For a debut book. Iain Banks 'The Wasp Factory' takes some beating.

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I just skimmed the Wikipedia entry about it, sounds really interesting.

For some reason it made me think of Bereavements by Richard Lortz, another book I loved.

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I just read

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I enjoyed it, though it will be interesting to see what his other books are like.

As for my Favourite book, that's a horrible choice, but it would be one of these I think:

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My absolute favourite book in the world is the original Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. So, so many themes to explore. It's also really sad.

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I also love Lolita (which adidasss already mentioned), The Catcher in the Rye (yes I loved it okay), and absolutely anything by Virginia Woolf.

I read that one a couple years ago. I really liked the concept but the structure of the book seemed off balance to me. I thought the first two thirds of the book were way longer than necessary while, strangely enough, the last third felt kind of rushed and I wished it was a little longer. Have you ever read The Handmaid's Tale?

Great book! One of my favorite books I ever had to read for school.

Aw you got to read it for school?! I wish I had good books to read in school. We always got assigned shitty contemporary stuff.

That's funny, when I was in school it seemed like most of what I had to read was pretty old (Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Homer, etc.). The only books we read that could be remotely described as contemporary were still several decades old.

I think by the time I reached high school they tried to modernise the curriculum in an attempt to 'connect' with teenagers. But the truth is I love the classics over contemporary stuff any day. Dickens, Shakespeare, Joyce... love them to bits. Not Jane Austen though. Haha.

I liked Sirens, but I think I prefer Vonnegut when he is slightly less whimsical.
Although just refreshing my memory on wikipedia is reminding me how much I liked it.

I think as far as awesome quotes go, you can't really beat Vonnegut.

Haha. Yeah, I really hated Pride and Prejudice.

So what are some of the contemporary authors you had to read?

We basically just read contemporary Australian books. (I think they were trying to Australian-ise the curriculum as well). Like Deadly, Unna? by Phillip Gwynne, some Katherine Paterson, Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy.. not bad books but just not my thing. Oh, that reminds me, we did actually read this fantastic book - it was one of the very few I enjoyed:

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I have, it's also incredible. I guess I chose Oryx and Crake because it had a very profound effect on the way I went literarily after that: It made me think a lot more about what I was reading, and in many ways opened my mind to an entire realm of books. It gave me a greater appreciation of the ideas and ideals behind Science and Speculative Fiction, and also when I read her other books opened up the treasure trove that it Paul Auster, as I started reading his books shortly after.

As for the off-balance nature of O & C, I think that's intentional. Towards the end of the story, things got well and truly out of control for Jimmy, and much of what was happening was going well over his head. Surely the way in which the story is narrated emphasises this and brings the frantic nature of the story and the overriding sense of panic to the fore?

That was something I noticed about it; I picked it up in a friend's house, I was surprised at first by the almost fantastic nature of the writing, but I guess it is a book of its era in that respect :D It fits, but i haven't quite decided why...

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I think this book is partly responsible for my cynicism, or perhaps I read it at too young of an age, but I love this book to death. The characters, the dialogue, the humour, the disjointed story, just everything about the book does something right for me. I really wish Irvine Welsh would write like he use to, his last few books have been real let downs, but I've heard that he's working on a prequel to Trainspotting involving Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud, and Tommy in their youth, so I'm pretty excited about that.

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Bought this when I was staying in Edinburgh for a fortnight and was bored one day. I had never read it in high school, because I left the States before I started grade 10 in which it was a required reading. I suppose I, like so many other people, likened myself to Holden. This book kept me entertained for a few days while I bummed around Old Town in Edinburgh.

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Easily the best war book ever written. It strongly influenced a short story I wrote that I'm eventually going to get drawn out into a sort of graphic novel. I had never cried at the end of a book before, but I can honestly say I cried at the end of this one.

I'm curious to know what your favorite Irving novel is.

I think A Widow for One Year is probably my favorite by him.

Havent gotten there yet. Iv'e read ....Owen Meany, Garp, and Cider House, and the last one is definitely my favorite.

