I’ve somehow awoken a voracious reading habit in the last couple of months, and while plowing through my third book in the last week or so, it struck me that some of you might have some great suggestions for what to read next. Compiled together, those selections might make an excellent reading list for all of us. So…

What are five books that you repeatedly recommend?

If you can’t name five, name as many as you can. If you come up with more than five (my list was originally over fifteen), boil the list down to as close to five as you can get. That should eliminate a lot of the marginal choices and leave us with only the best of the best. Your suggestions don’t have to be brand new or in any particular genre as long as they are at the top of your personal favorites.

To get you started, here are five books that I think are absolutely worth a read:

Five Books That I Repeatedly Recommend

5. A People’s History of the United States (non-fiction): If you can read through the leftist slant of the book, it presents a very interesting picture of the history of the U.S. as seen through the eyes of the people upon which America silently stands upon. Whether this is an accurate depiction of the way America was really built or whether it is merely revisionist propaganda, this book will give you a different perspective on U.S. history.

4. Fight Club (thriller): Long before the movie came out, I reluctantly read this book because I had run out of things to read. After I finished it, I practically became an evangelist for it, loaning it to everyone I could. If you’ve seen the movie and need encouragement to read this, the book doesn’t end the same way that the movie does, and Chuck Palahniuk’s descriptions are some of the best that I’ve read.

3. Days of War, Nights of Love (philosophy): This book verges on anarchist propaganda, and might make you want to quit your job and burn the whole motherfucking building down. Don’t read this within two hours of having a meeting with your boss or you might end up just another happy hobo with a blog (Call me if you do though).

2. A Million Little Pieces (drama): This is as close as you’re going to get to addiction without getting puke on your shirt, and if I could say “emotionally draining” without sounding like a little girl, I would use those exact words to describe this book.

1. The Time Traveler’s Wife (sci-fi): I’m very resistant to love stories, but if I had to pick one book on this list that I thought everyone should read, it’s this one. When excellent writing is dipped in action and drowned in time travel, it makes for a fast read. When it can make you forget that you hate love stories, it’s a great read.

*Bonus: Intensity (thriller): Dean Koontz books are fast reads, but this is easily my favorite out of his works. I bought this in an airport, and I accidentally left it on a plane. It was such a page turner that I bought another copy at the next airport and finished it in a couple of days.

And that’s my list. Now, what are you going to recommend?

Michelle over at CO/OB has decided to take on a project where she reads a book a week (which I think is absolutely insane). While there isn’t a chance in hell that I’d attempt it, the whole impossibility of the idea got my brain trying to think of ways to make it at least theoretically possible.

The first thing that I could see this project doing would be injecting 452 million of my hard earned dollars directly into the coffers of my local bookstore or the local library’s late fee account. As nice as it would be to have a wing or possibly even a coffee drink named after me, I just couldn’t see living out of a shopping cart to read 52 books. The first thing that I thought that I would need would be a healthy supply of free books. I think I might check…

• Bartleby.com
• Bibliomania
• Chicago’s Naperville Public Library E-books
• Internet Public Library
• Literature.org
• Mass State Library E-books
• Pagebypagebooks
• Project Gutenberg
• U Penn’s Online Library
• U Virginia Free E-Books

This is just a small subset of what is available out there, although a lot of them are frustratingly reliant on works that are out of copyright (read: over 100 years old). The Mass State and Chicago libraries should offer more modern titles in downloadable form.

After I had compiled my list of free books, the only other major obstacle to reading a book per week (besides the necessary desire and attention span) would be my horribly slow reading speed. I might read this article on Speed reading techniques, which offers some great points to increasing reading speed without losing comprehension or skimming (by far the most effective of which seems to be the elimination of the little voice in my head that reads along with me). I might also dramatically increase my reading speed relatively effortlessly with zapreader. Then again, if I were really smart, I might read the speed reading article with zapreader. Go, brain, GO!

The basic concept behind zapreader is that it sequentially flashes the words of a selected text at a speed that you control. It defaults to 300 words per minute (that’s 5 words per second), which initially was enough to make me feel like I was going insane. After getting over the initial shock, I found that there was no way that the voice in my head could keep up, so it stopped trying. And once it did, I easily jumped to about 600 WPM. And once I got used to reading by absorbing words projected in a single spot rather than jumping line to line as I would on a page, I found that I could bump to about 725 WPM without any loss in comprehension.

The way zapreader works is that you save the Zapreader Bookmarklet to your favorites. Whenever you highlight text on a page and then click the bookmarklet, the text is fed into zapreader.

