The 67 Books That I MUST Read Before I die, According to my Buddies on Facebook

I read a lot, but that doesn't mean that I'm an exeptionally well-read person. I tend to stick to the bizarro, horror, and sci-fi/fantasy genres and I'd like to broaden my pitifully narrow horizon when it comes to literature. Almost everyone has heard of the "1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die" list and yesterday I decided to check it out. You can peruse it here:

1001 Series

The site doesn't just host the book list, but also 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Songs You Must Hear, etc. I browsed through the list and the rest of the site. Seemed decent enough until I realized that I couldn't figure out just WHO made these lists. That didn't sit well with me. While I'm sure that the books on the 1001 are worth a gander, as I think that most books are, I decided to go a different route to increase the breadth of my literary knowledge: I asked my friends on Facebook with this status update:

"Name a book that I MUST read before I Die"

Comments and suggestions poured in immediately. Of all of my friends' suggestions, I'd only read about four of them. I wrote them all down on slips of paper and put them in a coffee can so I can select one blindly, read the book, and then pull another title out of the hat. Rinse and repeat.

The List:

The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow: the Rediscovered Diaries of Opal Whitely

Simon Logan's I-O series

Swan Song – Robert McCammon

Story of B – Daniel Quinn

Papillon – Henri Charriere

Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut

Wretched of the Earth – Frantz Fannon

Sexual Politics of Meat – Carol Adams

Thomas the Rhymer – Ellen Kushner

The Hour of Star – Clarice Lispector

House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski

The Handmaid's Tale – Margaret Atwood

Lolita – Nabakov

Pale Fire – Nabakov

World According to Garp – John Irving

Cider House Rules – John Irving

Mao II – Don DeLillo

A Scanner darkly

Everville – Clive Barker

A Choir of Ill Children – Tom Piccirilli

The Indifference of Heaven – Gary Braunbeck

The Tao Te Ching

Dante's Vita Nuova

Dubliners

Die, You Doughnut Bastards – Cameron Pierce

Private Midnight

Pick Your Battle – Douglas Lain

Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

The Big Sleep

Naked Lunch

Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

The Odyssey

Haunted:Tales of the Grotesque – Joyce Carol Oates

Short Stories of Dunsany

The Essential Ellison

Maus

Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science and Bad Religion in a world without God.

The Killing Joke

Siren Promised

The Razor's Edge

The Stand – Stephen King

The Bhagavad Gita

Walt Whitman, anything by

The Age of Reason – Thomas Paine

V for Vendetta

Siddhartha

Walden – Thoreau

Renascence

Joseph Campbell, anything by

Prometheus Rising – Robert Anton Wilson

Junky -burroughs

Dark Gods – Ted Klein

Deltora Quest series

Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

Smonk - Tom Franklin

 Autumn of the Patriarch

 The Shadow of the Torturer

 Shriek

 Random Acts of Senseless Violence

 Perdido Street Station

 Crow With No Mouth

 Nova

 Silent Spring

 Night of the Crabs

 Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Start to Bleed a Bit

 The Girl on the Refrigerator -  Etgar Keret

With so many responses, I'll be busy for quite some time. Last night I pulled THE HANDMAID'S TALE out of the can, so I'll be acquiring a copy of that soon. I'm very excited about this endeavor. I think that it's one of my better ideas.

READ ON, EVERYBODY!

Walking Dead Wednesday: What to Do Until the New Season Starts

The past couple of Sundays since The Walking Dead's season finale, the internet has been bombarded with "Oh no! Whatever shall we do until The Walking Dead returns in October?" memes like the one above. Worry not. There are still PLENTY of ways to get your TWD fix until our favorite apocalypse survivors return to the air.

1. Read the Comic

I'm hoping that everyone who watches The Walking Dead realizes that the show is based on a comic series that has been running since 2003. If you haven't read it, do so at your earliest convenience. Hell, what ELSE are you going to do on Sundays until the show returns in October?

The easiest and most cost effective way to get up-to-date on the comic series is to acquire Compendiums 1 & 2, which include the first 96 issues. Volume 17 continues the story through issue 102. Volume 18 is due out in June 2013.

Don't worry about the comic ruining the show for you. The show is vastly different from the its source material.

2. Read the backstory novels. 

Robert Kirkman has written two novels with Jay Bonansinga that chronicle the lives of some of Woodbury's residents before they arrive in the town. The books are pretty damn good actually, I preferred "Rise of the Governor" over "Road to Woodbury," but they're both worth it.

