Top products from r/bookclub

I'm a long time Redditor, but using this account to include my own book - online as of yesterday. I hope this is allowed - I need some feedback, so if anyone is interested I'd greatly appreciate ;-)

Half Past Monday
By M Erpenbeck

>After marrying his med school sweetheart, Dr. Dominic Rivera thought his life was perfect. But his wife, Clarissa, has dark secrets, and the consequences of her past trauma have been buried all these years. When current events push her over the edge, the confident doctor’s life completely falls apart.

>Dominic would do anything to change what happened. His only chance lies in an old inventor friend’s scribbles, stored away in a forgotten attic. This tool will let him change his wife’s history—but at what cost? Even though he only has time to alter one moment, the repercussions follow him back to the present. He saves his wife, unknowingly at the expense of others.

>A single day can alter who a person becomes. When a young boy sees his mother killed, his own path turns dark. Back in the present, Dominic is thrilled when everything seems to be right again. He gradually notices small differences, ones that are seemingly unconnected. But when his daughter is kidnapped, Dominic realizes the gravity of what he has done. Lost among the dusty roads of a ghost town, he must prove himself innocent and find his little girl—before it’s too late.

Design with Nature by Ian McHarg

I started reading this one a while ago, but was sidetracked by life and it sat collecting dust. I just started it again, but haven't gone very far. This book is supposed to be the bible for planners and landscape architects, so I'm excited to get back into it.

I just finished reading Need for the Bike by Paul Fournel. This book is a collection of short stories and musings written by a lifetime cyclist. He does an amazing job conveying feelings associated with biking and I devoured this book much quicker than I expected. My wife bought it for me for Christmas because it was supposed to be similar to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, another book I really enjoyed.

I also finally finished The Landscape of Man, which I had been working through. I still don't see how this one was supposed to impact me as much as others claim it should, but it was an interesting read.

General

The Genius and the Goddess by Aldous Huxley

>“Why do you love the woman you're in love with? Because she is. And that, after all, is God's own definition of Himself; I am that I am. The girl is who she is. Some of her isness spills over and impregnates the entire universe. Objects and events cease to be mere representations of classes and become their own uniqueness; cease to be illustrations of verbal abstractions and become fully concrete. Then you stop being in love, and the universe collapses, with an almost audible squeak of derision, into its normal insignificance.”

>One of the greatest books I've ever read. I plan on reading it 1,000 times more.

[Kitchen Confidential] (https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Confidential-Updated-Adventures-Underbelly/dp/0060899220) by [Anthony Bourdain] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Bourdain)

I read this on Kindle on through their Lending Library (it might still be on there) and loved it. It's a great look inside kitchens and Bourdain is a good writer.

Edit: inserted title and author

Awesome, since I just picked up the Kindle edition of GR last week along with a thrift copy of this guide.

This wiki page also seems to be pretty cool. I used the same wiki for V a while back and it was a nice/fun reference to have.

I found InfiniteSummer to be extremely helpful when reading Infinite Jest. Perhaps this site will prove to be just as helpful for Gravity's Rainbow. The site seems to have various resources (chapter summaries, introduction, links to wiki's, links to papers) at our disposal. Happy reading!

Also, I really recommend avoiding Penguin's edition of Gravity's Rainbow. The edges are frayed, which prove to be rather cumbersome when flipping through a 750ish page book :|

General

[The Glass Bead Game] ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/009928362X?pc_redir=1397308069&robot_redir=1 ) by Hermann Hesse.

Had this on my shelves for a while. Seems like it'd be a good one to discuss.

From Amazon:
>In the remote Kingdom of Castalia, the scholars of the Twenty Third century play the Glass Bead Game. The elaborately coded game is a fusion of all human knowledge - of maths, music, philosophy, science, and art. Intrigued as a school boy, Joseph Knecht becomes consumed with mastering the game as an adult. As Knecht fulfils his life-long quest he must contend with unexpected dilemmas and the longing for a life beyond the ivory tower.

ok, how about the crying of lot 49 by thomas pynchon? I've read it seve n or eight times, but love talking about it so...

The Sisters Brothers sounds particularly awesome. I'll be picking that up.

It depends on what kind of reader you are. It's supposed to be a complicated book so it would be easy to get bogged down in details.

To each their own.

It's my first time attempting so i'm just going to use the wiki page but in the future when i re-read it i'll pick up the companion.

Lexicon: a novel
https://www.amazon.com/Lexicon-Novel-Max-Barry/dp/0143125427

the sister's brothers
https://www.amazon.com/Sisters-Brothers-Patrick-deWitt/dp/0062041282

a soon to be film starring Jake gyllenhall, Joaquin Phoenix, and John C reilly

Bit late, but Papillion?

Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson

http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0060512806/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217867198&sr=8-2

Modern Book Submission

House of Leaves

Mark Danielewski

https://www.amazon.com/Thump-Rat-Tat-Tat-Gene-Baer/dp/0060203617 maybe?

Modern

[The Bell Jar] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Jar) By [Sylvia Plath] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath)

Description via Amazon:

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

Some people would call me crazy, but House of Leaves by Daniel Z. Danielewski.

Quick note for UK book clubbers:

Crime and Punishment is available in the Penguin Popular Classics imprint, and it sells at £2. You can find it on Amazon here, but it should be available at this price everywhere.

Am reading Henrietta Lacks ATM and really liking it.

I also recommend ...

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

The Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan

God Is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens

Risk - Dan Gardner

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre

Why People Believe Weird Things - Michael Shermer

How We Know What isn't So - Thomas Gilovich

EDIT : MOAR

Quirkology - Prof. Richard Wiseman

Tricks Of The Mind - Derren Brown

59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot - Prof. Richard Wiseman

How to Lie With Statistics - Donald Huff

Modern Submission

Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr

Per Amazon

> Sara Goldfarb is devastated by the death of her husband. She spends her days watching game shows and obsessing over appearing on television as a contestant—and her prescription diet pills only accelerate her mania. Her son, Harry, is living in the streets with his friend Tyrone and girlfriend Marion, where they spend their days selling drugs and dreaming of escape. When their heroin supply dries up, all three descend into an abyss of dependence and despair, their lives, like Sara’s, doomed by the destructive power of drugs.