THINGS I LIKE: Other Books

swansongSwan Song (Robert McCammon)

When I was in high school in the late ’80s, I became obsessed with horror novels and movies.  I had read a few of them previously (I was more a Sherlock Holmes guy before high school), but a girl named Cynthia Harrington sent me It for my 14th birthday, and it was on.

If I had a favorite writer other than Stephen King, it was Robert McCammon.  He was (and, I believe, still is) a local author.  Something about that always struck me as neat, as a teenager.  While I think that King is a better storyteller, I think McCammon is less watered-down in some ways — his extremes exist further from the center.  Swan Song is comparable (and often compared) to King’s The Stand (and fairly so), but I think that this is the stronger of the two.

Really and truly, especially with summer coming up, you can’t go wrong with McCammon.  For a less-horror slanted read, try Boy’s Life.

illusionsIllusions (Richard Bach)

This is new-agey as hell — I honestly sometimes can’t believe that I like this book at all, much less as much as I do. But the truth is, this book possibly more than any other collection of words has shaped my life and my philosophy.  I recommend it to anyone and everyone, in spite of the hippie ambiance.

There are a lot of truisms throughout, and it’s a good reference book for people that may have lost their way in life.


houseofleaves rawsharktextsHouse of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski) and The Raw Shark Texts (Steven Hall)

There’s a genre out there that no one has tagged as such: mind fuck.  And I can imagine that there are so few members of this genre as to make it not worth labeling, but if only…

Both of these books are part horror/science fiction and part love story (yes, really). The magic of the horror — and honestly, the real scares that both give me every time I read them — come from concepts that are… well, they’re nearly impossible to explain.  House of Leaves deals with impossible physics and insanity, while Raw Shark Texts is about words and language and memory and insanity. Both unabashedly attack higher levels, and delving in can be incredibly rewarding.

It doesn’t hurt at all, apparently, to be a little bit of a nerd to read these two.

choke-novel12 Choke (Chuck Palahniuk)

Speaking of mind fuck…

I can’t even remotely claim to have gotten on the early Palahniuk train — it took the movie version of Fight Club to turn me on to his writing.  Glad it did, though.

Palahniuk is as close to poetry that I can imagine reading.  I love the usage of language in his books, as well as his constant pushing of the envelope and explorations of the underbelly of acceptibility. Choke, above all others, really struck me as the strongest of all his works, including the ending.  I can’t quite put my finger back on it on rereading, but the feeling of everything snapping directly and correctly into place whne I hit the last 15-20 pages was overwhelming the first time I read the book.

stephen-king-itIT (Stephen King)

I’m forever thankful to Cynthia Harrington for this gift.  In fact, as unattached to my material goods as I am, I still hold on to this hardcover because it’s the first King book I ever got.

To this day, there are scenes from the book that I’m not certain I ever read completely through, because they still scare the shit out of me.

Yes, I’m serious.

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