Time for another book thread! I’ve got a little bit of an ulterior motive for this one. I’m looking for examples of your favorite or least favorite cult books — either fiction or non-fiction.
I’m not necessarily looking for books that have a small but devoted following (though those are fine) but also for those books that seemed to be everywhere at some point in time — the kind of books that friends pressed upon you, insisting you read them, telling you they had “changed their life.”
In one discussion of cult books over on Metafilter, a commenter described his list of suggestions as “what any self-respecting 80s stoner would have had on his bookshelf.” Replace 80s with any decade you’d prefer, and “stoner” with “nerd” or “punk” or whatever suits you better, and you get the idea.
Some examples of the sort of books I’m looking for:
- Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse
- The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, by Carlos Castaneda
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig
- The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
Feel free to post examples that are far more obscure and/or recent. Or examples of books that “everybody read” at one point that have become obscure, or that people mainly remember as an embarrassment.
These can be books that you personally love, or books that you can’t understand why anyone loves.
I think pretty much every science geek has read Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! I know Feynman is a problematic character, but he communicates the pleasure of finding things out so clearly, it’s infectious. Reading this book for the first time made me so happy!
As for humour, I suppose most Brits of a certain age have read Down With Skool! and the other books featuring Nigel Molesworth. I didn’t go to a prep school, even a cheap and nasty one like St Custard’s, but I had no trouble identifying with Molesworth, and recognising characters from my own life. Many years later I still occasionally find myself quoting bits of it, and have sometimes mystified co-workers by awarding them the mrs joyful prize for raffia work. A classic British series, as any fule kno.
@Johanna, Shades of Grey was wonderful. A society where your standing depended on what colors you could distinguish… Where several specific colors were used as medicines and drugs… Diagnosticians carried around sets of color flash cards to show to people with ailments. Spoons are important, and things aren’t nearly as nice as they seem at first. Color is piped into city parks to make them more colorful. *sigh* Great as an audiobook as well, since imagining the different colors and stuff was a lot of fun.
Older “cult classics” I think I’ve read…
Chronicles of T Covenant (bitten by a rabid thesaurus, I don’t remember that bit, but it’s been decades since I last read it)
Illuminatus Trilogy (yeah, I agree “Look how naughty we can be”)
Almost anything by Norton, MacAffrey, Bujold, Brin, Adams, Anthony (though I gave up on Piers when I got older), Zelasny, Pratchett, Zahn.
Star Wars Rogue Squadron series (no more, Aaron Allston died too young)
KSR’s Red Green Blue Mars Trilogy.
Charles Stross Laundry Files, but I suspect that’s a small cult.
Want to read more of the Wizard series by Stasheff.
Oh, how could I forget Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I found to be a bit ridiculous, somehow.
So many books, so little time. I stood a chance of reading my local library, but then they moved to a bigger location.
@Dali
Miss Feasance’s Home for Peculiar Aliens ?
@Moggie
*quickly googles*
Thanks all the same, but I think I’ll pass. Not really my jam. I’m a real sucker for… plot. A spoonful of story helps the footnotes go down 🙂
I’ll recommend The Rough Guide to Reggae. It’s a fairly thorough but concise history of Jamaican music, from mento to modern dancehall.
http://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1170968721l/79533.jpg
Also, Modern Chinese by Ping Chen. It has lots of information about the weird language politics of China, and the history of Chinese languages and dialects.
EDIT: Also also, the Wu-Tang Manual, by The RZA. It’s a glimpse into the mind of a very, very strange man.
@Moocow
You might have a go at The Necromancer Chronicles (not the Chronicles of the Necromancer, which is entirely unrelated), by Amanda Downum. It has a necromancer protagonist, a fantasy setting that’s not pseudo-medieval Europe, gay and trans characters, and cloak and dagger intrigue.
Axecalibur:
Well, if you want plot with footnotes, maybe House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski? But only in printed form: an e-book doesn’t really do it justice.
Noam Chomsky has some good stuff and some bad stuff. His work on media control, Iraq, Vietnam, and U.S.-backed right-wing regimes in Latin America is very good. On the Cambodia stuff he unfortunately stuck with the semi-mainstream view that atrocity reports were unverifiable when he could’ve taken a principled stance, like opposing intervention and supporting policies to help refugees. He often falls into knee-jerk Manichean anti-Americanism, perhaps because he believes in holding his own country to higher standards. His criticism of American foreign policy is mostly correct.
Apart from that, he’s unnecessarily hard to understand and his sources are mostly secondary sources like newspaper articles and citing himself (you might need to have a few of his books to check a source). Maybe good ideas, poor execution.
Haven’t caught up with the thread yet, but would Outbreak count? Seemed like everyone was reading it in the 90s and then it seemed to disappear.
Pandemic, get Pandemic. It’s all about the CDC, and preventing the outbreak of major diseases across the globe. You run around madly, trying to contain and control as you frantically try to search for a cure. It’s co-operative, too, and it’s everyone against the game, and it’s really frickin’ hard. The board’s nice and you get all sorts of little wooden cubes, too. I really want Pandemic Legacy, which is … well, it’s just lush. It’s an experience. But you need to have a group that’s willing to play it over and over, and that can be a little –
Oh, wait, that’s a board game.
Still! Totally worth your time! If you have a few board game nerd friends, it’s a classic.
OT: Trump’s first apology of the campaign
Trump apologizes for ‘locker room banter’ after past recordings emerge
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/07/politics/donald-trump-women-vulgar/index.html#
Another source says that he apologized “if he offended anyone.” So…a nonapology apology.
This same issue came up with Arnold Schwarzenegger when he ran for governor of California. He was quite the groper! He won anyway.
