Go out and read these now.
I suck down a lot of books. Most of them are OK. Some are pretty good. Others downright blow. But occasionally the dynamite book gets read. The kind where you wish you could erase your memory so you could read it fresh again. These are those books.
- Douglas Coupland, Microserfs. The novel that got me to not only read but BUY all other Coupland books. A half dozen MicroSoft programmers, who worship Bill Gates as God/the only guy with a plan for his life, leave and try to run their own company. Loaded with Simpsons and Lego references like you wouldn't believe.
- Jonathan Kerr, A Civil Action. True story of a ten year lawsuit after kids in Woburn, MA started dying of leukemia. You'll never be as pissed off by a book as you'll be by the judge in this. The movie captures the financial dilemma of Travolta's character well (who really should have been played by John Turturro) but there's dozens of other stories also in the book that didn't make it onscreen.
- Lorrie Moore, Anything she's written. These are mostly short stories, but they've all got a whimsical sadness to them. You'll be laughing out loud every paragraph, but at the same time feeling the intense loneliness these people have. An odd combo, but she does it better than anyone.
- Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Anything they're written. Resurrecting the adventure novel, they give you treasure hunts, killer viruses, lost cities, and one of the best monster books ever written. Read Relic and you'll be hooked into reading the rest of them.
- J. K. Rowling, Anything Harry Potter. You probably don't need me to tell you about these, but they're damn good for any age, so suck it up and read a book for kids.
- David Simon, Homicide. The guy spent a year with the Baltimore Homicide Department and captured the exact feel of what being a detective is all about. What they based the TV show on, and what they continually went back to in order to make the show great.
- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash. Other Stephenson stuff is also great, but Snow Crash is the must read. It gives cyberpunk a sense of humor, throwing virtual reality in with pizza delivery, 21st century skateboarding, the world's largest raft, and a computer virus that kills computer programmers.