Do you think of a favorite book as member of your family, or one of your best friends? Do you have too many books (or friends) or not enough this summer?
. . . Here are a few favorite reads for the summer months from your friends at Third Man. Tell us some of yours!
"Picking [three] favorite books is like picking the [three] body parts you'd most like not to lose.”
― Neil Gaiman
Chet:
"Miracle Boy and Other Stories" by Pinckney Benedict (Short Stories)
"The Brief History of the Dead" by Kevin Brockmeier (Fiction)
"Rise in the Fall" by Ana Bozicevic (Poetry)
*Honorable Mention: "Geronimo Rex" by Barry Hannah (Fiction - pictured)
Bliss:
"His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman (trilogy pictured)
"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett (parallels these hot summer days and racial discrimination still heavily present today)
"The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother" by James McBride
Ben Swank:
"The Sellout" by Paul Beatty
"Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt" by Chris Hedges & Joe Sacco (pictured)
"1966: The Year The Decade Exploded" by Jon Savage
Rebecca:
"Decline & Fall" by Evelyn Waugh (pictured)
"A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
"Galapagos" by Kurt Vonnegut
Ben Blackwell:
1. "But What If We’re Wrong?" by Chuck Klosterman
I absolutely love everything CK has written. Even fiction, which I usually cannot be bothered with. His newest book has sincerely affected me in that I’m now constantly wondering how my actions today will be viewed 500 years from now. Also, first book I’ve read in a timely manner after release since Violet was born three years ago. After Berry Gordy, Klosterman is the living person I want to meet most. I just think he and I
could be great friends. I guess that’s the mark of a truly great writer…their ability to make themselves feel familiar to complete strangers.
2. "The Detroit Almanack" by Bill McGraw & Peter Gavrilovrich
Everything I could ever hope to know, glean or forget about the rich, beautiful and sometimes ugly history of Detroit is contained in this tome. It cures homesickness. It sparks talking points for my essay in the new Stooges book. It provided me with yarn after yarn of tales to weave into the solo album I wrote exclusively about the city of Detroit. As this thing came out in 2001 it feels like it is in desperate need of an update.
3. "TeenBeat Mayhem" by Mike Markseich
An unbelievably exhaustive account of 1960’s garage rock singles, complete with geographic locales of the bands, month/years of release, label and pressing variations…this book was over twenty years in the making and worth every minute spent diving into it.
Ariana:
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez (pictured)
"Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami
"On The Road" by Jack Kerouac
Josh:
"SELECTED POEMS" by GWENDOLYN BROOKS
"BEVERLY" by NICK DRNASO
"SUBURBAN NATION" by ANDRES DUANY AND ELIZABETH PLATER-ZYBERK
Kim:
"Faithfull: An Autobiography" by Marianne Faithfull
"Boys in the Trees" by Carly Simon
"Salt" by Nayyirah Waheed (pictured)
Robbie:
"And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks" by Jack Kerouac & William S Burroughs
"Pain the Board Game" by Sampson Starkweather
"The Kitchen Readings" by Michael Cleverly & Bob Braudis
Sarah:
"Rasputin" by Joseph T. Fuhrmann
"God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" by Kurt Vonnegut (pictured)
"The Hawkline Monster" by Richard Brautigan
Brett:
"A Coney Island of the Mind" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
"Who I Am" by Pete Townshend
"Stress Test" by Timothy Geithner
Katty:
"Just Kids" by Patti Smith
"East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
"Positively 4th Street" by David Hajdu (pictured)
Todd:
"Swift 3 Pre-Release" by Apple
"Core Data in Swift" by Marcus S. Zarra
"Ansible for DevOps" by Jeff Geerling
Jenna Kay:
"Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier
"The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
"The Heart of Yoga" by T.K.V. Desikachar
Cam:
"Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"The Handmaid’s Tale" by Margaret Atwood
"The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway
Daniel:
"The Art of Loving" by Erich Fromm
"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
"The Tao of Wu" by The Rza
Chloe:
"You Shall Know Our Velocity!" by Dave Eggers - fave
"My Antonia" by Willa Cather - summer
"The Miracle of Mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hahn - current
David:
"A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller Jr.
"Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri (Paradiso is my fav jam)
Obviously our FAVORITE favorites are from Third Man Books. SUMMER READING SPECIAL SALE 20% OFF THIRD MAN BOOKS TITLES to help you choose! http://thirdmanbooks.com/
“Where your turntable’s not dead and the page still turns.”
Kali Durga, I agree! I’m not on social media, so I know that makes it difficult. I’m going to try to figure something out though. I can tell that we are gonna be friends. :-)
thanks for this lovely addition to the summer announcements….. being a verbavore has always made life more rich for me too…. im sure the photos were fun to snap also! very refreshing to see some nonfiction in the mix but with all the vonnegut and gabriel garcia marquez in the mix there is no doubt about the strong creative faction of imagination running wild at TMR these days…. glad you good folk have some time on your hands to be enjoying your leisure…. Cam… quit sneaking books off my shelf brother….I will be counting the days until the Iggy release and preparing my occular muscles for the Literary olympics therein but for now with the quiet sound of rain here at the moment i think i will sort these shipments for all the little libraries around town and be thankful for the time to do so…. Happy Reading TMR
“A Scanner Darkly” by Phillip K. Dick
“Starship Troopers”, and “Stranger In a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein
“Ender’s Game”, and “Speaker for the Dead” by Orson Scott Card
I also love “A Song of Ice and Fire” series by George R.R. Martin
“The Sword of Truth” series by Terry Goodkind
and the “Necroscope” series by Brian Lumley
Beck, I wish we had another avenue for conversation besides this, seems we could find a lot to talk about.
I love reading everyone’s lists and comments. And yes, Kali Durga! I’d like to hear Jack’s selections, too. Three books that I tend to go back to time and again are: Life by Keith Richards – I love to read biographies and his is fascinating, The Hoax by Clifford Irving – because truth is stranger than fiction and this is such a well-crafted story, and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway – because I love the old man and fishing…and “the baseball”.
Oh, and y’all need to get Jack’s selections on this list. I’ve read a handful of books that he’s mentioned over the last several years and enjoyed them all. That Leon Uris novel, Trinity, was questionable but interesting (and I wonder whether he read it or not, after asking about it in Vault chat), but the rest were fantastic.
@Aquamarine: I haven’t seen it either, but I had the same thought upon hearing of it.
The Prince of Stories- The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden and Stephen Bissette; The Consultant, by Bentley Little; Discovering Scarfolk, For Tourists and Other Tresspassers, By Richard Littler.
The Prince of Stories- The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden and Stephen Bissette; The Consultant, by Bentley Little; Discovering Scarfolk, For Tourists and Other Tresspassers, By Richard Littler.
@Kali Durga I didn’t know there was one, but It can’t beat the film that the book made in my head.