OTOH, he wasn’t running for president.
And OTOOH, Maria Shriver left her husband, Arnold, when it turned out that he had fathered a child with the housekeeper many years before. And the housekeeper kept working for them. Maria left Arnold just days before his term as governor was up, so it was a moot point as far as elected office went.
ETA: I don’t think Trump will be bringing up Bill’s infidelities at the second debate. Or am I underestimating the foolhardiness of Donald J. Trump? Planet Earth, stay tuned!
PS: Planet Earth, you should hear what he says about you! Climate change isn’t real, he says. What a dolt.
To be clear, Trump talked about groping women.
Schwarzenegger actually groped them.
Of course, I’m sure that both men did both things.
@Brony,
Interesting paper! I have issues with their basic premise, though. The idea’s sound, but they say that we have fMRI connectivity scans that could detect memes. That’s really, really not true – we haven’t got nearly the resolution, and even then, individual meme structures in the brain will be in (largely) unique places dependent on the individual. There are generalities that can be stated, but these are statements on general behaviour and function, not individual memes. We’re going to need to be able to look at the connectivity of individual neocortical columns, at the minimum (in my opinion) before we can start talking about memes as biological things.
Still, it’s good work, and I’m glad to see that there’s a push towards formalizing the idea. The concept of meme as neural network is spot on (and it’s basically what I do, anyways), so that’s nice to see! I’m a memeticist I guess!
@JS
I’ve been meaning for *years* to put together a swatchman cosplay (even got Fforde to sign a prop swatchbook I put together, as “ColourMaster General”!) and finally, FINALLY, I’ve got the rest of the bits together in time for Halloween.
No-one else will get it, of course, but I’m going to have fun, regardless. I’m doing myself up in greyscale – because a thing worth doing is worth OVERdoing – and I fully expect my coworkers to assume I’m a character from Pleasantville, or something. 🙂
This might be too Canadian, but Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill.
I’ll cop to thinking that Dawkins’ science writing is great, Selfish Gene and all the rest. I inherited a bunch of copies that were bought long before it became apparent and undeniable that he himself is an absolute disaster area in so many ways (long before his eponymous Foundation and twitter even existed, for example). And yet, and yet, somehow I no longer want to re-read them now … :-\
It never occurred to me to list the Discworld books as cult classics – but if they are, I’ll have ’em!
And Molesworth.
And 1066 and All That.
Catch 22?
@Dalillama
OMG that sounds amazing! I will have to check it out. Necromancers need more love in fantasy fiction! .>
I do really enjoy co-op tabletop games. You and friends vs the game is a refreshing experience.
Hmmmm…..
‘When Bad Things Happen to Good People’ by Rabbi Harold Kushner. Had at least one sequel I’m aware of.
‘The Rules’ by Ellen Fein & Sherrie Schneider. This one spawned a small industry with its sequels and diaries and things like that.
What a fab thread, so many of my favourites already mentioned, but here we go:
American Gods was my first thought, because I only recently got to it.
Hitchhiker’s, Discworld are longstanding favourites.
Garth Nix (particularly Sabriel) is fantastic.
No one’s mentioned “urban gothic”; Patricia Briggs is my standout favourite – the Mercy Thompson and Alpha & Omega novels are particularly good. I also love the Graceling trilogy – I don’t want to switch screens to look up the author, but the books are Graceling, Fire & Bitterblue. They’re arguably YA, but the issues tackled are brilliant (abandonment, memory loss, abuse, PTSD – all carefully examined).
ETA Kristin Cashore (see above)
Ah, that makes sense then.
That’s also kind of the reason I’m on the fence about Gotham, I think. It looks really good, and I’m glad a series is tackling something other than Batman (because I don’t like Batman stuff for Batman, I like it for everyone else, really), but at the same time, it’s really fucking with a lot of origin stories. I mean, in the first episode, you see a very obvious Ivy and Catwoman, and then there’s the Penguin’s whole backstory where he’s working for a sub-group within the Falcone gang.
Though, I really do like Fish. She’s a damn good character.
Back on the topic of books though, since we’re talking about high school favorites: when I was in junior high, I adored the Alana books by Tamora Pierce, and the Sabriel series by Garth Nix.
EDIT: Ninja’d about Sabriel by Weatherwax! That’s what I get for not refreshing. : P
Also, given someone above mentioned Flowers In The Attic, can I get a shout out for Lace by Shirley Conran? I remember, at 13, a class member reading out the goldfish scene. Possibly the most subversive moment of my adolescence.
@PI
Sadly I didn’t ninja you; there’s a mention upthread. But this is what I like about this community; for every shared reference, there’s a new one to explore.
@Dalillama
Thank you. I honestly wrote three different drafts of a reply that went on for paragraphs. You cut right to the heart of it.
For good cult books, nthing everyone’s mentions of:
American Gods (and Neverwhere, and anything by Gaiman but not sure if they’d all count as ‘cult’ I just will take any excuse to fangirl over him … *takes breath*)
Discworld – just, wow. It’s cult all right; once you start you fall in and never want to come out.
Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series (fantastic female characters to boot)
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Also love Daniel Dennett and yes, Dawkins on science is great.
I would possibly add:
David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest – anyone read that?
Hawking’s A Brief History of Time was the one that everyone owned back in the 90s but not many had read 🙂
Nick Cave’s fiction (e.g. The Ass Saw the Angel) and non-fiction (Sick Bag Song) might qualify. The latter is just beautiful.
I remember “The Rules”. Terrible stuff. The industry around those books started to fade off after one of the author’s divorce was announced. That is a fantastic example of something that was everywhere and then disappeared. I remember reading it in a bookstore and deciding I didn’t want to work that hard for a spouse.