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Above, the 1966 Evergreen Black Cat
first
edition of Jack Kerouac's
Satori in Paris
This is just the beginning of the list. Check here regularly over the next couple of weeks... In fact, what's offered up now is just a small inkspot of what will come in the next few weeks.
Send all suggestions to RoadSide6@aol.com
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"It's good when your conscience receives big wounds, because that makes it more sensitive to every twinge. I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make US happy as YOU write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we HAD no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us....That is my belief" Franz Kafka
~recommended reads~
It never ceases to amaze me when I hear someone say, " There's just nothing out there worth reading anymore". And, trust me when I say I have heard this more times than I care to count in my short lifetime. What's been most interesting to me, through my course of self-education, is how one author seems to link to another, who links to another, then another, and so on. If you have read Kerouac, chances are you've read Burroughs, Thompson, Kesey and Ginsberg as well. If you've had your fix of Rimbaud, then your library probably has a few titles by William Blake or Charles Baudelaire or Edgar Allen Poe. If you've read Hesse, there's no doubt you've read Dostoevsky or Sartre. I could go on for days, but will spare you the boring details.
When I first set out to really "read", it wasn't necessarily a conscious effort -- things just fell into place. But, I understand how terribly overwhelming the titles in a pulp shop can be. People are always asking for suggested readings, be it on the internet, at work, or in daily life. There's nothing I love more than turning someone on to a good book, or being turned on to a masterpiece by someone else. In fact, I think it's one of the greatest deeds one person can do for the next. So, below is my attempt at doing just that. I'll try as best I can to make sure that the titles I offer up are relatively easy to come by, either used or new. I'm also adding links to amazon.com so that you might have a chance at picking up one of the books listed if they strike your fancy.
But I can't do this alone. So, here I am, on bended knee, asking for your help. Send me all the suggestions you care to and I'll attempt to add them to this page of suggested reading as soon as I can.
~FICTION~
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