The List

This is a list of books I have read (***) or hope to read.

Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Alcott, Louisa
Little Women

Boyle, TC
The Tortilla Curtain

Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451***

Brown, Dan
The Da Vinci Code***

Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange

Cain, James
The Postman Always Rings Twice

Camus, Albert
The Stranger***
The Plague

Capote, Truman
In Cold Blood

Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland***

Cervantes
Don Quixote

Chabon, Michael
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay***

Chbosky, Stephen
The Perks of Being a Wallflower***

Clevenger, Craig
The Contortionist's Handbook***

Coelho, Paulo
The Alchemist
Verokia Decides to Die

Dahl, Roald
All the Short Stories

Darwin, Charles
The Voyage of the Beagle
The Descent of Man
The Origin of Species

Defoe, Daniel
Robinson Crusoe

Dostoevsky, Fyodor
Crime and Punishment
The Brothers Karamazov
Note from Underground

Douglass, Frederick
Frederick Douglass

Euginides, Jeffrey
Middlesex***
The Virgin Suicides***

Frank, Anne
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl***

Flynn, Nick
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City***

Fuhrman, Chris
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys***

Gaiman
American Gods

Golden, Arthur
Memoirs of a Geisha***

Golding, William
Lord of the Flies***

Grimm Brothers
Grimms Fairy Tales

Guterson, David
Snow Falling on Cedars

Hawthorne, Nathaniel
The House of the Seven Gables

Hedayat, Sadegh
Blind Owl

Heller, Joseph
Catch-22

Hemingway, Ernest
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
The Old Man and the Sea***
Across the River and Into the Trees
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms
Men Without Women
The Sun Also Rises
The Torrents of Spring

Hempel, Amy
Reasons to Live***
The Dog of the Marriage***
Tumble Home***

Hickman, Homer
October Sky

Hornby, Nick
High Fidelity***
A Long Way Down***

Hurston, Zora
Their Eyes Were Watching God

Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World***

Ishiguro, Kazuo
When We Were Orphans***

Kafka, Franz
The Metamorphosis
The Trial
Amerika: The Man Who Disappeared
The Complete Stories

Kerouac, Jack
On the Road

Kesey, Ken
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest***

Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon***

Kidd, Sue
The Secret Lives of Bees***

King, Stephen
The Green Mile***
Different Seasons***
The Stand***

Kundera, Milan
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Lahari, Jhumpa
Interpreter of Maladies

Lamb, Wally
I Know This Much Is True***
She's Come Undone***

Lee, Harper
To Kill a Mockingbird***

L'Engle, Madeleine
A Wrinkle in Time***
A Wind in the Door
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
Many Waters

Lowry, Lois
The Giver***

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Love in the Time of Cholera

Martel, Yann
Life of Pi***

Martin, Steve
The Pleasure of My Company

Melville, Herman
Moby Dick

Miller, Sue
While I Was Gone***

Murakami, Haruki
A Wild Sheep Chase
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Kafka on the Shore***
Norwegian Wood
After the Quake
South of the Border
Hard Boiled Wonderland...
Dance Dance Dance
The Elephant Vanishes
Sputnik Sweetheart
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
Underground
Birthday Stories***

Murakami, Ryu
Almost Transparent Blue
Coin Locker Babies***

Orwell, George
1984***
Animal Farm***

Palahniuk, Chuck
Invisible Monsters***
Diary***
Fight Club***
Lullabye***
Haunted***
Survivor ***
Choke***
Strnager than Fiction***
Fugitives and Refugees

Plath, Sylvia
The Bell Jar***

Remarque, Erich
All Quiet on the Western Front

Robbins, Tom
Skinny Legs and All
Jitterbug Perfume
Still Life with Woodpecker

Roy, Arundhati
The God of Small Things

Russo, Richard
Empire Falls

Safran Foer, Jonathan
Everything Is Illuminated***
Exetremely Loud and Incredibly Close***

Salinger, JD
Franny and Zooey***
The Catcher in the Rye***
Nine Stories***
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction***
For Esme-With Love and Squalor, and Other Stories

Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein

Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men***
East of Eden
Cannery Row

Stevenson, Robert
Treasure Island
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Thompson, Hunter S.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas***
The Rum Diary
Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Twain, Mark
Huckleberry Finn
Tom Sawyer

Updike, John
Brazil
Rabbit at Rest
Marry Me

Verne, Jules
A Journey to the Center of the Earth

Vonnegut, Kurt
Breakfast of Champions***
Slaughterhouse-Five***
Mother Night
Hocus Pocus
Galapagos
Cat's Cradle
Welcome to the Monkey House***


Wells, HG
The Time Machine***
The War of the Worlds
Invisible Man


Wiesel, Elie
Night

Wilde, Oscar
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Wright, Ronald
A Short History of Progress***

Wurtzel, Elizabeth
Prozac Nation***

Yoshimoto, Banana
Kitchen

Zinn, Howard
People's History of the United States

A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright

I have been reading this book. Its is amazing. I will definitely be rereading this one many times over.

