lurking

my two favorite books are Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson and Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami.

Any books like that or whatever is funny, inspiring, mind-bending, intelligent will be nice.

just looking at reviews, so far, i've added David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman to my list. any other suggestions??

Catch 22
Slaughterhouse Five or Breakfast of Champions
Blink or The Tipping Point (Gladwell)
World War Z/Zombie Survival Guide
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas [2]
Fight Club (so much better than the movie)
Choke (by the same author as Fight Club)
The Looking Glass Wars
How To Lose Friends and Alienate People
Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy Trilogy (All 5 books the new one)
Watchmen ("was the only graphic novel to appear on Time's 2005 "All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels" list")
Crash (by J. G. Ballard)
Night Watch, Day Watch, Twilight Watch, & Final Watch (so much better than Twilight series!)
Chinese Cinderella (is preceded by Falling Leaves, both amazing)
The Gargoyle (by Andrew Davidson)
The Big Over Easy (by Jasper Fforde, nursery rhymes as you've never read them)
Death of an Ordinary Man (Glen Duncan)
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (by Spike Milligan, fucking funny, well I think so anyway)
K-Pax (by Gene Brewer, there's also a part II & III)
and
My Life Is A Wedgie (by Gretel Killeen, absolutely hilarious)

The Kite Runner
All Souls

Waitwait I love these threads! Emily, what do you like to read? Recommending a book is like recommending a beer. One mustn't do it COLD, ya know.

Hmm.

Ok, I'm not going to lie. This was a challenge. But! On the theme of mind-bending and paradigm-shifting, I'm going to start with The Sparrow, which is a slightly different take on the whole sci-fi go-to-a-new-planet trope.

Moving on, I'd like to recommend Pattern Recognition. Now, I'm not 100% a Gibson fan, but I loveloveloved this book. It's so dreamy and slightly weird, and since you like weird and you like dreamy, as is evidenced by your love for Murakami, I recommend this one.

Half Life, is another kind of weird awesome novel about one half of a pair of conjoined twins. The main character's twin has been asleep for over a decade (or has she?). The story takes place in an alternate present where nuclear testing made conjoined twins a vocal minority group in the USA. The booklists and such are hilarious.

Lastly, I'd like to recommend one of my personal favorite books of all time, Tattoo Girl, which is about a mother-daughter type bond that grows between a mute girl covered in fish scale tattoos and an ex-circus fat lady. < 3

Nerd out!

Ugh. Since my lovely Amazon links didn't work,
1) The Sparrow: Maria Doria Russell
2) Pattern Recognition: William Gibson
3) Half Life: Shelley Jackson
4) Tattoo Girl: Brooke Stevens

thanks for the recommendations everyone! I've never heard of about half of those... (I never used to be much of a reader) so I'm looking forward to expanding my library!