages because I geniunely could not stomach the content. Funny as hell.
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
Incredibly compelling, which is a surprise for a book written by a guy I'm completely removed from by about five hundred years.
• No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
• Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh
• Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky
• Metro 2034 by Dmitry Glukhovsky
The best one.
• Metro 2035 by Dmitry Glukhovsky
I liked it but the translation was dogshit. I'll have to find a better one at some point.
• The Glass Teat by Harlan Ellison
• The Other Glass Teat by Harlan Ellison
• The New Media Epidemic by Jean-Claude Larchet
• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
• Slippage by Harlan Ellison
• Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin
I joined a Marxist book club against my better judgement.
• Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
• Heart of darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Geronimo's Story of His Life by Geronimo
• Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
• Snail on the Slope by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
• A Sacred and Terrible Air by Robert Kurvitz
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
• Child of God by Cormac McCarthy