If I could then feed full e-books into zapreader, I should be able to theoretically plow through books, leaving me four spare days per week to dedicate to writing crap on the interweb, rather than reading it.

I just finished Joe Meno’s “Hairstyles of the Damned” which may not be the best written book in the world, but it is one of the few that I really want to read again. As an ex-hardcore kid, I can say that there isn’t much that the book made me miss about being a teenager, but I do miss 2 things: My Misfits “Walk among Us” tape (there were no CDs back then), and man, do I miss getting mix tapes from people.

Mix tapes introduced me to Judas Priest, Social Distortion, T.S.O.L., A.C., Murphy’s Law, The Dead Kennedys, and even Slayer. For me, getting a mix tape from someone was pretty damned cool because it was like having my own 90 minute radio station DJ’d just for me. Plus, even if the tape sucked, you had to appreciate how hard the thing was to put together. Making a mix tape required picking songs that were obscure enough to be cool, yet not so far out that the person wouldn’t like them. You had to worry about ordering, pacing and the common thread that would pull the whole thing together. And when complete, you had to cleverly title your mix tape, like “Mix tape for El Senior Douche Head.”

Because most teenage girls have no idea how to make a mix tape, I think most of the worst mix tapes I got were from chicks. They were always beyond ultra super gay, and usually indicated that the chick was going to break up with me at some point in the near future. The best one I ever got was from THE only truly punk kid that I ever knew. I can remember listening to the thing over and over not even knowing who all the bands on it were until years later. The tape was light years ahead of its time. I know that tape burned in a house fire, but sometimes I wonder what happened to that kid. He was pretty fucked up back then, and I always hope that he eventually got a little house, a little wife, and a bunch of neighbors that like him despite all the tattoos.

Then, soon after, I just hope he’s not dead.

Do you ever wonder how many people are thinking about you right now?

Free Read
I added a new blog to my list of daily reads: Geese Aplenty.

Free Info
After reading the davinci Code, I’ve been brushing up on the old conspiracy theories via the web searches and a visit to the ol’ library. I looked up stuff on the Masons, The Knights Templar, Davinci, Phi, Fibonacci numbers, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla. And now, I no longer care. There is just too much information out there based on too little fact with too little bearing on anything.

Free Assembly
There are no laws requiring citizens to carry national ID cards, yet we have been coerced into producing identification to board just about any major form of travel since 1998. The arguments against the system are that it’s not only useless (if any 19 year old can get fake ID, what are the odds of an international terrorist getting one? Yes, the 9.11 guys all had fake IDs.), but it’s a violation of privacy and citizens right to free assembly. Read or don’t. Care or don’t. (Slashdot article)

Friday
Went to the library for an hour after work only to walk out without a book. Every time I picked up a fiction book, I wanted a manual, and every time I picked up a manual, I wanted a mindless piece of fiction. Frustrated, I left, picked up the paper, and grabbed an iced coffee before heading to the beach.

Once I got to the beach, I kicked back and read the housing section 8 times hoping that it might refresh with new data as I read. It didn’t. For another week and another month, prices are too high, and houses are too crappy. But with the wind blowing through the car and the surf driving the surfers along, it didn’t seem to matter.

Saturday
I Finished the last few pages of Reading People, which was so painful to read that I had to renew it from the library a total of 4 times to get through it.

The tag line, “How to understand people and predict their behavior anytime, anyplace,” indicates why I picked it up. The reality of the book is that even if you lived under a rock, this book couldn’t give you any insight into human behavior. The only thing that I was thankful for after finishing this book was that I was far removed from being forced to go back through it to write a book report.

At 9AM, I weighed whether I should write or get out of the house for a couple of hours. As the weather was nicer than it had been in a week, I grabbed a chair, some sunblock, and The Davinci Code, and headed down to the beach.

There was hardly anyone around, so I slathered on the 45 sunblock and read. Well, I slathered it all over my front and just never flipped. I thought it was safer than attempting sunblocking my back solo and getting the weird tye dye / handprint sunburn thing.

Then, I just read. And read. And read. …Until the GF showed up at around 2PM. By then, scores of teenage girls had planted themselves around me, making it look as if I had plunked myself down in the middle of them rather than the way it actually happened, leaving me to defend an undefendable position.