Ovid in 60 B.C.:

earth...had better things to offer -- crops without cultivation,
fruit on the bough, honey in the hollow oak.

no one tore the ground with ploughshares
or parcelled out the land
or swept the sea with dipping oars --
the shore was the world's end.

clever human nature, victim of your inventions,
disastrously creative,
why cordon cities with towered walls?
why arm for war?

Ronald Wright:

Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up...In civilizations, population always grows until it hits the bounds of the food supply, and all civilizations become hierarchical -- the upward concentration of wealth ensures that there can never be enough to go around...Human inability to foresee or watch out for long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the evolutionary social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer.

Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake:

One of her characters asks, "As a species we're doomed by hope, then?" By hope? Well, yes. Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create ever more dangerous messes. Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism.

Dave Pollard:

That takes us to the present day, where the "concentration of power at the top" continues to hoard resources, steal from everyone else, ruthlessly suppress opposition, and prospers as the environment and the general populace suffer. And we, strange creatures of our disconnected and self-made culture, cling desperately to the hope and false assurances that we will be saved by our gods, or our ingenuity, that what we are doing to our world is beyond our control, is not our fault, not our responsibility, and is not so bad in the global scheme of things anyway.
The idea that the human race has, under the harsh rules of Darwin, bred compassion out of the gene pool in favour of more 'successful' savagery, and that it is this ruthless and relentless violence, rather than our 'superior' intelligence, that has led to our staggering numbers, is not new. But it casts the lessons of our history in a different, and darker, light. It is serious enough trying to deal with one fatal character flaw -- our propensity to hope things will get better without the need for radical change or the learning of lessons from history. Add a second fatal character flaw -- a preference for murder and genocide over more peaceful and compassionate solutions -- and the outlook gets much bleaker. Perhaps this explains the finding that the best informed people in modern society tend to be the least optimistic. Fortunately, they also tend to be the most determined to make things better. Power struggle, anyone?

None of this was from my mouth. These are all quotes I found, because, other people always say it better.

Blossom

Without anyone to love you
What will you blossom into?
Without anyone to hold you
How will you grow?
And in the Wildwood trees
The wild wind blows
And the nighttime crushes the hurricane rose
And with no one to care for you
Who knows
Blossom for me rose
You're the picture of my love
Blossom for me rose
Stretch out underneath the stars
And when tomorrow comes
I will hold you up
Little blossom, shining in the sun
Without any place to go to
How will your soul return to
Without anyone to keep you
Where will you go
And in the shadows of the past
Where you're spinning so fast
It's hard to see it coming
And it never lasts
And with nothing to judge your life by
How will you know
Blossom for me rose
You're the picture of my life
Blossom for me rose
Stretch out underneath the stars
And when tomorrow comes
I will hold you up
Little blossom, shining in the sun
Without anyone to love you
What will you blossom into
Without anyone to hold you

Ryan Adams

Others People Words Are So Much Better

"People who say they don't care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don't care what people think"
-George Carlin

"We can't stop here this is bat country."-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

"If we're ever going to get out of here alive, we're going to need some golf shoes."-Fear and Loathing

"We've gotta get out of here. I have The Fear. " Dr. Gonzo

"All my life I wanted to be a gangster" - Goodfellas

“Jesus, where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to become president?" - Hunter S. Thompson

Good Reading

CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Invisible Monsters
Survivor
Choke
Fight Club
Lullaby
Diary
Haunted
Non-Fiction

OTHERS
The Catcher in the Rye
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Breakfast of Champions
A Million Little Pieces
My Friend Leonard
One Flew the Cuckoos Nest
Life of Pi
Flowers for Algernon
Geisha, a Life
Memoirs of a Geisha
Anne Frank- The Diary of a Young Girl
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
1984
Animal Farm
Lord of the Flies
Brave New World
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
The Virgin Suicides
Middlesex
While I Was Gone
Coin Locker Babies
The Green Mile
Brave New World
Of Mice and Men
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Old Man and the Sea
Reasons To Live
Tumble Home
High Fidelity
This Much I Know Is True
The Bell Jar
Prozac Nation
Farenheit 451
The Giver
A Wrinkle in Time
The Stranger
The Contortionist's Handbook
Everything is Illuminated
The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Song Quotes

-The years have been short but the days go slowly by.
Pink Bullets, The Shins

- I wish the world was flat like the old days
then i could travel just by folding a map
no more airplanes, or speedtrains, or freeways
there'd be no distance that can hold us back.
The New Year, Death Cab For Cutie

-All my lies are always wishes
I know i could die if i could come back new
Ashes of American Flags, Wilco

-Then one day you find, ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
Pink Floyd, Time

-We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl year after year.
Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here

-It seems to me, sorry seems to be the hardest word.
Elton John, Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

-Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.
Semisonic, Closing Time

In Chucks Words

-When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?

-More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.

-What we don't understand we can make mean anything.

-If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t.

-If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?

-You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

-Find out what you're afraid of and go live there.

-The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.

-The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.

-I just don't want to die without a few scars.

-The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.

-We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.

-Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.

-Trying the way we do every time we look in a mirror to figure out exactly who that person is.

-As if we can ever imagine the past, future, life on other planets, everything is such an extension, such a projection of life as we know it.