My dad is turning 80 & I’d love some help on what to get him. He likes funny stuff like Christopher Moore & Carl Hiaasen, but he also likes more serious stuff, Ernest Gaines is a favorite.
Right now he’s reading Cure for the Crash, about a guy train hopping across the US.
Any recs are much appreciated, thank you!
by Strict_Definition_78
14 Comments
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Farina.
get him “geek love”
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
The Dharma Bums by Kerouac if he didn’t already read it sixty years ago.
It’s non-fiction but I bought my Dad (in his mid-70s)The Book of Trespass which is about land ownership, whether anyone can truly own it etc. It’s mostly UK focused I think but probably applicable elsewhere too.
Source: The Guardian https://share.google/O214BpvIurOwtSXnx
“Blue Highways” by William Least Heat Moon. After his divorce the author fixed up a camper van and cruised the back roads (marked blue on the map) of America. Its an older book, published in the early 80s but its still a worthy read.
Don’t stop the carnival. Jitterbug perfume. The magus. Corelli’s mandolin
Tex and Molly in the Afterlife, by Richard Grant
Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand
The Uncool, by Cameron Crowe
J-POD by Douglas Coupland. It’s got a Christopher Moore energy to it, and I think he might enjoy the MC’s mom, an old hippie from Vancouver with a giant pot farm in her basement, watching her son work for a giant computer conglomerate
You can’t win by Jack Black (not that Jack Black)
It’s the autobiography of a Hobo during the Great Depression and all his travels
As a middle aged hippie I’d recommend:
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead – Tokarczuk
Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey (this one is a bit of a tricky read due to a lot of perspective shifting, but it’s good)
Travels with Charley – John Steinbeck
Novel: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
Bio: I’ll sleep when I’m Dead
Homicide by David Simon