Rise of the Governor

The Road to Woodbury

3. Watch some sweet Lego interpretations or parodies of The Walking Dead on YouTube.

There are a shitload of amatuer and not-so amatuer filmmakers doing awesome stop-motion movies with Legos. If it exists, there's most likely been a Lego movie made about it. Here's a couple that I enjoyed.

 

The Mocking Dead by digitalwizardz

The Lego Walking Dead by dysinger

4. Play The Walking Dead board games

Invite some buddies over for a game night and fight your way through the walker invasion together! There are two TWD board games: one based on the comic and the other is based on the show. I haven't played either of them, but if I had some friends I'd be all over that shit.

5. Play videos games based on The Walking Dead

There are two TWD console/PC games that have been released so far: The Walking Dead by Telltale Games and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct by Activision. The first one has an awesome "choose your own adventure" type of gameplay and an engaging story.The second one sucks major ass and should be avoided at all costs. The novelty of playing Daryl Dixon in Survival Instinct wears off quickly and the game is just...ugh.

There's also The Walking Dead Social Game on Facebook. Fun for a while, but grew old quickly for me.

6. Read or write some Walking Dead fan fiction.

Fan fiction is exactly what it sounds like: fiction written by fans set in the world of whatever the fan is a fan of.  Fantastic! Of course, some serious attempts at prose have unintenttioally hilarious (and awful) results. Whether the stories are really good, so bad that they're good, or just plain BAD, fan fiction is definitely worth checking out. Some fans write about Rick and the gang, while others make up their own characters to torture in the apocalypse. Check out some fan fic here:

Walking Dead FanFiction

7. Get The Walking Dead action figures and stage your own scenes.

The Walking Dead action figures by McFarlane Toys are pretty badass. They've created awesome little replicas of Rick, Shane, Daryl, a bunch of walkers and more. Get the full scoop on these rockin' toys here:

The Walking Dead Action Figures

With these poseable characters you can reenact scenes from the show as well as make up your own stories. Or you can just make them fuck, like my buddy Vince Kramer does:

Vince has even published a 2013 calendar of action figure porn which you can find here:

Action Figures Fucking 2013 Calendar

He's only got a couple left, but Vince is planning to do another calendar for 2014! Woo-Hoo!

So, as you can see, there's plenty to keep you occupied until season 4 starts in October. Stop crying in that corner. It'll be just fine. Trust me.

New Book Coming Soon from author Dustin LaValley

Guns, Girls, and Tattoos: a book trailer for Odds and Ends

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7hG6DRXoF4

From the Back of the Book

Prepare to be ferried to an unfamiliar realm on the bony back of despair. Author Dustin LaValley takes us down face first with rapid-fire flash fiction in the form of Odds and Ends: An Assortment of Sorts. Already associated with the dark and bizarre, LaValley expands his repertoire to experiment with form and literary introspection. These harrowing meditations on the nature of the world--and the very purpose of humanity--not only provide chills, but strangely the effect of this read is vastly disproportionate to its length, leaving us with scars to contemplate for a long time to come.

Advance Praise
"Extraordinary. Hauntingly poignant." -Thomas Ligotti, author of My Work Is Not Yet Done

Official Author Links
On Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/dustinlavalleyauthor
Dust, In the Valley http://dustinthevalley.tumblr.com/
On Twitter https://twitter.com/dustinlavalley

Floridian Author Extraordinaire

I've been on a Carl Hiaasen kick lately. If you're not familiar with Hiaasen, he's a novelist out of Florida who also writes a column for the Miami Herald. I introduced myself to Hiaasen's work in the late 90's by reading his novels "Double Whammy," "Lucky You," and "Striptease" (the book that the movie of the same name starring Demi Moore is based on).

Hiaasen's books are set in Florida and are filled with environmentalism, corrupt politicians, wacky characters, bizarre crimes and darkly hilarious humor.

In the past few weeks, I've immersed myself in his novels. I powered through "Tourist Season," "Skinny Dip," "Stormy Weather," "Skin Tight," "Double Whammy" (again) and "Nature Girl." Currently, I'm reading "Sick Puppy." I dig this dude's work.

Here's a link to his bibliography on Amazon:
Carl Hiaasen on Amazon

His books are available on Kindle, but if you're looking for hard copy, I suggest you try your local library or local, independent bookstore.

That's it for today. Meanwhile, here's a pic of my cat flashing you.