5 Books I Can Never Put Down

First of all, I'm thrilled to say that my good friend Ze Doktar Von Hammerstein is helping me give my blog a bit of a shot of colour, so to speak, which I feel is needed, especially if I end up contributing to projects of his that are better left explained later. So look for pretty changes up soon!

That said, I'm currently reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", which I'm only really a quarter of the way into, but can barely put down; it's sad to say, but this is the first book in years that has sucked me in like this, and it's immensely enjoyable. I used to read a lot more, mostly before I discovered the internet, and I think it might be time to return to the habit of reading more and surfing less. My taste in books has always been a bit strange, and I am nothing if not prone to random lists, so here are the 5 Books I Can Never Put Down, in no particular order:

1. "The Silence of the Lambs", by Thomas Harris

Before Harris went certifiably nuts and destroyed the credibility of one of the greatest villainous characters ever committed to page (or screen) through two insipid, truly silly books, he committed one brilliant, beautiful novel to our bookshelves, and that is "The Silence of the Lambs". It's brilliantly written, utterly fascinating, and shockingly cold in tone--one of the many things that the film adaptation got right smack dab on the money was the tone of that world--and I've read it more times than I can count. Every time I pick it up I end up reading it all the way through, and each time there are new things I find to love about it. Hannibal Lecter is never as good anywhere else as he is right here, utterly hypnotic, and he'll worm his way into your inner monologue until you start to worry about nice Chiantis (well, Big Amarones, in the book) too.

2. "Fight Club", by Chuck Palahniuk

Oh, good old Chuck ruined a lot of regular, realistic fiction for me. Once you've read his immediate, almost-poetic prose for books on end, once you've witnessed soap made from mothers and the eating of live lobsters and all the other absolutely crazy shit he's written, it's nigh impossible to go back to any sort of "regular" novel, especially one in which people undergo subtle changes and make their lives better (like 90% of novels, it seems). The catalyst for ruining almost all other books for me forever was "Fight Club", not as great as the movie (for once!) but still pretty damn fucking fantastic. Say what you will about Chuck, he's certainly memorable, and he's never boring. Even when I'm not necessarily a fan of his choices (I found "Snuff" to be sadly rote and unoriginal), he's still good for a couple of moments of jaw-dropping WTF-ness, and while I love almost all his novels, "Fight Club" remains the best of his work, and my favourite.

3. "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski

This one's an interesting entry for this list because, unlike the rest of the books, I've only read it once, and, despite my love for it, may never be able to read it again. There's a long story with "House of Leaves"; I bought it when I was in the ninth grade on a dare from my good friend Leah, who is forever doing more new and interesting stuff than I am at any given moment. I tried to read it, but I was about 14, and I got about 10 pages in to the long footnote manifesto written by the second or third narrator at this point about the stripper he's obsessed with who has a very intimate tattoo of a beloved Disney character, and I put it down. For about four years.
Fast forward to me working at my old summer camp in a boring office job, and I'd brought "House of Leaves" with me, intending to finally read it. And once I got through the first several chapters, I found that I suddenly couldn't stop reading it. Never has a book been more well-suited to grab you up and get you lost in it than the immensely subtle horror story of a house that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside, and, upon investigation, contains a labyrinth of possibly infinite size. But yet, it's about so much more than that, and so much less.
"House of Leaves" is by no means an easy read; there are about three (extremely unreliable) narrators, maybe more; there are pages upon pages of footnotes leading into footnotes, imitating the labyrinth itself; there are points when the text is backwards, upside-down, or blanked out completely; and there is the overarching story of the aforementioned stripper-obsessed Johnny, who is reading the same book you are and is starting to worry that the interior of his living room has a few more inches to it than it should. Reading this book was like being lost in a fog; I felt utterly wrung out by the time I reached the final pages, but I think all books should be that powerful, to dare to disturb and even repulse you. It's a rare thing for a book to gain a place in your favourites list but be too terrifying--in ways I can't really explain--to ever be read a second time, and I have immense respect for that.

4. "Perdido Street Station", by China Mieville

I rarely love science fiction and fantasy books, and find many of them overwritten, so this one has a permanent spot on my shelf precisely because it's so immediate in its weirdness that it sucks you right in out of sheer curiosity because you want to know what the fuck is up with the naked woman with a scarab for a head and that one guy who should have wings, but doesn't. And then you're a goner. The plot of "Perdido Street Station" is really almost impossible to describe, save that it contains mad scientists, steampunk flying machines, nightmare bats, the ethical dilemmas of interdimensional spiders, mutilated gangsters, a corrupt political system with an awesomely gruesome method for punishing lawbreakers, and a badger. All of it written by a guy who, to quote the literary source that alerted me to the book*, "uses the English language like Yo-Yo Ma uses the cello." High praise indeed, and deserving, too.

5. "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", by Betty Smith

Yeah, so this one's fairly normal, I guess. I read it in the fifth grade at first, and 11 years later I still have the same copy, worn away and falling apart, loved to tatters. It's a fabulous novel, though not as immediate as the other entries on this list. It's the story of a young girl growing up poor in Brooklyn at the turn of the century, and the lack of any real plot is handsomely compensated by the excellent writing and clear detail at the little things that make Francie's life so real. It's a lot to get through, but once you do you'll have a friend for life, and can go back to all the countless little moments that are so easily imagined and so fully realized.


So there's my list. For added geeky pleasure, each of the covers for the books is the actual version that I own, because I'm just like that.

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*that would be Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe. Damn right I get my trivia from those things.