I sheepishly admit that this is a close 2nd on my list of favorites:

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I've also been meaning to get into this Graham Green for a while now.

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^ Chuck Palahniuk is absolutely awesome. You have such good taste for your age! :)

Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. Kind of cliché considering I'm teenager, but it really is my favorite novel of all time...thus far of course. What amazed me about it was although the main character was a teenage boy living in the 1950's, I still felt like I could relate being a teenage girl in the 2000's.

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. It wasn't the first Vonnegut novel I read but I've read this book over and over again and I still find it hilarious.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Somehow I managed to read the book before I saw the film. At first it took forever to to finnish because of the slang words and I forced to print out the translations but it was worthwhile because it's truly a great novel.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. The main character was slowly going crazy but Sylvia Plath somehow managed to justify the crazy thoughts and actions and make them understandable.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. The only book ever written to ever truly upset me. Which is amazing because there is no surprise ending, you know exactly what is going to happen because you are informed of the story in the first chapter. And yet by the final page I actually wanted to cry. From the both the language and the perspective from which it is written, there is something very cold about this novel.

The Trial by Franz Kafka. I remember desperately wanting to finnish this one to find out exactly what the main character was accused of and what in the world was going on. And then I realized that wasn't the point of this story.

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. This was the first novel I read in the "Beat Generation" literature category. For some reason it took me forever to finnish this one because I kept losing my place but thankfully it's possible to read each vignette in any order.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. The first piece of Faulkner literature I ever read was "A Rose for Emily." I hoped The Sound and the Fury was written in the same vein but alas, it was not. It was stream of consciousness which thankfully I'd already had some experience with reading Ulysses by James Joyce. I'm required to read this one for my senior year in high school which is why I'm glad to have already read it. I had to read it twice in order to fully understand it because I was confused quite a bit. Though I do truly love this one.

Huh? It's been a few years actually, but it's still the best prose I've come across.

The book had the exact same effect on me too and I think my reasons for liking it parallel your own. It's so easy to just write it off as teenager angst, but the fact that somebody can pick it up half a century later and still find it relevant to themselves is something that not many authors can do and thus it lives up to it's reputation.

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best novel anywhere ever.

Someone else in the "what are you reading" thread posted it and you commented on it. I'm easily confused.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is my favorite book, but I like a lot of yous guys favorites too, apparently. Vonnegut, especially Slaughterhouse-Five, was very important to me in high school

I've been meaning to read Blood Meridian for some time. I've heard from various people that it's a major influence on the Gothic Country music genre.

This is the book that I've been narrowly avoiding for about 6 years.

stop avoiding. :p:

i've read most of Graham Greene's works, it's by far my favorite and one of the most hauntingly spiritual books i've read.

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This is pretty much my favorite book of all time. I like how it has the use of slang almost like a whole different language. Kubrick did a fine job with the film.

What did you think about the exclusion of the final chapter in the film?

That is true I was a bit let down by that, but I thought it was still a great film. Keep in mind in the American release of the book the last chapter was excluded maybe he wanted to stay true to that, i don't know.

It's one of my favorite films of all time and I actually didn't mind that they left out that chapter.

Man I loved Deadly Unna, I've probably re-read that book more than any other. I always used to pull it out for book reports. It was never on the curriculum though.
Maestro was though, and you're right - there's something about the book that stops you from really being sucked in.

I'm looking at The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime right now, I think my sister was given it at Christmas. The description put me off reading a little, but this encourages me.

Deadly Unna was on our curriculum for year 8, which was pretty taboo for my school at the time, 'cause it had words like fuck and cunt in it regularly. A lot of parents complained. I thought it was pretty cool at the time but looking back I don't think it's that exciting.

Definitely read Curious Incident. It is easily one of my favourite books. It's fantastic.

Yeah, I probably haven't touched it since around year 8. I tend not to revisit my childhood favourites for fear of ruining memories.

I wonder which came first, that jacket design or this album cover?

http://www.amiright.com/album-cover-...-Your-Mind.jpg

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To name a few.

I like to laugh, and this is hilarious every time.
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