Then, I ate and read some more only to be distracted by the glowing white skin of a pudgy jewish/italian looking dude with big sideburns, a fifties grampa hat, a Hawaiian shirt, and Hawiian shorts that sat down near us. Dear dudes, If you are thin and black, a fifties look might work for you, grandpa hat and all. If you are a fat, glowing white dude, it probably will not. As a matter of opinion, I say play the odds.

I think somewhere around 4 I decided that I just couldn’t take it anymore and we got the hell out of the sun.

I skipped Massachusetts Tax free day, as I figured that no store was going to run any sales, and spending $1000 to save $50 just didn’t seem worth it.

Sunday
I finished the aforementioned book. It took all day, but, I read it in a mere 2 days, which means that I not only enjoyed the book, but I am a genius.

I walked around Blockbuster like I did with the library.

I hate this post. It sucks. I want to delete it, but it took too long to write.

I finished Sartre’s Nausea. Being that the main character is an existentialist Frenchman, he seemed more insane and depressed than I could ever relate to, leaving me with almost a pile of ideas rather than a complete book.

To paraphrase what I got out of it:

“Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”

“An existant can never justify the existence of another existant.”

“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”

“The past is a landlord’s luxury. Where shall I keep mine? You don’t put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I should not complain: all I wanted was to be free.”

“This is what I thought: for the most banal event to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.”

But more importantly, the main character is asked who he is writing for, and whether he would write if alone on a desert island. With that, I still wrestle.

The Library
I hit the library and picked up Sartre’s Nausea, which I will hopefully read this weekend. I’m listening to Playboy’s Jazz After Dark, also a freebie. I wanted to pick up some crappy videos on such topics as country line dancing or Mt. Rainier, but I’m a little video’d out right now. I must say that I was fourth and inches on getting as many of the old In Search Of tapes that they would let me carry out of there, but I held back. This is probably a good thing.

On Desire

“C’mon think, I want you to reach back into those minds and tell us, tell us all. What is it that you fantasize about? World peace? [class laughs] Thought so. Do you fantasize about international fame? Do you fantasize about winning a Pulitzer prize, Or an Nobel peace prize, an MTV music award? Do you fantasize about meeting some genius hunk, ostensibly bad but secretly simmering with noble passion and willing to sleep on the wet spot?

You get Lacan’s point. Fantasies have to be unrealistic. Because the moment, the second that you get what you seek, you don’t, you can’t want it anymore.

In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It’s not the “it” that you want, it’s the fantasy of “it”. So, desire supports crazy fantasies.

This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Or why we say the hunt is sweeter than the kill, or be careful what you wish for – not because you will get it, because you are doomed not to want it once you do.

So the lesson of Lacan is living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you’ve attained in terms of your desires, but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.”

-The Life of David Gale, 2003

We hunt for a laptop or a game or a turbo diesel. When given the option to buy, we walk away.

I just plowed through a People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. It has catapulted itself to the top of my “Please Read this before you die” list…if I had said list…which I don’t.

I really liked this one a lot. A.

For her birthday on Thursday (lazy blogger, I am), we accompanied my Mom to Tosca’s for Dinner. I love Tosca’s. Their food makes me weep gently for each bite, as each is closer to the last.

I got a few fiction books to entertain her, a few home design books to inspire her, and a basket of wine, cheese, and snacks to munch on while she read. I also included a box of Bertie Botts jelly beans which include flavors such as vomit, grass, dirt, and boogers. I suggested she innocuously offer them to a doctor or two where she works.

The funny thing of this was that as I was buying my Mom some fiction, the voice of her friend Bob popped into my head saying that he never really reads fiction. The second funny thing was: He never told me this. My Mom did. As I find fiction to be more brain candy and prefer to read something technical, I started feeling that I should put some meaty books in with the cake books. Bob guided me to the kayak section, which I flat out told him that even though my Mom might talk about kayaking all the time, she is not a kayaker. Then, I think he headed off to the engineering or “DIY rocket mastery section” leaving me right near interior design, where I picked up some books on feng shui and design. Wait. Don’t say anything about this. He’ll think I’m crazy…which, I am obviously not.

I didn’t do shit today, although I should’ve done something. I didn’t turn on the TV, although it was the only thing that I wanted to do. I ended up buying the 1st season of “Coupling,” the English comedy that I saw in Sweden. It’s funny stuff, and I’ll lend it out once I see the last 3 episodes.

I’m also instituting an hour of learning a day for as long as I can maintain it. Today’s topic was Macromedia Flash. I really wanted to do more, but my eyes and brain are officially burned out for the day.

I finished another book and added it to the books page. It was Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Me read crappy that book.