Lots of the recommendations here are very popular novels that you could find on display at Barnes and Nobles or other booksellers.
I wanna hear about a book you love that not a lot of people have ever heard of. Bonus if I’ve never heard of it 😉
Novels, nonfiction, memoirs all good except for YA which I hate.
by heliotopez
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Clown Girl by Monica Drake. About a young woman trying to work in the dirty world of being a professional clown, mourning the man she thinks was perfect, and overall living in denial of her own pathetic nature. Monica Drake was part of Chuck Palahniuk’s writing group and he has stated that she was always the better writer.
Here are a few of mine:
Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony
Closet case Reganite gets a taxidermy aardvark at his dc office during election year, opening up the mystery of its origins. Incredible short read.
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Absolute gut punch of a novel for the chronically online. Lots of nostalgia for a simpler, pre 2016 time when Buzzfeed was at its apex.
Slapstick – Vonnegut
Everyone knows Slaughterhouse Five but this one really makes you think (about America and death and society and loneliness). One of his least popular book books but I loved it. Warning for non graphic incest and general 1970s attitudes.
*The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon*, by Tom Spanbauer. It’s weirdly under-read (though I first read it in a college class on great American novels that defined great as both excellent literature and bestselling status; we also read Sometimes A Great Notion and Invisible Man, among others). Set in a fictional Idaho mining town at the start of the 20th century, the story is mostly told in flashback by the main character as he comes of age (in a brothel), searches for his parents, and navigates his bisexuality and Indigenous identity in a community that is being taken over and controlled by Mormons who oppose everything about the late-frontier town ethos. It’s really an excellent book.
*The Everybody Ensemble* (Amy Leach), a whimsical essay collection about animals. Imagine Lemony Snicket writing about a wild Pomeranian, or Lewis Carroll writing about every animal in the world coming together to form a choir, and you’ve got a good idea of what the collection is like.
[removed]
Infectious Madness by Harriet A. Washington. Or really any of her books.
Towing Jehovah by James Morrow. It’s about towing God’s corpse to the Arctic to preserve it.
You Can’t Win by Jack Black (not that Jack Black). A lost autobiography that is one of William S. Burroughs’s favorite books.
I quite enjoyed “And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks” by William S Boroughs and Jack Kerouac about the story of a murder in their friend group.
Thank Your Lucky Stars by Sherrie Flick – great collection of short stories
The Unfolding by A. M. Homes – lit fic set during the first Obama election
Tales From the Gas Station series by Jack Townsend – fun horror romps, especially Volume One
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link – magical realism short story collection
There but for the by Ali Smith – a guy locks himself into a guest bedroom in the middle of a dinner party and refuses to leave for months
Fire Season by Philip Connors. The thoughts and adventures of one guy alone in a fire lookout tower for a summer. It’s like Thoreau meets Kerouac.
The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin: a lonely apple farmer in early 20thC PNW finds his life upended when 2 young runaways seek shelter with him
Don’t think I’ve seen these mentioned much:
Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance- Richard Powers
Fathers and Sons- Turgenev
Jesus’ Son- Denis Johnson
Max Perkins, Editor of Genius) , A Scott Berg( ( Max Perkins was Fitzgerald, Hemingway, & Thomas Wolfe’s editor)
Netherland- Joseph O’Neill
Executioners Song- Mailer
Home – Marilyn Robinson
I really love this SciFi novella collection called Kirinyaga, it is about an Oxford educated witch doctor trying to restore an Utopia based on traditional Kenyan value systems (Kikuyu tribe in particular).
I don’t think I know anyone else who has read that one besides my ex girlfriend.